May 18, 2025
Conquering Motorcycle Fears: A Guide for All Riders
In this episode of the Throttle and Roast podcast, host Niels Meersschaert delves into the fears and doubts faced by motorcyclists, like the fear of the unknown. He addresses concerns new riders may have about purchasing their first bike and the challenges of handling it, focusing on balancing and mastering the clutch. Niels reassures listeners that these fears are natural and offers practical tips for overcoming them, emphasizing the importance of skill development through practice and training. This episode aims to equip riders, both new and experienced, with the mindset for conquering motorcycle fears and enjoying the journey of motorcycling.
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00:00 - Introduction
01:11 - Fear of the Unknown
14:55 - One bad experience
28:39 - Confidence
35:17 - Wrap up
WEBVTT
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Face your fears and doubts and new worlds will open to you.
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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. This episode will be the first in a series of fears and frustrations that motorcyclists face. Whether you're thinking about riding, you're a brand new rider, or a long-term rider, some of these may still be affecting you, and I'll cover them along with some tips on how to mitigate them. In this first episode, will be a broad base to cover some general issues, and we'll dive into more detail in these in later episodes. So no matter whether you've never ridden or you've ridden for 20 years, there's always something that bugs you or that you might fear on a bike.
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And if you don't face your fears, you can't overcome them. So let's dig into some of those fears motorcyclists may face.
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So the first I want to start with is really this fear of the unknown. it's going to fit different riders at different stages in their riding career in different ways. so if you're a brand new rider, or you are just starting to think about getting a bike, there's some trepidation. There's some fear.
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There's some wondering that you may have about a variety of aspects of motorcycle riding.
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And maybe the first one is even just, how do I go about buying my first bike? It's not like buying a car. It's not like buying other things because you are used to that. You may have done that in the past with another vehicle, but a motorcycle is a different experience. There aren't as many dealerships as there are for cars. The experience of going into them is a little different.
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You'll see that they're really crowded in with a lot of bikes in the dealership. So it can feel very intimidating if you aren't used to it. And so there's ways in which we can tackle that. But I do want to just sort of, with this episode, really focus on what are the fears that we might think of.
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Now the other one, of course, if you're a brand new rider and maybe you haven't ridden a bicycle in a long time, because there's a lot of the skills will transfer over between riding a bicycle and riding a motorcycle.
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Maybe there's your balance and you're worried, am I going to be able to balance this motorcycle and compared to a bicycle? Maybe you ride a bicycle on a regular basis and motorcycles are going to be significantly heavier than any bicycle. Even if you've got something that's maybe one of the pedal bicycles that are out there, there may be 30, 40 pounds. Whereas a motorcycle is going to be at minimum, even if it's a small scooter, it's going to be at minimum, going to be 10 times that weight. So you can have a significant increase in the weight and that can make you wonder, am I going to be able to balance this And the thing you have to realize is just like a bicycle, a motorcycle designed to be having that intrinsic balance. And so it's not something that you have to necessarily fear, but it is something that you do need to develop your skills to be successful in. And that's all part of it is that it's a natural premise of when you have not yet done something that you're going to be a little intimidated or scared about what may be because you start wondering all these crazy ideas.
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Same thing I'd say is for a motorcycle with the clutch. Here in the United States, manual transmissions in cars, the take rate or the number of cars that are sold with a manual transmission is less than 2% of all sales. And I think the last time when I was able to get a manual transmission, my wife doesn't drive a manual transmission, so our current car is an automatic, but the cars I'd had all proceeding that were all manual transmissions. But I had to wait sometimes to get the car, they didn't have them available for pickup. That was a really rare occurrence. And so many aspiring riders may have only driven an automatic, and they have no experience with a manual transmission in a car.
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And then you start wondering about, well, how do I deal with this on a motorcycle? How do I deal with that clutch? And it can feel a little intimidating because you start to realize, well, in a motorcycle we're actually using our hands each individual hand each individual foot so all these you know movement of our body is being used simultaneously and they can feel a little intimidating of how do i coordinate all of and look in the beginning you're going to feel and be a little awkward it's a normal thing as you're just getting started you're going to pop that clutch a little too quickly you're going to be rough on the throttle and so the bike's going to bounce back and forth back and forth this bucking bronco sort of reaction and that's just a normal part of it so you will get better over time there are obviously ways that you can do this better which is taking like a class where you can do it in a controlled environment they're typically done like a closed off parking lot and they can teach you how to very smoothly and effectively manipulate that clutch to be nice and smooth now if you're still intimidated by this there are becoming more and more options on the market for a clutchless type of a bike and if you are willing to look at a certain genre of bikes which would be scooters almost all scooters are currently delivered with a cvt or a constant velocity transmission and this is of course a clutchless endeavor the clutch if you will actually happens automatically centrifugally inside of the transmission so you don't actually have a actual clutch lever anymore on most bikes they actually move one of the brake levers up to that second spot so on my vespa for my lever is still the normal front brake but my left lever is now not the clutch it's the rear brake because there's no foot brake on my particular version of the vespa so there is a way that you can do that with a scooter of course and there are other motorcycles that actually are beginning to have the lack of a clutch i think honda was one of the first ones to do this.
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KTM and BMW now have released some models that have a basically an automated manual so you still shift gears with your left foot but you no longer have to worry about the clutch so if you're really intimidated by a clutch this can be a way to address that and as i mentioned that MSF class or a class of whatever makes sense in your particular region of the world is a great way to address some of these fears while giving you that practice in a controlled environment now another part that you might fear as a new rider is traffic and you know if you're just getting used to the idea of even being able to manipulate the controls on a bike now dealing with working around traffic and everything can start to feel a little overwhelming and the big thing with traffic the only caveat i will say where there's a little different of course is because you are on a smaller vehicle other drivers tend to not be as aware of you and don't you don't give you the leeway that you would want so ride very defensively and you're able to mitigate some of those traffic concerns another one i hear this quite often is a fear of the highway or the expressway and a bit of this is more of the speed so i actually saw a couple recent posts on social media of some new riders who were celebrating that they had gotten up to a higher speed and in one example they hit 52 miles an hour which is not quite highway speeds yet but they hit that on their bike on that particular day and they were really proud of themselves and rightfully so because it can feel difficult to get to a higher speed and therefore the highway with the higher road speeds that you're going to have on the highway typically in the U. it'll range anywhere from 55 to 65 is a pretty common range in some parts out west they might even have 70 even 80 mile an hour speed limits obviously in Europe it'll be about 100 kilometers 120 kilometers an hour is pretty common for them getting comfortable with that speed is going to come over time the beauty is you don't have to jump from just getting your license to immediately riding on the so you you can take your time of just as that one comment I'd seen on social media someone who was really excited about that they had gotten a little quicker you can build it up over time now if we start to shift gears from sort of more of the new or considering riders into more of the non-established riders well there's a few things that we may fear that we have not yet experienced that still that fear of the unknown is still going to be plaguing us in some ways because maybe our riding riding career has been limited if you always are doing just short quick rides less than a day you know maybe like you go out for an hour or so like that maybe a longer ride is something that you're fearful of how am I going to do it what if I get too far what if I get too tired what if it you know I run into any sort of an issue these are legitimate fears that someone may have of considering how do I expand my horizons of what I'm doing to and the biggest thing is again same thing take your time with acclimating to that over a period so if let's say that your longest ride had been an hour well try an hour and a half try two hours just try to grow it a little further as you go out and don't be afraid if you start to get a little tired yeah pull over take a little of a break it's not a big deal no one's gonna to chastise you because you decided to take a break and enjoy a sight it's a wonderful thing to do on a bike it's in fact the beauty of a bike is that you are much more enjoying the journey rather than rushing from point a to point b so take that time and if it's something that you wanted to do even a longer trip maybe like an overnight trip because unlike on a day trip you may need to bring more supplies with you maybe bring a change of clothing maybe you have to bring some stuff for overnight or maybe you want to bring a cell phone charger whatever it is that you need to bring you're going to need to pack some more stuff well what if you don't have bags now all this anxiety can start to come in and what do I need what do I need what do I need what do I need when I have to get what do I need what do I need when I need to pack some money on well you can add all these things on over time and just make it a little bit shorter I've actually done full weekend trips with carrying nothing more than a backpack it can be done you don't need to have a massive amount of stuff with you just to go away for a weekend it's completely feasible so I've done that on a sport bike and just yeah threw a backpack on it was staying in a hotel so all I needed was just a change of clothes that was it and just realize that again you're going to be pacing yourself so you got to start thinking about what are you going to do for food stops for fuel stops and I would encourage you to look at some of our earlier episodes where we dug into this a little bit more of you know how do you plan for a trip but ultimately it's just recognizing that it's the same thing that you've been doing you're just making it a little bit longer and especially if it's your first overnight trip well what I might suggest is rather than saying hey I'm going ride my bike for 12 maybe you only ride for like four and that's still a good day it's a nice day but it gets you a little further than you would have ridden in the past you can then do that overnight you used to it and then the next time maybe you ride for six hours or eight hours or you figure out what is the comfort level that you have and you can change it so there's these fears of the unknown is just because you've not yet experienced it another one would be different road conditions so or styles of riding so a great example is maybe you got yourself and you're riding along and then the road turns into a dirt road and you're not really feeling very comfortable because now the bike is moving a little bit underneath you as it's slipping a little bit on the dirt. That's going to become a intimidating to you if you've never done it before. Same thing of if you think of even more intentionally going onto a dirt road or even further off of the beaten path on like an ADV bike, it's still going to be that bit of an intimidation. You're going to try something you have not done before, and it can be a little fearful. So the same advice I would play is, how do you do this and just ease yourself into it? And the good thing for things ADV bikes is that there are now a lot of ADV courses for them. So you can actually take a class, learn how to ride that big bike in non-pavement conditions and how to get used to how the bike is going to move underneath you. So you can take a class as a great way to get accommodated with it or find some friends that ride regularly who are more patient, who can take you on an easier one to begin with. They're not going to initially be blasting you down at high speed so that they can go at a pace that you will feel comfortable with and just get that starting out feeling. I've heard this many times that we'll often say like, oh yeah, well, I've been riding for 20 years.
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And the problem is, is that if you have one year of experience that you've simply repeated 20 years in a row, the breadth of the experience that you have is not quite that significant. So changing out what you do is going to broaden your horizons.
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It's going to give you more comfort in that. And I mentioned about these different road conditions. Well, if you get used to riding on a dirt road or riding an ADV bike, for example, and let's say you're on your big Harley cruiser and now you hit a patch of gravel through a corner.
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Well, you're going to have more comfort handling that because you've already done with some riding on a dirt road and you know how to manage the bike. So expanding that horizon actually can help make you a safer rider for those inadvertent situations that you may run into.
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And it's actually a good segue into another group that I want to talk about, which is people who've had that one bad experience and this is holding them back from ever trying it again. you probably know someone like this too. If you're an experienced rider, you've got that one person who got caught out in the rain and didn't have a rain suit with them. And now they will only ever ride if it's perfectly sunny outside and the weather has zero chance whatsoever of happening. So what happens is they don't ride all that often anymore, unless there may be in Southern California where it never rains. But in most parts of the world, rain is a natural occurrence that we have. So how do you manage that? Well, you know, there's a few ways. One is maybe use a different riding suit, maybe have a riding suit that waterproof. You know, Gore-Tex liners exist on a lot jackets now. And it's a great way to handle for when you run into that rain situation, rather than pulling over and putting a rain suit on top of leathers.
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Just wear a Gore-Tex suit and the problem is solved. Or make sure you always have that rain suit packed on your bike or in your backpack, wherever it is that you're using for storage on the bike, with you at any given time. And then there's a second thing that people will get frustrated with rain on, which is not so much of the getting wet, but a fear of the wet roads and that all of a sudden that the bike will no longer be able to turn. And in truth, while you do lose some traction that naturally happens from having wetter roads, most modern motorcycle tires have a good amount of silica in them, which helps them in wet conditions.
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They've got grooves in them, which are going to displace the water. So in most rain situations, you're going to be okay. Now, if it's a deluge of rain and the road surface is flooding, very different thing, probably pull over and just wait for it to subside a bit. But in a normal rain, most motorcycles are going to be perfectly fine.
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So just go a little slower, just to accommodate for it. Maybe cover your brake a little bit more often than you would have before, just to anticipate that.
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And you'll be okay with that weather. maybe you went out and it was beautiful. We talked about in an earlier episode of this ideal riding temperature.
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And you only have the jacket with you and that's it. And that's now all of a sudden you're riding along and now the temperature starts to drop. And now you're getting cold. What are you going to do? That's where you fear of what happens in that or you ride up into the mountains. And because you get into elevation, the temperature drops naturally. Well, there's ways to accommodate for that.
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Just put a extra layer into your pack or even into your jacket.
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Like I actually love this shirt that comes from AeroStich they sell. And it's basically this wind stopper Jersey and it actually folds up into a pocket in itself. And it's small enough that if you have a good sized pocket on a motorcycle jacket, you can just stuff it in there.
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And so if the weather might be volatile or maybe I'm planning on going up in the mountains for a ride that day, I'll just stuff that into the, into the jacket or if I have a backpack or saddlebags, whatever, put it on there. And now I have at least a layer that I can accommodate if the temperature starts to drop.
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So there's ways you can mitigate this. Or if it's maybe like early in the spring, late in the fall, where maybe it even gets even colder, well maybe bring some heated gear with you and you don't have to turn it on as soon as you pull out of your garage, but maybe you have it available so that you can increase that as you're going along. There's ways to mitigate these fears of that one time that you got caught out in the cold and in the cold for me. I mean, I had one experience many, many years ago. I was riding from New York city up to Vermont and I was on a BMW R 1200 R. Now this is a fully naked motorcycle.
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So no fairing, no windshield, nothing whatsoever onto the bike.
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So you're, you're really exposed and I was riding up for Oktoberfest. So this is obviously in October heading up to Vermont from New York city.
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And so it's about a six hour ride And as I'm going through Massachusetts, getting closer and closer to my destination, the temperature is really dropping. It's getting late at night. It's pitch black of course, because I'm in riding after work and the temperatures dropping. I finally pull over the side of the road and just open up my saddlebags and take out like every sweatshirt I had because I was just getting so cold. And all I had at that time was just a heated vest. And that wasn't enough to temper the cold that I was starting to run into.
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And it ended up being that when pulled into the parking lot for the restaurant that I was meeting my friends at it was about eight degrees Fahrenheit.
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So well below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which of course is freezing. So for those in Celsius, this is probably like minus 10. So it was quite, quite cold. And all I had was a heated vest. It was just not a great experience, but that didn't keep me from riding in the cold. I just learned from that experience and then took that as something new to now, another area where some people may have some fears and I see this very commonly amongst, uh, American cruiser riders where there's almost a fear or an avoidance of the back roads. They prefer to just ride on the highway and this may be a few different factors that are playing into this. So one is of course, wildlife. So as you get into the back roads, they're typically going to have trees on either side of the road surface, which can hide some wildlife, And maybe you had that one bad experience where a deer ran out in front of you. Maybe you collided with it or maybe it just, it scared you enough that you're like, I'm never riding on the back roads again. Well, look, part of the thing is this can happen even in a highway. So it's not an, a impossible situation, but as you get into an area where maybe you can't see so well off of there, maybe just cover your brake. Maybe bring the speed down a little bit. There's ways that you can mitigate this being aware of what you can do just temper that fear that you had from that one moment. And, and this is why I really believe in, you have to face your fears to a certain extent where you have to, you have to not just go in blindly and just be like, well, I'm going to do it anyway, because that's, that's probably a bit naive too. But you have to try to learn from your experience that was that negative experience. And then say, what could I have done differently that may make this ride more successful the next time I reach that situation? Another one that you might run into in the back roads is maybe a car turning in front of you. And again, we talked about for those new riders, as a motorcyclist, we tend not to have the same visibility that a car would have.
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So cars are going to more likely just turn in front. They're not going to be paying attention to us. So how do we mitigate this?
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And maybe you've been, you know, collided into a car in the past.
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Maybe you just, it scared you again, that same situation. How do you mitigate this? Well, number one is if you see a car getting ready to turn, cover the brake, obviously, you know, get ready to off the throttle a little bit, right? Get ready to do an emergency stop if you need.
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The other thing is keep an eye on the front wheels of the car.
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If they start to turn there, the car is probably going to start to turn. And if their point is straight, then you're pretty much okay. The other thing that you can do is maybe flash your brights just to kind of, Hey, give a hint. Hey, I'm here. The other thing you even, that's more like in the moment, but what you can also do is increase your visibility.So having things that are a light colored riding jacket or a light colored helmet is going to be easier to notice than something that is dark and easy to blend into the background. This is why a lot of riders will turn to high vis, whether it's helmets or riding jackets, or even a vest that they put on top of the riding jacket. The more that you can make yourself visible, the less likely you are to have a car basically violate your right of way because they will be able to see you. And we touched on a little bit with the weather and the rain, and also a little bit of those different road conditions that an established rider may be a little bit more scared of. But this is another reason why some people may grass clippings in a turn, and it caused the bike to lose traction. And maybe you it scared you. And I mean, I had this happen fairly early in my riding career. I was probably a year or two into it. And I was riding up in Massachusetts pretty late at night and was going out to meet some friends for dinner and was riding along this back road that was nice and twisty and curvy. And I know that road very well because it's up near a house that we have up there that I'd had since I was a kid. So we were used to road, but I happened to hit a little bit of gravel in the corner and the bike kind of slid out a little bit on me. And yeah, it scared me in the moment. And that's the thing. It was okay to be scared in the moment. But it did push me then to go and say, okay, well, how do I, how do I mitigate that in the future?
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Well, I can take some classes to get comfortable with that slick area. The other thing that you can do, and this is where it's really more of a lane position adjustment that you can do is remember a lot of cars will tend to drip oil as they're going along. happens. So the center of the road surface is more likely, or the center of the lane is more likely to have oil in there than the outside edges. So if you ride where the tires of the cars would normally be, you are going to be in the cleaner part of the lane. And this addresses not just the oil, but even other road contaminants. So like that gravel or those grass clippings, if the car is riding over that, they're going to clear it out of those tire paths. So the more you stay in that lane position, you're going to also be more likely to avoid having that sort of situation. Now, I mentioned how Harley riders there, at least here in the United States, there's more of a common sense for them to avoid the back roads and stick onto the highway. Well, there may be the inverse of that, where there are some riders who maybe avoid the highway and because of a fear. Now I tend to avoid the highway because I just find it boring, not because I'm afraid of it. And if I'm in a rush or whatever, yeah, I'll hop on the highway and ride. No big deal. I don't care, but I don't find it fun. So I choose, I choose not to, because it's not fun, not because of a fear for it. And if that's your choice, that's absolutely fine. But if you're avoiding the highway because of a fear of it, we talked a little bit about that.
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Maybe you don't want to go that fast, or maybe you're afraid of the big trucks that are around.
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Well, again, you're never going to address that fear if you don't go out and face it head on.
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Now, with big trucks, this can be really intimidating because they're barreling down along the highway. You know, they may not see you so well. So again, that visibility is a big factor of what you can do. And remember, they're coming up typically behind you. So it's not like you can flash your brights because they're not the one that's the problem. It's the ones coming from behind you. So have that road awareness to know what's going on. Be checking your mirrors regularly. Adjust your lane position as you need. So sometimes even shifting your lane position can wake up a fellow driver to be aware of your position in the lane. Same thing with brighter clothing.
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Brighter helmets are going to give you better visibility for those other vehicles to notice you. Of course, we talked about speed. If uncomfortable at speed on your bike, well, what's causing discomfort? Is it a mechanical problem on your bike?
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Maybe your bike just has a big wobble as it gets up to highway speed. Probably you should get that fixed because that's more noticeable at a high speed, but it doesn't mean that it's not there at a lower speed. Or is it really just a fear of the speed?
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And I've heard some riders who complain about, hey, they have no windshield or therefore they don't want to go on the highway because the wind is just blowing at them so much. Well, you can lean a little further forward and mitigate that wind a bit.
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There's ways to address this, but you have to kind of take that one bad experience and kind of put your sort of memories as it was a bad experience. It's just like you had a meal and maybe you had a lousy meal at this restaurant one time. And maybe it was the dish that you didn't like at that one restaurant that one time. Well, should you avoid that dish forever? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe try it in a different restaurant.
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Maybe it's how that particular restaurant prepared it. So think of it in that sense of one bad experience shouldn't ruin your riding experience and keep you from trying out these other things just because of that fear The other one I want to touch on a little bit is, and this is kind of backing all of these in a lot of ways, but fundamentally everything we're talking about of fears usually are related into confidence. And confidence is your comfort level in doing an activity usually because of familiarity with it. So the more familiar you are with an activity, the more likely you are to be confident in your ability to negotiate that situation.
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Whereas, and that's why that one time and then avoiding it is going to enhance the fear factor.
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So if you were scared of backroads because of one bad experience where a deer ran in front of you at one point and then you avoid the backroads forever, it's like, well, then that fear just keeps getting reinforced in your mind over and over and over again. you have to kind of face that fear in order to then gain the confidence that you would have to do this. So as I said, some Harley riders in the U. stick to the highways.
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And I've spoken with a few of them like, well, why do you do that? Well, I don't like corners.
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Corners are one of my favorite things on a motorcycle. But if you have a fear of corners, you don't like that bike to get leaned over, well, then maybe address that. Maybe work on how do I improve my comfort in those corners? How do I get comfortable with leaning that bike over? And this may also fit for some newer riders who are not used to that. If you're in a car, the car pretty much lays flat as you're turning or maybe leans out of the turn rather than into the turn. And so this different way of riding, of having to be turned and leaning into the turn can be very feeling different than what you were used to. The other one that I've heard some riders say is I never use the front brake because it'll lock up and then I'll lose control. that's a bit of a problem because your front brake actually provides like 70% of your braking force. So if you're using your rear brake only, you're more likely to lock up the rear brake than the front brake. and you have to get comfortable with it so just it's a squeeze so i always like to ride with just two fingers on the brake lever and that's just a squeeze you're not grabbing the brake you're just squeezing the brake and that can help make you feel more comfortable do some emergency stops do some practice in a parking lot and just see the braking level see where it is and again i know i sound like probably like a broken record but look at a class take one of those advanced rider courses if you're if you're an established rider take an advanced rider course and practice some of these high-speed braking maneuvers because it's a very common fear that motorcyclists get into maybe we don't really get as aggressive on the bike and therefore we're scared of actually using the brake when we need to on the flip side you could also have where you have slow speed maneuvering can make you nervous some people hate going into a parking lot because they're afraid of well i can't manipulate the controls and keep the bike upright when i'm going at really slow speeds and so they feel they have to go kind of fast so they hate maneuvering into a slow speed or this is probably part of the factor of cruisers are such a popular bike in the united states is the low seat height makes me more comfortable for when i'm going in slow speed maneuvering because then i can just duck walk as i'm going again this is a practice maneuver the more that you get your feet up off of the ground and onto the pegs you actually can now move the bike out underneath you get it leaned over to help you in this turns at slow speed it's practice that's all this is is practice and that same thing with that low seat height this is why some riders are like well i know i don't want to have a bike where i can't flat foot the bike as though if the bike is taller and you put both feet down completely flat at a stop the bike is somehow unsafe well if you think of bicycles if they're sized properly for you and set up properly for you you cannot touch the ground flat foot with your butt on the seat you have to get your butt off of the seat to flat foot the bike but if you don't oftentimes do that you might slide one leg down further and get your butt cheek off of the seat to get that one foot down steady it's the same thing we can do on a motorcycle just you can adjust and you don't have to be totally flat-footed to do this and this is it's interrelated with that slow speed maneuvering so if you're not comfortable with riding at slow speed with your feet on the pegs then if you can't flat foot the bike that's going to add more fear into that and it's really just practice that's all this is and building up that confidence again last one i want to talk about is when you're parking your motorcycle you might be scared of parking on a slope and you're again going to ride around and do circles around the blocks looking for that perfectly flat surface that you can park the bike on so you don't have any issue of is the bike going to fall is it going to lean is it whatever it is i just did a coffee ride a couple weeks and i went out to Tarrytown New York and in Tarrytown is right on the Hudson and it's got some hills to it it's a pretty hilly village if you will and where i happened to park was on a hill all i did was simply found the spot i you know i backed the bike into the spot put the the rear wheel up against the curb lean the bike along with the hill and i was totally fine it was not going to go any further over it wasn't going to fall the other way it was perfectly fine so you have to just get used to that comfort level now where i will say that some people will make a mistake when they park on a slope is they park head in down the slope let's say into one of those diagonal parking spaces and now you have to try to back the bike out of the spot again just be aware of your situation it's always better to back into a spot than to ride into it because you have to get out of the spot but unless you have a reverse gear on your bike which there aren't a lot of them my r18 happens to have it but it's not as common you're not going to be able to easily maneuver that bike out so just get used to positioning your bike.
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I did want to talk a lot about facing your fears. And we talked about a few of these different groupings of these fears. So you might have that fear of the unknown. It's an experience that you've never done, and therefore you're fearful of it, especially for new riders aspiring riders. That fear of the unknown may be keeping you from trying out something that you would really, really enjoy. So give it a try.
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You're going to only learn from something when you give it a go and give it an experience. And if you have that experience, and it was this one bad experience, don't let that keep you from ever doing it again. Now, obviously, if you have a repeated bad experience, then maybe it's just not gelling for you, and that's okay. But don't let one bad experience keep you from doing something. You still have to try it. Maybe it was just you weren't prepared for it, or maybe you hadn't trained. You were in the wrong mindset that particular day. It doesn't matter. That one bad experience shouldn't keep you from doing things. And again, this all comes back up into your confidence. And confidence is really a reflection of your experience of doing a particular activity. The more often that you do that activity, the more confident you will be that when you face that situation or similar situations that you will be okay. build up your confidence. Now, we're going to get into more of these, of course, and really dive into a lot of these sort of different fears that we may have in later episodes. But this is really just to kind of give us a broad spectrum, touch on a few of them.
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the question I have for you is what is your biggest fear about motorcycling? Share your thoughts through the text, the show link, and the show notes, or leave a voicemail at throttleandroast.com slash voicemail. Thanks for listening.
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I'll talk to you next week.
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