Episode 199. Teach your kid how to ride a bike: a lesson in skill compounding
In this episode, you'll learn the magic behind how I recently taught my youngest child to ride a bike without training wheels. Adds this to the list of topics that I never thought I’d podcast about. The response on social media was overwhelming, with tons of DMs asking about my technique. Tune in for my secret.
I draw parallels between teaching bike riding and tackling those huge life projects like writing a book, launching a podcast, or creating a digital course. My not-so-secret sauce starts with breaking it all down into bite-sized, manageable chunks and relishing those quick wins.
When taking off the training wheels, this starts with a piece of sidewalk chalk and a simple line on the pavement. You’ll hear my non-expert step-by-step method, where we celebrate every small achievement, creating an excited vibe.
Then, you’ll hear my perspective on surrendering to the outcome. They key to this piece: a heavy dose of patience and trust. Whether it takes a couple of days or a week, the goal is to make it fun!
And in true Nichole Joy fashion, I turned it into a business / life lesson for you.
As I draw parallels between teaching bike riding and conquering big projects, you’ll learn about compounding your skill set. It's like adding layers to your expertise in podcasting, writing, or any other area of life.
Before you go, please don’t forget to share your experiences with me—whether it's teaching your kid to ride a bike or conquering your dreamy delulu projects. Tag me on social media, send a DM, or share your thoughts. I’d love to celebrate with you! 🚲✨
Ways to work with Nichole:
https://www.nicholejoy.com/more
Connect with me on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/nichole_joy__/
Subscribe to the show:
Transcript:
So I taught my youngest how to ride a bike without training wheels recently. And I shared a little clip of it to social media. And I had so many people in my DMS and in my messenger asking me how I teach my kids how to ride their bikes. No, she's five. So it's reasonable. I taught my other child when she was six and my other child learned from my husband when he was six. She's a little young, which is not surprising considering she walked at nine months old. Yes. Really, it's a third child thing, I think. And I was shocked that so many people want to know how to teach your kid how to ride a bike without training wheels. I'm going to tell you the key to teaching a child how to ride a bike . And it's a lot like how I teach my clients how to approach these big mountain projects. These things that feel like will be impossible to climb. Writing a book, launching a podcast, creating a digital course. Any of these large expressions of yourself through some kind of container. The key to doing this, and this is what I teach my clients all the time, the key to doing this is digestible [00:01:00] pieces and small quick wins. Nobody sits down at a computer, at a laptop, and says, I think I'm going to write a book today, and writes out a whole book. Actually, that might happen for people who channel pieces, but for most of us, when we decide that we're ready to write a book, we might break it down and say, today I'm going to work on the outline. Today I'm going to work on chapter one. Today I'm going to work on the forward. It's unlikely that your average author sat down to write a book and wrote the whole thing in completion in one moment. Same thing goes for digital course. It's probably unlikely. And I have worked with hundreds, literally hundreds of people who have created digital courses over the last five years. And same goes, it's very slim. I actually don't think I've ever met somebody who sits down and it's like today, I'm going to create a digital course. And from start to finish. It puts a digital course out into the world. Same thing with podcasting. Even though I have podcasting intensives, where we can work for three hours and launch your show, there [00:02:00] tends to be some work involved before we sit down and put the pieces together to get it out into the world, right? I send you a checklist of things that you need to have ready before we sit down at your podcasting intensive to launch your show, or your digital course, or whatever it is that we're working on together. Point being, we are breaking a large task down into smaller pieces to help us move forward. We are experiencing quick wins along the way and that gives us that excitement boost of energy to continue to build the momentum. Now let's go back to the conversation about how to teach your kid how to ride a bike without training wheels. Now this is my method. You may come up with your own method to each their own. What works for us is I take a piece of sidewalk chalk. So far I've used blue, but I'd imagine you can use any color. I take the blue sidewalk chalk. I have my kid on the bike without the training wheels. I draw a line on the pavement, maybe six inches away from where they're standing on the bike. They are standing on the bike. They don't have their feet on the pedals. There's no pressure for them to put their foot on the pedal and start [00:03:00] pedaling. I put the line about six inches forward and the only thing I ask them to do is get to the line. They don't have to ride, they don't have to pedal, they don't have to balance, they don't have to do anything but get to the line. And what I've seen is they usually just kind of wobble and move forward walking the bike forward. And then we celebrate. I make a big deal out of it. Oh my God, look at that. You just made it. You made it all this way to the first line. That's awesome. And they get so excited and their chest puffs out and they stand a little taller and they're very proud of themselves. And they're like, yeah, hell yeah, I can do that again. So I draw another line this time. I don't know, maybe eight inches. So it's a little bit further than six inches out. I'm like, let's make it to one more line. See if you can do one more line. Again, they do the same thing. They kind of walk the bike forward. And they make it to the next line. Again, we celebrate. They puff up, they stand up a little taller, they're excited. They're like, go a little further, go further, mommy, go a little further. And so we continued this game of me going a little bit further each time, i. e. our quick wins. And we [00:04:00] celebrate each one of those quick wins. I put zero pressure on riding the bike without training wheels. Because what I don't necessarily tell them, but I know is if they do this enough and they start moving forward further and further and further to the blue lines, they're going to learn how to ride a bike. It is inevitable, and we call that surrendering to the outcome. The thing that I've noticed about some adults who are trying to teach a kid how to ride a bike is they are so committed to getting this done, like right now, and they have to learn right now, or they'll never learn. And that's just not true. They're going to learn how to ride a bike. Does it matter if they learn today? For me, sometimes this process might take two or three days. There have been days where we only do a couple of lines and then my kid stops in the middle of the road with the bike and is dancing and singing, I don't know, a Taylor Swift song in the middle of the street. And I'm like, okay, we're done for the day. And we release and we're done for the day. And we get up and we walk away. we allow it to be fun every time we get back on the bike and we do the lines and we keep moving out. We're just out there to have a good time. And [00:05:00] eventually they want to learn how to pedal. They want to learn how to push forward a little bit further . Because all of this celebration, all of this excitement energy is really building them up to where they want to do this and there's no pressure because I don't really care if they learn how to ride a bike today. They will be fine if they don't learn how to ride a bike today. And the same thing goes when you're creating a course, a book, a podcast. It doesn't really matter if you get it done immediately and right now. . So when they're ready to start pedaling, when they're ready to start trying to balance, when they're ready to start doing those things, then we start to bring a little bit of other strategy into play where I'm like, okay, find your push forward pedal. And they start to learn where to put their feet on the pedal so that they have one foot on the ground and one foot on the pedal that's higher up, right? That they'll. So put that foot on the higher up pedal and push it forward and they keep just pushing forward. That's the next piece. find the push forward pedal and keep putting your foot on that and push forward. It can be a little tricky for them to put all the pieces together and [00:06:00] coordinate pushing the pedal forward while lifting the other foot fast enough and starting to pedal to balance all at the same time. So I just focus on pushing the pedal forward. That's it. Every time they stop or pause, my only goal for them at that point is to find their next push forward point. And we practice that over and over and over again, and we celebrate all of the quick wins. But what's happening is we're building these skills on top of each other. So that first layer, when they were just walking the bike to try to get closer and closer to the lines, they were building the confidence of even being on a bicycle without having training wheels on it. And they were working on their balance at the same time, even though they were just walking the bike. And then we start to add on the skill of finding the push forward pedal while they had already mastered the skill of walking with a little bit of balance. and then when they're ready to add on and go to the next step, they start learning how to put the back foot, the second foot on and start pedaling. So they learn how to get that back foot on, but then they don't always start pedaling fast enough. So the bike kind of stops because if you're not pedaling, the bike stops. [00:07:00] So we practice that piece. This combination of breaking this big mountain project down into smaller pieces. Quick wins, celebrations, and compounding your skillset it works like magic. And that whole compounding your skillset thing, when you look at podcasting, for example, when you first launch a podcast, you may not have social media clips. You may not have a page on your website dedicated to your podcast that looks like a blog. You may not have commercials, you may not have all of these things that eventually you might have at first, your skill set may be one, two, three, eventually, when those things get really easy, you start adding on and compounding your skill set, and that works in probably every area of life. Share this with a friend who is trying to teach their child how to ride a bike without training wheels. Or with a friend who has these huge aspirations for their life, like writing a book or starting a podcast and may get overwhelmed by all of the things that come with these big mountain projects. And please, for the love of God, can you tell me how this helps you? Can you share with me, post to social media, write me, send me [00:08:00] a DM, let me know if this is helpful and how it's working for you.