W Revenue dot Com

I’m an avid cyclist as you may know, and had planned to spend Saturday and Sunday this weekend in Palo Alto cycling and watching the 2008 Tour of California prologue kick off. I had an opportunity to be one of 40 amateur cyclists invited to ride in a charity race on the prologue course with official timings and everything, just minutes ahead of the pros on Sunday afternoon. For those that aren’t familiar, the prologue course of this event is a time trial, where each rider races against the clock one by one. All the big guns were there for the race, Levi Leipheimer, George Hincapie, Paolo Bettini, Fabian Cancellara, etc, those are the guys that could give Lance Armstrong a run for his money.

As luck would have it, I woke up Saturday morning with a sore throat and feeling terrible. I was supposed to do a 45 mile ride Saturday, but decided to forget it in hopes that I’d feel better for Sunday. Well, Sunday morning arrived and I still felt like a ton of bricks landed on me and had spent half the night hacking and having a sore throat. I had to make a decision about whether or not I could get out there and ride in the Tour of California prologue in a couple hours, which meant warming up on my bike for 45 minutes and doing a 2 mile race with a heart rate of 195bpm when I felt like I could barely get out of bed. I decided to bail, and some other cyclist got my spot to ride in the race. I was totally bummed.

Later in the morning, I felt better, and went out to watch the race. As each rider flew by me on the race course, I was reminded of how I voluntarily handed over my once in a lifetime opportunity to someone else because I was sick. I’ve even travelled to Europe a handful of times to watch races like these, and here was one right here in my community that I could actually ride in, and I lost the opportunity.

Granted yes, I felt like crap, and clearly that’s why I bailed. But later, I thought, “why didn’t I force myself to go ride around on the bike a bit to see if I felt better”, or “why didn’t I at least just go do the race at a snail’s pace for the experience”. I hate having regrets like these. I get angry at myself for not predicting those regrets, and taking action beforehand.

And herein lies my tip: before turning down an opportunity, try to visualize yourself in the aftermath of your decision. Picture the story as it would play out. How does it feel? Are you content with your decision? If you have feelings of regret when you do this forward-looking visualization (and that can be regret internally, or feelings of remorse or shame of lettings others down too), then take another look at the situation and figure out how you can get to “yes” and accept the opportunity. For me, that would have meant pushing myself to get on the bike and move around a bit, or riding the course slowly. I might have felt bad doing it, but there was a chance that I could have felt better too, and no matter what, I would have had no regrets.