Your Beliefs Become Your Borders
“I want to become a professional motocross racer and make a living from the sport.”
“There’s no money in motocross.”
Put those two statements next to each other.
One describes the future a rider says they want. The other describes what they believe about that future.
There is a contradiction between them, and I think it matters far more than we sometimes realise.
This is something I explored in Chapter 4 of The Inner Circuit, Breaking the Pattern: Belief Systems in Motocross. In that chapter I wrote about the beliefs riders develop through their own experiences, but also the beliefs they inherit from the sport itself.
Motocross is full of ideas that have been repeated for so long they are treated almost as facts.
You need wealthy parents to make it.
You need to live at a training facility.
You need factory equipment to compete at the highest level.
If you have not won the right championships by a certain age, you have missed your chance.
There is no money in motocross.
The interesting thing is that beliefs like these rarely come from nowhere. There is often some truth inside them. Motocross is expensive. Better equipment can provide an advantage. Money can accelerate development and create opportunities. Factory support matters.
The problem comes when an advantage becomes a requirement, a difficulty becomes an impossibility, or an observation becomes a rule.
When Your Beliefs Conflict With Your Ambition
What I have been thinking about more recently is what happens when a rider carries one of these beliefs while simultaneously pursuing a goal that contradicts it.
Imagine spending years saying you want to make a living from motocross while believing there is no money in the sport.
Or wanting to compete at the highest level while believing you cannot compete without factory equipment.
Or wanting to discover how far your ability could take you while believing your parents do not have enough money for you to get there.
How completely can you commit to building a future that, underneath everything you are doing, you do not fully believe is available to you?
That does not mean a rider consciously decides to stop trying. They might still train hard, race every weekend, go to the gym and tell everyone they want to become professional.
The effect can be much more subtle.
Beliefs influence what we notice, which opportunities we pursue, how ambitious our decisions are and how we interpret what happens to us.
If you believe there is a way forward, a setback can become a problem to solve.
If part of you already believes the destination is not available to somebody in your circumstances, that same setback can become evidence that you were right all along.
That is why I think these contradictions are worth examining.
It is difficult to fully commit to building a future you do not believe is available to you.
When Belief Starts Consuming Energy
I have also seen another version of this in riders.
Sometimes feeling disadvantaged creates a chip on your shoulder.
That can be useful.
Being overlooked, underestimated or having less than somebody else can create an enormous drive to prove people wrong.
But there is a point where that same belief can stop being fuel and start becoming a block.
The rider becomes increasingly focused on the money they do not have, the equipment somebody else has, the opportunity they did not receive or the support they believe they deserve.
Some of those frustrations may be completely justified. Motocross is not fair. Riders do not start with equal resources or equal opportunities.
But eventually there is a question that matters more than whether the frustration is justified.
Where is your energy going?
Because the more energy a rider spends reinforcing all the reasons they cannot succeed, the less energy they have available for finding a way forward.
The obstacle starts occupying more attention than the solution.
Instead of asking what they can improve, what they are missing, what they can control or whether another route exists, they can become consumed by everything standing in their way.
Every setback then becomes another piece of evidence supporting the original belief.
That is when the chip on your shoulder can become the weight holding you down.
Go Looking for Evidence That Challenges You
The answer is not blind positivity.
I am not suggesting riders should convince themselves that money does not matter, equipment makes no difference or everybody who works hard enough will become a professional racer.
That would just be replacing one untested belief with another.
I think the better approach is investigation.
If you believe you need factory equipment to produce a certain result, go looking for riders who have produced results without it.
If you believe you need wealthy parents to make it, find people who did not have that advantage and study how they found another route.
If you believe there is no money in motocross, find people who are earning a living from the sport and understand how they are doing it.
You are not looking for proof that circumstances do not matter.
You are testing whether the boundary is actually where you think it is.
That distinction matters.
An obstacle and an impossibility are not the same thing.
Why Evidence Matters
I was reminded of this recently by the response to a video I made about privateer racer Lance Kobusch.
A lot of the content I produce is educational. People can watch it, learn something, think about it and move on without ever liking, commenting or sharing it.
That video travelled differently.
And I think there is a reason for that.
People want evidence that it is still possible.
An underdog story does more than give us somebody to support. It can challenge an assumption about what is required to succeed.
A privateer producing a result does not prove that factory support is irrelevant. Of course it is not.
But it does challenge the absolute belief that you have no chance without it.
There is a difference between being told that something might be possible and seeing somebody demonstrate it.
Education can challenge what you think. Evidence can challenge what you believe.
That is why I think deliberately searching for evidence against your own limiting beliefs can be so valuable.
Not to prove yourself wrong for the sake of it.
To make sure the boundaries you are living inside are real.
Before You Accept the Border
Growing up, I absorbed the belief that you could not make a living from motocross.
My father was not trying to limit me. He was trying to protect me based on what he understood at the time.
But imagine replacing that statement with a few questions.
Who is making a living from motocross?
How are they doing it?
What did they have to become capable of?
What opportunities exist?
What route did they take?
The first approach gives you an answer before you have investigated the question.
The second makes you curious.
That difference is important because beliefs do not simply describe the world around us. They influence how we behave within it.
So take the future you say you want and put your beliefs alongside it.
Do they support where you are trying to go?
Or do they contradict it?
Where did those beliefs come from?
What evidence supports them?
And perhaps most importantly, have you ever genuinely looked for evidence that challenges them?
Some of your beliefs may survive that investigation. They may be accurate.
Others may need adjusting.
And occasionally you may discover that a boundary you have spent years living inside was never quite as fixed as you thought.
Your beliefs become your borders.
Before you accept one, make sure it is actually there.
This article takes a deeper look at ideas I first explored in Chapter 4, “Breaking the Pattern: Belief Systems in Motocross,” from The Inner Circuit. The chapter explores how personal experience and motocross culture shape the beliefs riders carry into their development and performance.
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