John Kenny presents the Bicycle Effect, a framework showing how thoughts trigger emotions, reactions, and consequences in a repeating loop. Your past, pain, and perception form the back wheel that drives this cycle. He uses bike parts as metaphors: the saddle represents emotional wounds, handlebars represent your guiding beliefs.
Chapters
Hi everyone, and welcome to this video today. I'm going to talk to you a bit today about the Bicycle Effect. Now, the Bicycle Effect is a psychoeducational tool that I use with my clients when we're working together on the People Programme. And what it does is helps you to understand— excuse me— what it does, it helps you to understand more about where your stuff comes from. It also gives you a better understanding of why you do the things that you do, and why you feel the way that you feel, and how this impacts on your life. The first part of the Bicycle Effect is— the first thing I'm going to do is the front wheel. And the front wheel is made up of 4 sections: our thoughts, emotions, reactions, And consequences. And this goes round in a cycle. Now, what happens is, is we have a thought which then triggers an emotion that determines how we behave or how we react, and then there are consequences based on the reactions That we then have. And this is cyclical. So we might have a thought, say for instance, you feel a bit disrespected. That's your thought. So your emotion to maybe feeling disrespected is for you to get angry. And if you were then to get angry, how would you then react? And then what would the consequences be? As like most of us have at one time in our lives, we have got angry because of something that we thought. So we can think that now. What were the— how did I react, and then what were the consequences? And when you have those consequences, then that leads to different thoughts. So you think about the consequences, and that will lead to maybe stronger emotions, different reactions, maybe more powerful reactions, and then the consequences might become worse. You can also use the TURC cycle though for positive thoughts. So if you think something positive, you usually feel positive, react positive, and the consequences turn out really well. It's not just a negative thing, but in this instance we're talking more about a negative thing because that's the bicycle effect. The back wheel are the 3 Ps. So the 3 Ps are our past, our pain, And our perception. So we have a past, and in our past we would have felt certain things which have caused us pain. Our brain is very good then at processing the things that cause us pain and putting things in place which help us to cope, and that informs our perception. Our perception then dictates the kind of thoughts that we have. So for instance, we could be watching a movie and something on there that you find quite sad, that I don't find quite sad, is going to be triggered by what you thought about that experience. So you might relate to it in a certain way that will then trigger an emotion for you. So it's your perception of what's going on in that movie that makes you think this and then leads to how you feel. Now, I might not have the same perception as you because I haven't had the same experiences, so therefore I don't think the same and then feel the same about you, the same as you do about that movie. Now, our perception, like I said, comes from our pain, and the pain comes from our past. Our saddle and what we sit on, I like to describe as our wounds. Like you would get a physical wound if you cut yourself, you are left with an emotional wound when you experience certain situations and certain amounts of pain. This is what we sit on as we are riding our bicycle through our life, and this is our handlebars. Along this journey here, because we have a certain perception, we discover that we have certain beliefs. Maybe where you would put your water bottle on your bicycle. That's what sustains us. Yeah, it's our beliefs that sustain us. So our beliefs have a huge impact on what we do with our life. So if I believe something to be true, again, that will in turn inform my thoughts and also my feelings. So that could be a self-belief. So, um, what beliefs you might uncover about yourself. Again, from your past and your pain and maybe the relationships that you had when you were younger. And that all informs, uh, then what you will then think, emotions, and you'll go around in that Turk cycle based on all of this. So the handlebars inform our direction. Because if we're going around in these kind of circles, they will drive us in a certain direction. And that is the bicycle effect. I hope you've taken something even briefly from this today. If you'd like some more information, then please do leave your email contact details in the contact box provided, and we can send some stuff out to you. If you're interested in maybe looking at your relationships in more detail, having a bit, bit much better understanding of how all this works, then we can talk about having our Live the Life You Choose complimentary consultation and how we can work together on the PEOPOL programme in order for you to live the life that you do in fact choose. Thank you again for watching. You take care of yourself and I'll speak to you soon. Thank you, John.
