How your thoughts effect your riding

If our thoughts create a matching feeling in our body and our body language is made up of how we think and how we feel. Our thoughts need to be purposeful. Before a ride I tell my students to create the lesson in their mind exactly how they want to experience it. If a rider can see themself having a lesson on a calm horse, sitting up straight and riding confidently, they start to feel confident. Confident feelings create confident thoughts. Confident thoughts create confident actions. If a rider feels confident before a lesson they are more likely to be relaxed when they are on the horse. If the rider feels relaxed and thinks relaxed thoughts, there is a good chance the horse will be relaxed as well.
If I teach riders who have lost their confidence, I make it a priority for them to collect 'good experiences'. The more good experiences a rider has and the more memories of good rides, the easier it is to feel confident.
By purposely remembering these 'good experiences', the rider can gradually change their story about riding and their perception of what's going to happen.
That's how you change your reality.

How our horse reads us

We have talked about how our thoughts effect our feeling and with that our body language. We all know that as a rider we use our body language to communicate with our horse by using our weight, seat, legs and hands to apply aids and therefore tell our horses what we want them to do.
But do we really tell them what we WANT them to do?
A rider who is scared that the horse is going to take off and buck will generally pull on the rein, grip with the knees, lean forward and possibly even dig in their heals. All this while they desperately want the horse to be quiet, relaxed and calm.
From a horses perspective, it has just been pulled in the mouth, kicked in the guts and feeling the panic that comes from the rider, which signals to the horse that there is danger near by.
The horse being a fight or flight animal, now has only one thing on its mind: 'to get away as fast as possible and at all cost'!
So do we really communicate to our horse what we want them to do?
No, that's because we generally focus on what we DON'T want to happen, like:
- I don't want to get bucked off
- I don't want my horse to be stiff on the right rein
- I don't want it to stop at the first fence.
With these thoughts we keep creating a body language that communicates exactly that!
So how do we change? The first step is to be aware of what your thinking and doing.
Stay tuned next week.

Quote of the day

"Never let life's hardships disturb you; no one can avoid problems, not even saints or sages."
- Nichiren Daishonen

Exercise No.8

Affirmations are a great way of changing your thought patterns. Saying things like:

- I'm very relaxed when ever I ride my horse
- I am successful
- I always remember my dressage test
- I can jump a clear round

Saying affirmations in your mind will help you to change your thoughts and focus on what it is you want to achieve.
Write down your own affirmations and practise them daily.

Exercise No. 7

In order to change you have to do something different.
Einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
Most people find it difficult to change because they are so used to be doing things their way that it has become an automatic, unconscious response and lets face it; it's comfortable. And who wants to be uncomfortable?!
If you for example have a habit of hanging on to your horses mouth, in order to improve your riding you first have to do something different like changing the position of your hands by carrying them higher or lower. By changing your hand position you are already re-programing your mind, bringing a unconscious behaviour into the conscious and therefore being able to focus on it easier.
When we are doing something automatically, we don't think about it, which means we are unaware of what we do. By changing it becomes unfamiliar and we now have to focus on what we do because we are not used to doing it this way.
Tomorrow we talk more in detail how to change fear into confidence.

Exersice No.4

Did you find your lesson and could you see the learning?
Congratulations, that's a big step.
Now be grateful for the lesson.
Remember you always have a choice how you look at things and this will give you the opportunity to see things differently. Instead of focusing on the bad things, start to look for the good things.
By doing so consistently you train your mind to be positive.
Remember you feel what you think and you think how you feel.
Tomorrow we talk about how to re-program your mind.
Have fun.

Exersice No 3

So to recap on what we have done so far: You have written down what it is that you want to change about yourself and you have found the origin when that behaviour, fear or belief started. Now it's time to find the lesson and the learning in what happened.
If you have experienced something you don't like chances are you feel like a victim. A victim thinks things like:"why did this happen to me? What have I done to deserve this? Everyone is giving me a hard time. It's everyone else's fault."
If this is you, I'm afraid to tell you that you are stuck in a rut of negative thoughts, behaviours and ultimately negative outcomes. The only way to get out of this is to find your learning and that will change your thinking.
Now I know it's tricky to see something good when you don't feel good.
Let's start by accepting that there IS something good in your bad experience.
For example your learning could be that you can trust yourself more, that you have learned to sit up and listen to your instructor more or that you have to change the way you feed your horse.
Finding your learning gets you out of being a victim and empowers you to move forwards.
This is the most important step, so take your time and commit yourself to this.

Exercise No.1

Since most of the readers following this blog are horse riders lets stick to a horsey theme. If you are not horsey you can just adapt the exercises to any other area in your life.
The first step to change is you need to identify what it is you want to change. So in riding terms this could be letting go of fear when it comes to certain things like jumping, competition or trail riding. It could also be a choice to become more positive or more determined to follow your goals.
So the first step is to sit down and to take a long, hard look at yourself. What is it you want to change? Take a pen and paper and start to write it down.
This is your homework for day one, enjoy the self discovery and I'll see you back tomorrow.
Cheers Tanja

Quote of the day

I have been wondering, is anybody out there actually reading my blog?????????
If you are, please let me know. I invite you to ad some comments, ideas, suggestions and questions you might have. ANYTHING.
This blog allows me to write down my thoughts and I invite you to do the same.
Have a fantastic day
Cheers
Tanja

Quote of the day

"As long as a person doesn't admit he's defeated,he is not defeated-he's just a little behind, and isn't through fighting."
Darrell Royal, football coach

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"The key to successful time management is doing the most important task first, and giving it your full concentration to the exclusion of everything else."
- Alex MacKenzie

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"Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach. It's the end you're after."
- Anthony Robbins, Motivational speaker

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"Some man have thousands of reasons why they can not do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can."
-Willis R. Whitney

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"We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."
- Carlos Castaneda, author