Be the Rider You Really
Aspire to Be

Be the rider you really aspire to be What is it that sets successful people apart from everyone else? It is very rarely their physical ability, rather their frame of mind.

Successful people know how to set goals, and have control over the power of their mind in order to achieve those goals. Our mind is the most powerful tool we have, but that can also work against us if we are not using it in the right way. Before everything we do, every action we take, we first build an image in our mind.

For many things that we do every day without thinking about them we are not even aware of doing this because our actions seem to happen automatically. With our horses, most of us that have been riding for years can tack up, get on and move off without conscious thought. However, for more challenging things like jumping, riding a test, or responding to instruction during a lesson we have to think a bit harder, and will be creating images in our mind before taking action. When we are anxious or worried about the things we are about to do, the images we create tend to be negative. We imagine ourselves doing them badly or failing, which then leads to us doing exactly that, or just giving up altogether. It is those riders that can prevent these negative, limiting images from occurring, and replace them with positive empowering images that are the most successful. It is normal to have anxieties or nerves before jumping a large cross country course for instance, but the trick is to turn this to a positive rather than letting the nerves get the better of you.

Unfortunately, we have spent a lot of years getting good at being negative, so it takes a bit of work to undo it! In just the same way that we have to retrain our muscles in order to sit better on our horse, we have to retrain our brain to think better! You first need to consider what it is that causes you to feel anxious, and consider what would be a more appropriate way for you to behave and feel in this situation.

Use your imagination to find a time in the past when you felt this way. Calm, full of confidence, full of energy, whatever the positive state is that you need. Explore this past time and place and see exactly how everything looks and exactly how that made you feel. This is the feeling that you need to be able to bring back whenever you need to and apply to future situations. Think of a word that reminds you of this time, place and feelings, and repeat it over and over to yourself as you continue to experience the positive feelings.

Then imagine a time in the future when you are going to do whatever it is that makes you anxious, and just as you begin to get negative feelings, repeat your word to yourself and feel the positive feelings rush through your body. Neuro Linguistic Programming uses a number of visualisation techniques like the one above, to help people to find the resourceful states that they need to overcome fears, anxieties, or enhance performance under pressure. An NLP practitioner can decide on the best exercises to suit your specific needs, and by working through these exercises you will find that it is much easier to produce positive images and feelings to replace the old negative ones.

Once you know how to do this, you can start to take control of your thoughts, and in time it becomes easier and easier, as your brain becomes retrained in it's new habit. Just as when you first learnt to ride you had to think about where your hands, legs and toes should be, and now you only need think about fine tuning their position, with NLP you will first need to spend time consciously thinking about your thought processes, but in time positive thinking will become more and more natural, and you will only have to work on bigger challenges! If you believe that you could be holding yourself back from achieving your goals.

Riding With Confidence

If you are riding for fun, you want to make sure that you can do just that! Riding should be your relaxation time, so you don't want to be feeling stressed or worried or experiencing anxieties. However, many people all over the country are experiencing exactly these feelings every time they ride. This is normally due to past experiences or accidents, although in some cases people can't necessarily put their finger on the exact time that their anxieties started.

It is very easy to lose your nerve after a bad experience with a spooky, young, or unpredictable horse, or maybe caused by an inconsiderate driver. Or maybe you began riding later in life and have never felt that carefree confidence that more experienced or younger riders enjoy? Unfortunately, simply knowing that it is all in our minds doesn't help! Just because our fears or anxieties aren't logical or rational doesn't make them any less real, and actually makes them harder to shift.

As we go through life, we are continually building up a cluster of memories and experiences. All the happy, positive memories will store in our brains and continue to work positively for us, giving us confidence and self belief in those areas of our lives. The negative memories and experiences however, have an adverse effect, and this is how we get fears, phobias, anxieties, lack of self esteem, lack of confidence etc. In order to overcome our fears and anxieties we have to shift these existing beliefs we have built up over many years. You only have to consider the behaviour of a young child to realise that without all these negative experiences and memories, they don't have the same fears and hang ups that we do!

Okay, so we don't want to return to a state where we don't know that it isn't sensible to touch a hot pan, or climb up onto the cooker, but we now have the benefits of logical thinking to add to the equation. In an ideal world, we need to keep those learnings that are logical and useful to us, but on the other hand be able to rid ourselves of those that are no longer helpful to us and are holding us back. Once we can do this we have the best of both worlds. We will know not to hang from our horses tail, but will not have unnecessary anxieties about cantering for instance! We can choose what experiences and beliefs are useful to us, and act on those, and choose to ignore those that are not useful.

Of course, this is precisely what is so difficult, and what holds many people back from doing the things they really want to do. These negative beliefs build up to such an extent that they become almost impossible to shift, and in many cases cause automatic reactions that we have no control over - i.e. panic attacks, severe nerves etc. There are a number of different techniques that can help people to overcome their fears, and can all be used effectively for riders. EMDR is a revolutionary therapy that uses eye movements to remove the negative effects of past traumas and can eliminate irrational fears, phobias or anxieties. It requires a one to one session with a therapist, but is very fast and effective, giving immediate results. Hypnosis, is actually a heightened state of awareness, not an unconscious state as many people think. What happens during hypnosis is that we are able to just shut our conscious mind down for a bit, and deal only with the subconscious mind. This allows for some reasoning to take place with the subconscious mind, to suggest it lets go of all those negative memories and beliefs, and accepts positive new suggestions.

A therapist can achieve a great deal during a one to one session of hypnosis, and positive outcomes can also be experienced from listening to self hypnosis CD's. NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is a technique widely used today by top sports people. All it requires is that you have an imagination, as "if you can imagine it, you can do it!" It follows the principle that if you can build up very strong mental images of the things you want to do, then you will do them. It is extremely powerful, and the exercises can be used time and time again to achieve the things you want to. Although there are many books on the subject, the easiest and most fun way to use NLP, is for a practitioner to talk you through exercises that are specifically relevant to what you are trying to achieve. This can be done in the form of one to one or group sessions, or on CD.