In our first two parts of the Rider Confidence series we looked at goal setting and later at the practical 'tools' you can use when riding to boost your confidence. In part 3 of this series we are looking at how to deal with the consequences of bad experiences and complete this set of articles on rider confidence.
No matter how thoroughly you plan your goals or practice your mantras there are going to be days when something unexpected happens that scares you, perhaps a fall or near fall or perhaps a bad comment from a judge or unkind remark from a competitor. A temporary loss of confidence can be caused simply by a mood swing or incident in our lives outside of riding and is common during a physical recovery from illness or injury or a return to riding after some sort of break.
In the first year of production only 400 bottles of Coca Cola were sold; Albert Einstein's Ph.D. dissertation was rejected; Henry Ford had two bankruptcies before his eventual success; Rodin was refused entry to art school on three occasions yet became a great sculptor. All highly successful people have numerous failures and setbacks to their confidence throughout their lives so what helps them continue?
If we have previously been having success with our confidence building routine to hit a slump can sometimes seem worse than when we started, as if somehow we have been let down. However, it is when you have a setback that continuing to adhere to the habits of a 'confident' person - physiology, positive self-talk and visualization - is most important .
We have talked before about the roles of positive self-talk and storing good experiences in your memory banks in order to raise confidence. These techniques also apply when things go wrong. There are almost no situations where there isn't something good to take away from even the worst disaster. Look for the parts of the experience you can feel good about and bank them. A very common scenario for horse owners is taking their horse to a new place, a show or out on a hack and the at some point the horse spooks or blows up in some way or perhaps even someone else's horse makes the ride a misery for all. Find the parts of the ride that worked. Did you stay on even though you felt scared? "I stayed on" is the self-talk to store in your memory banks, remember no ifs, buts or maybes when you are storing the good stuff away. If you didn't stay on, did you remount or was there a portion of the ride prior to that when you felt good? Use that, grab hold of the good. Always look at every experience as something learned, something valuable and feel good about having learned that lesson.
Now let's deal with the bad memories before they turn into anxieties. Let's use our 'mantra', our silly song, whenever you find yourself thinking about those bits that make you feel bad, anxious or worried or even embarrassed. If you are somewhere you can't sing out loud, at least play your silly song in your head. If you are a visual person and you find that visual replays of a bad incident keep popping up in your head - close your eyes and picture it getting smaller and fuzzy until it disappears into a blue sky - sing your silly song at the same time!
These techniques are designed to take the power out of the experience, to trivialize it, before it grows and becomes an anxiety that could stop you from trying to fix the bits that went wrong. They're common hypnotherapy techniques and can really help to get control of the emotions that so often stop us from making physical progress in horse riding.
It is vital to be very aware of your body position. If you are feeling a little vulnerable immediately after a setback you may find that your body slumps over a little. Reset your physiology. Walk confidently, head up, shoulders relaxed. Slow down. Think about slowing down your movements just a shade - when you are stressed everything seems to speed up, be a little more jerky and tense. Slowing down will help you to relax. Imagine yourself walking on a beautiful hot summers day on your way to your favourite activity, or to meet your favourite person. Visualise your 'best\most confident rider picture' frequently and make your body match that position when you sit in the saddle.
Frequently picture yourself doing all the things you do well and also picture yourself doing all the things you want to do well. Picture yourself as that ideal rider you think of. First thing in the morning when you wake up is an excellent time to practice visualisation. If you have had setback, put aside a little time just before you go to visit or ride your horse. Just a few minutes somewhere you wont be disturbed, sitting in your car after you arrive may do. Close your eyes, breathe from the bottom of your lungs and perform your visualisations. Replay all the really positive moments and the achievements you are proud of prior to this latest incident. Say\think to yourself things like - On to the next step, moving forward, today we are working on... use self-talk to focus on todays riding and tomorrows progress rather than dwelling on the past. Move on! A failure can be a gift, an opportunity for you to learn, to improve your technique and remedy problems that you weren't even acknowledging were there, if you let it be one.
Finally, let's talk about something that no other sports person has to deal with when it comes to confidence or sports performance, your horse. Often when we are in a state of having little or patchy confidence or have had a bad experience or two, we owners may start to relate the horse's behaviour to feelings of being unloved. In short, we take it personally. "My horse hates me" or "I'm not good enough for my horse" or "He's being wasted with me". We invest so much time, energy and love into our horses that we often find it difficult to separate emotional, physical and behavioural aspects of the relationship. We may even start to avoid the horse, making excuses not to ride or even to see the poor animal.
Hopefully, you will now have the tools to understand how to look at your problems more rationally, to understand that you can tackle whatever the problem you are facing, if you do so in small enough steps and look to the future instead of dwelling in the past. It is actually doing the work that creates success and with it more confidence, not simply imagining or wishing for it. Some believe that 'if my horse truly loved me, we would have a magical relationship and could do anything' . Perhaps even that if they just search long enough there will be the one tool, the one type of training, the one magic formula that will resolve all problems in a single session. If you are waiting for this I have bad news. Everything, including magic, takes time and effort. Each day is a new opportunity to take the first step toward your next goal - why not take it?
The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do - Thomas Edison
Success is not built on success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe - Sumner Redstone
Success isn't permanent and failure isn't fatal.
