The gift of confidence is to be found in fear

Understanding fear dramatically reduces the dangers of horse riding.

The very first thing to do, to get rid of those appallingly unnecessary statistics about horse riding being the tenth most dangerous thing to do on the planet – is to understand your fear and anxiety and learn to take action on it before it gets to that horrible feeling of fear.

Or you could give horses up and just breed budgies as a friend suggested to me when I was going through a very tough time prior to discovering this way of being with horses.

Yeah I didn’t take his advice either – missing out on everything that horses have to teach us would have been a very sad state of affairs.

This is a serious subject but it’s not a downer – there’s confidence and joy in learning to understand fear and take action on it BEFORE it gets to that horrible feeling. It’s simple when we realize that fear is just a survival mechanism – and it’s useful, specially with your horse. So you don’t want to eliminate fear.  That would be like saying:

“I don’t want to be safe with my horse.

“I don’t want to solve danger before anything crappy happens.

“I don’t want that guidance about what to know or do, for me and my horse to be and feel safe.”

Can you see that you don’t want to eliminate fear, you just don’t want it to be feeling that crappy?

But fear doesn’t have to feel crappy for you to make yourself safe.

You can pay attention to the early warning signal that something is Not Quite Right – i.e. understanding the message of fear and taking action on it – BEFORE your inner self screams at you with the horrible feeling of fear.  Then it’s EASY and feels comfortable and natural to keep you and horse being and feeling safe.

“Do you mean that understanding and solving each fear, is what will make my riding safe?”

Yes, that’s happy and safe riding in a nutshell. 

Pfft! That’s the sound of the fear disappearing when you understand why you’re afraid – what the message of that fear is – and what to know or do about it. Fear (and it’s bogan cousin, anxiety) literally disappears … disappears… when you understand what to know or do about it – whether that’s take action to make yourself safe right now or whether it’s understanding your horse’s fears so you can help them or whether it’s understanding how some old fear from the past is affecting you now. 

Being confident with horses is a wonderful way to be, but confidence doesn’t come from ignoring your fear, because that just pushes it down and buries it – where, depending on your own health and life history, it becomes all kinds of physical ailments, including depression, panic attacks and all sorts of illnesses.

Gorgeous confidence and the kind of happiness with your horse that most people only dream about, means UNDERSTANDING each fear as it happens.  The kind of routine happiness with your horse that you dreamed of, means using that first sign of fear as the inner guidance that it was designed as, to keep you BEing and FEELing safe – so it doesn’t flare up into full blown fear or build into longer term anxiety. It simply disappears “pfft” that fast, when we listen to and act on that first early sign of fear.

THAT’s confidence and happiness with your horse AND you deserve it AND your horse can teach it to you.

Can you see how the following advice about dealing with fear actually increases your danger?

“Get over it.”

“Be brave.”

“Get back on that horse.”

“You should be riding that horse already.”

“What are you doing farting around, just get on with it and get out there like I did.

“Get more assertive.

“Don’t let him know you’re afraid.”  That one particularly makes me laugh – horses know everything about us!

“Just get on and push yourself and your horse through it – it will gradually get better.”

Advice like this is why horse riding is considered to be so dangerous, when it CAN be the most gorgeous, peaceful, uplifting, happy, exciting if you want it and joyful experience for you and your horse BOTH.

Here’s an example of the practicalities of listening to and taking action on the first early warning signal that something is Not Quite Right.

Here’s some practical advice that I gave to someone yesterday, that demonstrates what I mean about how you can use your early warning signal to avoid crappy outcomes.  Her horse had spooked at a herd of cows, bolted, reared and she fell off in front of the traffic.   Good grief, I just shudder at the thought of how badly this could have turned out.  And again, so unnecessary, except maybe as a wake up call to do it differently.

Usually I start with helping someone to find that place of delicious yumminess with their horse before doing anything else – but in this case I needed to help her see that fear had a purpose and that it didn’t need to be that big flooding fear and then dread that she’d been experiencing.

I said:

Teach him a sweet and soft back up from the ground. Then, approach and retreat is an easy answer that keeps you both gently expanding your comfort zone.  With your horse on a lead rope (because her nerves are completely shot after the accident), approach the cows and at the very first feeling of anxiety IN YOURSELF – ask him to back away softly until you don’t feel scared any more (that’s the retreat).

Then wait patiently until your horse relaxes and licks and chews – no matter how long that takes – because that’s his signal that he’s finished thinking and he’s ready for the next step.

Then you can approach the cows again.  Repeat stopping and backing away softly at the first sign of anxiety IN YOURSELF and wait for the lick and chew again. Keep repeating until he is relaxed going past the cows. If it’s an enormous fear, the process doesn’t have to be done in one day.

What you’re thinking of doing – just walking him backwards and forwards until he gives up reacting – is called “flooding” and it has a tendency to shut them down rather than solve the problem.   And if you don’t actually solve the problem. sooner or later it’ll bite you on the butt.

I could go into a whole big spiel about why you’re retreating from the first sign of your own fear and anxiety, rather than his, but that’s perhaps the most mind blowing topic of all and it’s for another day. 

Give it a go – try this approach and retreat from what your horse is afraid of, using your own first signs of anxiety as a signal – I bet you’ll find yourself crying with relief and happiness.

Want to experience how easy this is?  There’s freebies in the side bar if you haven’t been here before.  You’ll find that below the article if you’re on your phone. 

Then Zen Connection is a book that includes some audio lessons guiding you through an experience of the confidence that you get by understanding and acting on that early warning signal that something is Not Quite Right.  You can download those lessons to your phone and take them out to your horse.

Zen Connection with Horses

Or maybe you’d rather do the whole thing faster and replace years and years of lessons and clinics and thousands of dollars worth of training your horse?

The Fast Track to Brilliant Riding