You Know How to Trot, Don't you?

Recently, I found myself cantering sideways, downhill, looking into a gnarled patch of brush creeping closer by the moment.  In the background, I could hear Denny yelling at me, in that thought piercing, instant tone that anyone who has ridden with him knows.  Good thing, too, because he was getting further and further away.

TROT!  Don't you know how to trot?!  You know, it has two beats!  TROT. NOW.

Touching the bit was fairly useless, serving only to put a very jazzed up mare's head in my lap.  My leg seemed to only add fuel to the fire.  I very much wanted to be trotting, brush looming closer.  While I have occasionally used greenery to stop other horses, the atomic mare tends to nimbly find something to do with her legs (as I learned one day, with one stirrup, when she flat out blazed a new trail out on a hunt by turning too early).

TROT!  Why aren't you trotting?!  POST!  If you were out on a hack you'd know how TROT.  Agoraphobic.  You two are agoraphobic.*

Around this point, the age old wisdom "you'll end up where your look" finally came to mind.  I fixated on the man patiently waiting for us to get our act together, squared my shoulders, and willed the trot into existence.  Actually, the last part I'm a little fuzzy on, but we did end up trotting and changing direction until the fire in Suki's belly slowly cooled down.  

"Broke" in the ring now...
Photo by Lisa Ambrose Cook
Used with Permission

It's time she behave more like a broke horse.  She's a much more broke horse in show jump this year, now she needs to behave like a broke horse out here.

So we did the same thing that cooled her jets in show jump, we trotted and jumped until she trotted, not cantered, little cross country fences out in the field.  We trotted until any muscle I was hold my own tension and failure fearing tension in melted into goo.  We trotted, hopped, and plopped until the state of being wound up seemed far too exhausting for either of us to revert back to.

A valuable lesson was learned... We are not collectively broke for jumping in wide open spaces.  A winding course? Sure.  Lots of terrain changes?  Bring it on.  A jump in a vast expanse of space, brimming with possibility?  Not quite yet, not consistently quiet...yet... but, we'll be that broke soon enough.

*Fun fact: When I was five or six, I was slightly agoraphobic.  It seemed certain to me that, despite the laws of gravity, I would fall off earth into the bleak nothingness of space.  Luckily, I know better 

What Do You Do When the Problem is You?

What to do when the problem is you?

Last week, the two trainers I ride with gave me similar lectures on two consecutive days.  The first told me I need to get out of my head and stay there, that my ability was held back by my intensity and anxiety.  The second said that my academic mind focused too much on the abc of what to rather than allowing myself to feel what to do.  The bottom lined seems to be that under the layer of over analysis, I have the ability to ride...but, somehow, I needed to break free of my mind.

So, I sat down and tried to think of how.  But, thinking seems to be the crux of the problem.  It seemed as though I had reached an impasse.

Truth be told, in combination with having some unrelated, standard issue horse person drama weasel it's way into my life (how? damned if I know, I work at a private barn and board at a near-boarder-less breeding barn in part to avoid said occupancies) I hit a wall.  Hard.  How on earth was I going to get out of my own head?  What does that even mean?  Where do you start?  How do you remind yourself to not think if you're not suppose to think so much?
And as all these thoughts bounced around my head, as my shoulder and neck muscles seized into a knot, the main thing that kept me from faltering entirely in the face of a seemingly impossible task is my deep set stubbornness.*

"People seem to understand the power of practice when it comes to skills. You know you'll get better if you practice a riding skill like a shoulder-in or a right-lead canter transition. Well, you can also practice traits. You can practice courage. You can practice self-confidence. You can practice optimism. You can practice things that you might not think are able to be practiced, such as being a better friend to yourself or not always denigrating yourself." ~ Denny Emerson

The above popped up on my feed, via Lesley Stevenson, on Monday.  It struck me... I have been too stuck being the way I am because it seemed like changing would be an all or failure process.  I'm not good at accepting failure, which I find ironic because as an educator, I am a strong proponent of "just do something" and "learn from your mistakes."  And while I refuse to stop when I fair, given my innate stubbornness, I do struggle to push myself out of a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.  However, like the [questionably good idea] to try Cappuccino potato chips (trust me, not worth trying), I will try most anything once.  I decided to practice being an positive, optimistic person.

It was hard.  When I started to hear my internal voice nitpick myself or others, I had to remind myself that wasn't productive.  When I had to get on a horse that had bronco-ed me around the day before, pulling every move in the book without success, I had to swallow it down and think the best was going to happen.  And, well, it did.  Actually, the whole week went pretty well.  Riding started getting easier because I didn't give myself an opportunity to dwell in doubt.  Doubt happened, of course it isn't that simple to make it disappear, but replacing it with positive thoughts regarding the situation.  I had an amazing jump school with Suki Wednesday and some quite inspiring rides on my work projects on Friday.

  

The week culminated with a XC school that showed the progress we have made as well as the holes I need to work on in the near future before we can move up to Novice.  I'll admit, that inspired some self doubt until I broke it down for myself.  No, we are not ready; but, we are much more prepared than we were two months ago.  I am more comfortable with riding her mode forward and reverting myself back to cool to easy her out of our collective tense moments.  I might get a bit backwards when it gets technical, but we haven't been good enough to start playing around with the more technical aspects until now.  It starts seeming a lot like looking at the negative of a photo (for those of us that remember what negatives are...), you have to find the positive aspect of the negative.

I'm not done with my quest to step outside my own head, since I'm no where near there.  But, I'm starting to understand what that means.  It's letting myself asking for a bigger trot with more engagement exactly when it feels right except over analyzing if everything is right.  It's touching back to a fence when I see that we might come in to long otherwise.  It's letting myself do what I know how to do.




* Yes, this is a good example of a water down version of my every day internal monologue.  That said, it should surprise no one that I have a problem!