Overcoming rider fear. When I started riding my
Andalusian gelding several years ago, he was young and I was
absolutely crippled with fear. I've ridden to the highest
levels of classical dressage and horsemanship, from being totally
scared, so scared that I couldn't even stand on the
mounting block and mount my horse. And I want to share with
you today the exact formula that I've used to keep myself on
track, right to help me to make the right choices. Because
riders need to have longevity, it's not an easy thing to ride
horses. And so we need to have longevity, we need to sustain
our success with our horses, and not just have it be a fluke,
that one time it worked. And then maybe it won't work the
next time. And so what we need is a process to manage our fear.
Hi, my name is Chris Adderson, and I'm the founder of the
harmony for the horse program. The first one is risk versus
capability, you may be terrified of failing, perhaps. So what
happens is that we fear something that will be worse off
than we were before. So if we do this activity, say riding our
horse, or whatever it is with your horse, we fear that we'll
be worse off. After then we were before, I'll never get to my
ride my horse, or I'll never get to enjoy my horse, or I'll get
injured, or worse off than that. It's just going to be a totally
horrible experience, I might hurt my horse, these kinds of
things. So one core way that I found is to ask ourselves this
question. If I never get to ride my horse with confidence, what
else would make it worth taking this risk? Write that down,
because that's really important. What long term capabilities Am I
building, there's a lot to riding your horse. And we are
always after receiving safety and, security aren't we, we
maybe have a passion for our horse and we want the best for
our horse, we want to make a difference. Maybe we want a
partnership. And we want to get highest levels of competition,
whatever. But what it comes down to is it's ultimately about a
sensation or a feeling or an emotion that we want to feel. So
we have scary situations with our horses. And in the past,
maybe we didn't process them, or it may be not even related to
horses, but their failed attempts. So you have failed
attempts. And then time passes, and it gets bigger and it gets
bigger. And maybe there's another failed attempt. And then
it just gets bigger and it gets bigger. And then what it's like
a crushing anxiety that you have,
which
is actually the enemy of riding in harmony is the enemy of what
we want to accomplish. So this is where you ask yourself the
question that I mentioned to you earlier, if I never blank, right
amount, let's say for example amount to any kind of rider or
if I never ride a payoff, right. For example, if I never blank,
what capability am I looking to build over the next five years.
And that's the key part, the five years is the key part.
Okay?
The five years is what helps you to remove any distractions, that
squirrel type stuff where you're like going over here, and you're
going over here, and you're getting a bit of this and a bit
of that and it's like, "hurry, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo" And it's just distractions. Everybody maybe is following a
certain group that you've heard of. And so
I need to do that. And so you go and you follow that person and
you do their stuff. Oh, but now I need to do this.
When you say
the statement to yourself or write it down is what I want you
to do. It separates the momentary thing or the tactic
and it puts in a long term gain. So it changes things completely.
And I know it did for me, write this for yourself. If you
haven't already done so on your piece of paper if I never and
then put in your outcome like for example reach Grand Prix
dressage or Learn to ride my horse outside or help my horse,
whatever it may be, what capability or what potential Are
you looking to build over the next five years. And by the word
capability, what I mean. And for me, when I've done this exercise
over the years for myself, when I've had fear come up, for one
reason or another capabilities might be, for example, like to
be good at understanding my horse, I want to maybe deepen
the relationship with my horse or become proficient at in hand
work, or build trust through Liberty work, those are examples
of what might be capabilities that you would want to build
over the next five years. Number two is you want to examine
stories and rescript them. So in our harmony for the horse
program, this is what we do. And if we were to work together,
you'd be working one on one with us, on the mindset, every end of
things, using all different kinds of modalities. So it's not
just one modality, it's a combination that works really
effectively. And what we're doing is we're helping you to
integrate the subconscious with the conscious, our subconscious
is 90%. of us, and the conscious is 10%. So think about that for
a second is 90% of us is subconscious and 10% is
conscious, the conscious part is what sets your direction, right?
It's what your intention is. And if there's a problem if you're
stuck, what the problem is that there's a tug of war. And that's
why we're stuck. It's a tug of war between the subconscious and
the conscious, and you get locked in that place. And so
Which do you think is gonna win? If you've got 90% and 10%, and
they're pulling against each other, the subconscious is going
to win every time isn't it? So our purpose in the mindset
section of our program, is to get your subconscious on board
with your conscious choices and decisions and your intention. So
your conscious choice is, I just want to ride my horse and have
fun, for example, but there's all this fear behind it, right?
There's all this subconscious stuff that's getting you stuck,
and you can't get out of it. And I'll give you an example of one
of our students in our program, just what I was saying she just
wanted to ride and enjoy your horse and have fun, because she
knew that she'd had that experience when she was younger.
But she had so much fear from a previous fall. And actually
several falls that she had had previously, that she couldn't
even muster up the courage to get the saddle out to, to tack
up her horse. And so of course, with that much fear, then she
went into self sabotage. And she didn't even know this was going
on, until we work through our program with her. And she found
out what was actually happening. And then she no longer had the
behaviors that would sabotage her success with her horse. And
she started to to get success with her horse but don't not
only that in her personal life as well. So here's the format
that I'm, I'm telling you about here. It's FSS. Alright, so F
stands for fear. That's the first one. The second one is
story. The third one is substitute.
Okay,
so let's talk about fear, first of all number one. So I want you
to take a couple of seconds right now with your pen and
paper and I want you to write down what your fear is. Okay,
it'll only take a couple of six seconds. Like I'm, I'm fearful
of cantering. I can't canter or maybe. I'm always tense when I'm
on my horse. And that scares me. Those are just examples. So I
want you to sit with this. Like if you do this on your own
later, I want you to fit sit with this and bring your body
along with the ride in this. This is not only our intellect,
where do you feel this physically in your body and zone
into that because that's the place that's behind all of this.
We know what's in front of it. We know what we're thinking.
That's the easy part is what's behind that really
matters. The next one is story. Okay, so what is your story?
What is it that really hurts you? What is the meaning? You
are making of this fear.
What is the story telling? What are you telling yourself in this
story, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to
handle. If my horse is going to spook, I don't know how to
handle that situation. It bothers me when I'm scared that
I'm not helping my horse. So what's bothering you most?
What's your story? Write it down. Okay. And what we're doing
here is we're bringing awareness, we're asking these
questions of ourselves. But what I want you to do is I want you
to ask the questions to the part behind us the unconscious part.
And so this is what I want you to do, I want you to write on
pieces of paper, little pieces of paper, what you've written
down here and put them several places in your life, right?
Where you might see them as you're walking by on the fridge,
perhaps you're not thinking about fear directly, but you
might see it out of the corner of your eye and go oh, yeah,
right. Okay. And in that moment, when you're not thinking about
it, it'll tap into what's happening, subconsciously. So I
want you to do that, too, I want you to put this your what you've
written down as your story around so you can see it, this
will help you to see the connections that you haven't
seen before perhaps. Or you might get a completely different
answer from your subconscious that you would want from your
conscious. And then that's when you can do something about it.
And it'll help you to filter out what you are presently fearful
of with your horse and see it differently. So you'll notice
things differently from a completely different sense. And
then we're going to go on to the third thing, which is
substitute. Okay, so in this section, I don't want you to
actually forget or negate your actual fears, we don't want to
do that at all. What we don't want to deny it, we want to do
instead is to substitute another story. So we want to create
objectivity, we want to create a different perspective. And we
want to find out what other factors are in play here,
because we have an open mind and we're willing to look at them
examples say, okay, that story about my horse, blowing out, and
that means something really scary is gonna come up, maybe
that's true, it really might be true. But what else is true,
that I can look at, that I might be open to. And I want you to
write down your substitute stories for yourself. So write
down the substitute story for yourself. And it can be
something that you you can do, right, something that you may be
have done in other areas of your life, not horses, perhaps, but
something that you can do. And so I wanted to show you this
format, that has helped our students to move through
resistance. Because restoring it, restoring your fears is very
powerful. It's a very powerful tool. But the way you do this is
really important, you have to get the subconscious and the
conscious. So your subconscious actually becomes your ally,
right, it becomes your friend, instead of pulling in the
opposite direction. And being 90%. And then your conscious
being 10, it actually becomes your friend. And so
both awarenesses of both states are feeding your attention and
feeding your goal. And our body becomes our ally then instead of
fighting and forcing, and we work with us in our program, we
help you to move with flow to and so that your body moves with
your horse, your mind is working together as a friendship rather
than fighting and pulling against each other. Otherwise,
we're in fight flight or freeze, aren't we? If we're not, as I
was just describing to you, and if we're in this mode, we
basically have two options. Either you choose death, or you
choose survival. Nowhere in there is thriving, right?
thriving with our horse. So what we choose then is we choose to
go to survival don't wait, because you're not going to
choose death. So you choose survival and so on. We make
short term choices, that may be not the best choices, because
we're in survival mode. Yeah, just like our horses, and we
make self sabotaging decisions. We interpret our horse in ways
that perhaps are not really what's going on. Because we're
in that that state of fight or freeze. And so this makes it
impossible for you to reach your goals with your horse. So if
you're in that place, that you're not going to make quality
choices for yourself and your horse, then you're not fueling
your confidence. Because if you're not making appropriate
choices, then you're going to have another mini failure, and
then you're going to not make appropriate choices again, and
then your confidence gets eroded. Again, you're reactive,
you're in the reactive place, and so you're fueling your fear.
And then you'll feel your horses fear, guaranteed. So this format
that I've given you is what will help you to stay on track with
that whenever you get a situation that comes up this
fearful for you. And if you want support with something like this
personally, that we do in our program, with creating not only
your your mindset that is open and willing to receive but your
true movement with your horse, and understanding your horses
behavior and movement as well, so that your horse says to you,
oh, wow, I'm super happy to be with you and do stuff together
with you because it feels good, and it feels safe. So if that
resonates with you, then there'll be a link somewhere
around this video that will take you to a page where you can book
a call with us, and see how we can help you with your horse and
how we can help you with your deep fears on this deepest
level, which is the only level that can can solve and help you
with this issue. So if you'd like to join us and find out if
this is going to work for you, then click on that link. And
thanks so much for being with me. Great to see you here. And
we'll see you next time. Bye for now.