We’ve often talked about attitude and how it affects our success with horses.Horses are incredibly honest and reflective. As much as we sometimes hate to admit it, theyalways tell it exactly like it is. They are so sensitive to their surroundings andeverything in it that they are like a truth gauge when it comes to our handling of them.

As we have discussed in previous articles, humans as a whole dislike making mistakes. Wewill often go out of our way to avoid doing something new or difficult to avoid the feelingsof inadequacy, awkwardness and ineptitude associated with making mistakes. When we attemptto do something and it doesn’t quite work, we disguise these uncomfortable feelings withanger, frustration and tears.

Again, as we have previously discussed, mistakes are the very way in which we do learn, soif we go out of our way to avoid making mistakes, we are also robbing ourselves of theopportunity to grow and develop! If we make a mistake, our horse doesn’t mind, as long as wedo not blame him for it. Most times he will not even know if you have made a mistake. Onlyyou know that you got something other than what you wanted. Your horse just does as he’sasked to do.

We encourage you to make lots of mistakes and learn from them. That is whereexperience comes from and also what helps us to form judgement. Just do it all with a smile;your horse will forgive you. You’ll lighten up on yourself and be in a better frame of mindto figure out what didn’t work. At the end of the day, the only one putting pressure andexpectations on us ... is ourselves.

Allowing ourselves to slip into anger, frustration or sadness is our choice. These are theways in which we choose to placate ourselves. They are generally quickly followed by denialand blame, shifting the responsibility for our short-comings onto someone or something else.If you try something and it doesn’t work, there are two ways in which you can perceive it.You can either allow yourself to become upset, which puts you in a negative non-solutionaryframe of mind; or you can smile about it and think ‘here is a golden opportunity for me tolearn something new.’

Turn your frustrations into fascinations – the choice is yours alone!

“Life is 10% what really happens to us and 90% how we respond to it.”

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