From Fearful to Confident Horsemanship...

Mercury has been a very good teacher to me about Calm leadership , focus and clear thinking...

Carrying on the theme for the last post of using positive thought patterns and breaking stuck thinking patterns, I want to continue with more ideas for working through and past fear. We cannot be seen in a leadership position if we are mirroring fear to our horses all the time.

People often want a trainer to make the horse fearless so they can be less afraid. But at the same time we need to work on our fears because a horse will mirror back whatever you are feeling. An example is a horse being calm when I work with him because I am exhibiting Calm Leadership. This same horse can be given back to his person who is afraid and the horse begins to mirror the person he is with. Horses are in the moment with whoever they are with. Some horses are generous and confident of nature and not as bothered by a person being fearful around them. Others are too un-confident themselves to have a person be the same.

If you find yourself in this situation, It is good to start breaking down the issues into little achievable goals. The first thing to do is to get an idea of what your fears really are.

There are three fears I see when working with people. 1. I am afraid of certain things but my horse is actually quite confident. In this scenario, you are working on your own fears and your horse may actually build confidence. 2. You are afraid of your horses behavior because you have had an accident or you think you could have one with him. So you are actually afraid of your horse. 3. You are afraid and your horse is afraid as well. You both need to work together to become more confident as a team. It also ok to find another partner if it seems like a better situation for both horse and person. Sometimes this is the best option.

So if you thought about those 3 categories and thought you might fit in one, you are on your way to becoming a more Confident horseman.

The exercise is to write down a list of what exactly you are afraid of and also what you are not afraid of. Be as detailed as possible. Also write down what you would like to be able to do as a goals that you are afraid to do now. If you would like to share these lists in the comments section, please do so as we can all learn from each others experience. I will post the next step in the next post.
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