The confidence trick!

In my lesson this week with Pizarra she taught me that I give up too easily mentally. I have been recovering from a bug, had quite low energy and when we started freeschooling she would only work nicely for me when I was in close proximity and expending a tremendous amount of energy. Obviously I couldn’t keep this up so we were getting nowhere fast. I decided to pop up a couple of low jumps to give myself something to focus on.

Instead of making life easier I soon realised I had just made life harder! It transpires that Pizarra does not like change, has done little pole work and now I was asking her for even more than before! I’ve reached this point in many lessons where it all just seems a bit too hard. I give up asking for what I want, ask for something I know I can get and then stop. Not today!

There comes a point where you know if you want to progress it’s time to push through the block. I relied heavily on Pip for suggestions on how to correct the mistakes I was clearly making and two things became clear. The first was that there is a balance point in our body language and we need to find that sweet spot…..the second is that having strong enough energy is not sufficient...it’s needs to be the right sort!

I hadn’t realised, that both with my dog and the horses, I have been guilty of giving off a rather irritated energy. I would start out well but as soon as I wasn’t getting what I wanted I would slip into this ‘you will bloody do it’ irritated sort of energy. Whilst this energy no doubt has it’s place at some point down the line, this was not that point! As with an irritated boss who gets your back up I was not inspiring Pizarra to do my bidding!

Pip explained that what Pizarra actually needed, especially as she lacks confidence with pole work, was for me to have a confident assertive energy, assuring Pizarra that together we could do this. Well what a difference! It was still a delicate balance of having my hips and shoulders in exactly the right place to encourage her forward without blocking her and with my new confident ‘you can do it! We can do it together!’ attitude she went over the jumps! I was over the moon.

Having done each of the jumps nicely I wanted her to go around the menage and do both of them. Well what ensued was rather funny….in my misguided way I ended up being the bull in a bullfight! Pizarra thought this was great fun! I was running around like an idiot and she was charging past looking beautiful….not really what I was aiming for though.

Again Pip pointed out where I was going wrong and how to address it. Pizarra jumped both the jumps and we called it a day.

It’s the longest freeschooling session I have ever done. It was hard work both mentally and physically but I think it was a major breakthrough on my journey. I now realise that even when I was grooming the horses, leading the horses and walking my dog I was slipping into the wrong energy and whereas I thought I gave up physically when I became tired, I have actually been giving up mentally! Not any more!!!!