Daily Practice, Self-Care to Improve your Riding

             Utilize Self Care and Improve Your Riding

                  Carousel Coaching                    Dec. 11, 2023

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Utilize this as an exercise when you have time, with your journal:                               

 

      Aspects of ourselves

                     Character Traits  (same as values) these are relating to space and time. Honesty, love, compassion, organization, patience, respect.) Again these are things about ourselves that we want to nurture. We may have to look past what other people have made us think about ourselves.

                     Personality Traits (help us to be who we are) these just are, there is nothing to measure. Confident, humorous, imaginative, loving, direct.

                          Part of self love is getting to know these things about ourselves and make peace with them. Without comparing ourselves to others why are these characteristics special? What do we look like when we are acting on them in a positive way? What might it look like when we ignore or don’t like parts of ourselves.

 

              With the horses it is easy to get overwhelmed sometimes with the competitive aspect and then think that our own self worth and characteristics are not worth anything. We try to conform to the way other people want us to be, or what we see other people doing from a distance.

             Yes! There are certain practices that will help to bring you success!

                           Such as being disciplined, choosing good healthy food over junk food, working out, stretching, having lessons to improve your riding etc etc.

                            There are other things that create your special you that do not need to change or conform to the wishes of society or friends. These things are what make you you. And by trying to bury them, hide them or change them you are going against your true nature and living out of balance.

                           It takes time of self-reflection to start to find these traits and characteristics that are truly what you are about. Then it also takes time to cultivate or get to know your true identity. From then you want to grow the positive aspects of yourself and be brave to take them out into the world.

 

                          How to help myself travel on the right path and have success?

                  Take care of yourself and give yourself some love!

                          Be careful not to just ask it from other people. You must not ask someone to love you more than you love yourself. And…. If they do not show you love, enough love or the right kind of love, this must not reflect how much you love yourself.

                         We are all a work in progress. So! loving yourself and accepting yourself where you are right now does not mean that you might not want to improve certain aspects of your being. However, if you only focus on the negative remember, you will only continue to get more negative.

               For example someone might say; I love that I am funny, energetic and have a love for horses. I would like to improve my discipline so that my love for horses turns into a successful show career.

                But what if they said; I am not disciplined but I am funny and energetic. Can you see where this is going. One sentence is uplifting and gives something to work toward the other is going nowhere.

 

              When under pressure you will find that positive attributes will help you persevere, whereas negative thoughts and beliefs about ourselves will be self-fulfilling.

“If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you are also right.”

 

                                     Be the guardian of your mind. The way that business works in America is that they make you feel like you have or identify with a short coming or a problem and then they offer you the product that will solve it. These short comings are put into your presence daily on the computer, TV, radio, bill boards and magazines and then the advertisements sell you the product that will fix your flaws.

                                       If you can hold your positive self-vision in your mind and heart all of the time these ads will not infect you. In my email I get a million hits with subjects like “lose weight fast”, “look younger now” or “improve your relationship”. When I see the titles, I might say to myself I don’t need to lose weight! or my relationship is just fine thank you! I actually have the conversation and put it out there so that it does not infect me.

                                    When you come from this place of self-acceptance and love you can actively look for things that will improve your life and what you want to do, but you do not allow other peoples fears or judgements to infect you.

                  Taking care of yourself daily will reinforce to your mind, heart and spirit that you really are good enough. This confidence will spill into your riding, work, and relationships.

                  What ways can we take better care of ourselves?

                                     Spend alone time, meditating and learning (or just figuring out what is interesting and we might want to learn.)

                                      Respect yourself with your self-talk. Allow yourself to grow do not judge mistakes

                                     Eat right and stay hydrated

                                     Exercise

Important thing to remember!!

                You were not born knowing everything! So! it is ok to ask questions, make mistakes and look for ways to learn. You do not have to be the knower! As you do this you will find that you can give a hand up to those that have less experience than you, but you can also look up to those that have more experience.

 

                        Homework:

                                    Take a couple of days and listen to your self-talk. Write down some things you hear regularly, good and bad.

                                    Also, listen to some ads, look in magazines or TV and Facebook and write down a couple of these products that use this tactic of making you feel like you are lacking something or need to fix something to sell their product.

                     Share with me at nancy@carouselcoaching.com

                    

Confidence

 

Carousel Coaching               Confidence                                                                

 

When you look confidence up in the dictionary, it is defined as the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something; firm trust. When we use this definition, it asks us to look outside ourselves to find confidence. Are we relying on someone or something outside of ourselves, actually outside of our control, to feel capable?

If you look further, you can find a definition; the state of feeling certain about the truth of something.

 So, then I ask myself, is it possible that this truth of something could be inside me? Is it possible that I could wake up every morning and believe that there is something inside myself that is well-intentioned, loving, and capable of doing anything I put my heart and mind into? Could I actually feel certain about this truth? Could I wake up with confidence every day?

What is it that takes this confidence away from us? What is it that asks us to look outside of ourselves for certainty so that we can feel confident?

I was listening to a podcast yesterday and the podcaster said…

”I can change someone’s state from insecurity to confidence, and make them believe they can make changes for the better, but when they are no longer with me it all disappears.”

What that means to me is that the speaker created a situation where his listeners had confidence in his ability, but not their own ability. It got me thinking about confidence and how do we cultivate it for ourselves.

How many businesses are built on the need for the person to come back? We produce goods that do not last. We create lesson programs that give people just enough information to know that they need to come back for more. When I started teaching, and now as a coach, my goal has always been to give my students the information they need to make good decisions. I want people to be able to function when I am not there, as well as when I am there. As a coach my purpose is to help put the power back in the hearts and hands of my clients. I want to help them find out “who” they are so that when they make decisions they are based on their own goals, interests, and beliefs. This can be difficult because we have a lot of people to please. What if my mother, sister or husband does not like the person I really am on the inside?

The person that we are on the inside is the only person, this is the person we must have confidence in. The problem is that we become so out of touch with this person that we do not know who she/he is. We cover it up, on purpose or by accident, and then we act out, hideout or go down a road that is not ours. We have so many outside influences that we end up bouncing from this opinion to that opinion, this person’s idea or that person’s insult. We forget to remember who we are, we forget to be confident; the state of feeling certain about the truth of something, the truth of ourselves.

No one can tell us who we should be or what we should do. This is the hard part. Young people have often said to me they wish someone could just tell them they are good enough, or they wish the road was mapped out and they could just follow it. This is something we need to find on the inside. This belief in our self needs to override everything, all that people say, all the insults, negative energy, and doubt. Many times, these feelings and expressions of insecurity are about the other person, not about us. If someone tells me their goal is to jump a grand prix course is it my place to say they cannot do this? I do not ever see myself jumping a grand prix course with my horse, but who am I to say they cannot do it? This is often what happens, the other person is so insecure they project that onto our goals and aspirations. In addition, we may act on a sport or direction we are talented in but have no actual interest in. In this case, we might end up going down the wrong road because people believe in us, praise us and encourage us, but we have no actual interest.  A lack of belief causes us to abandon our dreams. When we have confidence, we have an inner knowing that what we want is possible and we are able to create it. We may occasionally make detours along the way, bad decisions or mistakes, but inevitably we walk our path, the right path to the truth of our goals.

How do we gain confidence? There are a million programs, books, and coaches out there to help us with this.

My challenge for you is this. Every night before you go to bed ask yourself was there any part of the day you could have managed better? Was there a time you actually did not act on your inner truth? What was the reason? Does this bring you closer or farther from your ultimate expression? Was it a close friend, family member or just a passing acquaintance that caused you to step outside of yourself? Write it in your journal. Ask yourself to think about tomorrow and how you can be relaxed and in your truth in the future. Not aggressively and putting other people down, just relaxed and confident in your true nature.  Can you find this peaceful feeling that you do not need to impress your feelings or actions on other people, you just need to be walking your path in your own way? In addition, can you find the feeling that you do not need reinforcement from other people to know you have done the best that day?

The strength to be YOU needs to be developed and nurtured.

When you wake up in the morning think about the day ahead. Are there things that might come up that have the potential to knock you off your path? What can you do to be relaxed and peaceful on your way? Do you have plans to eat right? Can you talk to the people that strengthen you? Is it possible to find time to take care of yourself and remember your inner strength throughout the day?  Sometimes it is helpful to put alerts on your phone, a post-it note in your car, or a poster in your house or office. What does your strong self know that you forget when life gets overwhelming? Your strong inner self is the only self to listen too, try to create tactics to remind yourself when you feel the doubt or overwhelm creep in.

Be youthful in your approach, connection is the key and

Remember, anything is possible,

Nancy