Day: November 8, 2016

The Value of Reflection

Posted on by Jane Pike

We have all had rides that have left us feeling well below average on the Rider Hotness Scale, and whilst on many occasions its good practice to shift your focus to the future and keep on going, there are times when looking back and focusing on what went wrong can be the best thing you can do to get you moving forward.

So what do you do when your training session or competition experience has not resulted in you on the top podium belting out the national anthem at the top of your lungs to an appreciative and adoring crowd (ok, so this may have featured in my horsey day dreams at one time or another)? You grab hold of that session and you filter out the little nuggets of gold dust that it has left you in its wake.

Let’s have a look at the process.

1. Recover

I didn’t want to get all PollyAnna on your from get go, so I am allowing for a certain recovery period, also known as a temporary pity party, wallow, or a few minutes when you drop to your knees and swear that if God could just make all your rides in the future really great, you will never do anything bad ever again.

Letting yourself feel bad for a confined period of time can be a necessary part of the process, and brings closure to whatever specific event or training that you are endeavoring to recover from. Put a cap on it though. Your visit to Camp Crappy should be limited to a maximum of 24 hours. After this, it’s time to up sticks and move on.

2. Review

Now we are getting to the good stuff! Your task here is to sit down and look unemotionally at your ride in all its glory- the good and the bad. Your role is not to be critical, judgmental or negative. It’s simply to identify the parts of your ride that are of interest.

If you find it hard to emotionally distance yourself, in your mind’s eye, pretend you are at the cinema, watching the ride unfold on the screen in front of you. Get comfy. Make a note of everything that comes up. Celebrate the wins and jot down the challenges.

As you move through the process, ask yourself, what did I do well? Where did I come up short? What were some of the processes that led to me making an error or facing a particular challenge?

Get it all down on paper.

3. Reflect

Once you have your list of awesome-ness collated, sit down and rationally review its contents. Again, your task is not to be critical or judgmental, it’s simply to learn.

Ask yourself, what could I do in the future to prevent this situation happening again? What worked for me and my horse? What decisions yielded good results?

If I was to repeat the training session or competition knowing what I know now, how could I do things differently?

Think of this as an exercise in creating successful tomorrows as a result of learning from your yesterdays!

4. Reboot

It’s time to reboot and get back to it. Engaging in a process of reflection can be an invigorating and exciting process- if you allow it to be. It’s a primary opportunity for you to embrace new learning, identify areas that need improvement and create plans for the future. Allow the reflective thinking process to keep you humble while you continue to progress towards magnificence!

Engaging in an ongoing process of reflection, learning, planning and activation will leave not only ensure that improve and grow progressively but will allow you to view each ride as a valuable experience that will help to shape your training and competition future in wholly positive ways.

xx Jane

Let’s talk jealousy…

Posted on by Jane Pike

Let’s talk Jealousy…

Oh, the old green eyed monster! Unless you are some sort of highly ascended being who has never been caught in the wrath of a jealous moment (and in which case I want to meet you and give you a high five in person), most of us have experienced a jealous moment or two over the course of our lives. For the most part, jealousy is seen as something that needs to be trampled on and never mentioned again, and that may be so if the only course of action you plan to take is to let your jealousy fester and become a much larger force de vivre, such as bitterness, bad sportsmanship, or chronic grumpiness. Delightful right?

Like any emotion that we embody, jealousy is just another messenger that is vying for your attention in order to tell you something, and predominantly the message is that you have seen something that you want for yourself.

Someone has won an event that you would love to win

Someone is riding a horse that you would like to ride

Someone is making progress in training and you feel stuck in one spot

Someone has overcome their nerves and anxiety and you still feel unconfident and afraid.

It’s not about the other person. It’s about you. It’s about you wanting something for yourself that you perceive to be out of your reach or capacity to achieve in the present moment, and as a result you feel, well…. jealous. It’s horrible, frankly, and we have all been there, but the truth of the matter is, that staying there and marinating in your little pool of jealousy is not going to do anything to help you except make you feel worse. Nasty!

That being said, let’s have a look at some of the positive messages of jealousy and how you can use them to take the next best step forward.

1. Jealousy indicates you are ready for the next level, that you are open to some kind of transformation

If you see someone doing or having something that incites jealousy within you, reflect on your emotional reaction and ask yourself why you are feeling this way. What is it that you actually want? If it’s to win a certain award, feel or ride a certain way, or to achieve a certain level in training, don’t wallow, get busy. Or better still, get inspired!

That point that you are aspiring too marks your aspiration point. Fabulous! You have something concrete that you want to work towards. Now to work your way backwards! If this is where you are now, and that is where you want to be, what steps do you need to take in the meantime to bridge the gap between the two. And then decide on one step that you can take within the next 24 hours to set you on course toward your target.

2. The only behavior you can control is your own

The reality is, at the end of the day, the most likely person to be affected by your jealousy is you. There’s nothing wrong with feeling jealous for a moment (News Flash: You’re human!), but don’t let it define your future. Recognise it, evaluate it, thank it (it’s provided you with some good insights as to what you want), and then get on with DOING something to get towards where you want to be.

Envy and jealousy is boring really. Who wants to hang out with someone who blows smoke over the success of others but doesn’t do anything to change their own reality? Not me, that’s for sure. Yawn…

3. Learn to Celebrate other people’s successes

Here’s the thing: other people doing well doesn’t mean that you are failing. You are unique, your horse is unique, and frankly, the journey that you are on is yours and yours alone.

Celebrating other people’s success is an important emotional reminder that you not only think they THEY are worthy of the success, but you are also. After all, if you can’t see good in other people’s awesome moments, who’s to say that you will see good in your own?

See the achievements of others as an indication of what’s possible. There’s plenty of room at the top after all!

xx Jane

Survival Tips For Putting Yourself Out There

Posted on by Jane Pike

Survival Tips to Transcend the Moments When You are Going to Put Yourself out there and feel a little …. Stupid.

It’s a sad state of affairs when we limit ourselves and our capacity based on what other people are thinking. If you are hung up on the thoughts and opinions of others, or don’t put yourself out there at the risk of looking stupid, here are three of my top survival tips for setting that baggage aside and strutting your stuff like the equestrian version of Charlie’s Angels. Let’s hit it.

1. Remember your outcome

When we start feeling stupid and worrying about what everyone around us is doing, we forget why we are doing it in the first place. It distracts us from Mission: Awesome and instead turns it into Mission: Hot Mess. Know what you are doing there, why you are doing what you are doing and how it fits into your overall plan and future goals.

Anyone who achieved great things spent some time feeling like they didn’t know everything, like they couldn’t yet do what they wanted to do in the way that they wanted to do it, and yes, feeling a bit stupid. When you start to stretch the bubble of your comfort zone you are quite literally expanding your comfort zone. And when you start to expand your comfort zone, guess what? You feel uncomfortable! If you don’t feel uncomfortable, well… you are still inside your comfort zone.

Uncomfortable is ok. Your comfort zone will expand to meet you in time. But if you don’t move the perimeter posts, it’s never going to happen.

2. Remember, it’s temporary.

We need to reframe this for a second. You are far from stupid right now. What you actually are is a Neural Highway Ninja. Basically, all those neural networks in your body are connecting up new pathways, joining the dots together and building both your mental and physical muscles in ways that will allow you to get out there and repeat the same task much more ease-fully in the future. You getting out there and actually doing it- not thinking about it, talking about it, or drinking coffee about it- is the only way that you are going to make this happen. The only way.

Forget stupid. Your totally bad ass. B.A.D. A.S.S.

You heard me!

3. Work out your Inner Circle of Awesome.

In all likelihood, most people aren’t as obsessed with us as we are. Strange I know. If, however, you just can’t get past wondering what other people are thinking, then you need to get selective. Narrow it down.

In the Academy, I talk about the Inner Circle of Awesome. Your Inner Circle of Awesome is your crew, your posse, the group of people that know you, know your horse and know where it is that you are both heading. These are people who have your best interests at heart and whose opinion you can listen to. From their constructive feedback, you can pick out the jewels that will help you further your training and continue on.

Everyone not in your circle of awesome you can absolutely listen to, but they are essentially surplus to requirements. Appraise any feedback on its value mechanism. Can I use this information to improve the performance of me or my horse?

If yes, fabulous. Thank you and move on.

If not, fabulous. Thank you and move on.

Be clear on what you want, and take immediate steps towards actualizing it. If you are going to shine like a crazy diamond, you can’t hide under all the rocks in the pond. Get out there and do it! I’ve got your back.

xx Jane

Mental Training for Competition

Posted on by Jane Pike

Last week, someone asked me about the approach I take training riders for high-level competition. For many, the thought of it comes as a shock. Wouldn’t someone competing at the elite level of his or her sport already have it together? What would they need with a coach like me?

Well, it turns out, quite a lot! Mental training techniques are not all about overcoming fear, working with confidence issues or taming anxiety. They are primarily about optimization- how we can optimize and train our minds to deal effectively with the pressures and stresses that arise in the competition arena.

My chief aim when working with someone who is interested in bettering their performance is to allow them to fine tune the existing skills that they have and produce their desirable outcomes on a more consistent basis than they would be able to previously

I am not their riding coach.

I am not their dressage or jumping instructor.

I am their mental coach and I am there to give them the skills to build the muscles of their mind in the same way a personal trainer would be on hand with a program to build strength and endurance in the body.

If you want to get physically stronger; if you want to improve your jumping technique; if you want to get better dressage scores then you hire a trainer who can give you proven methods and skills to enhance your own skill set and performance. Hiring a mind coach is no different; I help people identify the processes that bring them results and give them the skills that increase their mental fortitude and enhance the mind’s ability to focus.

One of the big fallacies is that professional riders don’t feel nervous. Nothing could be further from the truth! Many of the elite riders that I work with DO feel nervous, and it’s often inevitable. Pre-competition jitters can enhance performance by sharpening our sensory systems, but they can impair our performance when we can’t adequately control them. This is where the ability to be able to deal with pressure becomes so important.

There are several elements that I attend to when putting together a program for competitive athletes, and each are specified and tailored to the individual concerned. All combine to form a formula that can be worked through on a daily basis.

The first is breath work. From a physiological point of view, as soon as we experience pressure, we experience an acceleration of our heart rate. Controlled and specific use of the breath gives us primary control over our “arousal state”, which is the level of energy that an athlete experiences prior to and during performance. Across the board, we are looking to keep our heart rate below 120 beats per minute. Without adequate mental preparation, anyone whose heart rate exceeds 120 beats per minute will experience significant loss of mental focus and “sharpness”; over 150 beats per minute and we switch over to survival mode. As a consequence, controlling our heart rate with our breath becomes more than significant.

I will summarise briefly the other elements that are attended to:

1.     Specific mental programming techniques in relation to our internal dialogue on the field, or our self-talk: This helps to continually direct our focus and avoid unhelpful internalizations of doubt and negativity.

2.     Visualisation: Repetition of specific past and future outcomes and projections using proven and researched visualisation methods

3.     Beliefs and Identity: Our self image is the key agent of our behavior, bringing forward the thoughts, actions and behaviours needed to fulfill our ideals and expectations.

4.     Anchoring: Connecting specific stimuli with specific emotional states.

When the right ingredients are combined, what you are left with is a highly effective and easily implemented mental training workout. It’s the practical means to develop tangible results that are reflected in performance.

xx Jane

Flexing Your Mental Muscles

Posted on by Jane Pike

Jenny really has it going on. At the moment, she is pretty much at the top of her game. Pictures of Jenny pop up on your newsfeed and you can’t help but have a quick peek. You try not to give them too much thought, but I mean, what can you do?! They are right there!

She looks great of course. She’s riding the horse that everyone would like to have in their paddock or barn. Wow, he must be amazing to ride, you tell yourself. Imagine having a horse like that! She transports said horse in a top of the line, brand new truck. It’s so shiny it looks, almost unused. You mentally compute the cost of the truck and compare it to the cost of a house. For a little minute, you think that you may have actually swallowed your tongue. You need a glass of water.

Wow. Jenny looks phenomenal in a pair of breeches. Actually, it’s like breeches were crafted specificallywith Jenny in mind. It’s not normal. People shouldn’t look that good in stretch lycra, should they? No. It’s not normal.

 

When Jenny struts her stuff at competition, she seems to really have it together. Does she EVER lose her cool? You can see the whole package, the professional demeanor on the 15 second clip with the inspirational musical background she’s just uploaded to Instagram. Sickening and irresistible all at once. You try to turn it off, but instead watch it 5 times on repeat. You notice that you have wrinkled your nose slightly.

In her photos, Jenny always looks so happy. Actually, speaking of her photos, does she have a professional photographer follow her around? Is that her partner? Who looks like that when they are mucking out? You flick a piece of hay of your jodhpurs and consider whether it’s time to put them in the wash.

Many of us have a Jenny in our lives, or have come across a Jenny at one time or another. Some of us might be inspired. Wow, they might say. If she can do it, that means I can to! Let’s get out there and make it happen!

But equally as many will entertain feelings that are a little…. Uncomfortable. For instance, they might compare themselves to Jenny and in the process feel a little… less than. That’s not our fault though, they tell themselves, that’s Jenny’s fault! Splashing herself around like that!

And there might be a tiny background voice saying, Why aren’t I able to keep it together like she is? What’s wrong with me?

We may even host our own pity party. It’s not fair! If I had the money, I’d be able to do what she’s doing! If I could buy a horse like that / own a truck like that / get help like that. I’m just not that lucky! I could if….

Or it may be a bit more covert, a little more undercover. An eye roll. A sigh. A “uugh, not Jenny again! Spare me!”.

These reactions can seem… inconsequential. Insignificant. Justified even, at least in our own minds. But in reality, little moments, these little diversions into the negative, into comparison- they cost us something. They remove money from our mental bank and leave us with less to draw on. Ultimately, they are nibbling away at our mental strength.

Why? Well, let’s take a look. It’s not enough to try and cultivate positive habits and beliefs. We have to work at removing our negative habits also. Negative habits, no matter how small, how inconspicuous, or seemingly harmless, will hold you back. They divert your focus away from possibility to “lack”. They rob you of your power and steal your momentum.

Let’s look at the top 3 mental habits that take the glittery crown of our mojo’s without us even realizing.

1. Holding onto unhealthy or negative beliefs about ourselves

Even if you can’t isolate what negative belief patterns you are operating from, you can almost always recognize their effects. When we are acting from a belief foundation that is limiting us, we tend to feel stuck. Limited in our capacity, like there is a whole range of activities and experiences we would like to take part in, but we don’t believe them to be available to us. Oh, they can do that, but I can’t. I’m not a good enough rider to do that. I’m not as lucky as them.

More often than not, we magnify our misfortune in our minds and allow it to carry forward into our future. Instead of viewing a situation or challenge and temporary, we grant it a sense of permanency, and carry it forward into our future decision-making and outcomes.

When we are operating from this mindset, pity parties are a common occurrence. Sometimes we invite other people to join us- we gossip, look around us and bring other people down- or we party alone. It’s not fair! Why does this always happen to me!

We are problem focused instead of solution focused.

If you find yourself behaving in the way, ask yourself- what am I choosing to believe about myself in this moment? Is this belief moving me forward in the direction that I want? And if not, what do I need to believe in order to create the kinds of outcomes that I desire?

2. Shifting Responsibility

How we respond to any event or circumstance is a choice. We are always in control of our own feelings and our own responses to any given situation. This realization is the foundation stone of owning your own power. When I talk about power here, I don’t mean physical power; I mean the quiet confidence that comes with the realization that how you choose to behave is something that you have control over. It may be the one great freedom we are all blessed with, the ultimate equalizer.

Seek to develop a level of consciousness that allows you to respond to your environment as opposed to mindlessly react. You are in control. No one has the power to make you feel a certain way, or behave in a certain way unless you assign it to them.

3. Generalised, global beliefs

Global beliefs, as the name suggests, are more expansive. They rise to the surface when we take an entire group and assign a label to them all. An example of a global belief would be “Thoroughbreds are hot” or “Everyone who competes at a high level is wealthy”. Banal examples, but we take an entire group and we assign to them something specific. In doing this, we are actually diminishing our own capabilities, and operating from a fixed mindset.

Believing that all Thoroughbreds are hot, for instance, may cause you to pass up the opportunity to work with an amazing horse just based on your own biases of breeding.

Believing that everyone who competes at a high level may stop you putting in the required level of effort to compete at a high level yourself. After all, if you don’t currently have the funds, what’s the point? Your belief system will limit the decisions that you make, and as a result of those decisions, the actions that you take moving forward.

Whilst it may seem a little daunting to dig in and analyse what unhealthy belief systems are holding you back, you can’t really afford not to. We have to train our minds to think differently, and to move away from comparing ourselves to the person next to us.

So the next time “Jenny” pops up in your news feed, flash her a smile and send her a virtual high five. One person living their dreams is all the evidence you need that you can get out there and live yours too.

xx Jane

Cultivating Confidence

Posted on by Jane Pike

Earth to Planet Confidence? Can you hear me?

Confidence issues. They are the Captain KillJoy to our Super Hero selves. You don’t have to be a psychology expert to know that confidence- or a lack of it- affects every aspect of our lives, and obviously has a huge affect on how we conduct ourselves in the saddle. I thought in this particular post we could go all Keanu Reeves (I’ll probably bust out some sweet moves as I’m writing), dive into the matrix and have a good poke around inside the workings of our mind and how we can use it to our best advantage when cultivating confidence.

Ready? Excellent. Let’s get in there.

Now you have entered the inner workings of your brain space, you will notice that it is operating in two distinct parts. You may not have seen them before from this exact angle, but you will recognize them when I tell you that they are the conscious and the unconscious (or subconscious) mind. I know it’s a surprise to realise that the conscious mind is actually really small. You don’t have to worry- this is not an indicator of your intelligence- it’s just that the conscious mind actually only occupies a very small part of the overall mind-scape, even if it is the area that we are the most familiar with. If you imagine for a moment that you are floating on a canoe on a lake, the canoe would represent the conscious mind, and the lake your unconscious mind. It’s important (obviously) but it’s only a tiny slither of what’s around us (or inside us, as the case may be).

Anyway, back to the mind. Your conscious mind is communication headquarters. It sends out to the world everything that you wish to communicate, and also controls your inner dialogue, the little voice inside your head that speaks to you. It’s Captain Communicator, sending out into the universe everything that the unconscious mind commands.

If you would step into your unconscious mind, you would notice it to be a huge storehouse of all your memories and experiences. Everything that you see in here is malleable- it can be extracted, molded and shaped in a thousand different ways, but the shapes that they form for us join hands with Captain Communicator and come out on the other side as our habits, behaviors and beliefs. It uses all of the information that it has stored to make sense of all the incoming data that you receive from the world, with its primary job being to keep you safe and ensure your survival.

You will also notice that between the unconscious and conscious minds there is a filter. This filter is made up of two layers; your belief systems and your focus. Your belief systems and your focus are hard at work picking through the storehouse of past memories and experiences and then using them to give meaning to your present circumstance. This filter system is the most powerful mechanism you have at your disposal to determine your reality. Essentially, whatever you choose to focus on, you give meaning too, and as soon as you assign meaning, you assign power. Your consequent experience only becomes positive or negative as a direct result of your focus, which has the power to lift you up and propel you forward, or bring you down.

If you have shaped your identity or associate strongly to the idea that you are an unconfident rider- you might believe that you aren’t good enough, or that you don’t have what it takes- then this belief will inform your focus. Our minds always seek to make our external reality congruent with our internal world. It wants them to match up. Consequently, if you believe that you aren’t good enough, your filter system begin to search through all of the resources of your unconscious mind to support your assertion and presents them to the conscious mind in defense of your case.

Your focus will rally to support the cause also. Believe you aren’t good enough? *** rubs hands together *** let’s see what meaning we can attach to all our your present and future experiences show you how true this is! A training rider that didn’t go to plan then becomes a reflection of your inability as a rider, a personal blight as opposed to something that is able to be worked through and constructively used to your advantage. After all, seeing things differently or focusing on a different possibility would go against your belief system, and the mind most certainly doesn’t want that. We want the inside and outside to match remember!

Think about it in terms of your own experience; if you are a rider who identifies with having confidence issues, do you sway towards being positive or negative, pessimistic or optimistic when it comes to assessing your riding and your future possibilities?

The ability of your conscious mind to direct attention and awareness is one of your ultimate super-powers. In order to create confidence, you must learn to control what it is that you are focusing on, and the actual skill of directing your focus comes down to reprogramming your belief systems and a single, ongoing decision to control your focus; deciding how and what you will think and consciously directing your thoughts in a way that creates positive meaning, action and momentum.

Becoming confident riders starts at this point- by recognizing the belief systems that limit us and understanding the ways that we allow them to inform our focus, and consequently, our reality. The key to the Confidence Vault comes with your ability to attach an empowering meaning to any given situation and adopt a new belief. No belief need be permanent. They are self-created entities- the only power they hold is the power that we assign them.

xx Jane

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