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You’re listening to Episode 29 of the Confident Rider podcast with Jane Pike.
00:17
Hello fabulous human. It feels actually quite relaxing at the moment. I’ve been running around like
a headless chicken over the course of this entire day- actually, let’s just rewind that over the
course of the entire week it feels like, and it is not how I planned this week to go! In my mind, I was
easeful and graceful and I was organised and things were flowing, but unfortunately, that has not
materialised in this case. So Monday of this week, I got back from Equidays, and I spent the five
days prior I think, four days maybe I got out there on the Thursday before. So Friday, Saturday,
Sunday was Equidays, and I was presenting seminars each of those days. And then the rest of the
time, I’m not actually sure what I was doing. The irony is I feel like I’m much busier at home, like I
do a whole lot more stuff at home but for whatever reason, just the amount of peopling that it
was involved and the excitement and my shiny object syndrome that was getting distracted by all
the different settles and bridles, and saddle pads and beautiful things that we can purchase, such
as boots…I did buy a pair of boots. That was planned mind you, so I feel hundred percent aligned
with that purchase. I’ll show you pictures soon. But for whatever reason, I was completely
knackered when I got home. The reason that I’m telling you this story is not to share the fact that
I was tired when I got back
01:56
which in and of itself is quite a dull fact to share with you, but that I actually recorded the
seminar presentation. So on Friday, I did one that was all about mental preparation for
competition; Saturday was about returning from injury and then Sunday was cultivating
confidence. Today I had planned to share the Cultivating Confidence session with you, however,
what I didn’t do was check the right setting on my audio recorder and those three seminars are,
well, you can hear me but I’m kind of like a distant voice. So I’ve listened back to it and decided
that’s not the way we’re going to roll for this particular session. And I’m taking it that the reason
for that is because there’s something more important that needs to be shared today.
02:42
Why I feel like it’s like headless chicken at the moment is because tomorrow I’m going to a clinic
with Warwick Schiller and I’m taking two of my horses. I’m taking Dee and Nadia, super excited
about that. And I think if I have the presence of mind and the energy to do so I’m going to do it on
the road podcast, so stay tuned for that one. But when I got back, my little boy Tommy was sick,
so it’s just been kind of a comedy of errors getting everything done.
03:08
So today, what we’re going to talk about is being attached to the story that you’re telling yourself,
and also the need to actually seek relief rather than solutions in some circumstances. Now, I
thought about the Cultivating Confidence seminar that I did on the Sunday and what it was that I
wanted to draw from that to share with you, but that’s also been highlighted or magnified, I
guess, because for whatever reason, over the last couple of days, I have been tagged a number of
posts on Facebook that have had similar shared themes. And those shared themes are people
feeling pretty down and out. Either they are in a situation where they’re feeling like they need to
give up or they’re super nervous and and just can’t seem to get on top of it, or there’s a huge fear
element involved to them doing what it is that they want to do with their riding.
04:07
Now in one particular post that I was drawn into, I felt really heartbroken by the language used
and I also felt quite heartbroken by another one that I read because I do take these things quite
personally. And the reason for that is because I know that there’s another way, I guess I’m in this
position that most people aren’t in that I see the full spectrum of stories that come through and I
see my own stories that I involve myself in and what I mean by a story is essentially the mental
narrative that we’ve become so attached to that we are no longer able to maintain an objective
position. So the two posts that I have just mentioned previously; one was a lady considered that
she wasn’t able to ride anymore or had to give up on her dream of riding because she didn’t have
the mental fortitude required, so she thought in order to be comfortable with the myriad of
possibilities as she put it that horses can present. Now, the second person was really nervous
about a lesson, and that nervousness was manifesting to the point where she was considering
how it is she felt to be her lot. Now, again, this is really symbolic, I guess, of a loss of objectivity.
That loss of objectivity is something that is one of the main things that happen when we are
unable to separate ourselves from our emotions as an experience, and the Itty Bitty Shitty
Committee and what it is that spinning through our brain space, and instead we go into a
situation that’s called cognitive dissonance, which is where we are unable to objectify our
thoughts. We believe the absolute truth of our thoughts. And the really interesting thing about the
Itty bitty Shitty Committee is that we often find it really easy to attach ourselves and to fully
believe what it is they are telling us, however, when someone offers us something really positive
or constructive or beneficial about ourselves and what it is that we’re doing, or we entertain a
positive possibility or potential for ourselves also, somehow that seems really distrustful.
06:28
Somehow, that’s something we can’t put energy behind. So you can see how these two things
exists at odds with each other, how we’re super selective about what it is we actually believe
about ourselves, how often that is the negative thread that we have running through our brain
space, and how those two things are simply thoughts in and of themselve, it’s just that we’re
deciding which ones we want to fuse ourselves to and which ones we don’t want to fuse ourselves
our thoughts that we have lost that ability to be objective. We’ve lost that ability to create the
intentional space between where it is we stand and what it is that we are experiencing. Now one
of the meditations or visualisations or audios whatever word you want to use, that is in JoyRide,
my membership programme is a five minute meditation on dealing with negative thoughts. And
one of the things that we talked about in that audio is making sure that the thoughts that you’re
selecting for yourself are thoughts that are actually supportive of what it is that you want. Now,
the irony of this situation is that we are attaching ourselves to these negative thoughts on the
false premise that somehow that serves a protective protective purpose. So we think that if we
continue to think negative things, if we continue to put energy and sustenance I guess behind the
negative things that we’re thinking about ourselves, and what it is that might happen in the
future, that that says some kind of protective function, and that by doing that we are limiting the
likelihood of that actually happen happening, which we know is actually a false thought, right?
That is a false some theory that we’re operating to.
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Now, the irony of that is as soon as you position yourself or are made aware of the positive
potential that’s available. So say, I asked you to vision or dream or you know, put some energy
behind things that you actually want to create, that seems like something you absolutely can’t do,
because what if you actually do invest energy and potential in that direction and it doesn’t come
true, then you feel like you’ve put yourself in a super vulnerable position that’s basically setting
you up to feel crappy. Now the thing is about those two situations is that neither of them are real
as they exist at the moment, right? Neither of them are real. It’s just that whatever it is, you choose
to invest yourself in, begins that process of alchemising- I don’t know if that’s a word but we’re
going to use it…
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Alchemising the thought and energy potential that you have into creating something that exists
in your experience. So everything that you want to be possible for you believes with the begins
rather with the belief that it’s possible. It doesn’t end with the belief but it certainly starts with it.
And that is the position that you have to get into where you actually open yourself up to positive
or constructive potential. Where you trust that it’s okay to feel okay. You know, it’s okay to feel
good. It’s good to feel good. And it’s good to dream and vision and think about all the things
that’s out there that is possible for you to invest yourself in. Now the stories that we tell ourselves,
especially the ones that go on loop, really indicative of the belief systems that we have, and
essentially all a belief is is our most practised thought. Now for the most part, you will have a set of
beliefs or a set of stories that you run on a loop. It’s like playing a record or playing a CD- now I’m
really showing my age now what’s the latest version of that? Streaming a song, streaming an
album, and having that play over and over and over and over, and recognising that pretty much
you only have half a dozen stories that have similar threads that you might actually, you know,
change depending on what the circumstances are. But be careful what stories you’re telling
yourself, and what it is you’re choosing to invest yourself in, because I say a lot of people arguing
for their limitations. And you know, when you’re arguing for your limitations when someone offers
you the possibility of it being different, or the idea of it being different, or shares with you a story
about how it’s possible for it to be different, and you come up with another excuse, you loop back
around, you loop back around “but but but but this can’t work, but this is why, but I still feel like
this”, you know that you’re arguing for your limitations when you are defending essentially what it
is that’s happening and pushing that to the forefront of the conversation.
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Now, does that mean that you have to deny what it is that’s going on? Yes and no. It when you
want to create something different to what it is that you are currently experiencing, then you do
actually have to get ahead of the experience. Because essentially, what’s presenting in your
reality or in your present moment is the past catching up with you. It’s a consequence of all your
past decisions, actions, and you know, everything else that you’re you’ve invested yourself in
catching up and making itself known in your present moment. If you continue to observe that and
don’t make any changes to make anything different, then of course, the likelihood is that you’re
going to continue on in the same fashion that you have previously. However, if you can actually
get ahead of the experience, and honour what it is that’s happening, while simultaneously going
to a better place- better is not the right word- going to a place which actually allows you to
attach yourself to what it is that you want, then you can observe what’s happening in the
moment, whilst aligning your actions, aligning your beliefs, aligning your energetic body, if you
like, with the bigger version of yourself with the higher intention of where it is that you want to
take things. Now, this can be really hard. And the reason that this is really hard is because if
you’re feeling afraid, or if you’re feeling anxious, or you’re kind of feeling out of sorts, and you felt
that way for a long time, there’s a lot of momentum that exists behind that thought process, right.
There’s a lot of energy that backs that up. And I think of it like this, say you’re driving down the
road at 100 kilometres an hour. And you been hitting in the same direction for a really long time.
And then all of a sudden you realise it actually what it is that you want is to your right. And so the
first thing that happens is that you change your gaze, you look towards the right hand side, then
you change the steering wheel, and then everything starts to line up in your new direction.
However, it doesn’t happen instantly, right?
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If you all of a sudden change the steering wheel towards the right- don’t recommend this,
especially if you’re travelling along at 100 kms an hour- then what would happen is you actually
spin out. Your back wheels would spin out, everything would kind of go quite wonky, for want of a
better technical term, and you would experience this drift, all going well, until the car lined up with
the direction that you want to go. That is lag time. That change transition between the
momentum that you’ve created in one direction, and the change of direction. In that moment in
that transition, you will experience a shift when not everything is lining up. And this is the ultimate
quit zone, right? This is the time when people say, it doesn’t work or it’s too hard, or I can’t do this,
or this just isn’t me. Because what you actually need to do is firstly, get ahead of what it is that
you’re currently experiencing, so you can attach yourself to a higher intention of what it is that
you want. And then you have to allow some momentum to build up behind what it is you want to
experience. And that momentum needs to get behind your thoughts. It needs to get behind your
actions. And all of those things need to line up before you will experience it in your day to day
riding, or in your reality.
14:49
Now, the reason that it feels hard is because when we have developed momentum along a
certain way of thinking, that emotional frequency has become something that’s really familiar to
us, and it’s it’s essentially set out internal equilibrium point. So in order for us to cultivate
something different to that it can feel really effortful. And the irony is that it can feel really unsafe.
It feels unsafe, because even though it might not be what you want, and what I mean by not what
you want- so if you’ve been fearful or anxious or afraid, or anything which we might typically
associate with the negative spectrum of things, any of those things can actually become so
familiar to us that they become our comfort zone. And when we challenge them in some shape or
form, then what we’re doing is challenging that internal homeostasis point, and really disrupting
that inner energetic frequency that we’ve become really attached to, or emotional frequency, if
you want to think of it like that.
15:47
So when we’re pressing reset in any direction, we need to become aware of that. We need to
become aware that there’s going to be these internal tussles that we have with ourselves, mainly
due to the momentum, mainly due to us pressing reset on that internal equilibrium point, on that
homeostasis point. And we need to allow time for things to actually build up in the direction that
we want. Now, the second part of this is seeking relief rather than a solution. And this is something
that I find myself mentioning more and more, and something that I am actually practising more
and more as well, what does that mean? What does it mean to seek relief or rather than a
solution? When we are in a position where we lack confidence or we feel afraid, or we’re really
we’ve got ourselves into a bit of a negative rut- that has its own frequency, I keep using these
words, you’re gonna have to roll with me today. It has its own frequency, right? So you know, when
you’ve been in situations where you felt really down and out or things just haven’t been good, and
you’re really in a funk, if you’re listening to someone that’s kind of chirpy and positive… maybe
you listen to me on occasion you think, oh my god, like that is enough already. You don’t have you
find people who are in the opposite zone of what you are at that moment, quite irritating? That is
because you are literally on a different plane, you’re literally on a different emotional and
vibrational frequency at that point, and so it is really jarring to come across something like that
which is so much in opposition to what it is that you’re feeling. When we recognise that we can
also realise that in order for us to make the leap from feeling kind of not great about things to
feeling really good about things, that’s going to have to be an incremental process. Some of you
might have heard me talk about thought hopping before. And thought hopping is a process where
we just gradually inch our way towards better feeling thoughts. And that way we make subtle
shifts from a space which isn’t serving us towards a better feeling space. Now, if we were to try
and leap that chasm in one foul swoop, chances are we wouldn’t be able to sustain it. We
wouldn’t actually want to do that in the first place simply because it is too much of a jolt, it’s too
jarring from the place that we are now.
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Now, if you have developed a form of you know, if that feeling that that negative, I don’t want to
use that word that let’s go with it, negative feeling is something that you’ve been rolling around
with and playing with for a while, then actually to get yourself into a solution framework or to get
yourself into a confident framework, if you like- and the way I think of confidence is that in the
midst of uncomfortable emotion, you’re able to point towards resources that help you rather than
resources which actually detract from your ultimate purpose. So let’s think of confidence in that
way. But if we were to think of wanting to move towards a better feeling space from a place which
actually isn’t serving you, sometimes when you’re in that place, you actually aren’t in the mindset
that you need to be open to possibility, to be receptive to the potential that exists or even to be
open to the resources that are available to you, because you’ve contracted or shrunk into the
negative emotion. That’s what injury essentially does to us or trauma does to us. You know, it
really contracts us into a very limited or tunnel vision experience. Confidence, sorry, lack of
confidence nerves or anxiety typically does that as well. You know, we go into that place where
we shrink into the uncomfortableness of the emotion and we are no longer able to point towards
the other things would that would actually lead us out of that space.
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So if you’re in that place where you’re like, this isn’t for me, I don’t think I can do this anymore, the
nerves are too much the anxieties getting the best of me. Don’t worry about finding a solution.
Just find relief for that moment. Do what ever you need to to get yourself into a better thought
scape. You get yourself to a better feeling space. If you make that your sole priority, then what
you open yourself up to is creative possibility, then you’re open to the suggestions that are around
you. You’re open and receptive to the help that’s around you. You recognise the resources that
you have available to you, that will actually help you move to the place that you want. When
you’re not in that place, you are essentially blinkered, you are unable to say what it is that’s out
there that is able to help you in the way that you want to be helped, because you’re just not able
to do that right now. Everything is so contracted so narrow, so zoomed in, that it becomes too
much of an asked to actually break that shell and look out in terms of a wider spectrum of
possibility.
20:52
So let’s do a recap. First up, making sure that you are not arguing for your limitations. Really easy
to do feels like it serves a protective function. Notice if you are attached to the story that you’re
telling yourself. The next thing, notice the stories that are on a loop. We will generally have a small
number of stories that are our favourites, the ones that we tell ourselves over and over and over
again and the ones that we proved ourselves right on. That’s the other thing with stories. It’s really
easy to attach yourself to them and then to prove yourself right. If I want to prove myself to be a
nervous rider, there any one number of ways I can go about doing that. You know, if I want to
prove myself to myself that I can’t do it or that my dreams are too much for me, that’s a pretty
easy thing to prove. Like I can find a number of things right now that would tell me that, you
know, the dreams that I have for myself at unachievable I could say I’m too busy, I don’t have the
skills. I don’t have the experience. You know all those things which I could quantify and justify if I if
I really wanted to put energy behind it. But why would I do that? You know, why would I do that?
Because that those possibilities or those thoughts are as untrue at the moment as the ones that
actually serve me. So if I want to make those true, which ones am I actually going to attach myself
to? You know, something that’s really useful that I play with, I think of every thought that I have as
an invitation to invite that into my experience.
22:28
If I think of things that way, if I think of thoughts that way, I become super selective about what it
is I allowed to run through my brain space. So if something’s out there, and I’m choosing to catch
it with my little thought butterfly net, I’m like, are you something that’s supportive of what it is
that I want to create? Are you something that I want to experience? And if not, it’s not a matter of
actually having to do something that demonstrates the opposite, it’s just that I no longer feed that
thought. I no longer put energy behind it. Relief rather than solutions. When you’re down and out
when you’re feeling like it’s the end of the road for you, or even if you’re just in a space that isn’t
serving you, do whatever you need to do in that moment to get towards a better feeling space.
Don’t worry about having the answers. Don’t worry about even finding the answers. Just get
yourself to a better headspace where you’re actually open to possibility about what it is that’s
available to you. Relief instead of solution. And from that place of relief, then chances are you will
actually find the creative solutions that are available to you. How is that? I think you guys can do
that right?
23:37
Notice the stories, notice when you’re in a crappy space, seek relief instead of solutions. I totally
believe in you. If you want to dive in this stuff into this stuff with me and with greater, you know,
energy, enthusiasm, and all that stuff…. my membership programme, JoyRide. is there for you
confidentrider.online/joryide. That’s it from me today. I am going to go and continue to pack the
truck with horsey gear and make a variety of different meals for my horses to take away. You
know, I’ve probably got all their stuff together and then I’ll be like, did I bring socks or do I have
food for myself? That type of conversation I probably need to have to. Have a great day team
and I look forward to talking with you in the next episode.
