Tag: mental discipline

A Regular Gratitude Practice

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Why is it so important to develop a robust and regular gratitude practice?

1- The average person has 12-60k thoughts/day.

2- 80% of those are negative.

3- 95% are exactly the same as the day before.

4- 85% of what we worry about never happens.

                   The National Science Foundation and Cornell University in the US:

For those of you who have followed Tim Ferriss – no fewer than 80% of the people he has interviewed in his podcast have a daily routine where they consciously practise gratitude.

The interviewees are a selection of billionaires, massively successful entrepreneurs / actors / musicians etc…

Tim Ferriss and his friends demonstrate that a daily meditation and gratitude practice is quite literally invaluable; it proactively overturns our innate tendency to negative self talk and redresses the balance.

being-grateful-improves-your-chances-of-success-studies-show

Gratitude is defined as the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. 

A regular gratitude practice actually rewires our brain. Consciously finding things to be thankful for, no matter how bad the situation we find ourselves in, teaches us to recognise the positives in every situation. It develops resilience, and resilience better equips us to overcome psychological stressors.

The-science-behind-gratitude

Gratitude works both ways- a regular gratitude practice has been called

the open door to abundance

I use the “Five Minute Journal” app for my daily gratitude practise. It’s  quick and easy thing to do with the first cup of tea in the morning. It offers an inspirational quote, the facility to upload a photo for the day, and asks for 3 things you will do to make today great. It then has a space for affirmations, and an evening review section. I’m not quite so good at completing the evening review, but I do enjoy looking back at past entries and past affirmations. And yes, I know it’s been said before, but it is amazing how much can change in a life in a year. With proactive observation and the implementation of good self care habits.

It is as true of humans as it is of horses; we are either improving or deteriorating ourselves every day. We choose. You won’t be the same person in a year, you won’t be in the same head space….why not consciously choose better.

5-minute-daily-habit

Practising gratitude is not all about relentlessly chasing the positives in the face of death and despair. We can also acknowledge our dark times, and be grateful for the strength to cope with them.

In our darkest moments, it may be that the only thing we have to be thankful for is the strength to carry on.

The strange determination to keep breathing, no matter what.

One of my favourite quotes

“Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love”

For me, this a reminder that every moment we live, every breath we take, is the result of a conscious choice.

8-ways-to-have-more-gratitude-every-day

Sometimes, in the dark times, my regular gratitude practice has involved simple thanks for every breath.

As my asthmatic friend pointed out, in response to the previous instalment,

Learning how to breathe

not everyone on this planet gets to take breathing for granted.

The ongoing environmental disaster in Australia is a stark example of this; the air was so heavily laden with ash and soot that the fire alarms were going off inside air conditioned buildings, causing people to be evacuated to stand outside in the even more acrid, smoke laden air they had been trying to escape from.

“All I need is the air that I breathe“

What can we do when the air itself becomes deadly?

The funny thing that if we just persist and endure, the sun will always comes out in the end.

The sun is always there, above the clouds. Just because the light is hidden doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

But we can’t ignore the clouds either.

Focussing on Positivity alone is toxic

At some point in our journey, be it towards wisdom, or enlightenment, or just plain sanity and functionality,  whether we are examining the contents of our own head, or our own navel, working out just what triggers which dread and what emotion lives with what feeling, we will have to deal with the night horrors too. We can’t just focus on the light, we have to deal with the shadows to find our way through to the light again.

To grow, to learn and to heal, we have to find a way to sit with our discomfort and take in the lessons.

What we will not look at, will not feel—in ourselves, or in the world—we cannot address.

We have to learn the importance of chasing our shadows, not just glance away from the painful and difficult parts of our apprenticeship. Like Le Guin’s Ged, chasing the shadow is the most important quest of our life, and the integration of our shadow being is the magic that makes us whole.

Thank you as always for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you. To those influencers who comment, share the site with friends or help to promote in any other way, I remain eternally grateful. To those supporters generous and able to offer funds, whether small or large, karma is finding its way back to you with a rainbow of horses and abundance beyond dreams. Thank you all for joining in the adventure.  

 
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Make the Mental Transition to “I can”

We must make sure that we do not inadvertently teach ourselves to fail regularly in our training. It is important that we learn to make the mental transition to” I can”.

I heard a story this weekend about a very high achieving golfer. Every time he takes a lesson to improve one aspect of his game he goes out, applies the lesson and plays much better. Instead of being pleased that he has played better, he then looks for the gaps in his recent good game, focusses on those, practises those aspects which he has not improved and then goes out and so has a horrible time again. Essentially he has trained himself to fail, repetitively.

Golf and dressage have much in common.

Golf swing fundamentals

We must train ourselves to bank the good stuff first, especially in riding where there are two sentient beings involved in the encounter. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t learn from our mistakes; reflection, adjustment and testing is a key part of experiential learning of a practical skill.  But we must learn just as much if not more from our successes.

 

I have started videoing myself riding more regularly. A friend once made the comment that high definition video is the most brutal feedback anyone needs. I don’t have hi-def capability but a mobile phone propped up on the arena fence is effective enough.

The first time I watch the video I am always appalled. I look like cooked spaghetti, what are my legs doing there, what on earth makes me think I can ride….

Then I look at it again and watch the horse…and generally there are some nice moments. And I have to remind myself that if the horse is improving then I can’t be that bad…

If the horse wasn’t improving, I would possibly have appalled myself so much that I would have given up.  I am my own worst critic.

Do as I say, not as I do!!

But luckily for me the grey horse loves the nitty gritty of training, and loves the way good work makes his body feel. Which means he loves me.

If we want to improve a movement  or an exercise then we have to pick one aspect to work on. We can’t just “try it again” and hope something will improve globally by accident. Practise doesn’t make perfect, perfect practise makes perfect. So you have to be consciously competent enough to choose one aspect that you can change to improve the overall performance of the task. A bit like teaching surgery….

Which means we have to choose other aspects to leave alone, or even better, aspects to keep because they are already good.

So for example; I’m doing trot halt, rein back, trot, transitions in step sequences of four. Four because even numbers make it predictable for the horse so the transitions should occur with less resistance. (That bit is magic, don’t question it, it just is, even number of steps for predictability, odd number of steps when you want change).

I ask myself what I can do….generally I can count to four, the transitions occur when asked, the rein back is diagonal, the line of travel is straight, the trot out has lovely oomph.

What do I want to improve? Lets just say one thing- the softness of the topline, for now.

Do I throw all the good qualities away just to focus on the topline? Do I say topline first and foremost, at whatever cost, no matter how many steps, no matter if it’s straight, …

Or do I try and add another quality to the good stuff I have already?

I have written before about how essential  positive feedback is to the horse if you want to keep him on side. The horse is never allowed to think he made a mistake.

Every Opportunity to Praise

Imagine how dispiriting it would be for a horse if, every time he does a movement or an exercise, to the best of his ability, exactly as you have aided it (because again that is the truth) and you say “No, no, that was terrible, it was all wrong, we have to do it again, we are just so rubbish!”

He wouldn’t keep trying for very long would he?

Imagine if, instead of saying “we just can’t do that”,

you made the transition to thinking I can,

if we thought “We can do that even better! We can do that more like an advanced horse. What’s the most we can do?’….in the example, “What is the best most elevated and elongated topline we can do that rein back in? How would Granat feel doing that reinback?”

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What is the maximum we can ask for?

Not demand…that’s different. If we ask for the absolute maximum possible that we can imagine, the horse will give is the maximum he is capable of, in that moment, and he might just surprise himself and you!

Our limited expectations can limit our horse’s potential. I know I am often guilty of trying to make every step the best step, when sometime it just needs to be the next step. Sometime we just need to make progress, in the work and across the arena.

Dinner needs to get cooked!

Never mind if the balance goes awry, what is the biggest length of stride the horse can offer?

What is the longest neck he can keep that balance on without going splat?  He has to go splat at least once for you to find out the answer to that question. If he doesn’t go splat how do you know you have asked enough? Obviously you ask for a touch less next time.

And then the next time you pick another aspect.

So in my example; yesterday I worked on quality of topline. And the response to the aids also improved. Today I worked on responsiveness to the aids (and topline came for free with a few repetitions). Tomorrow I will need to find a different sequence or a different usage of that lesson (pretend piaffe/passage transitions with rein back legs maybe, or what does reinback leg do to the canter walk transition) otherwise I am drilling my horse, and sucking all of the joy out of his psyche.

So to get the best out of out horses, we need to learn to make the transition to “I can”.

To I can do the most magnificent trot, halt, rein back, trot that I can imagine, with this fabulous horse I am lucky enough to be riding in this moment. The horse doesn’t know this is a difficult exercise, he just hears your thoughts, well before your aids.

So make those thoughts worth listening to. Make him feel magnificent.

The magic is in the transition- when every possibility is available, everything is possible.

And teach yourself and your horse to succeed,  a little more every day.