Fix Your Mind, Fix Your Ride - Lisa Eklund

So I typically kick the episodes off by having the guest tell us who they are and what it is they do. OK, my name is Lisa Eklund and I have a business called the Mindful Equestrian which I started about nine years ago. Started my life in the horses as a kid, always wanted a horse, the whole 9 yards and got into riding and then worked in the hunter jumper industry for several years before I did the typical burnout thing. Went back to school, got my masters, wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. So Long story short, I ended up for a year coaching the Cornell Equestrian team IHSA, starting at Morrisville College.

Ran the hunt seat program there, ran the hunt, the IHSA program, and was there for 18 years at that time. Towards the end of my time there, I decided I was retiring and I had gotten into the mindfulness stuff myself because I’d had some really big things happen, like upsetting things happening at my life and when it didn’t come, counseling. And then got into mindfulness. And as I used it for myself, I started sharing it with my students. And college students are full of mindset issues from everything.

They had a test, they broke up with a boyfriend, they’re living away from home, all of that stuff. Aside from trying to get them focused on riding the horses and everything. I started using it with them and really saw how much of a gap there is missing in riding in relation to mindset. Like we work very much on position and technique and the horse and all that, but that’s a missing link. As I was thinking of retiring just mainly from time to move on to getting tired of things.

I was like, what do I want to do next? Because it wasn’t like fully a retirement, was just retiring from the college and worked with a coach. That’s what I decided that I wanted to bring this mindfulness idea to writing. I got my coaching certification through the International Coach Academy and then brought the two things together. And that’s what I’ve been doing over these past nine years.

So I do clinics, I do one-on-one coaching, do talks, all different things in my clinics. They’re very much set up, mostly hunter and jumper, but do all different disciplines set up the typical way. But I bring in the mindset with it. So I’m working on technical things, but I also bring in the mindset. So I kind of have both sides of that equation.

That’s of who I am and what I do and why I’ve gotten into. This. So I guess let’s start with Justin. What is Mindfulness? It’s just being aware and present, and in our society particularly, they were all over the place.

You’re on your phone, you’re on your computer, you’re watching the TV, all those things going at the same time and we’re not present in what’s happening. So mindfulness is just that. It’s a practice of learning to try to be present, and it doesn’t mean we’re that way all the time because we get distracted. It’s not beating yourself up for losing that focus, it’s just noting it, the awareness and bringing yourself back to the present or whatever you’re doing, whether it be in your life, at work, at home, on your horse, whatever you notice yourself going off, whatever it is in your head, telling stories about whatever we do and bring yourself back to the present. And a lot of people develop a practice of meditation to do that.

I’m very informal with my meditation. I do meditate, but it’s not like I sit down and have an hour meditation. I walk in nature, I do things like that, help me be present and mindful, and when I go for my walks, I’m paying attention to what’s going on around me and that really helps me with my creativity and everything. If I’m off in my head about things about my business, I’ll go for a walk. This, I live in upstate New York, so we have the Erie Canal right here, which is pretty cool.

And I’ll walk along it and all of a sudden clarity comes back because I let go of whatever was I was stuck with or whatever was bothering me. And that doesn’t mean those things will go away, but you’re able to deal with them better. So that’s you can be like, oh, I’m going to, I’m going to be more mindful when I cook my dinner and think about the ingredients and everything you’re doing or brushing your teeth and you’re just noticing the feelings and the sensation. So it’s really just being present with what you’re doing. They don’t have to use meditation, though.

It is a wonderful tool. Yeah, I always tell people like I feel like says in themselves, when you’re having good rides and whatnot, that in itself is meditation because it forces you to just be in the moment and right there with them. And you’re most of the time out in some type of nature. And I feel like it brings a lot of components of getting people back to the present. But then we take that and we mix in competition and just the stresses of owning or says life.

Yeah, it was only very recently I was actually doing a dressage test on this very quirky force. I have been. We were nailing it. And then all of a sudden I was like, I wonder if anyone’s watching this, We’re going. And then all of a sudden it goes to crap.

And then I go, oh, I’m totally lost the moment. And it stuck out to me. And so I walked into mindfulness because again, I’m typical horse person, right? So sitting down for an hour to meditate is not necessarily conducive to the lifestyle. So yeah, I just feel like having this thing where you take moments and say, OK, now I’m going to be right here, I’m going to train myself to come back to here is such a good skill for riders to develop.

Yes, you can do your meditation while you’re grooming, you know how and it that’s a very kind of meditative thing. And if you can really just let that be like in it as you’re warming your horse up, things like that, you can just say, can I be really present and be using your breath? A lot of breath work is good too. If you get stressed out even for a moment. But when you talked about that, that as soon as you said, and I was wondering if people were watching or noticing, it’s all of a sudden we get in our head about stuff and then you’re not connected with a horse anymore and what’s happening underneath you.

And you also mentioned like the riding is a mindfulness practice in itself. But most of the time or not much of the time we lose that because we get, like you said, so caught up in the competition and might. And you don’t even have to be competing formally. I’ve gotten, because I work with a lot of adult riders who come back to riding maybe either later in life or come back to riding, they’re comparing themselves to I’m not going along as fast as whoever has to be. Why am I not?

I just had it the other day in the cleaning. I can’t ride like I used to when I was 18. And I’m like, that’s because your brain is different and everything’s different. Your body’s different. You have a lot more responsibility.

So that’s OK. But they get people can get so caught up in all of that stuff that you get in your head. And I’ll say to people, why did you come to riding and horses begin with? Usually some factor of it brings me so much joy and I’m like, but that’s disappeared. Trying to reconnect to that joy and not make it something that feels like a chore sometimes.

I love it, but it’s still a lot of stress. Yeah, no, it’s so easy and forces, I feel to that sense of I call it like childlike wonder. When you’re a kid and you show up to the bird, every day is the best day because you’re like with your horses and your friends. It’s easy to exist in that situation as a kid and adult life and the comparison in such your social media really doesn’t help with any of that that you do lose the you get so sick in the grind right. It’s not grind that hustle culture mentality of I just have to keep doing this thing to get better because of XY or Z reason.

Well, it’s just nice to go on. I get it’s just nice to do this. So I really enjoyed riding in the sun today and people only focus on Oh my God, my left heel just doesn’t go down and you get so stuck in these loops. Yep, and couple things you said like the the idea of, and that doesn’t matter what level you’re riding, just go walk out of your horse like you said in the sun and just enjoy that. Like taking some time to bring back that that childlike joy and innocence.

But also you mentioned focusing on my left heel. There’s a thing I’ve developed over the last four or five years called the Unleashed Equestrian where I talk about the three pillars, the idea of mindset, position and technique, and then connecting to the horse and that with all great intention. A lot of us as instructors or instructors teach position, technique, position, technique, work so hard on that and then often teach a lot of stuff at once. Our brain can’t multitask. We need to focus and one thing at a time.

But also in riders, they’re like, OK, the instructors, I’m getting paid for this, so I got to keep giving information. The riders I’m paying, I need to like take in all this stuff, get so caught up in the position and technique that they lose back to its purpose. Why does my leg need to be in this position? And I’ll ask people and it takes them a while. I’ll ask them why.

What’s the purpose of position? And often they’ll say security. And yes, there’s a factor of that, but it’ll take them a while sometime to say to communicate with my horse. And I talked to people, I’m like, you have to open up those two lines of communications going both ways. And when you’re in your head thinking only about I need to move my left leg or my right, whatever, like right back to this position with no idea of its purpose, instead of thinking, oh, horses falling left, what can I do to?

And I’ll do that with riders who are foundation, but they don’t have to be super advanced. I’m like, I want you to try to fix it. And they start move, they move their leg around and they might correct it. And I do simple stuff like walk down, make your horse walk down the corner line and keep them straight or whatever. And they their leg starts going into the position it needs to be in.

And when they find that spot where it works and it’s very interesting that organically now that yes, you need to learn position and you, but you also need to understand its purpose and to let you go of hammering on it. Just say what’s happening underneath me? Can I hear what the horse is telling me? And then use this position to support what they need. What are some common like mindset blocks, whether or from just the rider point of view or even trainers that you come across And yeah, common like blocks that they in terms of mindset?

One of the biggest, many of them will have a fear of, you know, many, some will have fear of like physical fear, like falling off, maybe they had an accident and stuff. That’s kind of a that’s a thing in itself. You kind of have to work with almost a little separately because it’s related to somebody’s really specific experience often. But the other big ones are perfectionism. Not like I need we can’t make a mistake and that, like you said, trainers too and instructors, but everything instead of allowing someone to make a mistake, it’ll learn from it and be curious.

I think a lot of people don’t, aren’t taught to have enough curiosity about their writing and to try some to give them permission because we, and I remember doing this a lot. No, I don’t want you to do that because this might happen or that might happen with a horse. Certainly they need to know not to do anything extreme, but you want to as a trainer, you’re protecting the horse. Don’t mess that up. Or as opposed to now I’m like, try this.

So I’m seeing what happens if you move your leg here, you move your rein there. You do this or you do that, so they get curious about it. Or somebody else would say to me, my horse does this, what? And I’ll be like, what do you think’s going on so that you start getting that curiosity. So the perfectionism is I can’t make mistakes.

So they lose. They’re not curious. They just need to be perfect. As soon as they make the mistake, they don’t get curious about it. The riding shuts down because they’re not a double 100 jumper for they’re catering a course of jumps and they miss a distance.

They’re so caught up in that missing the distance. They also miss the next 6 distances as opposed to oh, you know what, I let my horse go a little left there next jump I need to straighten them and or maybe I didn’t have the right can or whatever it may be. They get curious and they you do it on the fly and maybe you can’t figure it out then, but you’re then able to leave the ring and be curious about it and fix it then. But I think that’s a big one. People will say to me, I want to be more confident and I will say that’s the thing, I have a headache.

Many things can create a lack of confidence. That’s a symptom. Something just like many things got a headache. Some of the lack of confidence things are making mistakes. People like you mentioned it was somebody watching and maybe you might not like it.

Are people seeing me? But sometimes people worry about people watching in a worried way, negative way. And that self comparison loop that happens. There can be a lot of different limiting beliefs. I’m not good enough.

A lot of the adults comparing themselves to others. I don’t have enough. It can be everything from I don’t have enough money, so therefore I’ll I will never be able to do this. Or some people have really negative mindsets. And it’s not even just about perfectionism.

It’s just like nothing ever goes. How they enter the base with the world. Is yeah. So it can be a lot of different things. And like you said, cops.

So when somebody says to me, I need, I want to be more confident. I’ll be like, we got to figure out, dig in and peel away and find out what’s going on. Where’s that confidence coming from? Some people just overthink things and get in their head all the time. Some of it can be from learning styles and learning and they get in their head or they get distracted easily.

There’s a lot of different things, but the mindfulness helps. All of those things bring you back. So you have a habit. My habit is when I make a mistake, I get frustrated and upset with myself. OK, so that I have the trigger as a mistake.

The behavior is upset and upset and frustrated and then the outcome is you lose connection with a horse and more mistakes happen, right? And then it just keeps spinning in the cycle. You can’t break the loop or resolve it. So it’s figuring out what’s the trigger for someone, whether it’s, oh, somebody walked in the ring and started watching me or something reminded me of something. So when, like when I do one-on-one coaching with people or even at a clinic, depending on time, how much time, try to peel away a little bit as to what’s causing it.

But there’s to be a lot of different causes that kind of create very similar outcome. Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting because I actually just had this. I, I do a lot of work with forces with behavioral problems and I just had this client who they and their forces move down here to retire and their horses retirement and their retirement as they moved into this community so that they could tram. So all of a sudden their horse that they’ve owned for 14 years stops going forward and actually starts like hitting it and reports going forward.

It’s just very uncomfortable. And so they call me out. I work with the horse and then once I got the force over the issues, I started working with the horse and provider and I realized that horses, horses are very good at exposing our triggers. I find that I’m needing to teach her to feel her own habit loop of getting like frustrated and she would just not she’d get frazzled. So all of a sudden she can’t do anything.

And so you have to get these people out of that. They don’t even know they’re. In a loop and yeah, because what happens is when we get like that, we get in that fight flight place and our brain, our cognitive brain, our thinking brain shuts down for a purpose. Like when we when we need to run away from danger, we need to stop thinking and take action. So the brain kind of works that way.

Our brain shuts down, we get frustrated. We’re still in that kind of loop and we can’t stop it because we can’t even think. So that’s and as a trainer, like what you’re doing sounds like you, you were noticing that. If that’s when you like have them stop and take a take a breath and talk about what was going on. They can start noticing it and then to start maybe noticing it coming on before it gets into full.

Yeah, Five years ago, I transitioned from being a young writer to being a professional and not really something that I had ever really planned on doing. I went to school to be an accountant, not really to do horses for a living. OK, But COVID happened. I ended up doing this. All of a sudden I start working with these trainers and they go, I don’t know why you’re so nervous.

When you get into the presonatory, you just stop riding or you start overriding or you don’t ride in there the way you ride every other time you’re nervous. So I started working with a sports psychologist because I was like, there’s this weird thing going on. These professionals around me are telling me one thing, but I’m not feeling it. I realize as I start working with this person, he goes, just take notice at your next competition or whatever. What’s going on before you go into the ring?

And so I go to the next competition. I’m just hanging out at the arena and they call in the person in front of me to go. All of a sudden, my heart rate starts speeding up. My hands get all sweaty. I go, Oh my God, I’m nervous when I can feel it.

Up until that point, you couldn’t convince me I was nervous because I wasn’t feeling it. And so I realized how important it is. I call it like we have a before and a during and then after. And the during is the thing that we think it’s the bad thing, but it’s actually the before that sets that up. And so I’m learning, I’m in this process of figuring out what my loops and triggers are and then trying to, oh, OK, what’s the feeling before that?

And then that’s the feeling before that and just trying to get myself back to where does that feeling start? And then what starts that? And then can you pause and then choose a different behavior you know, and that? Takes care, yeah. And you said you went to school for accounting.

And very precise, like we all make mistakes, but I noticed when people in careers or backgrounds in very precise like medical accounting, things like that, you really aren’t supposed to make mistakes being right, very common. And so you don’t feel. And again, my other people I think equate nerves with I’m afraid of falling off or afraid of. More of a fear like physical fear where yours it’s more of like probably and you don’t even know if that subconscious like trying to do everything just right. Yeah, I presume failure, but really it’s just being, it’s funny because I’m paying to be judged, but being judged in a negative light I think was really the thing for me was I was like, and I brought up me being a professional because I think subconsciously what happened was all of a sudden I felt like my results had weight where before I had never felt.

That so there was. No reason to be nervous because like I didn’t really care. I cared but like I didn’t really care to look. This could affect how much I get paid still. And so all of a sudden when the relationship changes it, it creates this effect that I didn’t even realize happened.

And by the time I realized it, like it really took a long time for me to go from being a professional to me actually realizing what was stemming that initial being told I was nervous. And I think the biggest thing for someone to say is to be compassionate with yourself about it, whether you’re what trying to be a professional or whatever you’re doing is. And it’s all my brain trying to protect me, right? My brain is noticing A perceived danger. That’s how we our brains are wired.

It’s noticing this perceived danger of oh, I need to be really accurate if to be successful professional right? It doesn’t know, like the brain doesn’t know the difference between something where you’re going to be physically in danger. You’re just we’ve created this mindset of something. So you got to be compassionate with yourself and say this is normal and OK, thanks. Almost like with this feat, like the fear of making a mistake or whatever, I’m not being on your game professional.

It’s like almost like with this fear of saying thanks, I appreciate that you’re there to help me, but I don’t need you right now. And being really compassionate with yourself about it. And not because the next step is particularly professional, but I find it with all levels of writers, they start beating themselves up for having this very human thing. What you think about it. Every professional goes through that.

I was thinking about before I got on the podcast. I have to just breathe and let it go and do something else. And I’m thinking, well, people are going to listen to me and I’m in business and I hope it all you can get. I’ve gotten better at it over the years because it wasn’t such an easy thing for me, but it’s normal. Yeah, no.

And that’s honestly one of the gifts of the podcast has been I invite relatively high profile people on to have a conversation with me. And to me, I’m like, Oh my God, I can’t believe these people are here to talk to me. And then they’re on the other side. Oh my God, there’s going to be people listening to this. I hope I’m good enough.

We’re all just like in this crazy thing together. Same boat together. No, it really does. It really has opened my eyes to human psychology a bit, and it’s been interesting because it makes you feel a lot more human, a lot less alone. Yes, and I think the more you do things is putting yourself outside of your comfort zone too, because I started a podcast this year too.

One of my clients, like regular clients who’s a trainer has their own business. So do you need to start a podcast? And finally I did and it was I’ve had a few interviews, but usually it’s just me talking about different ideas. But all of a sudden it just gets really easy and it’s and it’s. So the idea is to embrace your the riding the same way to not make it such a big deal or so intense.

Now again, too, we’re doing this podcast if it means something to us as far as we want to do it because of our careers, but yet it is new to us. So we’re a little more like that kid with it. Yeah, we haven’t looked. But now the more we get better at then we’ll start bringing. We’ll be more.

OCD and stuff into it. Yeah, exactly. And no, it is funny because that is one thing that I’ve had to do and it’s been very recent. Really only the last couple of months of my forces are my fobby, like the horses that I don’t have syndicates for. Those are my hobby and I can just do those horses in the morning and enjoy it.

And you know what, if I have a busy day and they don’t get done, I don’t beat myself. That before it was like my horses have to get done because if they go bad the next whatever, that’s a reflection on me because these are my forces versus everyone else’s. Horses can be my job and these forces can be my not be my outfit. And they will be just fine. Oh yeah, and they’re.

What happened exactly? What do you think high performance in equestrian sport is possible without sacrificing mental health? And that’s an interesting question. I don’t know if I have the answer, but I would say yes and no. So I think there is a certain level of stress that you can’t avoid at any high level of anything.

You’re going to probably take away a little bit from that balance we try to look at for in our lives. The horse visit world is a very hard one to do that but find balance because of just the 24/7 aspect of it. Yet I think top, I know top professionals mindset work all different ways they go about it is very much a part of what they do. And I think that can keep it #1 keep the success in the ring. But I think also it’s keeping that happiness and joy in the rest of your life.

So it sounded like you you actually letting go of making your own horses be the having to be perfect all the time too and attended to all the brings that joy back. Like you’re able to tap into that joy of riding them like when you were a kid, right? Exactly. So I think can you avoid the high pressure, not 100% because it, you know what I mean, the higher you get. But boy, the ones at the top level, I guarantee you.

Yet they’re doing some good mindset work, though there’s still some of that top level 2 who are very intense and very they’re still successful, but there’s probably something missing. Does that all make sense? Their own mental well-being maybe off the horse. I don’t know if I answered that like which we’re asking, but I don’t think there’s a yes or no to that. Yeah, it’s.

Been something that I’ve been thinking about a lot because I had someone bring up to me, you don’t want to be that professional who at the end of the day, when they’re 65 and they want to retire, they don’t have anything at the end of it. Sometimes I feel like mindset really attributes to that because you’re so in the weeds of just, it’s so easy to get into the weeds that you never take a breath and come up for air. And the air is actually where you get perspective when you’re in the middle of this fight or flight, it’s really hard to stop and feel the sun. The the thing you have to teach into yourself. And I’ve, I almost don’t even worry about the really 5 professionals.

It’s like those mid level professionals who really want it, but yet they don’t have it yet. And they think that that success is going to be the thing that makes them full versus the people who maybe have success that now can work on the mindset stuff because they’ve realized that success didn’t make them whole. Yeah, I I think we can’t define ourselves by what we do as an occupation, but in the equine world we certainly do. And I look at now some friends because I’m 70. So I have a lot of people in my age bracket who are still have Barnes and they’re going 24 and they say they’re happy.

I don’t know. But I also hear some of them go on and I can’t find a good employees I got to keep. They’re just in the grind that they haven’t been able to step out of and they don’t know how to step out of it. So I think that idea of mindfulness, I think some of them can be very good at focusing and doing their job at like riding or training or whatever, but they don’t know how to bring in other things in your life. And I think if the end of it all, if that’s all you have and you’re stuck in the same grind and you don’t even maybe know that maybe you’re not unhappy, but you don’t know that there’s something that can bring you so much more.

So I do think getting into a mindfulness practice and awareness practice and walking away from this a little bit, even if it is hard because it is a 24/7 thing and it’s hard to find people to work and it’s hard to charge. I’ve got to take 15 minutes in the morning for myself. It maybe it’s only small bits. So that and that you develop other little hobbies. It might be something as simple as knitting or something, that little painting or a little something that you just are cooking or whatever, But you take a little time in your day to do that.

We’re reading a book. So you’re not so myopic because I think that’s what can happen in the horse business. It’s, it’s just this narrow focus and it when, as you get older, it’s like for me right now, like I like, love doing all of this. Even doing the mindfulness stuff brings a whole other set of things to me doing the horse business, but I also do other things too. But I found my way so that I like people say, Oh, so do you have a barn?

I’m like, no, I live in a townhouse, 2 cats, that’s it. So I found my way. That doesn’t mean you can’t have the barn at 70 years old and love it and something, but I do think you need to find that balance so it doesn’t own you. Almost like at the end of it, being able to choose to have the barn is better than not. Just that’s all you.

That’s all you do. And I also, I used to, I, I do business coaching as well and quit with the questions. And when I first left the college, I also did some business counseling at a Wise Women’s Business Center, which was ASBA through Syracuse University in the SBA. And we always said when you have a business, you have to have an exit plan, right? What am I going to do when this business is done to sell it?

And that’s what equestrians very seldom have. So that they, I’m thinking of someone in particular right now that I think that are my age or older who own barns that they’ve been, they were successful stuff, but they had no exit plan. So they can’t close their doors because they, that’s how they make that’s there’s no plan. So I think it’s, that’s really important if you’re in the horse business. So you as the owner, what’s your exit plan?

Putting money away for retirement, Even if you think I’m not, Make it, but still start right now so that you aren’t trapped by it. Yeah. And that you can stay in it. I love it. Not feel trapped by it.

Yeah, that’s such a good piece of advice because even said that and I go, what’s my exit plan, I guess going to the Olympics and I’m figuring out what I do the next. Day, so if that’s what you want to do. Yeah, exactly. If that doesn’t happen, if you get plan A and Plan B, yeah, but. Exactly.

And that’s what I’ve realized now, you can have goals and goals are good, but being tunnel visioned on a goal, unless you have the capital and the funding and owners of that whatever, where you can really slowly tunnel vision on competition and producing horses. And even then, what do you have when the horse dies or whatever? Yeah, I just find it’s really easy for riders to go. This is my plan for this year. I’m going to do all of this and then at the end of it I take 4 days off for Christmas and then I’m back out as I can.

Well, and the other thing too is you talked about having goals. It’s very important, even like I said, in business, in this life or whatever, and I’ll say to writers, you need to have a goal, but a plan, maybe not a goal, a plan. What’s, what do you want at the end of it all? And then figure out the little steps to get there and work on those steps. But remember, too, it’s just like saying I want to drive.

I’m going to live in New York and I want to drive to California. I need a map to get there. But I can tell you probably something’s going to happen along the way where I’m going to have to change routes. Yeah. And not to get upset by that.

How are you going to get around envisioning what all the bumps in the road may be? And if you don’t know what they’re all going to be, how are you going to handle things so that you’re not so put out a source or lost because you didn’t get to where you want to go? And that’s with riding or business or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So what if you could get riders to change one bit?

That would be better for them, for their forces. Why would that of it be? So getting again, sure, you need to learn all the technical stuff, understanding its purpose and as you’re riding, hearing what the horse is needing from you and thinking, what is it my horse needs from me, but not what I need from my horse or need my horse to do? And you will get what you want. But if your horse’s head is flipping up in the air instead of thinking, why is he doing?

What do I need to change? What’s going on here? So he, that’s part that’s a, he’s speaking to you, right? So what’s, what’s your horse saying and listening to your horse? And it could be at any level, whether you’re just learning to ride or at high levels or anywheres in between to make sure you’re listening.

And I even think top level riders, they’re connected in some ways, but maybe don’t get caught up in like the results that they need. Yeah, it’s definitely easy to get so out of the relationship. Their relationship is why we do all of this, but yet it’s so easy to lose it when you’re in the middle of something. It could and you want this outcome. You’re so caught up in your head on this outcome and if you can, I find when riders just shift their focus to what’s happening with the horse underneath them, even if they can’t quite figure out what’s going on, their riding approves organically.

You’ll see all the tension go away. So say you were talking about early on when you’re in your dressage test, if your curiosity went to huh, what am I doing that’s making this go so well? And I’m not because I would do the same thing all of a sudden you, but it’s shifting that to, oh, this is great. What am I doing so I can carry this on? Yeah, that’s what, as you said, that I was like, yeah, true.

I couldn’t even if you asked me to recreate the moments before that before I lost it, I probably couldn’t because my brain didn’t go to how do I recreate this? It went to, I hope people are watching. But yeah, that’s yeah, that’s a very valuable tool to be able to in any moment just be, even if things aren’t going well to prop to be like, oh, what about this is going well? How do I recreate this good ceiling here? And actually, that’s another thing I would say is that important thing is in the worst of it, notice what’s going well, because our brains have a negative bias.

They glatch, it latches right on to what’s going wrong to protect us. It’s looking for danger, right? Positive things are tefloned off, right? So you want to, did I do this while I teach a clinic? I’ll say they have somebody jump and they’ll dump a course and maybe they miss a distance and that’s the one thing they remember when they stop.

They don’t remember the other seven good jumps or whatever. And I will say what went well, you know, they’re like what went the best? And it’s hard. I’ve got to really depending on the person’s mindset, as soon as they start doing that, they start noticing even in what went wrong, looking at it through a positive lens and figuring out how they can can take what went well and fix what went wrong. So you brought that up and the idea even in your test that you’re doing, you might even have been curious and maybe even lost connection a little bit because you’re being curious, but you would have had something that you remembered to work with.

Does that make sense? Yeah. And it’s almost like going curious inward versus going curious outward. Exactly. Yeah, that’s a very good tidbit of advice.

But yeah, when you asked about the one being positive to really finding what’s going on when you think nothing’s going, force yourself. Some people have to find that one positive thing. As you keep doing that, you will start building on. And that’s not like being all warm and fuzzy. Just training your brain to focus on what’s working so you can build on what’s working.

Yeah, I just. Heard a podcast a few months ago and I’ve been trying to implement it ever since that they said you can be in a bad mood for no reason and no one questions it. So why not just be in a good mood for that reason. And I really keep trying to like, I could just be in a good mood. I can just be more and joyful.

And I don’t necessarily have to be like, and this is all the stuff that I do and it’s Oh no, I can be grateful for all the stuff I have to do. And it sounds so cliche to say, but it is true to look at things through more positive or grateful lens. Yeah, and you hear about all the time and again, it’s real. It’s doing like a gratitude list at the end of the day. Doesn’t have to be long, but just thinking about or waking up in the morning, being grateful that for whatever you thought that you woke up exactly.

And thinking too, that the also the brain when it visualizes something, it practices. It really does. So if we’re practicing that negative stuff that we think’s going to happen or whatever, we’re reinforcing that in our brain. So if you can reinforce in your brain what’s going to go well in your day or in your ride or whatever, so that along that same line, it really does work. This has been such a great conversation.

I feel like listeners are going to leave this conversation with a lot of little tools and things in their back pocket. So how can people bubble along with what you do, find you, All of that sort of stuff. I have my websites, the mindfulequestrian.com that you can find me there. I’m on Facebook under the Mindful Equestrian Instagram, and then I have the podcast, the Mindful Equestrian Podcast. So they’re all different ways.

And on my website there’s a free guide actually talks about some of the different things as some tools that you can sign up for. Then get on my mailing list and get things that way as well. So lots of different ways to connect with me. Like I said, I do one-on-one coaching. I do people are interested in clinics, talks.

I do Zoom like talks as well too. So if somebody’s from further away I can do stuff like that as well. This is great fun. This is great.