Welcome back to Honeyed Lasso!

I meant to post more often when I began this blog, but I haven’t had the right motivation to sit down and write.

I’ve been super busy with getting some things in order such as lining up some riding lessons, which I haven’t had in a couple months. I wasn’t happy at my previous lesson barn that didn’t give me the direct instruction that I was wanting. Around the same time, I began leasing my first horse to practice more outside of lessons and gain the experience. I stopped taking lessons all together which has really slowed down my progression.

More recently, I’ve been thinking about my goals as a rider and where I really want to be. It helped me realize that I wasn’t progressing at the rate that I wanted to be while only riding my lease horse a couple days a week without any instruction. It’s never a good feeling to get off the horse and feel like you’ve stunted your progression, like how I felt.

This is how I learned that if you feel like you aren’t getting anything out of training, you probably don’t have good instruction. We all have things that we can improve on.

One of my goals as a rider, I realized, was to be able to show by the end of the year. In my search for a new barn, I made it clear that I had strong motivation to show.

I had my first lesson since the beginning of the summer this past week, which was my first lesson in three months.

I had seldom been on a horse other than the one I was leasing over the summer. It was quickly apparent that there has been a large gap in my education as I was having trouble controlling the direction of my horse and getting him to listen. I’m someone who easily beats up on themselves, and I was getting more and more frustrated with how I was performing during this evaluation lesson.

The trainer talked to me after and told me that my expectations to show by the end of the year needed to be adjusted.

It was hard to hear that something many riders get to be part of is not something that I’m ready for yet.

Being new to the equestrian world, it’s extremely difficult not to compare myself to others. There will always be more information I wish I knew, higher jumps I wish I could jump, and another class I wish I could show in. But the more important thing is that I have goals for myself and always strive to be better because I recognize that there will always be more to learn.

My boyfriend frequently calls me out on my negative thoughts. For instance, because I didn’t do well in my evaluation, I thought I was horrible at everything. When we tell ourselves narratives that are negative or false, it reinforces those beliefs, so we are more likely to believe it.

So, another goal that I have as a rider, and person, is to catch myself when I know I’m having irrational thoughts, and change those to be more aligned with reality. Let’s all check what we tell ourselves and make sure that it’s kind, realistic, and true to us.

What’s your goal for this week?

anna j.