It takes skill to ride a difficult horse but I often find that the most challenging part is often the mental side. How do you control irritation or anger whether it’s with an animal, friend, parent, partner, employee etc? How can you turn a bad ride around or even a bad day around? Well maybe it all starts with being able to turn your own mood around… (mind blown!)

Today, I want to tell you about emotional control, something that not only helps with riding difficult horses but will also help you in many other areas of life. 

Feeling your emotions and acting on them, are two very different things. I’m going to be using the example of horse riding but this can be applied to other sports, dealing with various people and many other things. 

So my one horse, Lansink has a survival instinct that is on steroids and I often ride him at this circular sand track which is up the road from where I live. 

The problem is that this track has a lot of long grass and bushes in some places. So one late afternoon I was riding there and suddenly Lansink stopped dead. His eyes were wide, his nostrils were flared and he was staring at one of the bushes. I soon noticed that there was a man having a wee just behind the bush. I tried to get Lansink to move past the bush so we could leave this poor man to have his wee in peace but Lansink was not moving. I think the man then thought this random girl on a horse was watching him pee! So he shuffled further into the bush! Lansink is now even more terrified because the bush was moving! I’m desperately trying to move Lansink. Lansink’s still not moving! Eventually I convince him to slowly move past the bush – my eyes are locked ahead, not looking at this poor man who’s clearly feeling as traumatised as I am!  But to this day, Lansink does not trust those bushes…

Now you might be wondering…what does this story have to do with emotional control? Well, this is a classic example of what Lansink is like. Once he gets scared of something, it’s very difficult to calm him down or to take him even remotely close to what he’s scared of. Some days he’s just scared of everything and I can barely work him properly without him bolting every two seconds! Now I’m sure you can imagine how frustrating this can be! But if I get irritated, the problem only gets worse. 

And so I’ve had to learn to control my emotions.

Here’s what I started doing: telling myself that it’s my choice how I react and that there will still be good things about this ride, I’ve just got to find them. And so I make things simple. I focus on simple things that Lansink can do and even if he tries even a little bit, I reward him. This helps because now my focus has shifted from being frustrated at what he’s not doing well to the small things he’s doing right and rewarding him. Not every day will be a good productive day and that’s ok, tomorrow is another day. 

So whether you’re working with your horse, having a disagreement with a person or even just aren’t in a good mood. Whatever is happening, stop yourself and remind yourself that no matter what happens, you decide how you react. If you’re getting frustrated, focus on the small things that are going well or that you can do to improve your day/your situation or even the moment you’re in right now. If your whole day is bad because of one thing that happened, you made that choice. You decided to not look for the good things that happened around you after that one bad thing. You will inevitably feel irritated, frustrated, angry and then it’s up to you whether you act on that or not. In my experience anger can be very destructive and by saying or doing something nasty, it doesn’t make you feel better about the situation. What makes me feel good is knowing that I overcame that feeling – I beat it. I stayed calm in an argument and communicated in an effective kind way. I stayed calm and turned my bad ride around when my horse wasn’t in a good mood. I found things to laugh and smile about in a day that could’ve very much have been a bad day. It’s ok to feel negative emotions or for bad things to have happened, the question is, what are you going to do about it? Or even, how are you going to choose to feel about it?

If you enjoyed this blog, check out my YouTube Channel where I share my journey as a horse rider and the motivational lessons I’ve learnt along the way. https://www.youtube.com/@zanz.themotivationalhorseygirl