I often hear "I just need a bit more confidence" or "I lost my confidence" but what does that really mean? What exactly is it that we have lost and how can we get it back?
It seems to start with a horse training problem - perhaps the horse bucked you off or has become difficult to handle on the ground or when ridden in company. While that can be quite tricky to fix, given that you might need to do some un-training before you train the behaviours you want, it isn't the whole problem.
Once we've been put in a position that has frightened us as riders, we too need to un-learn some things and learn new ones. We need to stop being reactive riders and become proactive in the riding or handling relationship. It isn't just that we need to teach our horse new things, we need to understand that we can (or Kandoo, as I like to say!).
This is where our health and happiness come into the picture and I'll chat more about that next time.
By the way, the title here..... I was recently writing a talk for my PhD studies and had a big, 5 section chart like the picture here. I didn't know what it was called so christened it The Doughnut. My daughter told me, with a smirk, that it was a flow diagram. Nonsense, it's a doughnut and next time I'll discuss why we shouldn't eat too many of them as riders!
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