But, How Do I Change That?

One of my favorite weeks of the year is the time I spend at the Upperville Colt and Horse Show.  This year was no exception.  My tent sat near the entrance gate to Ring 2 and the Ring 2 warm-up ring.   Between sessions I had the pleasure of watching riders warm-up and then watching their rounds in the Hunter Ring.   As a sport psychologist, it is a luxury to work with clients and then spent the time between sessions pondering the challenges that my clients face while observing athletes in action.

As often happens in my work, a distinct theme has emerged in my work at the show this year.  As my clients explored their concerns there have been several “light bulb” moments where they have become aware of what they do to sabotage their performance.  Once they realize what is happening, they often ask the question, “How do I change that?”

Before offering some thoughts about the process and nature of change, I need to highlight the most important part.  Before we seek to change we need to be aware (a) that there is a problem, (b) develop at least some small insight into the ways in which we get in our own way, and (c) discover our unequivocal desire to change.  Without this kind of awareness we run into two different problems.  The first is motivation.  When we are blind to a problem, or in denial, we seldom feel any motivation to make a change.  Secondly, when we know we have a problem but have no insight (or interest) in how we contribute to creating the problem we will be at high risk for blaming others.  This might include blaming our horse, our trainers, judges, etc.   Finally, we have to really want to change.  Nothing will stymie attempts to change faster than reservations about changing.  Reservations might include fear of failure, fear of success, fear of unintended consequences, or some other type of fear or ambivalence about change.

Once we have basic awareness of the problem, a guess at how we contribute to it, and a clear unequivocal desire to change; the process of change becomes simple (if not easy).  The core of creating change is to know what we want to do to replace the behavior that is connected to the problem.  It is incredibly easy to fall into the “I don’t want to do that” mode.  Knowing what we don’t want to do is only important in helping us to identify what we want to change.  After that, focusing on what we don’t want only serves to intensify or practice what we don’t want.  Decide what you want to do instead and challenge yourself to do it.

Next, be specific.  Focus the change you want to make on a specific behavior in a very specific context.  Specificity leads to personal accountability and the ability to assess the impact of our changes.  The more global and vague our ideas of what we  are going to change, the more difficult it is to pin ourselves down and hold ourselves accountable for actually changing.   We have to actually do something different.  Furthermore,  if we aren’t specific we never get to learn much about what actually makes a difference.

Finally, the changes we want to make need to be things that we can actually control.  Changes have to be self-initiated and maintained.  We have no power to change others and often very little ability to change contexts.  We can’t make a horse show judge change or make our horses change.  Change starts with us and is maintained by us.  This is true whenever we want a relationship to change.

The next time you want to make a change try this strategy out:

– Describe the problem you are experiencing.

– Decide if REALLY want to change it.

– Identify one or more ways your behavior contributes to the problem.

– Be very specific about the behavior that contributes to the problem and specific about the context in which the problem occurs.

– Decide what your going to do differently.

– Make sure what you decide to do can be self-initiated and self-maintained.

– Observe the results.  Is it what you want?  If not, lather rinse repeat.

The Power of a Truly Free Choice

I often tell the story of a past client of mine who was struggling with a fear of jumping.  She was returning to the hunter/jumper world after many years away and had been a successful professional trainer in her younger life.  We worked hard to address her fear from a variety of different angles, but some how we always ran into some insurmountable roadblock.

I remember one day, in the middle of our latest creative effort to tackle her fear, she stopped and smiled.  It was one of those whole-face smiles with twinkling eyes and a grin from ear to ear.  I stopped mid-sentence and asked, “What?” She replied simply and joyfully, “I don’t have to jump!”  She thanked me for the work we had done together and left.  Some months later I received a call from her.  She proceeded to tell me about how she was jumping again and that the fear was gone.  Now, some 10 years later, she has reestablished her business and is training and teaching successfully.

I have never forgotten the power of that transformation.  Perhaps the most important lesson for me was the understanding that no matter how much we say (or think) we want to accomplish something,  our inner and often unspoken feelings will ultimately rule the day.  We all have the ability to tackle the greatest of challenges, but only if our conscious intent and our authentic inner desire are aligned.  And, the secret key to this alignment is finding a way to make a truly free choice.

What happens if you make an honest inventory of your motivations to tackle a challenge, conquer anxiety, or face a fear?  I know for me there is often a complex web of personal feelings or desires mixed with the other voices in my head (trainers, friends, family, etc.) and liberal sprinkling of a variety of well learned “shoulds”.  The problem with all of these competing interests in our brains is that they often serve to take the free choice out of facing a challenge by making the choice of not facing the challenge wrong, bad, or in some way shameful.  In this way we can feel pressured into change.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I feel pressured into action there is almost always an element of resistance, or at the very least heightened emotion such as tension or anxiety.  Facing our fears and conquering our personal challenges is hard enough without having the additional pressure of the things we “should” or “have to” do.  Tackling fear, anxiety, doubt, frustration or any other strong emotion in our riding requires both commitment and the willingness and ability to tolerate discomfort.  The simple fact is that people are best able to commit to a course of action and tolerate discomfort when we truly, in our heart of hearts, freely choose to conquer our demons, tackle our doubts and fears and rise to the challenges we face.

New Power of Positive Thinking

Last week marked the second installment of my 3-part seminar series on the psychology of equestrian sport.  We took a fresh look at positive thought processes and how positive thought processes can impact our riding performance.  New this year was a look at recent work in the area of positive psychology interventions that have been developed and studied at the at the UCSF Center for Excellence in Women’s Health by Dr. Margaret Chesney.  In a clear and insightful video presentation Dr. Chesney reviews her work and talks about the potential impact that generating positive thought and emotion would have on our health and well-being.

One of the big “take aways” for me this year as I prepared for the seminar was how important our overall state of mind is in our riding.  We are so often drawn to the fixing problems and changing or tuning up specific things here and there.  We forget that our overall attitude and frame of mind may ultimately determine whether or not we are able to move forward, grow, learn and advance in our sport.

Just take a moment to consider the impact that negative thought and emotion has been discovered to have on our experience.  It impacts our nervous system (fight, flight, freeze response), our musculoskeletal system (tension, rigidity, and pain), our endocrine system (adrenaline, epinephrine, BDNF and other hormones), and our respiratory system (breathing, hyperventilation, and oxygenation).  Anybody notice anything that relates to our riding?

Take a closer look at Dr. Chesney’s work and try out her suggestions for increasing positivity in your life and riding.  I think you will be glad that you did.

 

Gratitude for Another Year of Life’s Lessons

One of the greatest joys of preparing for my annual seminar series is taking the time to reflect on the work of the last year and pull together the lessons I have learned from the people with whom I have worked.  I am always humbled when I realize how much I have gained through the bravery and efforts of others as I assist them in tackling their riding challenges.  Each year I have grown in insight and understanding.  Each year I have grown in my awareness of the uniqueness of each individual’s challenges.  I hope that I have grown in my ability to respond to each person’s situation with knowledge and skill.  I also hope that I have grown in my ability to respond with sensitivity, insight and “feel”.

As I sit down to prepare myself for this year’s seminar series, I am acutely aware that this year was as rich as any other in what I have learned.  What strikes me as different this year is that the challenges I have faced as a sport psychologist have helped me return to my professional roots as a clinical psychologist.  I have spent much of the last twelve years seeking to increase my knowledge and skill specifically in sport psychology.  I have explored many of the traditional arenas of sport psychology; emotional regulation, goal setting, imagery, and self-talk to name a few.  I have also mastered intervention techniques such as hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming,  and mindfulness meditation.  What I have realized this year is that knowledge and technical skill, no matter how complete, is not enough.

The challenge is not in articulating what could be (or what some might feel should be) attained in terms of mental and emotional states during competition.  The challenge is in engaging ourselves in the process of change.  How many articles have you read or seminars have you attended that have outlined the essential mental skills of successful athletes?  How many books have you read about sport psychology techniques for improving performance, managing anxiety, or tackling fear?  The reality is that there is a lot of very good information out there.  Yet, I meet person after person who has had great difficulty applying this excellent knowledge base in a way that leads to meaningful changes in their own riding.

So what do you do when the solutions seem clear and simple, but difficult to attain?  How do you set the stage so that you are open and available for growth and change in our riding?  For the last year I have been looking to my roots as a clinical psychologist to shed some light on potential answers to these questions.  I have used this blog as a place to talk about some of the human psychology which underlies the challenges we face, and more importantly, the challenges we face in changing.  This year in the seminar series my goal is to take another step toward helping each rider make positive changes by offering them more than just a template for success.  I hope to offer them greater understanding of themselves and what they need on a basic psychological level to engage their curiosity and creativity.  The same curiosity and creativity which makes change not only possible, but powerfully rewarding.

So what are you really afraid of…

Many discussions of fear in riding are focused on the strategies and  mechanics of overcoming fear.  We have come to learn a lot about respecting fear, moving just beyond the edge of our comfort zone, approach and retreat, the value of repetition, taking small steps, self-acceptance, mindfulness meditation, and the power of supportive friends.  I am grateful as a sport psychologist that we live in an age when so many helpful tools are available and accessible to every rider.  But, what if there was a way to supercharge your efforts and speed your progress in overcoming your fear?  Would you be interested?

Some times the most helpful ideas are the simplest and seemingly obvious.  Recently, while working with a rider to overcome his fear of jumping, I had a profound and important realization in the midst of the work. The rider was not actually afraid of jumping.   He was afraid of something else… falling short and disappointing others.

I discovered this truth in an off-hand comment that the rider made about riding out on his own.  He related the story of a recent trail ride and spoke enthusiastically about how he had to negotiate several obstacles (i.e., jumps).  Nowhere in his story did he describe the debilitating fear that had dominated out work together.  When I pointed this out to him, we quickly came to the realization that he always felt the fear during lessons and shows where his instructor and family were watching.  Since he mostly rode in lessons or shows and seldom rode on his own he really hadn’t had the opportunity to put the pieces of the puzzle together in this way.  His work shifted from desensitizing himself to his fear of jumping to addressing his feelings and beliefs about what what others thought of him.  Helping him shift his beliefs, build his self-confidence and clarify the real nature of his instructor’s and family’s feelings about his jumping helped him make big changes very quickly.

This discovery reminded me about an important truth.  As much as I have talked about how change is possible without understanding “Why?” and how “Why?” can be a distraction (see Why Ask Why?), there are times when taking the time to understand the answer to the question “Why?” will help to guide your efforts to change in meaningful ways.  This seems especially true when fear is involved.

The next time your tackling a fear and your progress seems frustratingly slow, or nonexistent, take a step back and ask why you are afraid.  Is it the physical reality that you are facing such as the jump or the horse or the height?  Or is there something else?  Are you afraid to fail, of how you will look to others, of the impact of a possible injury on others such as your spouse or children, that you may hurt your horse, or some other reason we have yet to imagine? Address these other concerns honestly and directly and, if you still experience fear in your riding  and you still want to conquer it, try again.  It is likely that progress will come much more easily.

When You Need New Glasses…

Sometimes you need new lenses and sometimes you just need new frames.

I have always been seduced by the idea that if I can just analyze a problem sufficiently, I will be able to solve it.  I am a problem solver by nature and was raised in a family where knowledge and understanding were highly valued.  Especially, if that knowledge and understanding came from a careful, methodical and thorough analysis.  I have thought about this as the”lens” through which I look at a problem.  If I could just bring the problem into focus then I felt that I had a good shot at solving it.

One of my earliest challenges as a psychologist was my impatience in the process of change.  I worked diligently with my clients to help them explore their lives.  I helped them understand behavioral and emotional patterns, their temperament, their neurology and physiology, their relationships, and how their life of learning led them to where they are at the present moment.  And yet, more often than not, this highly focused and clear understanding of their problems did not spontaneously lead to change. Frustrating, right?

Over time I began to notice that the clients that did make changes were the one’s that, after understanding their problem, naturally shifted their focus to solutions.  In that way, they knew where they were going.  They had analyzed the problems in their life and, using that analysis as a basis, they had identified one or more solutions.  In essence, they had shifted their focus and attention from what I call a “problem frame” to a “solution frame”.  This may seem like an obvious and simple idea, but it is so often lost both in life and in learning.

Take a moment the next time you ride to listen to the voice inside your head.  How often do you identify a problem in your riding?  How often do you search for a cause?  And, how often when you identify a cause, do you admonish yourself to stop doing the offending behavior? Many riders are very critical of themselves.  They constantly tell themselves “don’t do this” or “don’t do that.”  The problem with this approach is simply that no amount of telling ourselves what not to do will help us do the right thing.

If your an instructor or coach, pay attention to the language that you use when working with your clients.  Notice how often you are critical or point out something your client is doing wrong.  If you find yourself doing this on occasion, try an experiment.  The next time your teaching a lesson and notice a behavior that you would like your client to change, take the time to enter a into “problem frame” with your student.  Clearly and thoroughly describe your client’s riding behavior and why it fails to bring about the desired results.  Then consciously and deliberately shift the focus from problems to solutions and enter into a “solution frame.” Talk with them clearly and specifically about what they need to do in order to progress. Finally, when you see the undesired behavior again, help your client stay in a “solution frame” by reminding them about what they need to do rather than pointing out their mistake.

There is no doubt that seeing things clearly is of great value in our equestrian lives, and that looking at our experience through the correct lens will help us greatly in our quest to accomplish our riding goals.  It is equally important to remember that no amount of focus or clarity will serve to help us overcome the challenges in our equestrian journey, if we are seeing things clearly through an unhelpful frame.

Horse Stories: From Blame to Understanding

As a sport psychologist and psychotherapist I have spent decades helping people better understand themselves and improve their relationships.  One of the steps in the process of healing and changing is understanding the story each client tells of the challenges they have faced throughout their life.

I often hear the complaint at the beginning of the process, “Why do I have to talk about my past?” and “I don’t want to blame my parents, family, friends,  etc.”  And, in general, my clients do want to take responsibility for themselves and don’t want to pass the proverbial buck.  My response to them is always the same.  The goal in exploring a client’s life story is not to excuse oneself or to assign fault or blame, but rather to foster and develop understanding.  It is in understanding that we often find our direction forward.

We face a unique challenge in our relationship with horses.  There are few other inter-species relationships that are as deep and intense as those we develop with our equine partners.  And, in part because of this intensity, we often interpret and assign meaning to our relationship with our horse, as well as interpret their behavior, in human terms.  I recently wrote a blog about the ways in which we assign qualities, characteristics, and judgments to our horses through the psychological process called projection.

The fact that horses don’t talk back in our native language and can’t debate our explanations for why they bucked, shied, refused, stepped on us or otherwise engaged in some undesirable behavior, leaves the door wide open for human interpretation or projection.  It also makes it extremely easy for us to be self-serving in the meanings that we make and the stories we tell (enter – blame).  If we want to be responsible in our relationship with our horse we need to exercise reflection and awareness in our interpretation of their behavior.

So here are a couple of questions you can ask yourself that may help you to explore the nature of the stories you bring to your relationship with your horse, and hopefully foster greater understanding while minimizing blame:

• How balanced is your explanation or interpretation of your horse’s behavior?  There is an old saying amongst relationship therapists – Every relationship issue is 100% my partner’s  responsibility and 100% mine.  If you find yourself placing the majority of the responsibility on your horse, or conversely taking on all the responsibility yourself, it may be worth taking a second look.
• How “convenient” or “comfortable” is your explanation or interpretation of your horse’s behavior?  While sometimes the easiest and most convenient explanations serve us well, there are times that relying on “convenient” explanations serves to help us to avoid thoughts, ideas, understandings that are less comfortable for us to face.
• Is the language I use in the story of my horse filled with human qualities, labels, and/or ideals?  Assigning human qualities and characteristics to our equine partner does make us feel better.
• Does my explanation or understanding help to illuminate a path forward?  Blame, whether it is assigned to ourselves or our horse, is a dead end.  So you say to your horse, “This happened because you’re a bully, a scaredy cat, mean, or lazy.”  What then?

I am acutely aware that there is no “One True Story.” I find it helpful to think about our knowledge, understanding, and experiences as being represented in a collection of stories that fit various circumstances.  As we grow in our relationship with our horses and run into the inevitable challenges, let’s have the courage to be curious and question the “convenient” or “familiar” stories, especially the one’s that end in blame.   In contrast, let’s tell a story of shared responsibility that honors both us and our horses for who and what we truly are.  A story that illuminates a pathway forward, even if it is only for now.

Day 7 – What can you add to the mix?

When riders ask for my help with nerves, they frequently tell me all about how they don’t want to feel.  They don’t want to feel scared, worried, fearful or like they are going to throw up.   My first response is always to ask them, “What do you want to feel?”

Our natural tendency is to push away negative feelings.  The only problem with this “push it away and buck it up” strategy is that, when the pressure is really on, it almost always fails.  The very nature of our brain works against us.  Any attempt to push away negative feelings backfires and, in fact, the feelings actually become more intense.  In cases where we are able to distract ourselves for a few minutes, we return to our suffering as soon as the distraction ends.

So how then do we change our experience?  The answer is simple but not always easy to implement.  Allow the negative feeling and then focus our energies on the positive feelings and attitudes that we want to have in the ring.  Allowing a feeling means just that, let yourself feel whatever you feel without trying to make it go away.  Observe yourself feeling it without getting lost in the feeling.  Next, focus your intention on feelings and attitudes that you want to experience in the ring.  It will often help to reflect on a real experience where you felt these feelings and attitudes before.  Once you connect to them, your attention on them with serve to intensify them.

This is a way to add positive ingredients to the mix and develop your own individual secret recipe for success.

Why ask why?

When we have a bad ride or fall short of our goals a lot of us feel frustrated and upset. If this happens repeatedly, we invariably torture ourselves by asking the question, “Why? Why is this happening to me?”

It is amazing how much energy that we can put into answering this question. We search for explanations and answers in our horse, our trainer, our tack, our vet, our farrier, our stablemates, our family and friends, and, maybe, even within ourselves.  On rare occasions, we may even find a simple answer.  Our troubles get resolved and we are back on track on the road to success.  More often, we compile a long list of explanations  and, even if our explanations for our troubles are right on target, our troubles persist.  This brings me to one of the most important and enlightening statements I have ever heard in the context of a professional training, “Understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for change.”

Think about it. It makes a great deal of sense. How many times in our riding (or in our lives for that matter) do we know why something is happening but experience ourselves as powerless to change.  We may even intellectually understand the solutions to the problems we face, but still the problem persists. Clearly, understanding alone is not sufficient to create change.

Conversely, we seem to be able to make changes all the time without understanding why we are doing something.  Just this morning while riding my mare Maggie, my trainer suggested that I move my right hand a few inches in a particular manner and turn my shoulders just so.  Voila! Maggie immediately softened and offered a bend.  It was not necessary for me to understand why Maggie was bracing nor the rationale for my trainers guidance in order to make the change.  What was necessary for me to transform the moment and create change was to do something different.

So, if we really want to change our experience on our horse, whether in the show ring or at home, it is necessary to be clear on what we are going to do differently and then do it. Remembering, of course, that we have to focus on what we want to do rather than on what we don’t want to do (but that’s a topic for another day).  This does not mean that understanding is unimportant.  On the contrary, understanding is often profoundly helpful in guiding us in the choices we make about what to change and when to change it.  Just don’t expect things to automatically get better when you finally understand why things have been going wrong.