Confidence; A Delicate Balance

Spoiler alert!!! I am not perfect.

Of course. No one is perfect. It's amazing how quickly you can go from feeling great about yourself, to feeling like you've been on a journey to nowhere and you've arrived there with a bang. I had that moment this week, and it was something I was not at all prepared for.

I love riding, dressage, eventing, and the never ending pursuit of knowledge. I am constantly reminded of how much I don't know, which is why I was surprised at my reaction to finding out I'm not God's gift to dressage.

Panda and I at the Debbie Clinic. Photo courtesy of Dusty Brown.

It went down like this. I was given the option to ride a notoriously difficult horse at the barn. I was really tired, and he takes a lot of work, but I've really been trying to take anyone and everyone up on the offer to ride different horses so I can further my skills. So weighing my options, to ride or not to ride, I chose ride. I know once I sit my hiney in the saddle I can focus pretty well and push through the wall of tired.

So we tacked up and I hopped on and we did a lot of walking. It was around 11 in the morning and already pushing 90 degrees so our workout was pre-planned to be pretty limited. The horse is quite difficult to get to come round in the walk so I left him on a loose rein, and when I felt we were ready, I picked up the trot. And everything unraveled. His ears were in my face. I was pulling instead of pushing. I couldn't keep him going. My hands were too high, and then too low. I couldn't keep my shoulders open while engaging my core. My right shoulder crept up like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and even convinced my waist to start turning on every up post. I couldn't even keep my dang leg still.

My trainer is shouting things like, "Hands forward," and, "engage your core and push your belly button at him!" By golly, I couldn't do anything. And I was frustrated. Oh my gosh was I frustrated. Not two weeks before, we'd had a really good ride! I'd been working, while riding Panda, on the never ending battle I have with my right shoulder trying to make friends with my ear. I've also been working on my core, on my legs, on relaxing, on turning from the outside aids. All of it. And in one ride, I was back to feeling like I couldn't even post the trot.

Learning some good old fashioned classical dressage.
Photo courtesy of Dusty Brown

So I took a break and sat under a shade tree and absolutely cried my eyes out. I did some deep breathing exercises and tried to get my emotions under control so I could go back out there and try again, but I was devastated. It was like everything I had been working on and all I had been doing was for nothing. Like I was back at square one, and maybe even a little behind that.

I was scared too. Am I doing everything wrong? Am I ever going to get halfway decent at this? The AECs aren't far off and apparently I have to learn to ride all over again. But also, how did I get so overly confident? How can I avoid getting that way again?

But that's the thing about confidence. You've got to have it. I've lived a vast majority of my life without it, and it's not a life. You have to grow and nurture it. You also have to be aware that you have weaknesses and learn from them. Confidence isn't a bad thing. It's the inability to accept that you aren't perfect that is bad. You have to make mistakes to learn and you have to fall to get back up.

It's not that I haven't been working hard, it's that I still have more work to do. There will always be more work to do. If you don't put yourself in situations that will test your abilities, you will never find your weaknesses and they will continue to be weaknesses.

There's that awkward right shoulder. But at this point, we'd still come quite
a long way. Photo courtesy of Dusty Brown.

Life is a funny thing. Before I wrote this post I wasn't sure if it was the right thing to talk about this week. I was looking at my page views though, and saw that recently people have been looking at an old post of mine about how little I knew about dressage. I went back and read it and it made me laugh. I really knew nothing at all, but it gave me a wonderful perspective on how far I've come. Sometimes after a good knock to your confidence, you just need to change your perspective. As long as you don't quit, it will get better. They don't call it "hard work" for nothing.