“I Just Want to Feel More Confident” – But What Does That Actually Mean?

Loads of riders struggle to know where to start when they want to build their confidence. And one of the interesting things is that if I ask a rider, “What do you actually want?”, they’ll often say something like, “I want to ride without feeling nervous,” or “I don’t want to feel scared anymore.” Or perhaps simply, “I just want to feel more confident.”

The problem is that “I want to feel more confident” is a little bit like getting into your car and saying, “I want to go north.” Okay, that gives you a general direction, but north is huge. There are loads of different places you could go. You could end up in Yorkshire, Northumberland or Scotland. You know roughly which way you want to travel, but you haven’t actually decided where you’re going.

Knowing What You Don’t Want Isn’t a Destination

And you might recognise the opposite version of this too. Maybe you can tell me all the things you don’t want. You don’t want to feel nervous. You don’t want to worry about your horse spooking. You don’t want to freeze when something unexpected happens. You don’t want to keep avoiding the things you used to enjoy. But that’s a bit like getting into your car and saying, “I don’t want to go east, south or west.” You’ve ruled out quite a lot of directions, but you’re still sitting in the car without a destination.

So one of the first changes I’d encourage you to make is to get really clear about what you do want to experience with your horse. What do you want to be doing? What memories would you love to create? What experiences would you like to have? What would make you get off your horse afterwards and think, Yes, this is what I’ve been missing?

And this can feel surprisingly tricky, particularly when you’ve spent a long time thinking about your confidence in terms of what you want to stop feeling or doing.

From “North” to an Actual Destination

So let’s go back to our car journey for a moment. Instead of simply saying, “I want to go north”, perhaps you decide you want to go to Yorkshire. Great, we’ve narrowed it down. But Yorkshire is still a pretty big place, so where exactly do you want to go? Let’s say you choose York.

Now we can get even more specific. What would you actually like to do when you get to York? What are the three places you’d most like to visit or the experiences you’d really love to have? And if you had to put those three things in order, which would be the one you absolutely wouldn’t want to miss? Which one would give you that feeling of excitement, enjoyment or fulfilment that made the whole trip worthwhile?

Once you know that, you can start getting into the really specific detail. Where is this place? What’s the address and postcode? How will you get there? What time does it open? Do you need to take anything with you? What will it look like when you arrive? What will you hear? What will it feel like to finally be there?

And that’s the level of specificity I’d love you to start exploring with your riding confidence.

What Does Riding Confidently Actually Look Like for You?

Instead of “I want to feel more confident”, what would confidence actually allow you to do? Perhaps you’d love to hack around a particular route and enjoy it again, rather than spending the whole ride wondering what might happen. Maybe you want to canter across a field, take your horse somewhere new, ride in a lesson, enter a competition, jump a particular height or simply get on at home and enjoy riding without constantly analysing how nervous you feel.

Then take that experience and build it out. Where are you riding? What does the day look like? Who are you with? What is your horse doing? What can you see around you? What can you hear? What are you thinking about? What are you paying attention to? What are you doing when something doesn’t go quite to plan? And when you get off your horse afterwards, how do you know that you’ve just had the kind of ride you wanted to have?

This is where “I want to be more confident” starts to become something much more meaningful. You’re beginning to define what confidence actually means for you, rather than treating confidence as this vague feeling you’re supposed to somehow acquire before you can get on with your riding.

Build Your Confidence on Your Terms

And your answer doesn’t need to look anything like somebody else’s. Your version of riding confidently might have absolutely nothing to do with jumping bigger, competing, hacking alone or doing any of the things you think a “confident rider” should be able to do. This is about you, your horse, your situation and your real life. What matters to you? What kind of rider do you want to be? What experiences do you want the two of you to have together?

That becomes the foundation for building your confidence on your terms. Because once you know where you want to go, you can start thinking about the route that might take you there. You can work backwards. You can identify the skills you might need, the support that could help, the smaller experiences you could build along the way and the evidence that would tell you that you’re moving in the right direction.

Start With Where You Want to Go

So if you’re struggling to know where to start with your confidence, grab a piece of paper and a pen and forget about the route for a moment. Start with the destination. If there were no barriers and no limits, what would you really love to experience with your horse? What would mean the most to you?

Let your imagination run with it and get really specific. You might have one destination that immediately stands out, or you might have a top three. Either is fine. The important thing is that they’re your destinations, rather than things you think you ought to want.

Because before you can work out how to get somewhere, you need to know where you’re actually going. And “I want to feel more confident” might point you north, but it doesn’t tell you where to set the Sat Nav.

So, where would you really like your riding to take you?

And if you’re reading this thinking, Okay, I know where I want to go… but I’m still not quite sure how to get there, that’s exactly the kind of thing we work on inside Crack the Confidence Code Membership.

We take all the things that can get in the way of you riding at your best – the nerves, what ifs, self-doubt, old experiences and unhelpful patterns – and give you practical ways to work with them, so you can start moving towards the riding that actually matters to you.

Because you don’t need somebody else’s version of confidence. You need the tools to build yours.

If that sounds like the kind of support you’ve been looking for, you can find out more about joining Crack the Confidence Code Membership here.