Understanding how we process sensory information can significantly influence how we experience nerves, anxiety, and fear when riding our horse. We use our ‘internal representational systems’, which refer to the primary ways we perceive and internalise our experiences through our senses, to make provide information about our experiences. Our mind filters and uses this information to make meaning of our subjective experience, as a point of reference for the future.
Our internal representational systems are visual (seeing), auditory (hearing), kinesthetic (feeling), gustatory (tasting), and olfactory (smelling). The processed information from each of these senses will impact how your unconscious mind processes your world and have an impact on how you feel about yourself, your horse and riding.
Visual (Seeing)
If you tend to think in pictures, you might visualise potential problems while riding, like imagining a fall or picturing the horse becoming spooked. These vivid mental images can make you feel more anxious. To manage this, you can refocus your mind on visualising exactly what you actually want to happen, in as much detail as you can. Your mind really doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined, and will respond to precisely what you tell it! So using this to your advantage and use your brilliant imagination to create a visualised scenario where things happen exactly as you want them to, and where you manage any surprises with ease and confidence.
Auditory (Hearing)
If you’re sensitive to sounds, the external noise of the horse’s hooves, your horse’s breathing, or sounds from the environment will all add to how you experience riding your horse. Internal sounds, such as your self-talk are also an important factor, since we often don’t realise quite how we speak to ourselves in our mind! Listening to calming music (where it’s safe to do so, obviously!), and positively managing your self-talk before and during your ride will help boost your confidence.
Kinaesthetic (Feeling)
If you are someone who is highly attuned to your feelings and emotions, you might be acutely aware of every physical sensation in your body and how it makes you feel. You might be aware of a knot in your stomach, tightness in your throat, or a very real feeling of having your legs turn to jelly! These type of physical sensations quickly transmit an alert to your mind, triggering nerves, anxiety and even fear. Practising deep breathing or other relaxation techniques can help you manage these physical sensations and reduce your anxiety.
Gustatory (Tasting)
As riders, the sense of taste is one we don’t often think about, and it’s closely tied to memory, where certain flavours can trigger emotional responses. I know of riders who chew minty gum before they ride (never chew gum while riding, as it is a choking hazard), and that minty sensation on their tongue can anchor feelings of readiness and confidence. Being mindful of what you eat or drink before riding and choosing flavours that you find comforting or refreshing can help trigger a shift in how you feel.
Olfactory (Smelling)
Certain smells can evoke powerful emotional responses. I don’t know about you, but I love the slightly warm, sweaty smell of horses who have just worked (that sounds weird, doesn’t it?!). As a child, I dreamed of the smell horses, of leather tack, and even now the first fly spray of the summer brings a reminiscence of happy hacking days. Find those smells which make you feel good and remind you of happy times, then make use of these whenever you can.
Recognising which of these sensory inputs resonates with you most will provide you with simple tools to improve your riding confidence. By consciously adjusting how you seek out and use these sensory inputs, you can help yourself feel more in control and less anxious while riding.
Preferences
While each of us might have a preference for one or more internal representational systems, such as visual, auditory, or kinesthetic, it’s important to note that we don’t exclusively use just one; our mind gathers and uses information from all of them. Think of it like having a favourite tool in a toolbox; even though you might prefer one tool, you still use the others when the situation requires it.
For instance, even if you primarily process your experience in a primarily visual way by imagining scenarios and pictures in your mind, your mind will still also pay attention to what you hear, the physical sensations you feel, the tastes and smells that surround you. Each sense provides a different piece of the puzzle, contributing to a fuller understanding and experience of your environment.
This means when you’re riding your horse and trying to manage anxiety, even though you might focus on using your preferred sensory channel, such as visualising calm and successful rides, you’ll also benefit from tuning into the sounds that calm you, the feel of the horse beneath you, and even calming scents or flavours. Using a combination of all your senses can help create a richer, more grounded experience that can be more effective in managing your nerves.
Simple Tips
Visual
Focus on shifting your mindset by vividly imagining positive outcomes. Instead of letting your mind linger on potential challenges, picture yourself riding smoothly, handling challenges with ease, and finishing your ride successfully. This practice of visualisation can help build your confidence and reassurance.
Auditory
Integrate calming sounds into your daily routine to help soothe your nerves. This could be as simple as listening to the radio while you tack up, or repeating positive affirmations to yourself such as “I am calm and in control” or “I trust my abilities and my horse.” These auditory cues can help create a mental environment of calmness and positivity.
Kinesthetic
Use physical relaxation techniques to reduce anxiety and physical tension. Before riding, try doing some gentle stretches, deep breathing exercises, or progressive muscle relaxation—where you tense and then relax different muscle groups. This not only relaxes your body but also prepares your mind for a more comfortable and focused ride.
Gustatory
Choose flavours that evoke a sense of calm and enjoyment for you. This might mean having a peppermint or a piece of dark chocolate before you ride or sipping herbal tea like chamomile which is known for its soothing properties. These tastes can trigger positive sensory memories and help calm your nerves.
Olfactory
Introduce a comforting and familiar scent into your riding environment. This could be applying a dab of lavender oil on your wrist or adding a few drops of tea tree oil to your riding gear. The smell of chamomile can also be soothing. These scents can significantly enhance your emotional state by triggering positive associations and reducing stress, creating a more relaxing atmosphere for both you and your horse.
By actively engaging these sensory strategies, you can better manage your emotions and enhance your overall riding experience. Each tip is designed to help you focus, relax, and enjoy your time with your horse, making your rides more pleasant and successful.
In conclusion, understanding how your internal representational systems influence your emotions can help you manage your nerves and anxieyt around riding. By recognising your preferred internal representational systems, you can use different strategies to feel calmer and more in control, so you can become a more confident rider.
Reasons riders get stuck with a lack of confidence
So often we get stuck in a negative head space and we find that we can only see the mistakes, the issues, and the moments that may have not gone to plan or not gone as we had hoped. And the thing is that our mind will default to finding the negatives. And actually, this default setting has a really positive intention, and that is to keep us safe.
So throughout human evolution, our mind has developed survival instincts, which means that any potential threat triggers our own flight, fight, or freeze response. Whether that’s actually appropriate or not. So our mind is always scanning for potential threats because had it not done that through evolution, we would not be sitting here today. It doesn’t matter at all to our minds. It doesn’t care whether a threat is real or it’s imagined, and this is really important because our mind will respond exactly the same. In other words, it will do everything it can to keep us safe, but the trigger for that flight, fight, or freeze response, doesn’t have to be real.
You could be using your imagination and imagining all the weird and wonderful things that could or might happen. The impact on us is that our minds will respond in exactly the same way because it’s a perceived threat… which is great if it’s a real threat, but if it’s an imaginary threat, that’s not so helpful, particularly when we’re sat on our horses.
But the good news is this is a perfectly human, normal, instinctive response. So if you are somebody who’s been experiencing those worries, those what ifs. Those negative thoughts, then I really want to reassure you, there’s nothing wrong with you! You are normally human. That’s a good thing, and you are functioning exactly as you should be.
All that’s happening is that you are inadvertently and unconsciously feeding your mind with all the imaginary scenarios and your mind responds with, “I need to keep you safe! So I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that I remove you from this situation, and I keep you in one piece!”.
That is the mind’s primary intention and we don’t want to mess with that, and that’s really important because when there is a real threat, we absolutely need to keep ourselves safe. So our mind is hugely powerful, and I know you already know this because I know you can imagine all the worst possible case scenarios, right? So how about we start putting our minds to better use?
Learn to focus on what you want
How about we start getting it working for us rather than against us? So I’d love you to imagine you are getting in your car and you want to go somewhere.
What’s the first question? The most obvious question is where are you going? If you can’t answer this question, when you get in your car, you’ll end up driving round and round around in circles not getting anywhere.
You’ll be wasting time and fuel, and nobody needs that right now, do they? You’ll be adding wear and tear to your car, and likely getting quite frustrated. You might even get stuck in traffic and you might even get lost completely.
However, if we were to get in the car and know with a hundred per cent clarity where we wanted to get to, we could use the postcode or the ‘What Three Words’, to identify the precise point we wanted to be and the precise destination we wanted to get to.
So what would we do if we knew our postcode? We knew where we needed to get to. We’d use Google Maps or our satnav to enter the details of our destination, and it would provide us with a really specific roadmap of how to get there, start our journey, knowing the roads, the turns, the junctions, the timeframe, and any alternative routes that we might want to take. All of that would be at our fingertips whenever we need them. So if we followed the guidance on our roadmap, or our satnav or our Google Maps, whatever it is that you use, we’d find our destination way more efficiently and be able to actually enjoy the journey. The pressure would be off. You’d taken a scenery, you’d take some pit stops from munchies along the way, and you’d take satisfaction and pride at how far you’d come along that journey.
So why am I telling you this? Funnily enough, this is exactly how our unconscious mind works. It works really hard to give us exactly what we tell it.
Our unconscious mind is always listening to our words, our thoughts, and our internal beliefs, and it takes them as absolute truth. So if we have an internal narrative around all the things that we dread, those things we really don’t want to happen, then our mind will take those stories at face value and provide us with opportunities to create those new unwanted realities.
So we stay stuck driving in endless circles, not getting anywhere, and often beating ourselves up for it. These patterns also reinforce any limiting beliefs that we have, such as, “I can’t”, if you’ve ever said that I have, I know I have. You’re not alone. “I can’t”. It’s really powerful in a really unhelpful way.
So how do we change this?
Choose your ‘desired destination’
I’m going to ask you to do something in a little while. I want you to explore and define your desired destination so that you can step out of those habitual thought patterns and explore new possibilities and opportunities to get to where you want to be. Remember, this is your desired destination.
It has to mean something to you so it doesn’t matter what anybody else’s desired destination might be. Some people might want to go and canter along the beach. Other people might want to go out on a hack on their own. Other people might want to simply be able to get on their horse and walk trot canter in an arena.
It doesn’t matter what anybody else’s desired destination is. What matters is that the desired destination you choose is something that means something to you. It has to light that fire in you. It has to be something that inspires you and would be your dream. Big, small, tiny, it really doesn’t matter because this is yours, nobody else’s.
So when you arrive at your destination, you’ll fill yourself up with excitement, joy, passion, fulfilment, and pride in yourself. Your destination will be absolutely compelling and feel like everything you ever dreamed of around riding.
It’s certainly not what you think you should do, rather than actually what you want to do.
What do you want? What do you want to be? What do you want to experience? What do you want to have? What do you want to enjoy? And there are no right or wrong answers here. It’s entirely up to you what the best version, the best experience of you as a rider will be like, and you get to define that as your destination.
So if you’d like to (finally) get rid of those mindset gremlins, to make real progress towards your equestrian goals, and learn how to become the most confident version of yourself, then I invite you to join my Crack the Confidence Code membership community. Click HERE to find out more.
