Lisa's Blog post # 14

Impatience - “inability to control one’s desire for action”.  I repent …  and now fully embrace the organic and variable nature of my sport.

And, I also confess that I am project driven.  And I’m a builder – I was usually the one who assembled the boys’ gifts on Christmas Eve; I sew things; I bake cakes.  All of those things are accomplished by methodically following a succession of steps.  After step one you move onto step two and then steps 3, 4, and 5 and pretty soon you have a Playmobile Pirate ship or dining room curtains.   

Today I finally accepted something Lesley has been telling me for a while, which is, Cotton and I have some habits that need to be changed.  They are bad habits.  It can take from 30 to 45 days for a person to change a habit – I don’t know about a horse.   I admit now that my expectation to hop on Cotton, get a few lessons under my belt and gallop away into the sun set to event happily-ever-after was totally unrealistic!  

Here’s a list of all the things I need to change (that I can think of right now) - riding forward instead of backwards, maintaining light contact on his mouth, keeping my elbows elastic, looking up, opening my chest, keeping hands level, keeping wrists straight, keeping my elbows by my side, keeping core engaged, rewarding his every effort to obey, correcting his every attempt to avoid obeying, keeping his mind occupied and active, positioning right when asking for right lead canter, keeping right shoulder up and back on right lead canter, stretching up right side of my body so I don’t collapse my hip and shoulder, steering him through “the tunnel” rather than through a direct rein - and I haven’t even touched on jumping yet, this is just basic flat work!  

I would have to do all of these correct every day for 45 days to have them ingrained into my riding brain.   No way!

And these things can’t be accomplished in “steps”!  I can’t trot along and only worry about “#1 - riding forward” for 30 days until I can check that one off and begin “#2 - maintain light contact”.  See how this is messing with my brain!  The logical, linear equation that has lead to success in just about every “project” I’ve accomplished in my life is totally useless!

Big time paradigm shift.  

I cannot evaluate my progress in becoming a good rider the same as I would evaluate my progress on a project since neither Cotton nor I are inanimate, static objects.  Thanks to Cheryl in Pinehurst and Briana and Andi for helping me arrive at this conclusion.   I am just going to relax and enjoy the gift God has given me!