Confidence

I always learn from my students.  Recently, I readdressed lesson goals with several of them and found something amazing:

Many students mentally understand and can technically fulfill the role of rider.  What is truly holding them back is a lack of confidence. 

With my riders, I found a direct correlation between the amount of education and the persons’ lack of confidence.  This isn’t a scientific study by any means, but if I take a highly educated student and ask them what their biggest challenge is with riding, I repeatedly get the same answer:  Lack of confidence.  Others, with less education specifically list a skill or task as such as “keeping my hands quiet” or “loping” as being their biggest challenge.

What does this mean?  Perhaps the level of awareness, in regards to our personal obstacles, is higher in the educated group?  Maybe less education leaves students more eager to take risks and less afraid of failure?   Maybe the less educated are able to address one task at a time, gaining continual success and growth versus the highly-educated seeing one problem as their total failure in riding?  Maybe the sample group of my “study” is just too small to draw any conclusion!

However else I apply this information, I now stereotypically look at physicians, lawyers and engineers as riders lacking confidence, not necessarily skill….although I do know that either scenario is possible.  This has affected what I do during lessons and how I gauge a student’s success.  I no longer see repeating the same exercise as mundane and silly to some riders.  They need the repetition to build confidence!  I also do not have to see major changes in the performance of the rider or horse….the rider needs to feel a change, which in turn provides a building block for the next skill or challenge.  I need to be in tune with this growth and present challenges accordingly.

The challenge with confidence levels is that many horses cannot be fooled by a rider who lacks it.  Conversely, riders often need a horse that allows them to gain confidence.  I call this “borrowed” confidence.  It simply means that:

 Choosing a horse for each rider involves assessing the confidence of both so that neither is overly challenged and the one with higher levels willingly “loans” confidence to the other. 

 It’s like a leveling out of confidence with both horse and rider seeking balance.  Everyone has seen this;  The “babysitter” horse taking care of the green rider, or the rider who can get even the most anxious horse to walk quietly.  Both are example of borrowed confidence.  Instructors and riders do need to be aware that borrowed confidence is not a license for a horse to guess or choose.  It requires a level of respect between the two that insures the safety of the other

My new awareness has brought me back to something I routinely did years ago:  Requiring my students to recognize their goals (in writing) as riders.  I might be improperly assessing current students depending on academic experience but all students, old and new, will soon be asked to reassess why they ride and why they take lessons.  Why do you ride and/or take lessons and what is holding you back?  It may be worth the time to list the answers to these questions.  You might find yourself one step closer to becoming the confident horseperson you’ve always wanted to be!