Isn’t this possibly the most over used phrase in January? I certainly think so! And what does it really mean? Why does everyone want to be a different person at the start of each year? Pretty deep questions for the first blog in a while I know but the relevance will become clear later I promise!
This is a very personal blog, and will probably be quite long. It will be awkward for me to write (and probably for you to read) but it’s something I feel I need to do to be able to move on to a new year.
You may notice I stopped my blogs towards the end of last season and the reason for this is that I was too embarrassed to write about what I had been doing – or not as the case may be! Plans were made that didn’t come to fruition, goals were set and weren’t achieved and I can (now) quite honestly admit that I stopped enjoying eventing and all that went with it. My one aim for last season was to complete a CIC*, I had carefully mapped out my journey to get there and nothing was going to stop me. The problem is, I should have let something stop me because ‘the plan’ wasn’t working, we had a few shaky runs, and instead of regrouping and focusing on what was best for me and my horse I just ploughed on regardless, determined to achieve my goal and not let anyone down. It has always been my dream in life to event at the top levels, as I am sure it has for many many riders. As I child I idolised professional event riders. I worked my way up through various event yards, soaking everything in, grooming at every event I could, watching and learning all the time. Eventually I was able to afford a cheap project horse to break in, bring on and make a bit of money which I did easily, then bought another slightly better one to do the same and make a bit more money, and so on until a few horses later I had made enough to buy ‘the one’. This was the horse that would finally help me realise my dreams. And from that moment, although I didn’t know it at the time, I placed an unhealthy amount of pressure on myself to achieve my goals. So when things started to go a bit off course before Somerford, I ignored it.
Frustratingly for me, the reason it went wrong was everything to do with me and nothing to do with the horse. I say frustrating not because I wanted to blame him, but because if it had been his fault, I would have known how to fix it. Horse problems I can work with, my own not so much. The problem was me and it all stemmed from a stupid fall at home, off a different horse and that was a completely unavoidable freak accident. In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t even that bad, a black eye and concussion, but what it did to me inside my head was one of the worse things I have ever experienced. At first I thought it was the concussion that had messed with my head and made me feel wobbly and unsure, and to be fair it probably was a bit, but as days turned into weeks I realised I had completely lost my confidence. Not in the horses, but in myself. I’ve had my fair share of falls in the past, some ridiculous and some pretty painful resulting in trips to A&E and various plastercasts but they all had one thing in common – I knew why they happened, and most importantly I knew how to prevent them from happening again. I am a very logical person, I like to analyse things in detail, work out why they happened the way they did and from this I can solve the problem. But in this instance there was no reason to find, no matter how many times I replayed it I just couldn’t work out a way to fix the problem and stop it from happening again and just like that, for the first time ever I lost all confidence in my own abilities. A problem that I couldn’t solve was equal to a failure in my eyes and suddenly I began to realise that I couldn’t control every situation, and I am well known for liking to be in control! If I couldn’t control this, then there would be other things as well, perhaps with far worse consequences and that scared me. At this point I should have reassessed my goals and not gone to Somerford but the fear of people thinking that I couldn’t do it, was too much and I went ahead and did it. I won’t go over the details but it was a disaster, not because of Herbie but because I froze and couldn’t help him when he needed me simply because I didn’t believe I could.
The following months were pretty horrible to be honest. Instead of being open about how I was feeling, I was determined not to let anyone see. I felt stupid for letting something so small affect me in such a huge way and was pretty sure that everyone else would think I was stupid too. So outwardly I carried on as normal, I continued to compete Herbie by dropping back down a level after our awful time at Somerford, telling everyone it was to get his confidence back but I only did a couple of events before I decided to call it a day for 2018 and I gave him a months holiday as I couldn’t really even bare to ride him after letting him down so badly. Unfortunately these things tend to manifest if you ignore them and pretty soon I didn’t have a single belief in my ability to do anything, this negative mindset spilled over into all aspects of life and I became quite withdrawn, anxious and extremely paranoid that everyone else thought as little of me as I did. I had become a completely different person and I didn’t like it.
Over the last month or so I have made a conscious effort to get back to the ‘old me’. Having had time to reflect on everything and admit what happened has been a revelation. I know I never lost any of my ability to do anything, it was all in my mind and it’s only now I realise just how powerful our minds can be. Negativity breeds negativity so by letting these thoughts take over they snowballed out of all proportion. I am not a talker, I don’t really discuss feelings and I imagine this blog will come as a shock to a few people but I now know if I had just told someone how I was feeling, they could have made me realise that it wasn’t the end of the world that I’d had a little confidence wobble! It’s so silly, we are all so happy to shout about it when we are feeling great, or when we achieve something big but the second something goes wrong we hide it. Why? Because we don’t want to be perceived as weak, we don’t want to be seen as a failure because there is always someone waiting in the wings to show you how it’s done, and also in my case I don’t want to burden anyone with my issues. But this lack of communication is what stops us from progressing – the old saying ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’ is so very true and having now said out loud exactly what has been going on in my head the last few months, I suddenly feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
Which brings me round to one of my first questions – why does everyone want to be someone different at the beginning of the year? I certainly don’t, I tried that and it wasn’t fun – what’s wrong with just being yourself?!
So I’m afraid it’s New Year, Old Me! No pressure, no regimented goals, no massive expectations, just to have fun and enjoy what I do – after all I’ve spent my life working up to it so why the hell not! My only resolution is to not let those nasty negative thoughts worm their way back in again and to be honest with myself and other people if they do. I have two lovely young horses to ride this year, a fab team to work with and a great support network so I have to allow them to do just that – support! As for Herbie, in all honesty I don’t know what road we will go down. He is undoubtedly a very talented horse and I am very proud of him so we shall see what happens. For now he’s feeling very well, enjoying getting fitter and I can definitely feel a positive difference in his attitude now mine has changed.
Congratulations if you got this far, apologies if it was cringe worthy but it had to be done for my own peace of mind and normal horsey blogs shall resume from now on!
Take Care
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Herbie's Diary 