Fear to Confidence

Transcript:

Welcome to this week's You Are Destined For Greatness. I'm here this afternoon with Pertie. Pertie is a two-year-old filly—or a mare or a female horse—who's just two years old and starting her career as a saddlehorse. Right now, at this point that she's in, she's had one ride, and I'm preparing her for her second ride and the consequent rides after that. Her first ride was by a friend of mine who prepared her for her first ride and got on for the first time just a few days ago, right here in this round pen. I want to tell you about that experience, and then I'm going to tell you about what that experience might mean to you.

What happened was after much preparation and all the things that could be done to prepare this horse for a first ride, Rick—my friend—stepped onto this horse for a first ride, and something like this happened. Even with all the preparation, she experienced something for the first time that she'd never experienced before, and she was afraid. So, what she did is she ran. She ran from about over here. This is about a 50-plus foot round pen. She ran about half or three-quarters of a circle, and then she stopped and walked.

Now, the reason that she ran is because she was afraid. Okay, so let me tell you what was happening with Rick. My friend Rick has started enough horses and been on enough horses for the first time to know that he had faith in his preparation. He had confidence in himself, and he had confidence in the skills that he'd built into her to know that if something went wrong—like she ran away or she tried to get him off his back—that he could bring her back into control . So, he had confidence enough to calmly act in a way to redirect her mind and bring her back to a walk. And then they had a successful first ride, and he stepped off, and it was a good thing.

Now, most of the time—or we'll say a lot of the times—here's what can happen. The horse responds from fear, runs away, or tries to get the rider off, and the rider responds, rather than with confidence, responds with fear. What happens when we respond with fear is that we clench up. We act fast, we act rash, and we're just reacting because we're feeling so much fear. What happens as a result of the way that we're thinking when we feel fear is that we act that way, and then the horse reacts to us. What the horse does when we react in fear is goes faster and tries harder to get us off their back, and it's almost never a good ending.

So, why does that matter to you? With people, and with our kids, the one thing that I wanted to relate this to is the point where you find out what they've done. And a lot of times, as parents, we react in fear. We react in fear. We react because we're afraid for their safety. We can react with frustration, with anxiety, because they didn't do what we told them. They're not doing what we want them to do. We think that they're in danger. We think that they're making bad decisions—and they are. And so we react either in... So we have these thoughts, okay, that make us feel frustrated, angry, or fearful. And when we feel this way as a parent, we're not going to get a good result from our kids. It's the same as the horse because they're reacting based on how we feel because how we feel is coming out in our actions.

The point here is everybody knows—I mean, it's common sense almost—we know not to react and not to blow up. The question is, how do we go about getting that done so that we have a better result? How do we show up as the calm and confident leader in those key moments that determine big results when there's a lot on the line? And in those moments with your kids, there is a lot on the line. And the thing of it is, is you can. First of all, just to know that you can, because those moments are so critical. It is possible, regardless of the circumstance, to show up as the calm, confident leader.

The first step that I'm going to give you today—we go more into this; there's also a podcast about this, and we go deep into this in our Stable Living program—but the first thing that I'm going to give you is this: plan and be prepared for those moments, okay? Just plan and be prepared. Have the mindset to know how you wanna show up. That's the first step. Know how you want to present yourself in those moments. Now, just because you're thinking that thought, it's not like, "Oh, I know something bad's gonna happen. I know something bad's gonna happen." That's not the thought. The thought is, "When bad things happen, and they inevitably will, this is how I'm going to present myself." So, we want to turn the thought into a positive thought of how you're ready to present yourself. That's the first thought. That's the first step. More on this to come.

Thank you for taking your time to be with us and remember: You Are Destined For Greatness.