Self administered dose of harden up..

It has been that long since I've sat on my horse, I'm seriously considering placing an ad for my mojo on a milk carton. If seen please return to..

I gave up on the horse scene this season, again! Recurring theme here.

I feel like I am just so precious about riding, and horses leave no room for preciousness. You have to have a bit of grit about you or you can just forget it.

So, I have all these aspirations with my riding. Like I want to do this event and that event, and have a go at this, and be really good at that. But if I fall out with my bestie at the stables then I can't possibly do any of this or I might get laughed at behind my back when it goes less than perfectly. Ridiculous? So ridiculous. Also, the rain just never really went away (until now, yus!) and I needed to work at polo blah-de-blah-blah. I've had a lot of time to reflect and realise why none of my equestrian related 'dreams' have materialised yet and I think it has something to do with the depths of my excuse bag rivalling the depths of Santa's gift bag. I am also the queen of 'what-if', and feeling like my horse needs to have perfect conditions to even consider jumping a single jump in a sand arena.

Even though he has proven time and time again that he can cope just fine getting himself over a small jump whatever the weather. Case in point being the slipperiest show jumping round ever in sideways rain, above, in which he did a foot perfect round over the baby amateur sized jumps that we're jumping.

Some excuses are well founded, like an assignment being due that weekend (lesson being that I need to do my assignments on time in the future), and money issues. I am a student with a teeny tiny student income. But with that being said, everyone faces individual obstacles and it's what makes the journey and builds your character - how poetic! But serious. I'm not the first man in space student to have horses, and it is absolutely do-able. You just need to have strategies. And one hell of a budget.

So moral of the story, or point of the blog post, is to say that in searching for my riding mojo, I went on a little journey of self discovery which in turn led to a self administered dose of harden the f up. I don't know how effective it is. I may need follow up treatment.

Instead of setting goals to do a pre-novice event or go to Horse of the Year (not an actual goal but a perfectly useable example) I need to start from scratch and just work on my consistency, and at not being comfortable with excuses. I don't know at what point I developed this habit, but it is a terrible one. I need to get out of this habit before I even consider trying to be successful and competing again.

So, step one to attain my goal of being consistent and following through, is to make a calendar for the rest of February, and actually stick to it. No excuses, whatever the weather. Lock that into my Google calendar (I live for this app!) and fit everything else around it. If I'm given an assignment, I will put that into the calendar around riding instead of putting riding around everything else because that method has been tried twice, even thrice, and failed every time.

So step one to becoming a 'gritty' rider is to follow the plan above, the weather is forecast to be Crapsville so no doubt some rainy day excuses will try to creep in and I will just have to give myself that "toughen up cupcake" pep talk. 2016 is the year of no excuses.