Pressure

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey y'all, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. Thanks so much for stopping by. Hope everyone is having a great day, a great week. And thanks so much for joining in. So I wanted to chat today about uh the the barrel race that we went to last weekend. And if you uh if you already have listened to some of these some of this channel, you know that I have horses that I compete on, I do barrel racing, and you know that my one horse has really her and I have really been having a time the last uh few years and really trying to get back into the swing of things, you know, slowly but surely, and one of the one of the hurdles that we're trying to overcome is is building building up confidence, building up trust. Uh you know, she has a lot of anxiety. I have a lot of anxiety after what we've been through, and so working on on building up that connection and that and that relationship and that trust and that confidence and getting back to competing has been a real focus of ours this year. So like I've talked about on here before, uh you know, I've done a I've done a bunch of stuff with her this with this spring, um, earlier this year with the intention and the focus of of working on that stuff. So we've been we've been focused on doing stuff for like desensitization, we've been focused on going on trail rides, we've been focused on um going and exhibitioning at bigger shows and just really trying to make both of us just slowly start to get back into the swing of things and keeping keeping the mind right has been kind of the biggest focus, one of the biggest focus. So she has been doing really, really great. Um we've been we've put in a lot of work and you know I'm I'm happy to report that it's it's made a difference. So she's been back in it um this season. She's gone to a handful of races now. We've competed in a handful of races, and uh she's done really well. Again, we're not we're not pushing it, you know. I'm not my goal is to not push it too quickly and to to go backwards, so we've just kind of slowly, consistently, correctly been trying to make our make competitive runs. I'm not asking her for too much at any time, I'm not asking for her her for a ton of speed, I'm kind of letting her pick her speed and go where she feels comfortable. The goal is for both of us to to reestablish that trust and that relationship and that partnership and that confidence. So, you know, I haven't been wanting to push it too much, and the goal has been come back correctly and come back the right way, and that's gonna build a better dynamic down the road, more confident each time, a little bit quicker each time, like things are going in the right direction. Well, we had a we had a race on Friday that I took her to, and this was this was what they call uh just a barrel race, a jackpot race. So it's just barrel racing, it's not it's not a rodeo event. Um, if you if you ever go into a rodeo, if you know anything about horses, you know anything about this, you know that rodeos, you have barrel racing there, but you also have a lot of other events there, and they tend to be a lot of a lot more uh stimuli for the horse. Like there's there's noise, there's sometimes fireworks, there's sometimes fares in the background, there you know, there's just a lot of a lot of ruckus, a lot more sights, a lot more noise, a lot more um energy than if you just go to what we call kind of a regular barrel race, you know, a a jackpot, especially if it's a local, smaller show, like the energy is very different. So this thing on Friday was a barrel race, um, but it was being held at a county fair, so the environment was less like a you know kind of easy peasy jackpot or easy peasy barrel race, and more similar to the atmosphere that you would find at a rodeo. So that that means they had rides set up, they had uh the Ferris wheel in the background, you know, they had um monster trucks, and they had tractor pools, and they had uh lots of kids running around because they had like stuff at the fair set up, so families were there, a lot of spectators were there with their kids, and it was a very noisy, hectic, high-energy lights, sounds, all this stuff environment. I I figure this was gonna be a good test for for us because again, this horse, she has her and I both, after what we've been through, but especially her, what like there's some anxiety issues there that we're trying to overcome. And just like people, horses are the same way. You put them in a situation that feels unfamiliar, you put them in a situation that has a lot of stimulation, a lot of things around them, a lot of different sounds, sights, it changes things. So you might have control over your mind and and your anxiety and all that in a calm, familiar setting, or a familiar situation, but transport yourself to a situation where there's a lot of new stimuli or a lot of new sights and sounds, noise, people, all you know, lights, different, different, different external input that maybe you're not that conditioned to deal with. Once you put yourself in that environment, all of a sudden the handle that you think you have on your your mind, your anxiety, your worry, your stress, all of that, that changes because now your brain is also having to cope with all this new external input that is coming in that you haven't really been conditioned to deal with yet, and that is very true for people, and it is definitely true for horses as well. So I knew that this was gonna be a challenging environment for us, um, because even though obviously she was safe and we were in a safe environment, I knew it's not gonna feel like that to her because all these different external stimuli coming in, all these different sights, sounds, loud noises, lights, people, is she's gonna feel her brain is gonna feel like I'm in an unfamiliar environment and I feel not safe. And we're not gonna get into all that right here on this episode, but I know I've talked about them here before. That's gonna put you in a state of fight or flight, and that's going to put your mind, your brain in a state of I have to get out of here because I don't this is not familiar to me, and I don't feel safe. And regulating your emotions in an environment like that takes challenge and it takes practice. So, anyway, we're in the warm-up arena, and you know, like I said, I know this is gonna be a test for us. I know this is gonna be a a challenge, and she's she's kind of we're in the warm-up arena, and she's obviously she's obviously a little nervous. I can feel that under me while I'm while I'm warming her up. She's looking around, she's not really, you know, she's like a little uncertain about all this different stuff, and I can feel she's a little on edge, and it's like okay, like that's alright. Like, I can as long as you're still engaged it, as long as you're still engaging the critical thinking part of your brain, that prefrontal cortex, as long as you're still listening to me, as long as you're keeping it together, like we're good. Like, that's part of what this is. We gotta work through this, we gotta work through dealing with this environment that feels a little scary and a little uncertain right now. And then they start doing the tractor pools, and these tra like these tractors were are like the loudest tractors I've ever heard, you know, at a tractor pool. Like they are intensely loud, and they're not that far away from where the warm-up arena is. So imagine the best way I could describe it is it almost sounded like a siren. Like, you know how like it feels if if you you hear police and ambulance sirens coming down the road and they're getting closer and closer and louder and louder. Like that's how it felt. Like the trectors would start reving up, and it would you would hear the noise, and then it would just become increasingly louder and louder and louder and louder, and it just you know felt like it was just the sound was just coming at you with the so much intensity, and it was it was very disturbing, honestly. And like I know it was disturbing for me because even me understanding what's happening and understanding the tractors and understanding what's going on, like the sound was so intense, it felt like something was getting closer to you, and like was just gonna explode or something, and I know that's what you know the hor the horses heard this too, and they're dealing with that same that same sort of of fear and and uncertainty to this auditory stimuli. So you know, every time the tractors would rev up, she would kind of panic and perk up a little more, and every time they did it, because they would rev up and they would stop, a few minutes would go by, they'd rev up and stop, a few minutes would go by, you know, repeat, repeat, repeat. So on about the so every time they revved up, I could feel her getting a little a little more uncertain, a little more on the muscle, a little more anxious and nervous, and on about the fifth time, or maybe sixth or seventh, I don't even know. But anyway, a handful of times down the road, they did a rev-up, and she just kind of came unglued for a second. You know, she wanted she heard it, she heard the noise increasing, she tried to take off on me. When I when I held her back from taking off on me, again, because fight or flight response, right? Like, I want to run away from the noise, but then I'm not letting her run away from the noise, or what she perceives, of course, as to be a f a threat to her safety. I'm not letting her run away from from that threat, so now we're gonna go into to fight. If I can't flee, I'm gonna fight. So she's trying to get away. I'm not letting her get away, so now she becomes a little aggressive, and so she rears up, she does a little buck, and luckily I was able to get her under control. You know, I did like it got her a little bit, I got her under control, got her settled down, she didn't throw me off or anything like that, but I knew in that moment that she like she's reached her limit, like she's going to come completely undone the next time this tractor revs up, and so I got her calm down and I made the decision to get off and to stand beside her so she could see me, and I just hand-walked her in the warm-up arena, and the next time the tractor revved up, she wanted to to come unglued, but now I'm on the ground with her, now she can see me. You know, I'm talking to her, and that's enough. That change, me getting out of the saddle and on the ground with her so she could see me. That change was enough to kind of bring her enough of a security blanket that she was able to handle it, you know, from then on, and she was definitely still nerved up and definitely still anxious. But me just being on the ground with her, her being able to see me, me being able to talk to her kind of face to face, like that was enough to keep her, you know, under control, and that was enough to allow her to regulate her emotions so she didn't have a full-on unhinged panic attack. And so I walked her around, you know, just hand-walked her, let her continue warming up, then I walked her up to the arena, and then I got on her right before I run, and I honestly the reason I'm bringing this up is because so much of horse training, and like I say on here all the time, this podcast is not meant to be about horse training, it's meant to be about life and dealing with life and dealing with how our minds work, our brains work, our mental health, how we respond to things, this, that, and the other. And the horses just are great examples, you know, to use when when talking about this because the stuff you use when training horses is so applicable to how we deal with real life. And I wanted to talk about this because in this moment, you know, there's a large part of training horses that revolves around you have to know when it's time to apply pressure, but more importantly, you have to know when it's time to back off. When is it time to remove some pressure and and back off to avoid major setbacks, you know, major problems. And in that moment, at this race the other night, I knowing what knowing what we've been through, knowing where we are in our journey, knowing how this horse thinks, knowing knowing everything I know, I knew the right thing to do in that moment was to rem to back off. To back off and remove some pressure. It's not always gonna be that way. Like, there's going to be some situations, there's gonna be some circumstances where you need to apply the pressure. Like you need to you need to push forward because you're never gonna go where you want to go. You're never gonna you're never going to reach those achievements to to reach those milestones unless you eventually you eventually have to to throw yourself into it, and you eventually do have to apply the pressure, and you have to see what you're made of, and you have to, you know, see where you are, you know, after preparation and and training and effort and and behind the scenes, eventually you gotta test it, you gotta put it out there, you gotta put it under the pressure, and you gotta see where you are. So there's absolutely a time for that. But the biggest the biggest deal is learning when is it time to put the pressure on, and when is it time to back off, and again, knowing everything that I know about what we've been through and about this horse and about every you know, all of it, I knew the right thing in that moment was to back off, and I knew staying trying to stay in the saddle and trying to work her through what she was mentally going through from the saddle was potentially going to result in something very bad. Like she she was either, you know, potentially she was going to come completely unhinged, potentially she was gonna throw me off, if not throw me off, just you know, continue to spiral mentally, and so now I have this horse who's felt like she's I've put her in an unsafe situation and not done what she needed me to do. So now our all the stuff we've been working on, our trust, our confidence, our all of that stuff takes five steps back. So in that moment, I did not think the right thing to do was was to continue to apply pressure, which is why I made the decision to get off. I made the decision to get on the ground, I made the decision to try to offer her the security that she needed to prevent all those bad things from happening and to prevent us from taking all these steps backwards. And that is what horses I mean that what that is one of one of the many things horses will teach you that applies to how I how you live your daily life is not always gonna be perfect. You're not always going to be able to ride it out. Like you sometimes have to realize that it's time to like the the way to take the step forward is actually to pause and take a step back for a minute and prevent undoing the progress that you've made. And when you're having a training, when you're having a um training session with a horse, you always have these things that you want to accomplish, right? Like, and it's so frustrating when you don't accomplish what you want to accomplish because you just you just want it to happen when you want it to happen, how you want it to happen, on the timeline you want it to happen, and horses will teach you time and time again. Your timeline means absolutely nothing, and you can have these goals and you can have these things that you want to accomplish, and have the progress, you know, you have these milestones of the progress you want to make in your head, and that's all well and good because we need something to guide us, but you better be prepared to continually be evaluating in real time where you are, where the situation is, what the situation requires, and you should always be prepared to and willing to decide. Okay, is this a situation where I need to apply more pressure and I need to push us forward, or is this a situation where I need to realize that it's time to back off, I need to realize it's time to take a pause, I need to realize that's enough for today, and you you see that you do that a lot in with training the horses in training sessions. You might have something you want them to accomplish that day, but you may have to settle, and you may have to say, you know what, I didn't get I didn't te get them to understand everything I wanted today, but I got a little progress out of them, and I think I probably need to end on that progress, and I need to just be done for today, we'll come back, we'll try again tomorrow. Because the worst thing you can do is push past the pressure point and make the situation worse than before you started. And again, I don't, you know, take that, relate it to your daily life, however it might be relatable to your to your daily life, to your daily journeys, to the to the obstacles that you're coming across, to the goals you're trying to accomplish. You know, it is we want to be driven, we want to apply pressure, we want to to chase the things we want, we want to do as much as we can as quick as we can do it, but sometimes the the better route, the thing that's going to actually get us the more meaningful steps forward towards whatever we're chasing, sometimes, a lot of times, the situation calls for us to to be aware and to recognize that pausing, you know, removing the pressure, taking a step back potentially, accepting a little bit of progress, but not perfection, like that is that is the way you move forward in the most meaningful and impactful way possible. So yeah, I hope uh I hope maybe that makes a difference to someone out there with whatever you're going through. Don't let perfection be the enemy of progress. Don't try to push yourself or push whatever it is you're trying to move forward. Don't try to push it so hard, so quick, so heavy, so fast, that you actually send yourself backwards. Smooth as fast, you know, correct as fast, doing it the right way with intention, with awareness. You know, that is what is gonna get you to that to that goal, to that achievement that you want. Alright, I hope everyone has a great rest of your day, and we'll talk again very soon. All right, thanks, bye.