Making mistakes

I am in the process of reading Chris Hadfield's book "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth". The book started out with a disjointed feeling, but it is starting to come together, and is full of his experiences, and then the life lessons to be taken from them. One of the chapters discusses how Astronauts tend to be high achievers used to success, but that part of the routine of being in the Space program, is that everything you do, in particular mistakes, is analysed to death. So to cope with their "failures" being highlighted and discussed to death, they have to change their mindset to thinking of them not as mistakes, but rather as teaching/learning moments.

I think this is important for riders too. How often do riders just want to pretend that chip never happened, or rush to get the horse cantering again when it breaks? By trying to ignore or cover up the "mistake", you don't give your brain a chance to think about what went wrong, then analyse WHY it went wrong, and finally come up with the fix so it doesn't happen again. And so we end up making the same "embarrassing" mistake over and over again.

We don't want to make the mistake bigger than it was though, by giving it too much importance, and we definitely don't want to dwell on it, but by giving it appropriate consideration, and coming up with an alternative approach to solve the issue, it will increase a rider's ability to self correct, and will result in increased confidence. Think about it...if you consider mistakes to be learning moments, then your ride will only be full of good things and moments where you get your monies worth in lessons!

Here is an example: a horse is cantering, but keeps breaking to a trot at the out gate. One solution would be to just chase the horse forward at the out gate, but this is a "covering up" solution. A learning moment would mean trying to analyse why the horse keeps breaking to the trot at this point. Is the horse distracted by activity in the barn? Is the rider? Is the horse loosing its balance and falling in/out at that point so it is trotting to rebalance? Is the horse acting gate sour? By figuring out why the failure is happening, a more productive solution can be found; more active inside aids to keep the horse's focus; rider looking into turn to keep their own focus; increased rebalancing aids heading into corner, and supporting aids through the corner; using a crop to get the horse past the out gate, but then working on why the horse is sour.

By looking at the problem and solution in depth, the rider can then take that solution, and use it in different locations and situations, and can then come up with their own list of fixes and thereby become a better rider!

So next time you do a crotch jarring chip, don't get embarrassed, be proud that you set yourself up for a learning moment! (and if you are in the lesson with someone who does the crotch jarring chip, try to steal their learning moment so you can avoid the same fate!)

Karen