Choose Your Thoughts

What kind of rider are you?

• Do you feel 100% responsible for your results? Are you thankful for your horse, your teachers, for your opportunities to learn and grow? Do you create the world you live in?
• Or do you blame your circumstances when you have a bad day? Any disappointment comes from the horse, from the instructor, from the method, from the saddle, from the riding arena, from the other riders……? The world is out to get you?

What is your current reality? When something uncomfortable happens to you, how do you react?

Have a look at the words in the helmets below.

Would you describe your riding and training using similar terms? I’d encourage you to scan the types of words in the green and red helmet and ask yourself which helmet you tend to wear.

The Green Helmet

The green helmet contains supportive, empowering and positive thoughts. Wearing this helmet you have a positive view on life and how you see the world. You have a positive attitude, supportive beliefs and empowering meanings. Your way of thinking is serving you in your best interests and it’s bringing out the best in you. You feel energetic and in a good mood.

The Red Helmet

The red helmet contains limited, disempowering and negative thoughts. Riders wearing this helmet have a more negative view on life and how they see the world. They have a negative attitude, limited beliefs and dis-empowering meanings. Their way of thinking is not serving them in their best interests and it’s not bringing out the best in you. They feel sad and disappointed and in a bad mood.

It’s not good or bad, it’s about awareness

It’s normal to think ‘Greens’ and ‘Reds’. All riders change from time to time between these two helmets, between these two states of mind. It’s not wrong to wear a Red helmet, it’s just human nature.

But there is a difference if you occasionally wear the Red Helmet or if you ‘live’ with the Red Helmet day and night. The price we pay wearing a Red helmet is poor execution, poor performance and poor morale. Wearing a Green Helmet empowers us to have more choices, more opportunities and more chances at success.

The best riders sometimes choose to wear a Red helmet, but they wear it differently than riders who are not aware of their thoughts:

• If they for some reason WANT to go ‘Red’ for a while, they have an awareness of wearing the ‘Red Helmet’.
• And they wear the ‘Red Helmet’ with dignity and grace. They don’t get upset, don’t get angry, cool down, listen to music, spend some time alone or talk to somebody they trust.
• And then they stop thinking of whatever is making them to wear the Red Helmet, and don’t go there permanently.

You don’t have to wear the Green Helmet 100% of your time, but be aware the thoughts in the Red Helmet are created by YOU.

The power of choice

You have a choice what to think, to think ‘Greens‘ or ‘Reds‘, to wear the Green Helmet or the Red Helmet.

• If you find yourself caught up with the idea that ‘life is against you’, ‘circumstances are often out to get you’ and ‘why am I bothering with this straightness training’…. remember… it’s just an idea. It’s a meaning created by your thinking and the choice of wearing the Red Helmet.
• When you believe in the idea ‘Life’s what you make it‘, you take accountability to overcome obstacles and ask, “What else can I do to achieve the desirable result?” It’s the choice of wearing the Green Helmet.

You can not control the events, the circumstances, other riders, but you get to choose the meaning of anything, you can choose what to focus on. You have the power of choice.

The decision is always yours:

• Is it a problem with your horse or is it a challenge to discover something?
• Is it an obstacle or is it an opportunity to learn?
• Is the glass half-empty or half-full?
• Is this the end or the beginning?
• Is it a mistake or simply an undesirable outcome?
• Is it failure or just feedback that you need to correct your way towards a desired outcome?
• Are you looking for more choices, more opportunities, more success and a happy togetherness with your horse? Or do you feel disappointed or angry because there is a lack of results?

And YOU decide weather there is any value in this article or not.

Conditions or decisions?

“It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.” ― Tony Robbins.

It is not our conditions but our decisions that control our life. Two riders can have the same difficult experience and yet one decides it’s the end and the other decides to utilize this event as a driving force to start over and become more.

What’s the difference between those two riders?

Their minds! The difference is in how they look at things and what helmet they choose to wear!

The secret is to become conscious about your decision making.

Minor decisions – Major impact

It is easy to think that if we make good choices about our career, marriage, education, income, family, etc., we should be able to do just fine.

But when it comes down to it, it isn’t the major choices we make in life that count the most! It is the everyday, minor decisions and little choices in our way of thinking that will start to affect our whole life. Little decisions like:

• what am I going to focus on
• what am I going to think
• how do I handle problems with my horse
• how do I look at problems in the past
• what do I do when I’ve made a mistake
• what do I do when someone else has made a mistake
• how often do I criticize or complain
• how do I react to negative attitudes or opinions from others
• how interested I am in my horse
• how much encouragement I give to other riders
• which helmet I will wear most of the time

Any one of the choices we make affects something about us; what we focus on, what we think, what we do, how we feel, how we react.

These ‘little’ choices are exceptionally important. It may be the big choices in life that set the direction for where we’re going, but it is the little choices that get us there (when you wear the Green Helmet) or not (when you wear the Red Helmet)!

Choose your helmet & Change your horsemanship!

You experience about 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts every single day of your life. And they’re your thoughts – nobody controls how you feel and think.

The quality of your thoughts, beliefs and meanings determines the quality of your life and your horsemanship.

So make each thought count:

• If you find yourself caught in ‘Red‘ thinking, think ‘Aha, interesting” (in stead of “Oh No!”) and simply choose a word out of the Green Helmet.
• Replace every ‘Red‘ thought with a ‘Green‘ one.
• It’s only one decision, one thought that swings the balance to the other helmet!

Choose your words, choose your helmet and it will change your horsemanship!

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