I Love My Mistakes … Give Me More!

Seek errors as I ride my horse?

What we all strive for is to stay focused, confident, calm, and energized in ANY situation. Emphasis is on the word “any”!

When you feel good, you ride well.

When you are frustrated, angry, distracted, worried, making excuses, or doubting yourself, you WILL ride somewhere below your best.

One of the most challenging times to stay positive and focused is when we make mistakes!

It’s so much easier to be defensive, deny anything happened, try to hide, make-up an excuse, or blame someone else for the error of our ways. Surely one of those tactics will make that stupid mistake go away forever! Let’s just pretend like it never happened!

Well … when we use one of those familiar approaches, our riding goes South. (Refer to the second paragraph above!) If we make ditching errors a habit, our progress will crawl at a snail’s pace.

Here’s a radically different way to think about your errors … LOVE them!

In Dr. James E Loehr’s book, Stress for Success, he says, “Coming home is facing the truth about your most profound weaknesses and making a commitment to do something concrete and tangible about them.”

In Daniel Coyle’s book, The Talent Code, the book discusses how talent is grown. The talent beds of performers all over the world have a huge thing in common. They practice in small chunks until they reach the inevitable mistake. THEY ARE LOOKING FOR THE ERROR. The approach is to correct the small mistake in a small chunk in the overall set of technical skills.

This strategy allows a student to progress accurately, efficiently, and quickly.

The key is to know that errors are an integral part of our learning. No one escapes that. And, mistakes are not only a part of our expansion, they single handedly give you the critical information you need. You get the precise piece of skill to practice to advance yourself at that one moment.

And then there’s the mental/emotional side of the equation. We tend to do funky, emotional gyrations when we make errors. Isn’t it interesting that we hope no one noticed our blunders and perhaps they will magically go away?!? This natural inclination is the exact opposite of what we need to do.

So, here’s six suggestions to help you turn mistakes into your friends:

1. Chunk your riding into skill sets. The big headliners include mental skills, horsemanship, and specific techniques for your discipline. Now break them down even more, i.e., use of your seat, hands, balance, approach to a maneuver, etc.

2. Face the truth about your weaknesses within these chunks. Then, get as specific as you can about where you make a mistake.

3. Sloooooow down. Do the movement at a slow pace. This will help you pinpoint where the error is occurring.

4. Be clear about the correction. Maybe you already know. If you don’t, get someone who does know to give you accurate information.

5. Practice the correction. Begin the whole sequence again until you hit the error. Keep repeating the sequence and notice how this process just keeps moving the error methodically down a clear path of skill acquisition.

6. Recondition yourself mentally and emotionally about making mistakes. Tell yourself, “I LOVE mistakes!” Laugh and lie to yourself until it becomes true! As you do this you will spare yourself a ton of emotional negativity and become a laser beam for correcting your errors.


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Comments

One Comment on I Love My Mistakes … Give Me More!

  1. Cheri Le Clear on Wed, 3rd Feb 2010 4:13 pm

    2. Barbara,
    I was all set to leave for a local Ranch horse versatility show on Saturday and my slant divider on my trailer was frozen and I could not close it, to close the trailer. Even the big strong guys around could not make it budge. I laughed and heard you say ” no problem” I’ll just heat up some water and poor it over the hinge. I calmly unloaded my horse, got out a water heater I keep around to heat my horses water and heated a little water and unfroze the hinge and we were off. As I was warming my horse up for the working cattle horse portion, I could feel myself steady in my optimum performance state until I looked at the pattern drawn out by the judge. OH MY GOD It was more complicated than I had ever seen and this was the green horse class. The loops, the dotted lines with little arrows going left, right and back. There was one clipboard and 10 frantic riders trying to figure it out. One prepared girls mom wrote out her own copy for her. I broke the pattern down into three phases and memorized them one at a time. I rode the pattern in my mind and went back to the clip board to see if I had it right, but I did not want to be a hog the pattern, some people were really freaking out, one started to cry. I was third, the two people before me each did something different. I had a great run, my horse was wonderful, I got two turns wrong, I still came in third. I was reserve champion for the day, I lost the champion award by those two turns.

    But was it really the turns? I don’t think so. I did not go into the day believing I could win. I prepared to do well, but not to win. This was my first full RHV show, so I thought “NO WAY” will I win, I guess to protect myself. Mentally, I did not put myself in a position to win. One last calm look at that clipboard to see that the rollback was left then right. Would have changed the outcome of the day. But I know what happened (grin) I didn’t think it would make any difference, and I just wanted to survive the thing. I do not have to make excuses about the “complex” pattern (ok I complained with everyone else at first) I do however need to come prepared to write down the pattern and mentally prepare to ride it to the best of my ability and give my horse every opportunity to do his best. The rest is not up to me. One more mistake I will not have to repeat

    Thanks!
    Cheri

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