After graduating I set up a practice however you could say my niche found me. I had just bought an ex racehorse and was retraining him and suddenly I was talking to people who had lost their confidence through riding. Indeed my own experience of not owning a horse for 5 years had led me to lose a bit of confidence and ability. I started to work with people as well as doing research as to why riders lose confidence. It has taken me 2 years of studying clients, professional riders, and developing knowledge of neuro science to create a business model based on my research. What I discovered didn’t just affect the horse riding community but did in fact relate to the society we live in today.
What is that?
We are in a society where we are chasing information. We are, after all in the age of the internet where information is now just a click away. We feed our brains over and over again. We read books, we watch tv programmes, we buy the dvd, the cd and the book, we take in everything both good and bad, and either way we are inputting information in the brain which at some point, can be used as an output specifically, when we ask ourselves a question or indeed more pertinently, have a thought.
What i've noticed is that we can have a whole conversation with ourselves based on wanting to do something and almost immediately we can discount wanting to do that thing just because we have talked ourselves out of it. For example – “I’m going to ride my horse today, oh no I’m not because the weather forecast says it’s going to rain this afternoon so I don’t want to get wet and if I ride him in the rain he is going to be grumpy and not go forward and then he might slip and I might fall off so actually no we won’t ride today!”
It amazes me how many people go through this mental process of making decisions on a future that hasn’t even happened yet.
This is the primary the reason why dreams are not materialising, why people are not taking a chance on their lives and their futures…. because oooh something “might” happen that may change that. The brain is getting confused.
We are taking in so much information which is clogging up our brains, but this information comes out as output with our thoughts. One thought then breeds into another thought based on the information we have selected in our brains. Therefore if we are focusing on the negative then the negative will breed and procrastination and fear step in.
So… stop thinking and start doing! Sometimes it is in our interests to not overthink. To just stop and live in the now, live in the feeling and not the thinking. Today’s society is based on thinking too much and we have stopped feeling. We think that intelligence is the answer, we think that we are protecting ourselves from pain.
Life is about finding a balance! A balance between thinking and doing, by doing this, we start achieving, we start living our dreams, we start being brave and reaching out. Anything is possible if you put your mind and your action into it. You can’t have one without the other.
I started my coaching business 2 years ago with an idea. An idea that I didn’t know would develop into the successful business that I have today. I have clients based all over the world, I wrote a book that makes sales on a monthly basis, I created an online programme that has helped numerous clients control their thoughts, I created mp3s to help clients become confident and focus on self awareness, I have done workshops through national organisations like British Dressage, British Horse Society and British Showjumping and I have my own Let’s Get Confident workshops that I deliver across the UK. I have even created an annual event and have 300 people signed up.
This was possible because I had an idea and then I put in some action – well lots of action actually, I tried and tested a lot of things. It hasn’t been easy and I’m still learning. But most of all I have no regrets because i love what I do! I love helping people to change the way they think and become confident.
Stop thinking and start doing. I remember watching a video by Arnold Schwarzenegger where he said something like “while you are sleeping someone else is creating – so sleep faster”. Don’t let the grass grow under your feet, if your idea feels good to you then in the words of Nike JUST DO IT!
Be brave! Feel the greatness in achieving instead of overthinking and everything remains the same.
Faye Low is an Equestrian Confidence and Performance Coach who works with individuals to help them control their thoughts and stop the ‘what's ifs’ from developing so that they can fulfil their dreams of riding their horses with confidence. You can connect with Faye on Facebook page Horse Confidence.
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