In dressage you have to be humble enough to accept advice. You have to be able to critique yourself and accept criticism. However, you also have to be able to block out the non-sensical advice, the critique from those who are merely “critiquing” in order to suffocate your spirit and your passion for the sport you love.
That is yet another art of dressage, the ability to determine which advice is beneficial and which belongs in the garbage.
One form of bad advice is easy to identify: any advice that actually offers no solution. They say that a negative person has a problem for every solution and sometimes there are people that quite literally like to rain on any parade. Their criticism typically begins with “you will never” or “don’t expect to ever get to B”, whereas constructive advice will come more in the form of “right now you can’t but if you…” or "if you work more on A then you will reach B."
As a rider you must first determine which advice belongs in the garbage and then achieve the more difficult part which is blocking out that advice that you deem completely unproductive and unhelpful! Advice like “give your horse to a better rider” or “your horse would already be at Grand Prix now if” is difficult to brush off. But let’s face it, anyone who gives this sort of advice is either jealous or just doesn’t get that life isn’t actually about where one should be, but about the journey one takes in getting there.
The second, and even more complex type of advice wisdom, is knowing that bad advice doesn’t necessarily always come from people you dislike, or distrust. It can quite often be given by those who genuinely care about your well being.
Recently, I have been facing this one quite a lot, as I start back riding after a long time off, on a horse that can be rather “spirited” and with an injury that is really not healed, but that has to learn to cope with what I want to do with it. The most common one I get is “be careful”. Now the people that are telling me to be careful are not giving me bad advice. From their point of view they are simply looking out for my health. However, for me it is advice that I have to block completely out of my mind when I get on my horse.
If I mount my horse and my mind is saying “oh god be careful” or ”oh no, a chair be careful”, “oh no, a flapping tarp be careful”, I am sending constant stress signals to my horse and within minutes he will be thinking “oh god what do I need to be worried about, if she is worried, surely I should be."
This doesn’t mean that I go galloping off into a storm, it simply means that I have to block out that advice, and turn it into wisdom that will actually help me on the horse. Instead of saying “be careful”, I tell myself that what those people really mean is “be smart”. And then when I get on my horse I’m not sending him nervous vibes, but sending him confident reassurance, that everything will be ok. We just have to remember to be smart and work together.
So much of our sport is determined by our mental capacity to accept, interpret, understand, apply, but also block out what people around us say. We have to decide if one piece of advice is right for us and quite often really think about how to apply that in a productive way. The next time someone tells you to “be careful”, say to yourself: "ok they are looking out for me, but getting on my horse like an ice block of tension isn’t really going to help, so I just have to be smart."
The next time someone begins a sentence with, "you will never," ask yourself if there is anything positive in their critique or if they are simply judging you on a split second moment. A thick skin is a must in dressage, and so is the ability to accept your own weaknesses. Deal with them, and above all be smart about what advice you let come into your mind and stay there, because whatever thoughts go through the mind, is felt in the body. Everything that is felt in the body sends a message to your horse!
by Sarah Warne - Photo © Rui Pedro Godinho