Monday, January 3, 2011

Goals

So this is my favorite time of the year. I love to review and analyze how to be better in anything. Anyone who has visited my house knows I love self-help books and actually didn't understand why people read anything other than non-fiction for a long time. This time of year everyone has an opinion on how to set goals, make goals and of course attain goals. So I get to read a lot of self help articles, coaching articles, business articles even financial articles. All of these are in the news in January.
There are a lot of similarities in all of the articles; set an attainable goal, measurable goal and give yourself a time line for example. Also remember to set monthly goals that will help you attain your quarterly goals that will help you attain your yearly goals! This is a lot of goal setting!
One year I got so addicted to setting goals that I set a goal for myself every hour of the day and got fixated on the math of goal setting.
Than recently I found some notes from a sport psychologist I use to go to for my horse shows. Of course, my goal oriented parents thought it would help me to compete better. It did and really helped me understand pressures of competing. This man was a very big professional and ended up coaching two gymnastic Olympic teams and many NFL players.
One thing he taught me I think we all need to practice more of; visualization. Very few hip news articles talk about this but it is so useful. First I am not talking about visualizing yourself on your horse. Well yes and no. I am talking about feeling the horse underneath you, smelling the wind as your ride, hearing your breath as you gallop, seeing the jump, feeling your body get into position. You get the idea. Now this is a brain exercise and is hard to do at first so you need to practice this visualization everyday.
For example everyday you need to sit quietly for 10 minutes and think about ONE goal. Than start to see yourself achieving that goal. You might just see yourself holding the trophy, than feel the trophy , than hear your friends scream, than see the cameras flash. That part is easy now visualize the skills needed to get the trophy. For example you need to visualize what the perfect dressage ride feels like. Every transition with the timing right, the perfect place in the arena, your core muscles tight but relaxed. You get the idea.
Now when you hit on something you can not visualize, feel, hear or smell in your imagination (And by the way you need to see this in color.) than you need to work on that particular skill. So let's say you can't feel a perfect canter transition you need to then get your coach to help you and feel one. Than visualize it everyday and practice them as often as is safe for your horse.
Our sport is very difficult because we can not drill our horses like a football player or other singular athlete can. We are working as a team with our horse so we need to know when we can push the horse and when we need to let his body recover. Because of this, visualization is a great exercise. So go sit quietly and start dreaming your dream for real! And remember one dream/step at a time.