United States Eventing Association

There are two certainties in riding: (1) You’re going to fall-down, and you’re going to get-up, and (2) you’re going to succeed, and you’re going to mess-up. In a world where so much uncertainty exists, it’s kind of comforting knowing that getting-up and messing-up are things we can always count on. As long as we’re OK with that we’ll be OK… but if we’re afraid of failing, falling, getting-up, or messing-up there’s a really good chance our happy-place might begin to feel a bit more like our crappy-place.

When it comes to riding it's important to remember that we won't ever succeed-our-way-to-success. We have to struggle our way there. It’s those struggles that’ll eventually create our strengths and those mistakes that ultimately deliver the messages that teach us how to grow. As long as we’re OK looking for our success in our struggles and our messages in our messes we’ll all be OK. After all, look closely at the word message, and you’ll see that there’s a little mess in there!

Without the mess-up there can be no message! We just need to have the courage to look past the messes and mistakes so that we can see the message they’re trying to teach us. Below is a fun way to understand the importance of mess-ups, missed-opportunities, mistakes, mindfulness and mastery. I like to call it the Five M’s to Mastery:

MESS-UP: We forget our dressage test because we're worrying about the judge and spectators.

MISSED OPPORTUNITY: We do the same thing in our next test even though we knew better! We missed the opportunity to learn because we forgot to pay attention to our last message.

MISTAKE: We do it again in our next test…ugh! We should know better by now so it’s at this point that it becomes a mistake (because we forgot to listen to our previous two messages).

MINDFULNESS: In our next test we remind ourselves to stay focused, and we remember our test! Yay! Being mindful of our previous mistakes (messages) allowed us to finally complete a test!

MASTERY: Thanks to the messages from our previous mistakes and mess-ups we never forget another dressage test.

Notice that in this example it wasn’t a mistake until we repeated the mess-up three times. The first two were learning opportunities that we either payed attention to or not. Remember, a good mistake is one that we make because we’re outside our comfort zone; one that we don’t blame on others; and one that we learn from and never repeat again! Even though it’s sometimes hard to accept, mistakes aren’t missed opportunities—they’re learning opportunities—as long as we’re mindful of them.

Here’s another fun example I read recently:

MESS UP: You’re walking through a pasture. There’s a big hole in the ground. You fall into it.

MISSED OPPORTUNITY: You’re walking through a pasture. There’s a big hole in the ground. You know it’s there but get distracted and fall into it anyways. You should know better.

MISTAKE: You’re walking through a pasture. There’s a big hole in the ground. You panic because you know it’s there and fall into it again! Big mistake!

MINDFULNESS: You’re walking through a pasture. There’s a big hole in the ground. You walk around it.

MASTERY: You walk through the pasture and jump over the hole for fun.

In the end, always remember that the road to success is always under construction and that being mindful of the holes that’ll appear along the way is the best way to ensure we don’t fall into them! Our struggles create our successes and our mistakes and mess-ups create our mastery of them!

I hope you enjoyed my Pressure Proof tip and will consider joining me this summer in one of my Equestrian Athlete Training camps! Four days of equestrian sport psychology, fitness, leadership, nutrition, yoga, and more! For more information visit https://www.pressureproofathlete.com.