Feature: Mindset matters

FEATURE

Mindset matters

Equine sports coach, eventer and author ALISON LINCOLN developed an interest in mindset and visualisation from an early age.

As a competitor at Pony Club Alison Lincoln often heard phrases like ‘attitude is important’, or ‘mindset is important’, or ‘you can use visualisation’, but was never quite sure what these things actually entailed.

Like many riders, Alison suffered a little from nerves. “I really wanted to progress to the higher levels, but I found coping with nerves quite tricky and I couldn’t really understand that.” But she didn’t let that hold her back, instead she began to expand her horizons and unravel the secrets to conquering her nerves and improving her performance.

Alison began researching what other sports people did, while also working as a business performance and life coach – and it became apparent to her just how much mindset did matter. She discovered there were common threads in other industries that could all be related back to riding. “How you think really matters, in all walks of life, not just in sports,” she says, “it’s all about making your brain work for you.”

Growth mindset

As human beings we tend to have a negativity bias. “That means we tend to focus eighty per cent of the time on what’s wrong, what’s not going right, and what we can’t do, and only twenty per cent on the good stuff!” Alison explains. “How often do we come out of the dressage arena and instead of saying ‘that went well and this went well’, we focus on the one part we fluffed up? Or we go around the cross country over thirty fences, but focus on the one fence where we got the striding wrong, rather than all the other fences that we jumped well.”

In Horsemanship Competence, a recent study conducted by the FEI, fourteen key attributes for good horsemanship were identified. “They discovered that the best horse people in the world all have a growth mindset,” says Alison. A growth mindset refers to the ability to approach a situation in a way that has you thinking ‘how can I make the best out of this situation I find myself in?’ or ‘what can I do to change things for the better?’ The opposite of a growth mindset is a fixed mindset, where someone might think, ‘oh well, I was born with this level of ability and I can’t change it’, or ‘I’m not a cross country rider, I'm not brave enough’. A fixed mindset is very limiting.

Changing your mindset is possible, but it’s something you have to work on and practise across everyday life. Research suggests that if you do change to a more positive or ‘gratitude’ mindset, you can enjoy health, relationship and other benefits throughout your life, including an improved relationship with your horses. “It’s not about saying ‘oh isn’t life wonderful, everything’s lovely’, it’s having a realistic optimism,” Alison explains. “It’s saying ‘I know I can make the best of it; I feel positive about the future.” It’s all about reframing how you see the world. “You want to look at a situation and rather than seeing all the things that are wrong, start to see the opportunities that might be there,” she adds. “For example, top horse people view a challenging horse as an opportunity for learning, rather than a problem.”

Master your nerves

Anxiety plays a role for many riders; nearly everyone gets nervous, even those at the top of the game. But, as Alison explains, it’s the way they interpret their feelings and thus the thoughts that those nerves trigger. Anxiety can be split into two areas, somatic and cognitive. Somatic anxiety is what you feel in your body, like butterflies in your tummy, jitters, needing to go to the loo; while cognitive

Visualise riding a clear round in vivid detail.

anxiety is what you tell yourself and the thought processes that occur. “What’s fascinating,” she says, “is that successful people, whether they’re athletes, business people or whatever, get all those same physical feelings but they view them differently.”

A top event rider might say ‘I get really nervous, but I know I need these nerves to perform well. They help me to be on my game’. An amateur on the other hand, may interpret these same signs of anxiety as ‘I can’t do it’, or ‘I’m not good enough’. “That’s where the cognitive side comes in, you start to worry and experience self-doubt, which leads to the downward spiral of limiting beliefs,” says Alison. But what would happen if instead you were to experience those feelings as excitement? “How different is the feeling of excitement from nervousness anyway? Still butterflies in your tummy, still feeling fidgety and jittery,” she adds. So why not try looking at those feelings as ‘I’m excited to get out there and I’m excited to see how I get on’.

Visualisation

The way you act has the power to affect your outcomes. Experiments have shown that people who simply act as if they’re happy actually end up being happy. How is this possible? Because your brain cannot tell what is real and what is imagined, which is why, if you are serious about upping your game, imagery and visualisation are some of the most useful tools you’ll ever use.

The point of visualisation is to enact what you are trying to improve by playing it out in your mind flawlessly, in exactly the way you’d like it to go. Visualise riding one transition, or a sequence of movements; negotiate a single fence that’s got you worried, or tackle the whole course. Alison explains how to make visualisation truly effective: “You need to incorporate all the senses and do it in real time. See it through

Australian eventer Shenae Lowings didn’t compete in her first World Championship by thinking she’d never make it (Image by Jess Morton).

your own eyes, feel how your horse moves, smell your horse’s sweat, feel the bit of your horse, feel the bit of heat wafting off their body, hear their hooves pounding into the surface you’re riding on.” Then, when it comes to game time, watch the magic happen. “You don’t have to think so much, you brain sort of goes on autopilot because it thinks you’ve done it before.”

If visualising the whole ride play by play seems a bit daunting, Alison has one final tool you can use to achieve great outcomes: “Visualise the end result.” Imagine you’re at the completion of your ride and you’re leaving the ring or riding through the finish flags. You have a massive smile on your face, so big it hurts. You're patting and praising your horse, you feel full of pride and so satisfied with how the ride went. Your horse is warm and breathing strongly in that post-workout way, but is still relaxed and feeling great. The people around you are smiling and enthusiastically congratulating you. Everything you see is in vivid colour, and you know you just nailed it.

Use this technique when you’re riding at home too, and set yourself up for the ride you want every time. And know, even when things aren’t perfect, you’ll be open to all the wonderful learning opportunities as they present themselves. Remember, you are more powerful and more capable than you think you are, and it all starts in the mind.

Pay a visit to Equestrian Hub for Alison’s Zoom video interview. Hear about the positive impact of catching your horse in the act of doing good and much, much more.