Manifest Your Riding Dreams

Do you suffer from chronic self-doubt and constantly sabotage yourself through negative self-talk? Or maybe your self-talk isn’t even obvious, but there are underlying beliefs you don’t even question about yourself and your world.

Did you know you can change this? And it’s not even hard? Well, the actual steps aren’t hard, but staying aware and then making yourself do it are the tricky parts. Pretty much like everything in life… 😬

That said, believe it or not, I changed my riding skill, confidence, and results in a matter of weeks by doing what I’m about to tell you about. It’s hard to believe, even to me. I’m not saying I, all of a sudden, became a perfect rider by any stretch. Hardly. But by getting hold of my seemingly never-ending what-ifs and all the reasons why I would apparently never be good enough head chatter, I was able to focus on riding how I knew to ride and finally get some results.

How did I do it?

I may be dating myself, but I’ve been a dabbler in the “manifestation” world since “The Secret” came out in 2006. I know you must have heard about The Secret, if not watched or read it. Basically, the premise of that was that thoughts become things and if you change your thoughts, you could change your life.

Well, I, along with millions of others, jumped on that idea. Why not? Who wouldn’t want to just think different thoughts and change your life? And ever since then there have been countless books, videos, courses, webinars, you name it, promoting this concept.

But I, along with millions of others, could never get it to work for me. I thought I was doing everything right, did vision boards for a while, meditated, spent time visualizing, the works, but nothing seemed to really change. I still made the same amount of money, had the same job, same confidence or lack thereof issues… Why did this work for some people but not me? What was I doing wrong?

It wasn’t until recently, after more than 16 years of failing at it, that I finally figured it out, I finally found the missing piece.

It is ridiculously simple but not easy.

It turns out Rhonda Byrne was right, along with countless others who have been telling us this for decades… you get what you tell yourself all day long, consciously and subconsciously.

Now I KNEW this. This wasn’t some new concept.

What was the difference?

The only difference was discipline and persistence. I’m not kidding. That was seriously the only difference.

While I thought I was doing the practice correctly before, there were actually two things I was doing wrong, both implying the same thing – that I didn’t really believe in what I was doing.

What were these two things I was doing wrong (and you probably are too)?

• Even though I would do my meditation or visualization twice a day, write my “dream life” script, or do affirmations, at the same time I was constantly looking for other techniques, other ideas, basically the “magic pill” that would fix it all. I would find a new book, watch a new YouTube video, try a new technique for maybe a week (if I was really committed, lol), but then quickly decide it didn’t work and move on to the next, all the while thinking I was doing everything right.
• I spent the majority of my day telling myself the opposite of what I’d visualized or scripted, whether that was through internal dialogue throughout the day (often without realizing it as the stories I was telling myself felt like “facts”), and I was telling these unwanted stories (“facts”) to other people on repeat. I bet you do this too. Most of us do and don’t even realize how we’re perpetuating the same thing over and over again.

If you look at reality like a mirror that reflects what you are thinking and feeling, how could I possibly get back anything other than spinning my wheels? By constantly looking for new techniques to fix my life, I was essentially telling my world to show me a life that needed fixing! And by constantly feeling desperation for all that I wanted 90% of my day, spinning my wheels all the while, and feeling/telling myself all the reasons I wouldn’t and couldn’t have what I wanted, all I was going to see back was more of the same! How can it be any other way?

What I was really doing was all sorts of techniques to visualize, meditate, or script my way to this dream life, but when I wasn’t doing that (so yes, the majority of my day), I was thinking and feeling the way I always did. I was still feeling desperate about wanting freedom with money, completely incompetent in my riding, and like I would never be good enough in so many aspects of my life.

Now don’t get me wrong, while I was visualizing my dreams, I was well aware of my self-sabotage, so at the same time I was constantly looking for ways to get rid of my limiting beliefs. I became convinced that the reason my visualizations weren’t working was because I had “blocks”, so I was also on the hunt for the magic pill that would release me of these apparent blocks.

Do you see a theme here? If the thoughts, both consciously and subconsciously, that we’re marinating in all day long create what happens in our lives, is there any doubt whatsoever why I kept creating the same situations over and over and over?

Of course not!!

So how do we fix this?

Again, I go back to discipline and persistence. You have to be deliberate about your thoughts and persist with only that which you want to be true all day long. That is truly the key. I don’t mean that you have to be positive 24/7, but just that whenever you start trash-talking yourself or your life, you catch yourself and stop, don’t keep going down that road.

It also means stop complaining and don’t tell your negative “story” to others. Don’t complain about your ride. Don’t complain about the people at your barn. Don’t complain that you’ll never figure things out.

You are essentially casting a spell or programming yourself by your thoughts and beliefs, whether they are positive or negative, so pay attention and choose wisely!

If this seems too hard, then you just need to accept your life the way it is. I’m sorry, but it’s true. If you want your life to change, you must do the work to change it, starting with the stories you tell yourself and other people.

Tell yourself a new story over and over and over again. And again. And yet again. Do it UNTIL. Until you get where you want to be. Eventually you will start to believe it. This is what happened for me. And then when you’re there, keep at it. If you don’t and get complacent, you can slip back into your old thought patterns. That also happened (happens 😬) to me. After a show, I stopped it all and then the old doubts started creeping back. You just have to keep choosing the life you want and focus on it.

It doesn’t matter what technique you use. You could script, say affirmations, say ask-formations, visualize, or whatever other technique you enjoy doing. It’s not the technique. It’s convincing yourself of the story you’re telling yourself until it sticks, until your beliefs change. You get whatever it is you assume is true – and the way to do that is to constantly repeat the assumption you want to have. You’ve been doing it for things you don’t want your whole life. It’s something you’re already doing. The thoughts you have on repeat or what you were repeatedly told as you grew up have become your beliefs, most of which you don’t even realize may not be true. Now you just need to choose what you’d rather believe and deliberately program yourself.

As I said, despite thinking I was doing “the work” for over 16 years, I really wasn’t. I was just pretending to. I wasted time reading books, watching videos, taking courses, but not truly doing the work 24/7. And I’m sure any or all of these resources would have worked if I’d really and truly done what they’d said! This is not new information!

Again, it’s just discipline and persistence. You tell yourself the story you want to be true, not contradicting it to yourself or anyone else, until. Until what? Until you have what you want.

Simple, but not easy, but if I can do it, 100 times over, you can too. You’ve got this.

Want someone to cheer you on? Feel free to leave a comment or email me at kim@beginneradultrider.com. I’d love to hear from you and help you on your journey. ❤️🐴❤️