Mental Tip: Reframing Nerves
What does reframing nerves mean?
In this context, reframing nerves means intentionally shifting your perspective regarding the nerves you’re experiencing as they arise. Nerves typically feature both physical and mental symptoms, such as your heart racing, butterflies in your belly, sweaty palms, and shallow breathing paired with a negative perception that something may go wrong. When we feel nervous, we feel uneasy, restless, worried, and stressed, which is not ideal going into a lesson or a horse show.
The opposite of feeling nervous is feeling excited, which actually has some overlap with nerves. The physical symptoms of feeling nervous, like your heart racing and butterflies in your belly, is exactly the same as feeling excited. You feel that physical activation and anticipation while you’re excited, similarly to while you’re nervous, but the only key difference is your mental perception of what you are experiencing.
Nerves are viewed in a negative manner, while excitement is viewed in a positive manner. Nerves are often paired with a sense of dread, while excitement is often paired with a sense of readiness and preparedness. The choice simply is yours to either go with the nerves, or reframe them as excitement. It’s all in your mental perception and interpretation of what you are physically feeling, which can be changed for the better!
Why is reframing nerves important for riding?
Reframing nerves in either a positive or a neutral way helps you achieve the mindset you need in order to ride and perform at your best. Although possible, it is quite difficult to perform well while feeling nervous. Instead of fighting the nerves, work with them by reframing them in your favor. Not only does this help yourself and the way you ride, but it also helps your horse out. Your horse both feels and responds to what you are thinking, feeling, and doing both in and out of the saddle with them, and those feelings can be contagious. When you’re feeling nervous, there is a high likelihood that your horse will feel nervous too. Horses can feel nervous on their own, but feeding into their nerves can only worsen the situation at hand.
We want to feed our horses positive information, like calmness and confidence, so that we can influence them in the best way. While horses automatically react to stimuli, we have the power to respond and remain in control of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Approaching your rides with a positive versus negative mindset sets the tone for the ride, and this simple shift can be so crucial for either the benefit or deficit of our rides. Also, we want to enjoy and look forward to our rides rather than constantly dread them!
How do I reframe my nerves?
Before you can reframe your nerves, you need to both notice and understand them. Think about what you think and feel when you’re nervous, where you think the nerves may be coming from, and if there are any patterns tied to when you feel nervous. Gather as much information as you can so that you can recognize both when and why you are feeling nervous at the time. The key is to both notice and intervene as early as you can.
Reframe your nerves by simply shifting your perception and your self-talk. Tell yourself that these feelings are normal, helpful, a sign that you’re prepared, and a positive indicator for your upcoming performance. Instead of thinking about what may go wrong, think about what can go right and how you can make that happen, and even look forward to it happening! The nerves can help you as long as you let them, but only you get to decide that for yourself. All you have to do is change the meaning behind them!
