One of the bittersweet parts of my job is when my clients no longer need me. It is that moment when someone feels confident and resourced enough to strike out on their own. Whether it comes after a few sessions or a few years, it fills me with deep satisfaction. At the same time, there is always a quiet sense of loss.

I care deeply about my clients and I invest fully in helping them achieve the goals they set for themselves. In the process of supporting, guiding, and mentoring them through their challenges, we build a strong and trusting relationship. I get to know them in a deeply personal way. Because of that, when the time comes for them to move forward on their own, it can be hard to let go.

The “letting go” is not something that only happens at the end. Often it is an ongoing challenge throughout the process. When you care deeply, there are moments when you want to control the choices your client makes, if only to help them avoid pain you can see coming. I certainly have my own “Papa Bear” moments. When they arise, I try to notice them, acknowledge them, and then return to supporting my clients in a way that respects their responsibility for themselves and their choices.

It does not matter whether you are a therapist, a mental coach, a trainer, or a riding instructor. Our role is to guide in a way that builds real independence and genuine self confidence. This does not mean pushing people off a cliff to see if they can fly. It means helping them grow the knowledge, skill, experience, resilience, and belief in themselves that they need to succeed. Along the way, we give them opportunities to test their wings.

There are times when my clients feel frightened, anxious, or uncertain. There are moments when hope feels distant and change seems hard to believe in. In those moments it can be tempting to jump in and fix things for them. Instead, I often invite them to borrow my belief in them and in the possibility of change. That belief is not built on blind optimism. It is grounded in decades of experience and hard work standing beside people as they find their path forward.

This is how we help our clients unfurl their wings.

And eventually, fly on their own.

~ Paul

PC-Erin Gilmore Photography

#PsychSaturday #RidingFar #MentalPerformance #GrowthMindset #CoachingLife #TherapyReflections #PersonalGrowth #Resilience #ConfidenceBuilding #TrustTheProcess #LearningToFly #HumanDevelopment #CoachingWisdom #PsychologyInPractice #MentorshipMatters

Have you ever had a stretch of time when you just felt grumpy for no apparent reason?

For the last several weeks I have noticed a reduced patience for what I perceive as the nuttiness of our world. It is unfortunately all too easy to find examples wherever we look: economics, politics, education, popular culture, and of course the equestrian world.

Most recently, I have been struck by how often representatives of the competitive disciplines lament the lack of young, gritty riders who grew up riding “naughty” backyard ponies, galloping bareback, and jumping anything that crossed their paths.

In a similar vein, I have seen more and more comments about the increase in timidity, anxiety, fear, and tears among young riders. What has been most disheartening is the number of mean spirited and derogatory remarks coming from people who are in a position to teach our children. I am certain their students pick up on that lack of empathy and the quiet contempt beneath it.

I understand wistful sentimentality. I understand the sense of loss that comes from reflecting on a bygone era. What I do not understand, and cannot align with, is the lack of investment and creativity directed toward doing something positive about the perceived shortcomings of our current reality.

When my children were small, my wife had a refrain she repeated often: “Requests, not complaints.” It was her gentle way of shifting their thinking from what I would call a problem frame to a solution frame. What Pam and I eventually realized was that it was not enough to want our children to change their perspective. We had to change our own.

I spend my days helping riders work through trauma, fear, and anxiety. In my experience, addressing the fear itself often pales in comparison to addressing the negative self judgment and shame riders feel for having those emotions in the first place. That shame does not appear out of nowhere. It is shaped, in part, by our collective attitude toward emotion and its expression in our sport.

Sometimes I wonder what might happen if, instead of complaining about riders today, we got busy building solutions. What if we invested real resources into programs designed to develop joyful, skilled, resilient, emotionally and physically healthy riders and horses, rather than continuing to pour money into venues where young riders and their families are required to spend tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars simply to compete?

My son Justin calls himself a grumpy optimist. I am borrowing that moniker today.

In the spirit of optimism, I am choosing to align myself with the voices in our industry that respond to the real needs of today’s riders and modern horses with engagement, positive energy, creativity, and compassion. Let’s work to change the culture.

So here is my request. Will you join me?

~ Paul

#PsychSaturday
#RidingFar
#RiderMindset
#ResilientRiders
#ConfidentRider
#EmotionalFitness
#ModernHorsemanship
#EquestrianCulture
#ChangeTheCulture
#GrumpyOptimist

Well over twenty years ago, I was trained in the art and methods of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a collection of change-oriented techniques developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. While many of these strategies have been enormously helpful to my clients, a few simple ideas pack the biggest punch. One of them is what they called the Law of Positive Intent.

Simply put, the idea is that behind every behavior or statement is a positive intention, even if the behavior itself is ineffective, harmful, or poorly expressed. In other words, when we or others do unhelpful, frustrating, or hurtful things, the underlying motive is often understandable or self-protective.

Examples from our riding lives are easy to find. I think of myself when I am overriding. Pulling on the reins, body full of tension, heels creeping up in an effort to use more leg. The resulting picture is one of imbalance, conflict, and tension between me and my horse. Yet it is easy to imagine, or at least I hope so, that I am simply trying to create quality movement or avoid failure. Helpful? No. Understandable? Yes.

We all know about human biases. One prominent example is the actor-observer bias. This is our tendency to judge ourselves by our intentions and circumstances, while judging others by their actions and assumed traits. When this dynamic becomes hurtful or unproductive, it is still easy to understand why it happens. Humans are meaning-makers. We try to understand the world using the information available to us. We have access to our own internal states, but not to those of others. We only see their behavior.

Becoming aware of these biases and intentionally looking for positive intent in ourselves and in others can be a game changer. It allows us to reframe situations in ways that reduce conflict, improve communication, build trust, and create better strategies for meeting needs. This does not excuse harmful behavior. We can acknowledge positive intent while still setting clear boundaries and holding ourselves and others accountable.

Join me in playing with this idea in the coming week. Take a frustrating situation or interaction and apply the Law of Positive Intent to yourself and to others. Separate intention from behavior. Name the positive intention the behavior or words might be serving. Then consider what other strategies could meet the same need. As you do, notice what begins to shift. ~ Paul

#PsychSaturday #RidingFar #LawOfPositiveIntent #PositiveIntent #MindsetMatters #SelfAwareness #HumanBehavior #PersonalGrowth

My family has always celebrated Christmas. Filling Christmas stockings with treats and small gifts is one of our favorite traditions. As I was opening mine this year, one small, thin packet caught my eye. It stood out from the usual stocking fare. It was light, flat, and made no perceptible sound when shaken.

I was surprised to find a packet of Breadtopia dried sourdough starter inside. I love to cook, and I am endlessly curious about how different foods are made. Still, I never expected the gift of sourdough. Three days later, I baked my first loaf.

As I read the paper or scroll through social media, the new year inevitably brings a flood of retrospectives on the past and exhortations toward goals and resolutions for the future. At times, I find these reflections helpful and enlightening. Recently, though, I have become more aware of how easily they can limit our experience and quietly strangle creativity if we are not careful.

I see this every day in my work in the horse world. Riders get locked in. Locked into a discipline. Locked into a trainer. Locked into competitive or performance goals. Locked into a specific philosophy or perspective on the horse.

In psychology, there is a concept known as top-down processing. This is the tendency to filter experience through existing knowledge, ideas, plans, and learned procedures. It can be enormously useful because it is efficient. It helps us select what seems important in our environment and organize our behaviors and responses accordingly.

In contrast, there is bottom-up processing. Here, experience is taken in with far fewer filters, making room for awe and wonder. Meaning, understanding, and response emerge from the experience itself rather than being imposed upon it. While profoundly inefficient, this mode allows for a depth of creativity and an expansion of consciousness that predetermined frameworks simply cannot offer.

Much of my last twenty-plus years with horses has been devoted to developing this bottom-up way of being. I have often been told that I needed clearer goals or that I was wasting my horses’ potential. What those voices did not know is that I spent my first thirty years with horses deeply immersed in traditional knowledge, skill acquisition, and competitive ambition. I gained a great deal from that education, but in the end it left me feeling frustrated and empty.

We talk often about living in the present. Sourdough has become a surprisingly rich reminder of what that truly means. Each loaf, bun, bagel, or pretzel anchors me in the moment and reminds me of the vast world of possibility that opens when I do. Two weeks ago, I never would have imagined that I would be nurturing a yeast culture and baking bread today.

Here is wishing that everyone finds their own “sourdough” as we enter the wide and open opportunity of a new year. ~ Paul

#PsychSaturday 

#RidingFar 

#BottomUpProcessing

#TopDownProcessing

#PsychologyInPractice

#MindfulLiving

#CreativeProcess

#PresenceOverPerformance

#CuriosityAndGrowth

#EmbodiedAwareness

#HorseHumanConnection

#PersonalGrowthJourney

#EverydayPhilosophy

#FindingYourSourdough

When I write on Saturday morning, you will usually find me holding one of two coffee mugs. One has a picture of me and my horse Nubble hanging out in front of the barn. The other holds two pictures of my sons. The first is Justin and Luke at about five and two years old. The second is from Justin’s wedding a little over two years ago. The caption on the mug reads, “Then… and now.”

This mug touches my heart in so many ways. Of course, there is the emotional tug, the deep love I have for my sons, and the pride and joy I feel as I watch who they are becoming. It also reminds me of one of the core roles I have played in people’s lives as a therapist over the past 38 years.

We talk a lot about grit, skills, and strategies. We talk about doing the work and challenging ourselves as pathways to growth. Yet none of these are enough if we continue to look at ourselves and our lives through the same old lens.

There are many ways to help shift perspective, but two stand out as especially meaningful.

The first is belief. When someone does not believe they can change, I often offer to let them borrow my belief in them until they are ready to carry it themselves.

My belief in my clients and their capacity to change is not sentimental fluff. It is hard earned. It has grown through decades of work and through bearing witness to the resilience and brilliance of people facing some of life’s most difficult challenges.

The second shift is becoming a more accurate historian of your own life. One thing we know is that people are terrible evaluators of their own progress. No matter how far we have come, there is a strong pull to dismiss all of it after a bad day or a rough patch.

In those moments, I help my clients step back and remember where they started. I remind them of the growth and change that has already taken place. Sometimes those shifts are big and obvious. Other times they are small and subtle. All of them matter.

When you begin a journey, whatever that journey may be, I encourage you to take a snapshot of where you are starting. Let it be as detailed as a photograph in sharp focus. As you move forward, you or a trusted partner can take more snapshots along the way. Over time, you will have the pieces to create your own “Then… and now.”

Perspective matters. ~ Paul

PC – Erin Gilmore Photography

#PsychSaturday 

#RidingFar 

#ThenAndNow

#PerspectiveMatters

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#BeliefInChange

#MentalHealthMatters

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#ProgressNotPerfection

#Resilience

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