I recently went horse riding with my partner. Kev.
It was only the second time Kev’s ever been on a horse, and he did really well!
I used to do a lot of riding when I was a kid and it’s very much like riding a bike (although much bigger and hairier).
I felt a little rusty, but things came back to me very quickly.
I was given a very handsome chap, Mickey, to ride.
He was beautiful, and looked after me really well.
During the ride, I kept feeling really grateful that I’d spent all those hours as a kid learning how to stay on a horse.
Like any young rider, I spent a great deal of time getting it wrong and being dumped on the floor, but I think when you’re a kid you have greater resilience when it comes to learning new things.
You tend to be more accepting that skills don’t just happen overnight.
You’re in the thick of learning both at home and at school, watching your mates get things wrong, too, and growing together.
When you learn new skills as an adult, you can get deflated when you’re not good at things straight away, or it simply feels hard.
You can say things to yourself like, “It’s just not my thing”, without giving yourself the time and space to make mistakes and learn from them.
You see other people doing things well, and you don’t want to look awkward or silly in comparison, so you give up before you’ve even started.
That’s just your ego getting in the way.
Weirdly, it’s trying to help! It’s a defence mechanism that aims to prevent us feeling embarrassed and disheartened, but it actually stands in the way of trying new things if you’re not careful.
Listen to that voice, acknowledge it, but don’t let it get in the way of trying something new.