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The bond between horses and humans is a truly beautiful thing to witness and experience.  Horses have, for centuries, travelled and learned alongside their human companions. 

But how often do we stop and listen to what THEY are teaching us? Really stopped and watched how horses interact with the world?  Horses are naturally intuitive creatures that trust their instincts to guide them at every moment and in every encounter.  We humans have suppressed our intuition, our empathy, and our openness to learning from the world around us. 

With Equine Guided Education (EGE) the focus is on “being in the world”; guiding you back to yourself, to what really matters, and to an openness and understanding of the word around us.  The Equine Guided Educator will help individuals to identify their future goals and to develop a healthy self-knowledge and responsibility. 

Horses guide individuals toward a healthier sense of self during the course of the education.  Because horses experience the world in a way that is truly unique to them, they are able to react to each experience without doubt in their abilities and their place in the world.  By opening themselves to the horse’s way of experiencing life, individuals open themselves to an education in life itself.

 The guide, horse, helps find paths through previously unexplored territory; unexplored territory such as healthy thought processes, awareness of goals, and connection with the world.  Learning methods like kinesthetic learning are employed with hands on activities to help individuals feel what the horse is feeling and to connect physically with their guide. 

EGE can be useful in many different life arenas – building workplace confidence, parenting, therapy, leadership development, etc. The Equine Guided Educator is trained to recognize each individual’s strengths and weaknesses and to plan a unique educational experience with these in mind. The horse, Educator, and individual, will embark on a journey together toward a healthier and happier life.

Stop the self-abuse, silence the critic!

We all have that little voice in our heads.  You know the one – that inner critic that nags at you and worries away at your confidence and happiness, that pipes up with sneering remarks after a silly blunder or before a big step in life.  Don’t you just HATE that inner voice?  When we let that inner critic influence our decisions or our daily life, that’s called self-sabotage. Self-sabotaging in a nutshell is simply acting against your own best interest.  It’s that little critical voice in the back of your head that tells you that you aren’t smart enough, funny enough, pretty enough, lacking in SOME way. 

We all self-sabotage in one way or another; whether its in some small way, such as thinking you’re not good enough to ask for a promotion or in a bigger way such as picking an argument with your significant other for no reason when everything is going “too well”. The good news is, you don’t have to listen to your inner critic.  You can change your thought patterns, and thus your self-sabotaging behavior.  As Roderick Thorpe, the American novelist, puts it: “We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.”

The first step to becoming your own best friend – confront the inner critic.  Okay, I know this is the scary part but to overcome it, you have to face it!  Imagine yourself as a knight armored to face a fire breathing dragon if that helps, or imagine the inner critic as a grumpy Muppet (that’s what I do J ).  Listen to all of those terrible untrue things the inner critic is telling you.  Write them down.  All of them. Read them again.  Maybe twice, if necessary.  This could be as little as a ten minute process for you or you might consider taking a few days – carry a notebook with you and write down every negative thought that comes to mind. 

NOW KILL THE INNER CRITIC!  Slay the dragon!  Burn the paper where you wrote down the negative thoughts!  Flush it down the toilet! Bury it! Maybe just throwing it away will suffice, but acknowledge that the inner critic is wrong, that you are good and worthy, and then make up your mind to never let the inner critic triumph again!

Which leads us to the second step (hey, this should be fairly easy after you just slay a dragon, right?!), relearning how to think about yourself.  Cognitive therapists recommend keeping a negative thought journal where you track the thought and then refute it with evidence as to why it’s not true and why you won’t listen to it.  For example: “I think I look fat in this dress BUT my husband thinks it looks great on me and I received several compliments while wearing it so that must not be true”.

 A negative thoughts journal may not be the right choice for you, just keep in mind with whatever method you choose that the point is to confront the inner critic and nip it in the bud before it leads to self-sabotage. Relearning how to think about yourself is as simple as recognizing the fallacy of your negative thoughts. 

Never forget: YOU ARE AWESOME, AMAZING, AND WONDERFUL.