There’s nothing as demoralising as making and goals and not reaching them.
At this time of year, we tend to look at the fresh page in the diary and think – I’m going to do X, Y and Z.
But what we need to know is that if we are going to make a change, it’s the HABITS that need to change before we can reach the GOAL.
For example, a goal might be ‘I’m going to do 20 minutes of exercise everyday’. Something I think we would all like to sign up to. But what we actually have to do is change our daily habits to make room for 20 minutes of exercise. You have to ask yourself ‘what do I need to do to fit these 20 minutes into my day’. I can personally vouch for this being quite hard to do if you lead a busy life, especially if you have people or animals pulling you in different directions from the moment you get up.
So how to we achieve this goal? I would say a better way to look at this would be to say – I’m going make 3 minutes of my day available at 8am to exercise everyday for a week, then I’ll make 5 minutes available everyday for a week and so on. The common theory is that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. The science says it’s actually 66 days. That’s a lot of days to lose the new habit. So we need to start small and have little wins.
Pic: One of my goals for 2022 was to take Shaun jumping. We had to brave the rain to do it!
It’s actually the same with horses. If you want to do something new with your horse, you have to make time for it. If you do, you will give yourself the headspace to be in the moment with your horse and enjoy your journey.
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