AS a person who is passionate about helping horses and humans cultivate deeper connections and confidence within themselves and within their relationships ‘confidence’ and the state of being ‘confident’ is something I hear and talk about a lot.

Whether it’s having bags of confidence or a total lack of it, in ourselves or with our horses, what does it actually mean to be confident...or not..? Here we’re going to look at it from two different perspectives - human and horse.

First off, let’s take a look at what confidence means to us human beings. Confidence is a word that can be construed in a myriad of different ways, and over the years it’s become a word that can perhaps be quite loaded, depending on its use and the meaning conveyed from person to person.

Frowned upon

In our society for instance, someone who is deemed to be ‘over confident’ is someone to be frowned upon, thought of as arrogant, or ‘heading for a fall’. This person could be seen as outspoken, opinionated and even ‘gung ho’ and thoughtless. In general, people often pride themselves on being stoic, humble and self-deprecating. Describing ourselves as being confident is something that we often shy away from and avoid at all costs.

The dictionary definition of confidence however, is ‘the feeling or belief that one can have faith in, or rely on someone, or something’. Feeling, belief, and faith - those words stand out to me in that definition because I think they articulate perfectly what I consider true confidence to be.

Confidence isn’t about what you tell other people. It’s not about how you articulate your experience or your knowledge, it’s not about how you present yourself, or even in the actions you take. It isn’t about jumping the highest jump in the arena, climbing on the bucking horse or galloping at every chance out on a hack.

Confidence is feeling that you are adequately prepared for any situation that may arise and feeling relaxed and at ease because of it. It’s in having faith in your own knowledge and training, and being open-minded enough to ask questions and seek help if something happens to pop up that’s out of your comfort zone.

It’s about having the grace to understand that both horsemanship and self-development are incredibly closely connected, and that the journey of learning and growing both is endless. It’s having the self-belief to hold your course, no matter what others may say or the situations that may present themselves to you. It’s having the empathy and patience to understand that everything and everyone can teach us something, for better or for worse, and that nothing happens to us that we can’t handle.

Ebb and flow

Finally, for us humans, I think it’s important to accept that confidence is something that takes time and can ebb and flow like tides of the sea. It isn’t just there however, it’s built from practice. From stacking up competence. From showing up and dare I say it, from trying and failing.

Looking at this from a growth perspective - there is far more to be learned and gained from failure than success will ever bring us. We might find that starting new ventures, hobbies, or learning new skills (for instance riding a different horse or in a different discipline) can often leave us feeling slightly vulnerable and lacking in an abundance of the c-word.

However, with time and the right support, the aforementioned feeling, faith and belief will grow and blossom. It is okay and it is natural to feel vulnerable. Without vulnerability we cannot grow.

We are only human and none of us are perfect. We all start somewhere and we were all put on this earth to grow and to learn.

Mooching around

So, what about confidence for our horses? What does it mean for our four-legged friends? Going boldly where no horse has gone before? Handling any new experience without so much as a snort? What does a confident horse even look like?

A confident horse is relaxed and able to focus on the job or situation in hand. Whether that is mooching around the countryside on a hack, executing a correct and admirable dressage test, tackling a show jumping course or simply standing and enjoying a groom from their devoted human.

The confident horse has soft eyes, feels relaxed enough to lick, chew, and yawn on occasion, and will flick their ears around in a light, casual interest in their surroundings. This horse, it’s important to add, is not to be confused with a horse that is ‘shut down’ (that is a subject for another time).

Primal instinct

As prey and flight animals, horses are hard-wired to question their safety in any new or potentially threatening environment or situation. They have a deeply ingrained primal instinct to want to survive and feel safe. It is up to us as their humans to help them relax and learn that they can trust us, whatever we may present them with. It’s important to add here, that as part of this process of cultivating their confidence, we have to allow our horses to show emotion and to respond to things.

If we do this, making sure we are rewarding signs of relaxation, we can exercise their ‘panic muscle’. We can turn the ‘OMG’ into the ‘oh okay’ without ‘shutting them down’. With understanding, repetition, and breaking down and building up the ‘scary’ things, we can help them build confidence in themselves and in us.

Sure, some horses, as with humans, are born to be more relaxed and confident than others, and some can be ‘sharper’, more alert and reactive, depending on breeding, genetics and experiences (good or bad) in their lives up to now. But I think for us, it’s important to realise that we can help our horses.

We can do this by taking the time to recognise stress indicators, body language, and the other small signs our horse may give us that they are worried, or reaching their thresholds of fear, ornot feeling so confident about what they are experiencing in any given moment.

By recognising and responding to the signs our horses are giving us and working with our horses in every moment, we can help them to enter any new environment or situation with a little more serenity and a little less ‘oh my God are we going to die?!’

Overnight fix

By having the empathy, patience, and understanding to be able to break things down into manageable steps, we can help our horses feel seen, heard and understood. While working in this way is definitely not a magical overnight fix, it will lay the foundations of a deeper connection and a profound growth of trust between you, your horse, and all you do together. It will allow you to stride off into the world as a partnership, feeling pretty damn good about yourselves and wherever it is you’re headed.

So here’s to cultivating that feeling of confidence, whatever that means to you and your four-legged friend.