CAN THE ROAD RUNNER HELP YOU CONQUER YOUR RIDING FEAR?
The Road Runner view of fear!  Who loved watching the Road Runner as a kid?  If you haven't watched it before, check it out on Youtube. I love that no matter what, the Road Runner was always fine and no matter what, Wile-E-Coyote was in a pickle. Isn't that true with us when we stand in courage vs. when we curl up in fear?

My accident felt like one of Wile-E-Coyote's disasters! Every time I thought of it or talked about it, I could feel the overwhelming fear rise up and consume me. Have you had an accident that seems to just take over your life, especially when you think about riding your horse? Your fear is preventing you from enjoying the riding you and your horse deserve? Are you the SMASHED Wile-E-COYOTE????

Why not rewrite our memory in the form of a Cartoon? And if the fear is in the future, why not write an amazing cartoon of cool places you are going to see or goals you are going to achieve with your horse? Be the Road Runner!

I turned around my "TERRIFYING ACCIDENT" and made it a cartoon!

There I am, the Road Runner, Running around the campground on the back of a big bay horse, who happens to be wearing a pink Tootoo and ballet Slippers! We are zipping along and out of nowhere, Wile-E-Coyote attacks us with his ACME product of the day. The big giant ballerina horse FLOPS Over from the blast on top of Wile-E-Coyote, and as ALWAYS, he is SMASHED right there in the campground! I pop up fine….BEEP BEEP…..and off I go for another adventure! (If you want to hear my original story of terror, check it out here on Youtube!)

You can convince your brain of anything you want to. Why not look at the funny side of things instead of the bad? Why not store things in your brain in a way that makes you feel good even when bad stuff happened?

If I look back over my 51 years of riding history, I have had maybe 5 scary falls and only ONE that was terrifying and yet that one has defined the last 20 years of my riding on the trails. I added it up, and conservatively, it is TEN THOUSAND HOURS of joy to less than a minute of TERROR. The percent chance of something happening is much less than ZERO!
And yet, for 20 years, this fear has held me back from trail riding. I can honestly say, the process of creating a cartoon of the accident and really feeling the laughter bubble up was HUGE for me. I can now look back and instead of tears, there is laughter, I am lighter. There is HOPE!

I challenge you to look back at your accident and create a cartoon, make it as funny as you can make it. Revamp it to make it funnier! Get to where you can laugh about your situation. If you have not had an accident and are just having a growing fear of getting hurt. Picture that accident you are afraid MIGHT happen and then turn it around into a cartoon. The laughter will serve you well as you feel fear. Embed this cartoon memory into your brain, replace the original. Nobody says we have to keep our memories "true". Fear never goes away, we have to know that we can handle the fear and laughter helps us to see that WE CAN HANDLE IT.

If you would love help writing your cartoon, or just want to rise to Courage, please join my free FB Fear to Courage support Group and share your CARTOON With us!  We all need a little laughter and levity when we are sharing our fears!


1 Comment

  1. Ty for this! Definitely going to try it!

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