Too serious? Feeling judged?
I struggle with this one myself. I learnt to take things seriously as a child because if I didn’t my parents would get really annoyed. Being “silly” was not allowed.
Despite this I have quite a wicked sense of humour and love to have fun, get a bit silly, but I tend to only allow myself to show it around people whom I know well and who I trust not to judge me, or to love me anyway. I suspect I am not alone in this.
The problem is that this type of seriousness is usually generated by a fear of being negatively judged by other people. It is unhelpful because it generates tension and takes our attention and awareness away from our interaction with our horses which is our control and places our attention on anyone who might be watching us. We try to control how we look to control what they will think, which is not something we ever really have any control over.
I wanted to lighten up and loosen up but honestly at the time I didn’t know how.
Being “too serious” didn’t help my relationship with my horses either, because horses like to play, they don’t enjoy “serious” it is very demanding and it leaves them feeling stressed because it is quite an intense heavy energy.
Fortunately, I have learnt that having an ability to lighten up and not take something or myself to seriously is essential to having a quality experience.
We are usually “too serious” when are worried or concerned about what other people might think about us, our actions, how we sound, look etc. Ok so why can’t we just stop caring about what other people think about us? Because it is part of our survival instinct.
At the beginning of humanity’s evolution if we didn’t fit in, if we weren’t liked by the rest of our group it would result in rejection and isolation which usually led to dying, there was safety in numbers.
In an attempt to manage other people’s opinions of us we judge, criticise and lack patience and compassion for ourselves and instead in that moment we notice things about ourselves that we think others might criticise or judge, and we attempt to change ourselves and what we are doing in a way that we think the other person might judge kindlier. The truth is though, we don’t know what the other person is thinking, these are our thoughts, our judgements about ourselves.
Rather than trying to go against our instincts, we could accept that it is human nature to judge each other and just about everything else. It’s not personal, the same person that is judging you will be judging every other person that they can see also. It doesn't mean anything about you unless except some way or on some level you actually think that of yourself, after all it is your thoughts not theirs.
We can’t think someone else thoughts, even if we are making an educated, informed guess they are still our thoughts.
I know right, so we think other people are judging us, we don’t know that for sure at the time, and we don’t know what the judgement is even if they are, but we judge ourselves in some way and assume that they will be thinking that as well.
Yep, it is really your thoughts about yourself and what you are doing that you are projecting. Does this mean that other people aren’t judging you, no, what it means is that the way you are feeling and the action you are taking from that feeling is caused by how you are judging yourself, the other persons judgement if they are making one cannot cause you to feel anything.
It might look something like this….
You notice someone watching you canter
You think “they probably think I’m useless”
You feel - inadequate
Your focus changes and You try harder to sit up and be more balanced, your body tenses, your horse notices and starts to resist in some way or become more tense. He unexpectedly breaks into a trot, you lose your balance, lean forward, and pull on the reins to come back to a walk. You tell yourself your stupid, no wonder people think you can’t ride. I’m never going to be able to do this. Maybe blame the horse or something else. You don’t manage your thinking or realise that you stopped think about riding a canter and started thinking about how you looked. You comment out loud that your useless, or some other criticism.
Your result is – you tell the very people who you didn’t want to think your useless, to think that your useless.
This is how every human brain works. So, what can we do, we can acknowledge before we even ride that if someone is watching us, our brain is likely to begin offering us these kinds of thoughts, we can decide ahead of time how we will manage those thoughts when they happen.
Personally, I choose to find it hilarious, I will say to myself ‘of course my brain would offer me that kind of thought if someone is watching.” The brain is designed to keep us safe to ensure we are accepted and part of the group. It used to be key to our survival. It is in our DNA to want people to like us, but it is no longer key to our survival.
There is nothing wrong with me, you or us, we are all just humans having a human experience.
