Horse Time Cherished and Your Brain as a Puppy

Trish Lemke is an equine-guided coaching specialist. Her business, Joy Rides, is based in Durango, Colorado. She hosts trips to Ireland, Costa Rica, Italy, and elsewhere.

Lemke writes:

It seems that we are all living with quite a bit of uncertainty right now.   And a lot of people I talk with are carrying this uncertainty around with them. They get stuck in those heavy emotions of worry, fear, dread and doubt and cause themselves suffering and constant angst.  They are giving away their present life with worries about their future life.

But life never has been certain.  We don’t know how our future is going to unfold from one moment to the next. That is why I love the practice of mindfulness.  It helps me cope with the fear of uncertainty.  

What is certain at this moment?  

• Are you safe, fed, housed, loved, right now? Today?  
• Are your kids happy and healthy?  Are you?  

If the answer is “yes” to those questions, then simply sitting in gratitude for a few moments will help to make that major shift from the “what-if?” anxiety of the future to the truth of the here and now.  

Animals, nature and being with my family are the quickest ways for me to come to my present moment truth. But this mindfulness stuff is a practice of training your brain, because even after sitting in gratitude and awareness, your brain may want to take you back to the stress and worry.

Don’t let it!  

You are the boss of your brain, not the other way around.  Treat it as gently and as firmly as you would treat a puppy that you are training.  A nice dialogue to have would be:

“Brain, I understand your desire to keep me safe and be in your comfort zone with the stress and worry, but you need to stay where I put you, with thoughts that are true and that make me happy.”

This was one of the biggest pieces of learning that I received several years ago in my training and it really has helped me stay a lot more balanced and happy.  You CAN follow the thoughts that make you happy.  So simple, yet so true.