"I’ve fallen off so many times, I read a magazine on the way down."

–(One of my riding instructors when I was a kid)

One of the first things you learn in any sport, including horseback riding, is how to fall.  This is not, at first, incredibly reassuring to the student.  We spend most of our lives trying not to fall.  When we took our first steps, our parents’ reactions was so overwhelmingly positive that we assume not falling is a really big deal.  It takes years in order to coordinate those limbs to walk, run and hop.  And then, all of a sudden, when you want to learn a sport like judo, gymnastics or horseback riding, you have to forget what you’ve learned about not falling.

Because inevitably, you will fall, whether it is off of a horse or in dating or trying a new job.  You might as well know how fall right.

Granted, I was suprised to discover that there is a right way to fall.  I assumed that all falling was wrong and well beyond my control.  Considering that I have been partially blind all of my life, I’ve fallen down a lot by tripping over objects or misjudging where a step was.  I had a lifetime of falling practice.  I thought I knew all about falling that I needed to know.  Besides, I thought the art of riding was to stay on the horse’s back, not to drop off of it.  They don’t give out Olympic Medals in Falling Off A Horse, unfortunately.

How To Fall Off A Horse

When you know that falling is inevitable, let go of everything, become as limp as you possibly can be and fall.  Yes, you will still slam into the ground, but you will do far less damage to your body if you fall completely relaxed.  For more comprehensive details specifically on falling off a horse, click here.

It’s that easy…and it’s that hard.

Your natural instinct when falling is to brace yourself.  This even seems logical.  A fall is not that bad, but the landing is quick, hard and incredibly uncertain.  However, when you get back up again, it winds up not being as half as bad as you thought it would be.  I discovered I was even less afraid of falling off of anything because I’d practiced relaxing my body on the way down.  I practiced so much that I wound up relaxing while falling in my nightmares.  And when you are less afraid of falling off, you have a tendency to stay on.

Of course, it also helps if you wear the right hard hat to protect your head from injury, too.

Fear of Falling = Fear of Failure

Whenever we put ourselves in a risky situation (literally or metaphorically) we are potentially setting ourselves up for a fall.  In our brains falls are equal to falures.  Sometimes we avoid trying new things because of this fear of falling.  In other words, you can’t win if you don’t try.

Although I haven’t had the money to continue horseback riding lessons (sigh), I have pursued another passion and became a freelance writer.  In order to be a freelance writer, you have to send out manuscripts, essays, poems or whatever for someone else’s approval.  Usually, you do not get that approval.  All you get for your efforts is a rejection slip.  There are some poems and stories I have doing the rounds that have taken me years to write, rewrite and re-rewrite.  There are essays that are true stories from my life where I lay my heart out bare on the page.  And they get rejected. 

Over time, this has become no big deal.  In a strange twist, freelance writers must present their rejection slips to the IRS as proof that you are, indeed, a writer.  (That’s their explanation, anyway.  Personally, I think it just gives the workers a laugh).  I have so many rejection slips that I don’t count them as individual letters but in how many inches thick the pile is.  At times, this can be discouraging.  But this is a normal part of a writer’s life, so I have relaxed on the way down.

Besides, I can always take my rejection slips and make toilet paper out of them.  That knowledge is my hard hat.

Hope this helps.

Please let us know what you think about this post. No time to comment, Nothing in particular to say? Just click a star or stumble us

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Stumble Us