Do you ever feel like your life is production? What role are you playing today?
Maybe you are a CEO, or a busy career woman/man, successful skilled at your job. You are able to deliver on productivity and have great communication skills. You manage teams of people who look to you for direction, and you also juggle dentist appointments, parents evening, after school clubs and Harry Potter World.
Despite the many and varied roles, you play, somehow there is a nagging doubt that you are a fraud, that you don't measure up to this illusion of having it all together, and one day someone is going to find out and blow your cover.
Do you feel the pressure to be the perfect boss, wife, husband, parent when you are centre stage, but inside you feel weary, teary and just not up to it?
Enter stage right........................THE IMPOSTER!.........
The imposter is a wearing character who whispers in your ear, a sneaky, devious, negative voice that plays out in your thinking. He is master in the art of deception and loves to tell you that you are not good enough, and you will never achieve your full potential. He steals your identity if you allow him to . He enjoys elevating himself at your expense by putting you down. He loves to give you a running critique.
HOW DO YOU SHUT HIM UP?
One of the ways I have found to silence him is spending time with horses. Horses???????, I can hear you thinking, how ludicrous, however, I would like to share with you a little of my story and how spending time with horses helped me to learn to be authentic and know my true identity.
I came from a show business family. My parents were both ballet dancers with the English National Ballet and toured the world before I was born. My early years were ballet lessons, school and family life. The discipline of ballet is to try to achieve the perfect line of movement, emotion is expressed through dance, but in practice it is a tough life. Hours of barre work, sore muscles, bleeding toes, no room for weakness. The show must go on at all costs. I learned to hide my emotions and became a great actress, master in the art of being fine, but in my dreams, I dreamed of horses. I read pony books, drew them as they galloped their way over the crisp, white pages of my maths books, and I was often put into detention for scribbling over school books.
When I was 10 years old, I was lucky enough to be bought a pony. My parents knew nothing about horses, and so it was a little like the blind, leading the blind. When I was with my pony, I didn't need to be someone else, I could just be myself. Although I was quite an accomplished dancer and won quite a few competitions, I never felt that I was good enough. My parents never pressured me into dancing, they knew first hand how hard it is, but inside, I was an under confident girl in many ways, although to the outside world I presented something quite different.
As I grew up my passion for horses grew with me and I became a riding instructor and competed to national level eventing. Even this didn't stop me feeling like I wasn't good enough.
My seasons in life changed, but the one constant was the feeling I got when I just "hung out" with horses.
What I now know as an Equine Facilitator of Human Development is that horses read us emotionally. They are non-judgemental and sense what is really going on for us on the inside, when we might be presenting something totally different. They don't care what we look like or how we show up in the world, they can cope with honest emotion. What they pick up on is incongruence in people, where we might be presenting one way, but inside we are feeling something different. You can never hide from a horse, they give you honest bio-feedback, and that can be really helpful in making us self-aware, re-framing negative mindsets and teaching us courage, healthy boundaries, better communication and above all, they teach us to be ourselves and like ourselves for who we are and not what we do.
Horses have helped me to find my authentic identity, I don't have to put on a show anymore or pretend to be something or someone I am not. I love my work helping people to find their authentic identity and build better relationships, not just personally, but also in business.
I have many credits, to many horses who have helped me learn valuable life lessons. There are too many to list here, but to each one of them I will be forever grateful. I am still learning from them.
As the show comes to the final curtain, as they say in theatre "Its not over, until the fat lady sings!"
THE END
Come and find out how horses can help you find your authentic identity and kick the imposter in to touch.
Book a one to one session or have a taster at one of our workshops. Book via https://hephzibahuk.com/
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