2010

2009

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2009

New Year, New Resolution

Tomorrow, it will be 2010. Have you made your resolutions yet?

While lots of people’s New Year resolutions center around becoming more physically active, my resolution is a bit different – to really focus on getting emotionally fit.

I realized the other day that I have much more in control of my emotions when I’m out with my horses than in other areas of my life. Out there, I see difficulties as puzzles that I haven’t yet worked out. I reward my horses just for trying to understand me. I analyze my horses’ personalities and try to understand exactly what their ideas are.

I’m better at mastering my emotions when I’m with my horses because it’s what I’ve trained myself to do.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about this over the past few days, looking at the correlations between natural horsemanship and the rest of my life. Doing natural horsemanship really is like therapy – it makes you think about and address all sorts of problems that are mirrored in your own life. Sometimes it makes you see things about yourself that you aren’t particularly proud of.

My sister, Anna-Marie, was telling me about emotional reactions the other day. She’d been reading this book, My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist who writes about her experiences and epiphanies after experiencing a stroke herself.

Ms. Bolte Taylor says that when something happens to you, the first 90 seconds of emotional response after the incident is pure reaction – we can’t control it since it has to do with our biochemistry. But after that, the way we react is dependent on the circuits that we’ve created in our brains – if we continue to feel the emotion after that initial 90 seconds, we need to look at the thought patterns that are replaying this response over and over again.

Translation: after 90 seconds, how we respond is our choice, whether we are aware of it or not.

To change these circuits takes real focus – a real determination to change. The easiest thing to do is to let the circuits continue – but the healthiest thing, for us and our all of our relationships is to make a conscious effort to change how we react. Let yourself feel that strong emotion for one-and-a-half minutes – and then decide how you want to react.

So this is my New Year’s resolution, typed up here for all the world to see (just for some added accountability!): I am going to think about my reactions and decide how I want to respond, not just go along with the pre-programmed reflexes. I am going to focus on my emotional fitness.

P.S. If this kind of thing interests you, Jill Bolte Taylor explains the basics in an interview: http://www.bleepingherald.com/apr2008/taylor?page=0%2C1

POSTED BY CELENA AT 2:03 PM     POST A COMMENT
CATEGORIES: ANNA-MARIE, APPLYING NH, EMOTIONAL FITNESS, HORSEPEOPLE - A BREED OF OUR OWN, NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

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