If you’re having a bad day and getting frustrated, it’s time to get off. Don’t take it out on the horse.
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Confidence is difficult to build but can break in an instant. Horse and/or rider. Don’t push a nervous horse if you are nervous. Do something safe until it’s boring for you both, then push out 10%, then back to safe.
Make standing still and calm a reward.
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Reward the effort. It’s easy to fall into the habit of waiting to release/reward until they get it exactly right. A new trainer reminded me that an honest effort is as much a positive building block as the moment when they finally put it all together. Praise that just the same.
Teach them when it’s appropriate to stand and graze while mounted. No, we’re not letting him root the reins out of my hands and go diving for grass. A planned snack break on a long trail ride, or even as a redirection if he starts to get a little stressed or amped up. We were out cross country schooling in a big group - my horse was starting to get antsy and I was getting nervous. My trainer told me to let him graze. I’ll be damned but he was too busy snacking to worry about what was happening around him. It gave him a little mental reset and we were able to pick up and go back to work after a couple of minutes.
If you’re not in the mental or physical space to be fair in managing whatever your horse brings to the table on a particular day… just don’t get on. It’s not worth it. One ride won’t make your training or prep, but a bad one can sure set it back.
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I think the best advice I got was more of a mindset thing than a specific catchy phrase. My trainer growing up always said that you’d have periods of obvious growth and then muddling phases where it felt like things just weren’t coming together, and that that was the natural progression of things to peak and then plateau and muddle, and then peak again.
It’s something I’ve thought about a lot in other areas of my life too. My entire advanced training felt like a muddling phase 
but it’s helped me to remember that eventually I’ll have the tools or skill set to succeed at something even when it’s hard.
I’m out of the horse world at the moment and do an entirely different sport (circus stuff), and it’s applied over there too.
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No matter what’s going on, add more leg.
To be fair, all my horses (except one) have been OTTBs that don’t need encouragement to move forward so adding leg isn’t always my first instinct. 
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stop analyzing the karma of the fence and just jump it
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Two things from Molly McKellar, then a GP riding student with Michael Poulin:
“Horses feel your body [and mind] and will try to replicate it.” In other words, be correct, so it’s worth their efforts. Her shorthand was, “Sami [my mare] wants to be like you.”
While not strictly training, an image she gave me that I use nearly every time I ride, “Take your corners as if your horse has an outboard motor and you’re leaving a wake.”
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What a lovely idea for a prompt. Thank you.
I look forward to checking back for more inspiration.
I think this is so true in almost every area of life!
Think about what you want to do, NOT what you are trying not to do! For example, if you are thinking “don’t drop your eye” you’ll probably drop your eye, but if you think “eyes up!” you’ll probably get it right!!
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Learned this from a preschool teacher friend. She said our brains struggle with negation.
Say to a child, “Don’t eat that marble,” until about the age of seven all they really can manage is, “Eat that marble.” Way better to say, “Put the marble down, honey,” or, “Hand me the marble, please.”
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In high school a theater teacher told me “it takes a real long time to build a reputation as a great actor and only one incident to build a reputation as a diva” (teen me was acting like a diva) and I’ve frequently thought about that with horses and career and nearly every aspect of my life since then
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Just ride your horse.
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I listened to a great episode of the Noelle Floyd podcast tonight on the way home from the barn - with Peter Wylde on riding softly. His three big tips: 1) ride without stirrups; 2) loop a stirrup leather around the neck and loop a finger through to quiet your hands; 3) look up and out over jumps. Sigh, 1 and 3 - so “easy” to do and yet so hard!
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- Ride the horse you have today (not the one you had yesterday, or you hope to have tomorrow).
- Pull (the reins) as hard as you have to bet DO NOT HOLD.
- If you are asking the horse to do something and he/she isn’t responding properly, go through YOUR own position as a mental checklist. Usually it is something wrong with YOUR position.
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You can’t say ‘no’ to a horse without giving them something to say ‘yes’ to.
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Whenever you want to pull, push. Whenever you want to take, give.
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Ride first, then chores. You will always get the chores done ‘enough’ - but riding has to be priority.
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Be a proactive rider, not a reactive one. It’s all very good and well to ride through problems (especially if you do it well!) but the best riding subverts the problems in the first place.
That said — each day is a blank slate. Don’t write the memories of yesterday’s problems on today’s whiteboard. Give them a chance to be good. Ride them like they will be the best horse in the world.
And of course: have a sense of humor. Bad days happen. They won’t be fun and they won’t be funny. But if you let them, they can become an albatross that drags you down - try to find levity where you can, to help you keep looking forward rather than getting bogged down when things are tough.
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Yes! I need to make this my barn creed, ride first! 
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