BY DEBORAH JANE NICHOLAS

No one wakes up feeling motivated . People may wake up feeling an urgency or an excitement for what the day may hold. But motivation is not an instinct, it doesn’t spontaneously materialise if you eat well, drink plenty of water and sleep a solid 7 hours a night. In fact there are people (or have been) that survive eating junk food, embracing alcoholism and hard drugs and still wake feeling motivated. Just a simple Google search will throw up (literally) Vincent Van Gogh, Stephen King, Alexander the Great, Leonard Nimoy, and Betty Ford. Motivation has nothing to do with healthy living, practising yoga or eating organic food. Living in a luxurious home, wearing designer clothes, driving an expensive car, dining out often, going on exotic holidays…just have the novelty factor, one which is temporary, and probably wholly unfulfilling especially in terms of daily self-motivation.

The only way to get motivated is to generate motivation.

Generating motivation starts within the brain with a decision, a promise, and one you will stick to no matter what. It’s about staying focused and drowning out all the useless noise of life.  On a personal level I cannot wait to find a good day to write, a day in which I have the energy of a spring lamb, or I would never type a single word. No matter how well I sleep and eat (and I do), every single morning I have about as much energy as that forgotten limp lettuce oozing mush in your salad draw.

But my decision, my promise to myself is – I must write.

I had a very good vet once, and since, but this man is memorable for his lack of bed-side manner. Bereft of any bedside manner myself, and being quite envious of people that have mastered the art of diplomacy, caused me to really like him, a kindred spirit if you like. Once when handing him the phone to directly speak to a livery about his horse he covered the mouth piece and asked Is he moderately intelligent, or a simpleton? He wasn’t being rude, not in my book. He wanted to understand on what level he should explain a slipping stifle and bad conformation to someone he had never met.

Several months later he was stood chatting with me about my own horse and enquired what I planned to do with her. I didn’t really have any solid plans, just the usual stuff i.e. a bit of show-jumping, sponsored rides, maybe dressage etc. His response was Well, you had better get on with it then or you’ll miss the boat.

Maybe a simple, flippant  comment but it had an impact on me because he was right, and it gave me pause for thought. People that go through life trying a bit of this, and a bit of that never actually achieve anything worthwhile. They don’t do so because they haven’t committed themselves. They have no single focus and that promise to themselves was never made. The motivation they so sorely needed was never generated.

I hear non-concrete aspirations all the time from horse owners no matter what their level of experience or ability, or what age their horse is. But stop waiting, the right time to make promises and generate motivation is immediately.

Instead of planning flat-work lessons in the spring, do it now, pick up the phone and book it. If you want to start getting out in the box more and exploring new hacking tracks, get loading. If you’re going to start introducing your horse to pole work soon, do it tomorrow, not soon. You tell me you have started groundwork training, but have you? Can you show me your 3 month plan and what exercises you will be doing? You would like to hunt but you missed this year’s season, but didn’t you say that last year?

If both the owner and horse are fit and well then the excuses are just that, excuses. Yes you can find the time, and yes you will find the money and yes we have all been there juggling the kids and a job. Take all those plans and put them in motion today. Take that first step, whether it’s a phone call or putting together a quarterly program. Get prepared and be prepared because planning is the key to your success and this is what will generate your motivation.  We are not talking about training for the Olympics here, although by all means do, but even happy hackers need motivation. So what if the ground is slushy in the winter, and baked hard in the summer, plan your route and climb aboard right now!

Write down your goals and start planning to achieve them immediately, or, and in the words of my favourite vet, You will miss the boat.

…and what happened to my brilliant vet? He got fed up of moaning housewives that owned horses and returned to his first love, the racing industry. His words not mine, like I’ve already stated… he wasn’t the most diplomatic fella on the planet.