Managing competition nerves

One of the biggest challenges in working with nerves is what psychology calls tolerance of uncertainty: training your ability to sit with the uncertainty around the things we cannot control.

We often want to plan and organise our nerves away, and it is quite right to plan what we can. Some things, though, such as how the horse will react in the ring, we cannot control completely. The more we accept that and learn to trust our ability to handle whatever comes up, the less our nerves will hold us back.