Calming the Chaos: Finding Consistency When Life Feels Full-On

If you’re feeling like everything is a bit much too right now, work piling up, the dark nights creeping in, trying to cram everything into shorter days, struggling to ride your horses, too many personal commitments, whilst your training starts slipping & your own goals seem to disappear then you’re not alone.

Winter time can throw our routines off balance for sure. The daylight hours shrink, the days feel shorter, and between horses, work, family, and life admin, it can feel like there’s barely time to breathe, let alone stay consistent with any training of your own, or good quality nutrition or enough sleep time.

But the thing is & all us Equestrians know this...

Life doesn’t suddenly become calm. You won’t find more time, things won't magically calm down & honestly?

Life with horses involved is always chaos to an extent. When everything around you feels chaotic, the most powerful thing you can do is learn how to ground yourself within that chaos. You might not be able to control or avoid that chaos but you can sure as hell control how you react to it & keep yourself in the drivers seat. We all have that ability.

So today's blog is all about helping you to identify where that chaos is coming from, allow you to be able to move forwards from it & get back in control so you CAN work on your own goals. As a fitness coach I spend alot of time & many of my blogs are about giving practical advice around training, nutrition, riding & health but mindset is one of the biggest areas I focus on inside Event Rider Fitness.

Because if you're mentally feeling fried, over run & completely stressed out you're never going to be able to work on the physical or have that headspace for it. So first step is getting your mindset back on side & knowing how to control it.

There are 2 types of chaos that tend to throw riders off track:

1; External

2; Internal.

External chaos comes from the things that happen to us, most of the time that we don't have control over. Things like work deadlines, big projects, family responsibilities, horse dramas, vet visits, travel, or simply too many social commitments. These are often out of your control, it feels like they're happening around you but directly affecting you but you can't change it.

Internal chaos, on the other hand, is the noise inside your head. It’s the overthinking, stress, guilt, that pressure to be perfect, or the urge to do everything at once.

This is where your thoughts and expectations start creating more overwhelm & stress than the situation itself much of the time without us even realising it. You can’t always control external chaos, but you can control how you respond to it, 100%.

When everything feels messy, the instinct is usually to try to fix everything at once. To tell yourself that you’ll get back on track with better food, do all your training sessions, more sleep, and you'll re start your routine next Monday. But all that approach always leads to is burnout & you being stuck with one moment being "on it" (hate that phrase), and the next you're off it again.

The more you try to do, the less you actually get done. It’s like walking into the yard and deciding that in one evening you’ll perfect your half-pass, tidy the tack room, clip the horse and lunge before dinner. Reading that it sounds unrealistic right? If you tried you’ll likely end up frustrated, exhausted, and feeling like you failed not because you didn’t work hard enough, but because you tried to do everything.

But if you just sat down a moment & thought proactively about those expectations you're putting on yourself you'd likely realise just how unrealistic they were in the first place. Yet this is exactly what we do when it comes to our own fitness, health & personal goals.

The first step to calming the chaos is to stop asking, “How can I do more?” & we also want to stay away from that mindset of thinking "Sod it, I'll just sack it all off. That just keeps you frustrated & stuck for longer.

Instead, just take a moment & ask yourself;

“What’s the 1 thing that always slips first when life gets busy?”

For me, it’s my focus for sure. The ability to slow down, plan my day, and stick to it. If I don't do that planning part & have that headspace my days 100% ends up like chaos, I can't find time for everything, I just react as the day goes & feel like I've achieved nothing by the end of it.

For you, it might be your training, your riding, your nutrition, or even sleep. Once you identify what slips first, make that your non-negotiable focus for the next week or 2. You can’t fix everything, but you can hold 1 thing steady.

And focusing on 1 thing at a time is key, because once you crack that then you'll think "Ah ok that's back on track, I feel a bit better now" you'll be calmer & you'll have the physical & mental energy to address the next thing. If you try & fix it all at once honestly, that will get you nowhere. Trust me, I see riders do it all the time.

This is where anchor habits come in. Small, simple actions you do everyday that help you feel calm and more in control, even when life is anything but. Your anchor habit might be something as straightforward as taking 5 quiet minutes with a coffee each morning to plan your day before you open your messages or emails & start responding to others.

It might be leaving your workout shoes & training kit out on the living room floor where you’ll see them so that when you walk in the door at 6pm you’re reminded to train, writing down your meals for the next day before bed, or setting a bedtime reminder so you actually switch off when you intend to & get the rest you need. Setting small actions like these are so often overlooked but it's EXACTLY how you make habits stick long term & keep yourself in control.

The goal isn’t perfection, striving for perfection is something so many riders do & it comes from a great place! But it's one of the biggest reasons so many riders fail with their own goals. We all have high standards which is fantastic but expecting yourself to be perfect is unrealistic, you're never going to be perfect & it’s about re-finding ways to gain consistency through the chaos. Small steps & small actions will keep you moving forwards & even if it doesn't feel like it that's what'll keep you progressing then when life gets a little calmer you'll notice you've still moved forwards even though it felt mental.

Even 1 small anchor habit can make you feel completely grounded & back in control again. It's the small actions that have the biggest impact.

When life feels full-on and as seasons change, it’s also important to redefine what “showing up” means for you. Showing up doesn’t always have to mean smashing a full workout session or achieving a personal best. And the way you show up in the Winter may have to be different to how you show up in the Summertime because you have different commitments, routines change so you can't keep the same rhythm or routine you had with those longer days.

And that's ok! If you don't flex & adapt that's when you get stuck. Sometimes it might mean doing half a workout, going for a short walk, stretching rather than training, getting a food shop done rather than a full week of meal prep or just riding instead of training that day.

Progress isn’t built on perfect weeks; it’s built on what you do during the messy ones because it's here where you set those foundations & they're actually things you can stick to long term.

If you can keep yourself consistent when life feels chaotic & control the way you react & behave to what's going on around & to you, then you’ll find it 10 x easier when things calm down again to keep yourself moving forwards.

This is how you keep yourself consistent & gain long term progress. Not by only "sticking to everything" on the good weeks.

So this week, take a moment to reflect.

1. What’s creating the most chaos for you right now?

2. Is it external or internal?

3. What’s the 1 thing that tends to slip first?

4. What’s 1 small habit you can use to keep yourself grounded for the next 7 days?

5. What does showing up right now look like to you?

And if everything does go sideways as some days it just does, how can you still show up in a way that keeps your momentum & allows you to try again tomorrow?

You can’t wait for a perfect life to feel calm & in control, you have to create that calmness through structure, clarity, and small consistent actions that you can actually stick to on the most craziest of days.

If you’re struggling to find structure or feel like training & your own goals always slip when life gets busy, I’ve created a FREE 30-day coaching series designed to help riders build consistency, feel more in control, and train confidently around real horse life.

👉 [Download your FREE 30 days Coaching here]

It's not that you're failing or doing anything wrong or not putting in the effort, it's just that you need to get back in control 1 small step at a time & this is exactly how you do it.

I really hope this helps you to stay in control through winter & gives you a framework to keep yourself consistent & make sure your mindset & the way you react to things is allowing you to push forwards with your riding & your own fitness goals.

Have a great week,

Katie