Frustrated:(

So as is the unfortunate nature of the perfectionist I am having a frustrating day, nothing serious, Nico and I will most definitely survive but we are working on changing a couple of things and I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it, consequently when I can't wrap my head around things I often feel very disconnected from my horse, like I'm going through the motions but don't feel totally present in my ride as my brain is working double time trying to gather and sort the new information while focusing on the ride at the same time (it's a weird feeling for me when this happens and definitely psychological as I literally get off and my brain is full of information and yet I feel like I haven't ridden my horse at all-it's almost like a bizarre out of body experience).  I've never been inside anyone else's brain before obviously so I'm not entirely sure how most people learn or absorb information but for myself I basically try and take in every bit of information and then sort through it all and try to make sense of it, this way of learning has its plus sides and its negatives, on the plus side in the long run once I've got it all clear I have a very good memory for the things I've learned, I rarely miss anything and generally speaking am very clear about what is to be achieved and how to get there and how to use it in the future effectively, the major negative to this is that in the moments where I am in-taking new information and trying to sort it into my 'brain files' (as I like to call them;) I often find that I get overloaded mentally with information and feel like my brain is about to explode at which point sometimes I have so much going on in my head that I stop riding in the moment and then I get very frustrated with myself for not being able to keep my brain on task and then I get so paranoid about not making a mistake that I usually end up making mistakes I wouldn't normally make and that frustrates me even more, haha hopefully what I've said there makes sense and maybe some other perfectionists out there know what I'm talking about??  So I chose to ease some of my frustrations this afternoon in a productive way and gave Nico a stellar full body grooming and then clipped him out again (he had some leftover cat hairs from back home that he wasn't quite ready to part with so I had to break out the clippers and get him looking a little less scruffy-though I left his mane a little long, I have to admit there's a part of my that loves his afro mane-it so suits his rockstar attitude;).  Anyways, tomorrow is another day, Nico has been quite good as of late and is trying hard and I hope that tomorrow I am able to get my brain channeled the right way and working for me, often times the most difficult part of this sport isn't the physical part but the psychological part as what we are dealing ourselves affects our horse.  For myself I actually find the psychology of things at home much harder than when showing, at shows I feel quite comfortable and relaxed as once you're at a show you have what you have and all you can do is go with it and do your best, on the other hand the psychology of the day to day training is much more difficult as that's where you have the biggest ups and downs, the ups are great-when you have those lightbulb moments and things click it's unreal but the downs (and I don't mean 'down' in a negative way but in the manner that when you go in to work on something it changes the timing and aiding between you and the horse and often results in a 'lull' in the training where things aren't going as fluidly) are never easy to go through, I wanted to write about this here as I've watched many students of mine go through these ups and downs over the course of the years and often times they get very stressed about those downs, with experience you know that the 'downs' are merely breaks before the next peak so you forge on and find your way back up the hill but it's never easy no matter what your level and there's always the fear of losing something that you've worked so hard to achieve but we have to stay brave in the approach and try new things otherwise we would never learn anything and never go anywhere.  So as I've said, tomorrow is another day and I know things will get back on track so in the meantime I will keep riding the training wave and get my head wrapped around it, and to anyone back home going through any training lulls now or in the future just keep working your way through it, there is light at the end of that tunnel somewhere I promise!:) (and I apologize for the wordy post and hope that it makes sense as I think there is value to be learned from it, plus the very act of writing about it is also educational for myself:)