‘Change one little thing to make a big difference.’

When coaching, feedback is one of the most important aspects for learning and development.

Even if you are schooling your horse at home by yourself or during a lesson with a trainer, we are constantly looking for feedback. This gives us a guide on how things are going (or not in some cases).

In NLP the saying ‘There is no failure only feedback’ is important to remember. We can all learn from mistakes, but the point where people get stuck is when they don’t move forward, don’t question what it means or come up with an answer.

An easy tool to help with this is the cycle:

ACTION, AWARENESS, ANALYSE, ADAPT.

Action – What is the task you a doing? It could be just a feeling or a thought

Awareness – What is the feedback? How does it make me feel, where do I feel it?

Analyse – What caused it? What do I need to change? Options?

Adapt – What do I need to do to change it? Route forward?

Then the cycle starts again by returning to Action.

This doesn’t just apply to working with your horse, but to everyday life. We can use it to solve problems, come up with decisions and help build self-awareness. Try it for yourself! 😉