Burnout in the Horse Industry

yourself permission to rest. Take a day or two away from the barn and try to get a few extra hours of sleep. Do something simple that you love to do but havent done in forever. Grab a coffee with a good friend. Sit down and watch Netflix for an entire afternoon. Do not skip this step! You cannot do the mental work of recovering from burnout until your body has had a chance to rebalance. If you are reading this right now and immediately thinking of a million reasons why you cant take a day off then consider this The best thing we can do for our horses our relationships and our jobs is to prioritize our own health and wellbeing. We cannot and will not show up as the best riders parents friends business owners or employees we can be when we are physically and mentally exhausted. Allow yourself a timeout to rest and regroup. Then ask yourself this question What do I need to give myself permission to do differently to allow for more rest balance and recovery in my life?
One of the most challenging symptoms of burnout is feeling detached from things that are important to us. This is often experienced as a profound drop in motivation and feelings of pessimism and cynicism about the future. In these moments the question What is the point of doing this? comes from a place of hopelessness yet it is the exact question that we need to think more about to find our way forward. What is the point? Why do you ride coach train or run a barn? Burnout can follow when pressure disconnects us from the values that drew us to the equestrian industry in the first place. As the pressure mounts to be an excellent rider who gets results to coach students to success and to build a profitable business our focus strays farther and farther from what sparked our love of horses in the first place. We begin chasing the results and outcomes instead of being present in the daytoday process that gets us there. Ironically a high focus on winning and proving ones ability as a rider typically leads to higher stress and lower performance. In contrast when we focus on falling in love with the daytoday process of improving ourselves and our horse regardless of performance riders experience lower stress and ultimately perform