Making the Best of a Bad Situation

I've been hearing rumblings of frustration throughout the horse industry as shows are cancelled all over the U.S as an aggressive response to the EHV-1. Talking with one reader and non-pro competitor, I was reminded that not only does this hurt our wallets it can also have a significant impact on our emotional well-being.

When we have little or no control over changes that affect us, we can experience significant anxiety from the uncertainty of our circumstances. When a
sudden and significant change occurs in our lives, we often experience a period of emotional discomfort as we try to work out, first, what happened and, second, what to do next. While we all work to remedy this situation, there are a number of things you can do to reduce the emotional impact by making the best out of a bad situation:

·         Turn a negative into a positive. Use this time productively.
·         Remember that you can't always control what happens in life but you can control how you respond.
·         Remind yourself that everyone is in the same boat.
·         Be flexible. The more rigid you are regarding your preparation plan, the more difficulty you will experience when an unexpected change such as this comes up.
·         Re-evaluate your plan. Try to come up with alternatives.
·         Work on your mental skills.
·         Evaluate your goal plan. Are you still on track or do you need to make some changes?
·         Work on your technical skills.
·         Evaluate your health and fitness levels.
·         Tie up loose ends and get back on track so that you can hit the floor running when this virus gets under control and life gets back to normal.
·         Focus on what you can do rather than what you can't do.
·         Learn from this experience.

Check out next month's Quarter Horse News to read more about this topic. This virus has seeped its way into our lives in many different ways. How has it affected yours?