My hobby is riding. I love to ride and to do show jumping. The feeling of flying together with my best friend over a fence is peerless to anything else in this world . But at the same time I am scared of the big fences. And my horse knows this, he can feel how the adrenaline is circulating in my blood as soon as we enter the jumping place and focus the first fence of the parcours. So I need to convince my inner beast, that there is no need to be scared, that we have the skills to also do the big barricades. But it's hard to radiate a sense of calm if you're internally fighting against a beast, that says you're too weak to ever reach the finish line.

But this parcours is the biggest one we ever saw. We didn't train for it.

'It is so huge. The ways are so long, the corners so spooky. Also the other riders said, its difficult...' I'm insecure. Can we really do it?

I greet the jury, a bell rings, we are allowed to start. My horse and I start to canter, focus the first barricade.

'This is the lowest one, we can do it. Stay calm. Breath! Aaaand JUMP!' We can do it!

Still flying over the first one I already focus the next.

'Come on boy, that's not that high, we did this several times before! One, two, three, push!. We stop. My mind made me stop. I just thought to push him, but forgot to actually do it.

'Stop thinking, just ride, you stupid beast' I take a deep breath, close my eyes and start again. This time I stop my mind of thinking, just feel the movement of my and my friend and fly. Endorphine replace the adrenaline in my blood.

Now fence three.

'It's the biggest one in the parcours. And a wide one. And it has flowers arround, a pink plank and pictures of ducks. Thats the spookiest fence ever!'. My horse catches my thoughts immediatly and shies. He won't move, no matter what I try. I sight.

'Well honey, it's okay. We do fence one again, okay? That one was nice.'

I finish my round with a good feeling. We learned from it, the next time I will train harder! At least we did two fences good. And on the warming place we jumped great. I just need to stop my mind from thinking to much. I don't let the beast win this time although I didn't make it over the third one. I am skilled enough though, if I just DO it.

Every parcours gives strengh, experience and knowledge about my abilities. With every parcours I get more self secure and trustful in what we can reach.

The next weekend I'm not scared anymore. We trained higher, my trainer believes in me, I believe in my partner. We can do it, we can win!