This is episode 184 and today I have a conversation for you. It’s all about the importance of heroic attempts and daring to enter in the first place and just getting going with things. So let’s do it.

If you want to do things differently but need some help making it happen then tune in for your weekly dose of coaching from me, Maisie Hill, Master Life Coach and author of Period Power. Welcome to The Maisie Hill Experience.

Hello, hello, I am freshly back from going to horse camp with my horse, Buttons, and my friend, Chloe, and her horse, Ted, and I have to tell you what happened. So we were due to travel on the Friday to spend Saturday and Sunday doing a series of horse riding lessons at horse camp. And I actually had a horse riding lesson with my regular instructor booked in for the Friday morning, but it was so windy that day.

And if you’ve been here for a while, you will know that the wind is my least favourite type of weather, it really dysregulates me. But I have done a lot of work to be able to be outside in the wind and to increase my capacity for it. And that has served me well, especially when it comes to learning to horse ride and having a horse. So the other thing is that horses are also affected by the wind, it can kind of get them a bit geed up.

And in my lesson, Buttons did a series of bucks all the way alongside of the arena. He has never bucked with me before. I managed to stay on. He did, I reckon he did about five in a row just all the way along. And so I stayed on, kept riding. My instructor’s like, “You’ve got to keep riding him. You’ve got to get it out of his system. And we don’t want him building an association that if he bucks, then he stops being asked to do things and the lesson ends.” So I kept going, and then he did it again, kept going.

And I was just so exhausted by the end of the lesson, mentally exhausted because I was just coaching myself the whole time to keep going and just physically exhausted from all the cantering around. My period was due to start, of course, and I had a meltdown towards the end of the lesson because I just stopped being able to process and understand what my instructor was saying. So I had a big cry, I had a  release.

Meanwhile, my friend Chloe was having a four hour trailer loading session with her horse because he’s not a fan of going into the trailer. And of course he needed to go in the trailer to get to the camp. So by the time we got there with both horses and all our camping gear by the way, and all the hay for the horses for three days and all our saddles and tack, we were in bits.

And I have this massive tent, it’s a huge family sized tent and I love putting tents up. I get so much autistic joy out of putting tents up. But this one is so big that you need several people in order to erect it. And by the time we got the horses there, got them settled, there was no one else on site to help us put the tent up and it was still really windy.

And my friend, Chloe, I’m tall, I’m 5 ‘10, she’s shorter than me. And oh my gosh, trying to get this tent up, we were drenched in sweat by the end of it. It was epic. And it was windy all night. It was like sleeping in a plastic carrier bag that someone was just rustling around. We barely got any sleep. It was still windy the next day, 40 mph winds and we rode, and I was terrified, especially after the bucking that had happened the day before, but I got through it, I did it.

And at the end of the day we went back to the tent and we’re like, “Wow, the tent’s done really well to stay up in this weather.” Because every time we’d look at it and even that morning, we were holding it up from the inside because the poles would just blow over and then it would come back up. And we had to keep re-pegging everything down again. And we’re like, “Oh, thank goodness it stayed up.”

And we get into our pyjamas, and I unzip the bedroom pod section at the back. And as I undid it, I thought, it’s quite breezy in here. And I thought, well, maybe Chloe had opened up a window or something at the back. And I’m like, “No, something’s different.” So I get out, walk around and that’s when I see that the entire back of the tent had been ripped off in the wind. We actually got more sleep that night, although it was colder, there was no wind by this point, so it was a lot better. We did try using gaffer tape to tape the whole thing up, that didn’t work so well so it was an adventure.

And I’ve been thinking more and more about the kind of things that Buttons and I might do together, some competitions because Chloe and another friend of ours, they’ve been doing some local competitions recently. And I’ve been going along and watching them and helping on the day. But also the thrill of competition is in the air at the moment because the men’s Euros, the football competition that’s happening. Wimbledon is on as well and the Olympics are coming up and I am highly competitive.

But I’ve been thinking more and more about competing and about winning and what that means, not from the perspective of coming first or snagging a medal or a rosette. Of course, I’d love to end up with a fabulous collection of rosettes, but this is about the act of entering itself and of counting yourself in. This is really obvious. It’s a very obvious statement, but it has to be said, you cannot win if you don’t enter. And there’s a lot of power from adopting the mindset of to enter is to win.

I came across this recently in a horse related post on Facebook where someone had just commented to enter is to win and I was like, “Oh my gosh, yes, that phrase just encapsulates everything that I’ve been thinking about.” Because recently we did this 30 day, get it done challenge in the membership. And it was just so fascinating because I went through the process myself, but I also coached so many people throughout that month.

And to be honest with you, I didn’t really care that much what the members picked as a goal. I mean of course I do care about that as their coach, because it does matter. But for me, the win was for them to opt into this, to give it a go regardless of what they decided to focus on and pick as a goal and regardless of whether or not they actually achieved it.

So I asked them at the beginning of the challenge to come up with a clearly defined goal. But also for them to determine and define what success with that goal would be. Because traditionally we measure success by various forms of external validation, trophies, medals, personal bests, timings, measurements of some kind, which can include the recognition that comes from other people. But I wanted them to consider other aspects of success, like loving themselves through failure, having a non-perfectionist approach to their goal and making what I call, heroic attempts.

Having the courage to give it a go, to put yourself out there and count yourself in. Because I reckon the true victory is in the courage to show up in the first place regardless of the outcome. So let’s think about that in terms of regular daily things. In terms of your work, that could mean suggesting a project or saying yes to a project, maybe one that stretches your capabilities. It could mean speaking up in meetings and speaking up and saying yes to things, even if you don’t currently see yourself as qualified to do so or as the expert in something.

Or perhaps you do see yourself as those things, but you still hesitate and feel nervous in those settings. So this is about being courageous enough to put yourself forward, to share your ideas and to contribute. Knowing that whatever you have to say always has value regardless of how it’s perceived and responded to by others. You could also just be applying for a job that you don’t feel entirely qualified for. You probably are, by the way, or it probably doesn’t matter as much as you think it does.

There’s a lot of great research on this about how women wait till we can say that we’re qualified for every single point that’s on a job description or application. Whereas men, I can’t remember what the statistic is and they’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m good enough for that, I’ll just apply.” But by doing these things, you’re putting your hat in the ring.

So if we were to apply the same principles to your dating life, it could be showing up for a date in the first place, especially if you’ve been out of the dating scene for a while, that is a win. Just opening yourself up to the possibility of connection with someone else, that’s also a win. You’re also opening yourself up to the possibility of rejection and awkwardness and excitement and delight. All of these things can feel a bit scary or exciting.

And that goes for relationships of any kind, especially when it comes to initiating difficult conversations, sharing how you feel. Being willing to speak up, to initiate things even when your body is like, oh, this is a really bad idea. That’s huge, especially if you’re someone who has vast amounts of experience in silencing yourself and keeping it all bottled up inside because you could keep doing that. But instead you’re daring to give it a go, to do something else without knowing how it will pan out. That is courageous. That is a heroic attempt.

The same goes for anything else you’re working on, whether you’re training in something new, completing a degree, a course of study, making new friends, starting a podcast, painting your bedroom or renovating your home. These are all great examples of the goals that the members came up with, by the way. But counting yourself in means beginning, even if the end seems really far off or the task is daunting, even if there’s no chance of coming first according to your brain at least. And that’s what the philosophy of to enter is to win is all about.

That phrase that I came across, I absolutely love it. It immediately resonated with me. Because it just so perfectly encapsulates what I’ve been thinking about for myself in my own life and also the coaching that I was offering my friends when they were competing, when they were showing up to these horse riding competitions. So this philosophy of to enter is to win shifts you from outcome based validation like trophies to a focus that is about effort and presence and showing up. And it really is about celebrating, just having the courage to say yes and show up, to count yourself in rather than not.

We don’t give ourselves enough credit for this. I see it time and time again in my coaching. People are so busy beating themselves up for not doing something perfectly, for not succeeding in some particular way, and they forget that they bothered to do it in the first place, to actually give it a go. So I don’t think that losing is about coming last or not finishing the race in the first place. Losing is when you count yourself out before the game has even begun.

And I’m not talking about those times where you decide not to do something, and you like your reasons for deciding not to do it. I’m talking about when you want to do something, but you count yourself out because of thoughts that you have about yourself, limiting thoughts, because you feel fear, because there’s self-doubt, some kind of trepidation. That’s what I’m talking about. And when we get down to it, what success looks like really does vary hugely from person to person.

Ten people can enter a competition, but all of them can have completely different quests within that competition. And for some people, just entering is a win. That’s it, they’ve already won. Signing up for a dating event or an app is a win. Signing up for a course and prioritising your interests when you’ve been socialised to put others first and you feel guilty for committing to something that’s just for you. That is a huge win. Even before you get there you have already done something that is helping you to rewire your brain, to rewire the connections in your body, to do things differently and be in the discomfort of that, in order to get to comfort.

And all that takes place before you even do the thing, it’s already happened just in that decision. That’s why decisions are so powerful. It could be that getting there is the win. Could be that showing up to your evening class when maybe your colleagues were expecting you to stay late and work or maybe you’ve got family members at home wanting you to be there, getting there could be the win. That’s especially true if you have a horse that refuses to get on a trailer to travel somewhere, very literally.

Showing up to a meeting or a presentation. That’s a big deal because you could have cancelled. You have to give yourself credit for all the steps involved. Big yourself up every step along the way. Winning can also be completing what you set out to do at the pace that works for you, even if, and especially if it takes you 5 or 10 or 20 times longer than everyone else it still counts. Some people complete a degree in three years, some people it takes 10 years. Is one better than the other? You tell me. What are your thoughts?

Think about the people who walk a marathon. Are they any less worthy of celebration than the folks who run it and who break the world records? Of course not. They trained, they showed up, they did it. That is worthy of celebration. It can also be about training for something, even if you don’t end up being able to compete. Let’s say you are doing that marathon and you’ve signed up for it, you’ve been training for it, preparing for it, and then something happens and you’re unable to do it on the day. What have you gained from doing it? There’s still so much to celebrate, so many wins.

And all of these things can be about fun, connecting with others, connecting with yourself, and what’s important to you. It can be about doing something and not getting injured in the process, but all these outcomes are only possible if you count yourself in, in the first place. So what is stopping you from counting yourself in? And what are you missing out on by not giving it a shot? Think about what you gained from counting yourself in. And this has nothing to do with whether you end up on a podium or not, or whatever version of that is true for your life.

Even if you finish last, even if you’re unable to compete on the day, what are the net positives of entering in the first place as in even if you technically lose, what do you gain from entering? You gain experience, maybe you gain friends. You build resilience and confidence. You discover things. You get insights into your capabilities. You get to unpick and unwind thoughts and beliefs about yourself that maybe you didn’t even know were there until you dared to enter. You get to try new things.

You get to discover things about yourself. You get to redefine who you are and what you’re capable of achieving. How fun is that? And you get to cognitively restructure your fear of failure, especially the fear of not being perfect or the best. Maybe you get to contend with your fear of success as well and you get to challenge and change these limiting beliefs. You see the value in every heroic attempt regardless of any ranking or any recognition. You get the excitement of trying.

You get the satisfaction that comes from putting in effort that has nothing to do with a defined successful result. So think about how this shows up in your life. Where are you counting yourself out? Where could you count yourself in and what do you gain from that? I’ve shared my thoughts with you. I’m sure there are plenty more. Count yourself in. Alright folks, I’ll catch you next week.

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