Your Horse Can't Be Fooled By Performed Confidence

She runs from meeting to meeting all day—back-to-back calls, decisions stacked on decisions, that constant hum of "what's next" running underneath everything. Her horse is her sanctuary, her escape from the corporate pace. The one place where she thought she could finally breathe.

Three weeks into The Horse Listener, she told me what she'd been doing without realising it.

She'd been bringing that same rushing energy straight into the arena, faking confidence because she didn't have time to figure things out properly, pretending to be in control because slowing down felt like going backwards. In the boardroom, this works. You project certainty even when you're uncertain. You make decisions quickly because hesitation looks like weakness. You bluff through the moments when you don't have all the information, because that's what leaders do.

Her horse showed her exactly what that energy created.

Tense. Reactive. Rushing to anticipate her cues before she even gave them. Distracted, like he couldn't settle into the moment they were supposed to be sharing together.

She thought he was the problem. She thought maybe he needed more training, a different approach, something to calm him down and help him focus.

He was the mirror.

The Shift That Changed Everything

"I was so afraid to slow down," she said. "I thought I'd be going backwards. I was afraid to trust what I now know is my intuition, because I thought it would make me look weak. Like a failure. Like I wasn't enough for my horse."

This is the pattern I see everywhere with riders and their horses. They think admitting "I don't know" will prove they're not good enough, that uncertainty will make the horse lose faith in them, that they need to project confidence even when they're confused inside.

So they perform confidence they don't feel, they fake certainty they don't have, and they try harder to look like they know exactly what they're doing.

The horse feels all of it—the tension in their body, the performance in their energy, the gap between what they're showing and what they're actually feeling.

The shift happened when she stopped performing and started being honest about what she didn't know. Instead of bluffing through uncertainty, she paused. She applied the framework I'd taught her—observe what the horse is showing you, ask what it means, test something different, adjust based on their response. She moved from fear into curiosity.

She expected her horse to lose confidence in her. The opposite happened.

He became more interactive, more present, more engaged. The tension in his body softened. He stopped rushing to anticipate her cues and started waiting for them, actually listening instead of bracing for what might come next.

"It's like we're in this together now," she told me. "Instead of me asking a question and expecting a result, we're experimenting. Learning together."

What Horses Actually Respond To

Her horse couldn't be fooled by performed confidence. He never could. He was waiting for her to show up honestly—uncertain, curious, willing to try something and see what happened. That's when the real partnership began.

Horses don't need you to know everything. They don't need you to have all the answers before you start. They need you to be honest about where you actually are, in this moment, with this horse.

When you stop pretending you have all the answers and start being present with where you actually are, your horse can finally trust you. Because you're finally trustworthy.

Grounded confidence doesn't come from knowing everything—it comes from self-awareness and the courage to stay curious even when you feel uncertain. Horses respond to that. Every time.

The Horse Listener framework gives you a way to do this. It creates structure that supports curiosity instead of killing it—observe what your horse is showing you, ask what it means, test something different, adjust based on their response. A process you can rely on when you don't know what to do next.

If your horse has been tense, reactive, rushing, or distracted, he might be showing you exactly what you're bringing. Not because something is wrong with him, but because he's doing what horses do—reflecting back what's real.

The question isn't whether you can fake confidence well enough to fool him. The question is whether you're ready to stop trying.

⤥ Learn more about The Horse Listener: https://www.nikavorster.com/the-horse-listener