Is your mind your best friend or your worst enemy?
Transform your Leadership Experience with Mental Fitness.
About
I am an equestrian who has battled with negative thoughts and emotions that have in the past hindered my progress and enjoyment. I used to worry about forgetting my course/making mistakes in competitions and even who was watching! These thoughts ruined my enjoyment and made me think about giving up. When I look back on my professional career, I can also now see the same negative thought patterns and how they sabotaged me.
As an equestrian I am a leader.
Since focusing on my Mental Fitness I have found an ease and flow in my riding, my business and my life. I have developed a solution focused mindset that is adaptable, positive and less attached to outcomes. My self awareness has increased, enabling me to recognise when I am experiencing negative thoughts and emotions and take back control, recovering from mistakes faster, rather than my thoughts controlling me. I have experienced increased feelings of enjoyment, improved performance in my riding and improved relationships with those around me.
I have a career in organisational psychology and I am currently coaching a range of professionals. My vision is to bring the latest globally researched Mental Fitness techniques to Equestrians of all disciplines and to those working within the Equine industry.
By building your Mental Fitness you can fulfil your true riding potential. You work hard on your physical riding ability and your horse’s training, yet do you pay the same attention to your mental fitness?
The thoughts you have determine your emotions, behaviour and the action you decide to take. Your Mental Fitness is critical to sustained success.
Is your mind your best friend or your worst enemy?
Break free from the chains of self-criticism, from harsh self-judgment to the liberating embrace of self-acceptance and unstoppable flow!
Transform your experience of life now. Move from stress and overwhelm to increased….
– Focus and attention when riding.
– Feelings of calm and presence.
– Chance of achieving a flow state in competitions.
– Commitment to the achievement of goals.
– Self belief.
– Speed of recovery from mistakes.
Program
Most attempts at positive change fail because we stop at insight and don’t build habits. Sustained change towards a more positive mind requires laying down neural pathways to form new habits through consistent daily practice. And that’s what our Mental Fitness Program enables you to do.
Daily Practice
15 minutes/day of app-guided practice enables you to build stronger mental muscles (neural pathways). These exercises are bite-sized to fit your busy schedule and customized based on how you self-sabotage.
Weekly Focus
Weekly hour-long video delivers deep experiential exploration of the week’s focus. You’ll feel inspired and energized to practice during the week to sustain the benefits experienced during the video sessions.
Measurable Progress
You’ll feel motivated through instant feedback on exactly how much progress you’re making towards building the three core muscles of mental fitness. Brain rewiring may be visible in MRI imaging within eight weeks.
Community Support
We help you establish a support and accountability group with other program participants. Research has shown this to be a critical success factor for establishing lasting new positive habits of the mind.
Build your foundation of mental fitness by strengthening three critical mental muscles to shift the balance of power from your inner Saboteurs (your negative self) to your inner Sage (your positive self).
Week 1
Self-Command Muscle
Through a breakthrough process called PQ Reps, you get to boost your Self-Command muscle. Each PQ Rep only takes 10 seconds and can be done with eyes open or closed. With each PQ Rep, you develop greater mastery over your own mind, quiet the negative, and activate the positive region of your brain.
Week 2-3
Saboteur Interceptor Muscle
You get to intercept your top Saboteurs the moment they try to hijack your thoughts, feelings, and actions. In preparation for this practice, you get to expose the lies, limiting beliefs and damage of your Saboteurs, so they can no longer fool you into thinking they are helpful to you.
Week 4-6
Sage Muscle
You get to practice the Sage Perspective that every problem or challenge can be converted into a gift and opportunity. And you get to generate the gift through the 5 Sage Powers of Empathize, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, and Activate.
Imagine yourself able to remain calm, clear headed, stress-free and positive even in the midst of handling big competitions. What becomes possible for you, in achievement, in peace of mind and wellness, and in your relationships?
I deliver both individual and group Mental Fitness programs virtually – meeting for 1 hour per week to support your app guided learning and mental fitness practice.
I also offer one to one coaching following the completion of the Mental Fitness Foundation Program.
To make an investment in your own mental fitness the cost is:
£750 – 7 week Foundation in Mental Fitness Group program.
£950 – 7 week Foundation in Mental Fitness Individual program.
£1,800 – 12 week Mental Fitness program, which includes the 7 week foundation in Mental Fitness Individual Program & bespoke one to one coaching with myself.
* Monthly payment plans are available.
Make a commitment now to boost your mental fitness. Click the ‘Contact’ tab at the top of the page or scroll to the bottom of the page to take the first steps towards Mental Fitness.
Research
The original breakthrough research contribution by Shirzad Chamine (Founder and CEO of Positive Intelligence®) has used the process of Factor Analysis to discover the core factors that impact both performance and wellbeing.
This research revealed that there are only 10 negative response factors (10 Saboteurs) and only five positive response factors (5 Sage Powers).
Discovering these root-level factors of performance and wellbeing dramatically simplifies personal and professional development. Intercepting one’s Saboteur and activating one’s Sage automatically results in a wide array of impacts including stress management, relationship improvement, performance, creativity, leadership, resilience, and happiness.
This is because we are rewiring the brain at the root level rather than treating symptoms.
Recent advances in functional MRI (fMRI), which measures how neural activity changes blood flow, have allowed scientists and psychologists to witness the real-time working of the brain for the very first time.
We are now able to pinpoint the regions of the brain involved in producing different thoughts or feelings and identify the neural functions involved with the activation of Saboteurs and the Sage.
The Survive Region:
Your Inner Saboteurs
Saboteurs are the voices in your head that generate negative emotions when you handle life’s challenges. They exist in the brainstem, limbic system, and parts of the left brain. They produce much of your stress, anxiety, self-doubt, anger, shame, guilt, frustration, and mind chatter. These negative emotions are only helpful for a second as they alert you to dangers or issues. However, staying in these emotions hurts your ability to see clearly and choose the most impactful response.
The Thrive Region:
Your Inner Sage
Your Sage lives in an entirely different region of your brain, the middle prefrontal cortex, “empathy circuitry,” and parts of the right brain. It generates positive emotions while handling life’s challenges. These include empathy, compassion, gratitude, curiosity, joy of creativity, and calm, clear-headed laser-focused action. This region is wired for creativity and big-picture awareness of what is important and the best course of action.
Activating this region results in release of endorphins that counter the negative impacts of stress-induced cortisol.
Saboteur Interceptor Muscle
Your Saboteurs generate all your negative emotions, including stress, anxiety, self-doubt, anger, avoidance, procrastination, insensitivity or discontent. Mental fitness requires the ability to intercept and discredit the Saboteurs.
Mental fitness is increased when new mental muscles are strengthened through positive habits. Our program focuses on growing three specific mental muscles, which become visible as new neural pathways in MRI imaging within eight weeks of practice.
How We Self Sabotage
Saboteurs are the voices in your head that generate negative emotions as you handle life’s everyday challenges. They represent the automatic patterns in your mind for how to think, feel, and respond. Your Saboteurs cause all of your stress, anxiety, self-doubt, frustration, restlessness, and unhappiness. They sabotage your performance, wellbeing, and relationships.
The Saboteur Assessment is your first step to conquering your Saboteurs — identifying them to expose their lies and limiting beliefs. Please email me to complete this free assessment.
The Judge & Accomplice Saboteurs
The Judge is the universal Saboteur that afflicts everyone. It is the one that beats you up repeatedly over mistakes or shortcomings, warns you obsessively about future risks, wakes you up in the middle of the night worrying, gets you fixated on what is wrong with others or your life, etc. Your Judge activates your other Saboteurs, causes much of your stress and unhappiness, reduces your effectiveness, and harms your relationships.
The Judge works with one or more Accomplice Saboteurs to hijack your mind and cause most of your setbacks. Do any of these seem familiar to you?
Avoider
Focusing on the positive and pleasant in an extreme way. Avoiding difficult and unpleasant tasks and conflicts.
Controller
Anxiety-based need to take charge and control situations and people’s actions to one’s own will. High anxiety and impatience when that is not possible.
Hyper-Achiever
Dependent on constant performance and achievement for self-respect and self-validation. Latest achievement quickly discounted, needing more.
Hyper-Rational
Intense and exclusive focus on the rational processing of everything, including relationships. Can be perceived as uncaring, unfeeling, or intellectually arrogant.
Hyper-Vigilant
Continuous intense anxiety about all the dangers and what could go wrong. Vigilance that can never rest.
Pleaser
Indirectly tries to gain acceptance and affection by helping, pleasing, rescuing, or flattering others. Loses sight of own needs and becomes resentful as a result.
Restless
Restless, constantly in search of greater excitement in the next activity or constant busyness. Rarely at peace or content with the current activity.
Stickler
Perfectionism and a need for order and organization taken too far. Anxious trying to make too many things perfect.
Victim
Emotional and temperamental as a way to gain attention and affection. An extreme focus on internal feelings, particularly painful ones. Martyr streak.
Testimonials
Maria is an excellent coach delivers her knowledge and experience in a way which suits the individual client. Maria takes the time to get to know the individual and goes at a pace to match their own journey.
She is extremely supportive and empathic as well as presenting just the right amount of challenge.
The fact that Maria has had personal experience of these methods and that they have helped her in her riding progress serves to make her coaching all the more personal and effective.
I found the course to be extremely enlightening and working through it with Maria has definitely altered they way I approach challenges. I would highly recommend Maria’s coaching.
Alex Buttery – Newbold Verdon Equestrian Centre, UK.