At 12:19:44 on 24.01.11, Flicka wrote:
Is happiness all in the mind? Can you change how you feel? Do we owe it to ourselves and our horses to be happier?
http://blog.trotontv.com/2011/01/think-yourself-happy.html

At 10:24:18 on 25.01.11, picsnicky wrote:
I have to say, I do feel one heck of a lot better when I smile :D and if you smile at another, you more often than not get a smile back :D which in turn improves my mood :D. The difficulty is remembering to smile in the first place lol! Took this pic a while ago, still makes me smile - hope it makes others smile too???

At 12:21:18 on 25.01.11, NMH wrote:
When I did dressage, I used to reckon I got better marks when I remembered to smile :) !!

At 21:48:32 on 25.01.11, zoelovesanimals wrote:
I agree 100% with this!! whenever i smile , even if im down, or frustrated it always cheers me up :) so i find something to smile about and get my happy frame of mind back! :)

At 07:44:32 on 27.01.11, Angwh19 wrote:
I'm mostly smiling either when I'm singing in front of an audience or galloping on my ex-eventer!! With my eyes streaming as well LOL!! I also enjoy Jilly Cooper novels and am trying to read 'Jump' atm but keep getting interrupted by my pets or sleep!! :-)

At 14:15:28 on 28.01.11, AnnMurray wrote:
Absolutely, I was tought as a little girl you can always find something to be happy about. When I go shopping or out in public, i see a glommy face and smile, almost always they smile back, such a joy!

At 12:45:15 on 31.01.11, Flicka wrote:
I really agree about how contagious smiling is, similarly someone in a bad mood effects us all in a negative way. So we must have an even bigger effect on such a sensitive creature as the horse. And yes sometimes it's just too easy to focus on what's wrong, and what we don't have rather than what's right and what we do have but the latter makes us much happier! As someone who really pushed themselves and so is rarely content I think this weekend was the first time I stopped to think what would the horse mad teenage me have thought about what I have now, two beautiful mares travelling down in a really nice horsebox to a fantastic trainer-I'd have thought I was the luckiest girl alive.

At 19:09:27 on 31.01.11, Pat Wooldridge wrote:
Yes, you can. It is sometimes called, "Acting as if." Flicka, you're a very insightful person, thinking of yourself as a teenager if you had had your horses then, and a lovely horsebox, traveling to a trainer---and while you were thinking these grateful thoughts, you actually were not feeling well. Guess that could be called "Thinking as if." I love reading everyone's comments although I no longer have horses at this point. I'm not living vicariously through reading all of your great comments about your activities, just drinking it in (well, here we go---)as I did when I was a teenager and reading every horse book I could find. No use looking for horse owners. Now and then there was one who offered to let me ride, but few and far between. Most of them owned show horses that were quite exclusive. That's just the way it was, and I understood that. As I write, and find more and more details about Hap and other horses I've owned, showing up in my finished work, I'm so glad I've had the opportunity to enjoy all those horses for all that time. It's still paying off. As they say, memories can never be taken away. We all have them. Nowadays I ride at a friend's stable, which is so much fun.

At 18:55:21 on 22.02.11, whittenberg wrote:
I completley aggree, once, i went on a sponsered ride and I was massively nervous as my poney was being REALLY spookey and bombey but half way through, I "faked my self happy" and found my self much more confident and genuinely happy for the rest of the ride which in turn made my poney happier about doing what I asked of him:D