Our own fears prevent us from achieving the goals that would lead us to our dream life. Self-belief and having the confidence to try things, to start things, to change things, will see us move forward to what we want.

When people tell us that we’re not good enough, it makes it hard to push through to what we want – but it is our own lack of self-belief that makes it impossible to achieve our goals.

As a child I was very shy and afraid to try things, or put myself out there and perhaps look stupid, or worse – fail. Learning to ride horses helped me feel like I could take “brave” actions. The achievement of riding and training horses in a non-verbal partnership is a skill to be proud of. It is a skill that can be improved upon for a lifetime. It has taught me about responsibility, dedication, kindness and empathy. It has lead me to experience ambition, joy and passion.

Riding horses has an element of risk. At one point, after many bad experiences, I became afraid. I could get on a horse and ride under tuition, but inside I was terrified of all the things that could go wrong. My horse at the time was young, with little experience under saddle when I started riding her. I realised that I had to find a way to give her confidence, despite struggling with my own! I started again from scratch with the tiniest of steps so that every day we both had confidence and a good experience. It was a long process, but one I needed to take.

Since regaining my confidence, I was able to start my own homebred boy completely on my own. I was able to give him enough confidence as a riding horse that he was able to go on to giving confidence to a novice rider. It is the achievement I am most proud of – something that I had never even dreamed or planned of doing. It made me realise that I am capable of more than I limit myself to believe.

Some of us are lucky enough to have lots of self-confidence and can leap ahead quickly. Others, like me need to take lots of small steps and build on our self-confidence slowly. But having self-belief makes achieving things possible.