Improving my learning skills

I have spent the past couple hours watching some DVDs that I got at my course. It's so true that the student is only ready to listen and learn when they are ready. I felt as if there was a lot of things I was doing wrong. I watched mostly the freestyle videos since that is our weakest savvy. I took a ton of notes but here are some things that really stuck out. ALLOW ALLOW ALLOW!! Allow my horse to make a mistake, let her think that breaking gait is okay, don't make her feel wrong. Be in harmony with her ideas, then we have harmony and I can still lead her in the right direction. But then the pattern is positive. We have then created a positive conversation. Ask them to break gait when you feel they want to, again keeping the harmony going. I find myself more task oriented in the saddle, and I realize that I don't have as much fun. I have too much consistency. One thing Linda said was to not let them get bored with the pattern. This was directly from my notes on Linda's teaching 'Horses that trip easily are bored with the pattern and don't want to continue forward. Usually they have their head down. The horses aren't concentrated. On you or what you're doing/asking.' Annabelle will lower her head almost to the ground, like she's going through the motions and I'm boring her to death. I need my patterns to be consistent, but more variety in them. It was a great evening of learning and I can't wait to try it! Oh and Linda is awesome!!