You only have limited decision-making capability each day. Wasting that on unnecessary decisions costs you precious energy. In his book ‘Willpower doesn’t work‘ Benjamin Hardy goes into this in depth.

Changing your environment so it supports you in want you want to achieve can be a game changer!

When coaching my clients, the environmental influencer is one of the most overlooked. We tend to take our environment for granted, or assume we don’t have any influence over it.

If your goal is to stop giving your horses sugary treats and use carrots as a reward instead: get rid of all the sugary treats. That way you never have to decide between the sugary treat and the carrot. You have created a small tweak in your environment that sets you up success with this goal. You don’t have to waste precious willpower on deciding which treat to give your horse.

If you want to waste less time sweeping, you could make sure there is a hoofpick easily available at every stable and the exits to the arena. People are far more likely to pick out their horse’s hooves if they don’t have to walk around the barn trying to locate a hoofpick.

The fewer choices you have to make, the more powerful those choices will be.

At Horse Care Center for example, we have optimised the environment for what we do: rehabbing and swimming horses. We don’t have livery clients disturbing the peace, we don’t allow other people to use our arena while we’re working, we have selected the optimal feed for muscle-building without creating excess energy, …

What could you do to tweak your environment so it sets you up for success?