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A few years back I learned the Word of the Year concept.
The basic gist of the Word of the Year is, rather than coming up with the usual plethora of New Year’s resolutions for yourself (the sheer bulk of which can overwhelm you, fail to inspire you, and ultimately, make you feel like a failure) you pick one word to guide your year.
One word, one… single… word.
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Ah, the holidays. A season meant for spending quality time with family and friends, connecting with your spiritual side, and soaking up the goodwill and bonhomie that abounds.
Somehow, it’s also a time for never-ending to-do lists, umpteen social obligations, and conflicting demands on your time. These can leave you wondering how you’ll be able to keep up with your riding and fitness through it all. But, the prospect of arriving at the end of December feeling stiff, bloated, and like you have neglected your horse is not a really appealing way to start off the New Year.
So, as the holiday pressure mounts, now is a great time to stop and get clear. Here are my tips for staying centered in yourself, and showing up the way you want to for your horse, throughout this season.
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One of my favorite techniques for successfully motivating myself, as well as for troubleshooting just about any problem – all the way from horse training to health issues – is something I call “Ask a Better Question”.
Here’s the thing. If ask myself a question like, “Why can’t I get motivated to do my stretches every evening before bed?”, my brain starts searching for answers, and it comes up with all sorts of things, such as:
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In my last article, I talked to Alice MacGillivray about how she went from horse newbie to successfully participating in riding a scored USDF Training Level test with her Fjord mare, Bocina. One factor that stood out for me in talking to Alice, was the role that the support and encouragement of her Gabriola Horse Group community played in helping Alice get to that point.
In today’s individual-oriented culture, it’s easy to look at someone’s accomplishment and marvel at what they were able to achieve. But the truth is, if you get a chance to take a look behind the scenes of that success, you will most often find a group of people.
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There’s this philosophical argument called Sorites Paradox, also known as the paradox of the heap. Sorites (pronounced so-rite-ees) is a Greek word that simply means “heaped up”. The argument goes like this:
Suppose someone dumps a large sack of rice on the table. On the table now sits one heap of rice. Now suppose you take one grain of rice away, and set it at the other end of the table. How many heaps are there now? One grain of rice can’t be said to be a heap, so there is still just one heap, the original one. Now take another grain of rice, and relocate it to the new spot. We get the same conclusion, two grains is not a heap. The same with a third grain, and a fourth.
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One of my clients was filling me in on her ongoing training with her young Fjord gelding (she is doing an awesome job with him!) and she used a phrase that I really liked and wanted to share with you.
As she introduced her horse to new experiences, outings, and adventures, if things didn’t go quite the way she envisioned they would, and consequently didn’t measure up to her expectations, she would tell me, “I had to find my lemonade”.
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One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
– Marie Curie
OK, so if a two-time Nobel-prize winning scientist can write that, doesn’t it only make sense that the rest of us might, from time to time, feel weighed down by all of what we HAVE to do, never mind what we WANT to do? If it sometimes seems like the gap between where you are at with your horse and where you want to be is a canyon, then I have a practice I want to share with you.
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A reader, Katie, wrote to me after she had read my Gumby article on using the power of visual imagery to help with your riding and training. Katie shared her experience with her own horse, who can be difficult at times, and I wanted to discuss part of her comment, because she raises a really important point:
I don’t know as I’ve come up with an image for my young mare and I, but I think your urging us to do that, and your example of how the image of Gumby worked well for you, is very important and useful. Whenever she’s difficult, the line: “This horse could hurt me”, comes to mind. It feels rational and careful, but it may not be.
Lori seems to bring out the strengths in every horse, and works to nudge away any problems. Every horse in the barn was unique and she was working with each of them to create living, breathing, trusting works of art…
I realize this note makes Lori and Bluebird Lane Fjords and Bocina sound too good to be true, but over the last few months I have been consistently amazed, even though I already knew I’d connected with one of the great Fjord farms.
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