Equuality: Reflections on Life with Horses

Showing Up

Don't be afraid. Don't be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be… If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then "Ole!" And if not, do your dance anyhow… "Ole!" to you, nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up. -Elizabeth Gilbert

Sometimes being successful is the scariest thing that can happen to us, for success often brings in tow the heavy burden of expectation. We view our lives as a linear progression, a succession of steps bringing us closer and closer to realizing our full potential. We expect that each performance, each endeavor, each day and moment must be better than the last. If it is not, we often view ourselves as failures.

This cycle is astonishingly unhealthy - each time we succeed, the pressure we feel to be successful increases. Once we reach a new height, the bar it set at that height for all future endeavors.

We can easily become overwhelmed by the need to achieve. We doubt our ability to do anything as great ever again. This doubt is insidious. It poisons the joy of every subsequent experience. We are become afraid to try because we fear failure, or we cannot truly enjoy our successes because we fear having to perform to a new standard.

As if this were not terrible enough, these habits inform the way we view the accomplishments of others as well. I have seen this tendency quite clearly in the way I relate to my horses. I find myself often falling into the pattern of using yesterday's successes as the baseline for today's efforts. In severe cases, I have thoughtlessly dismissed a behavior that I had celebrated with astonishment only a day before.

I think that this pattern of unconsciously ratcheting up the criteria for achievement is one of my greatest challenges as a horseman. If I am not careful, I can increase my expectations to the point where they are impossible for my horse to meet. Then the damage to my view of my self and my horse is substantial.

Some of the volunteers I mentored at the horse rescue had this same challenge. They would come to me and tell me that they didn't know what to do. Their horse must not like them any more, or maybe he has a bad attitude. Whatever the interpretation, the problem was that the horse was no longer doing something the volunteer felt the horse should know how to do.

What I usually found was that the volunteer had increased their criteria too quickly, or had failed to lower their criteria when a new challenge arose. Maybe the horse was completing one circle consistently, and then suddenly the volunteer decided the horse needed to do three whole circles to earn a reward. The horse became frustrated, not knowing why what was working before wasn't working now. In another scenario, maybe a horse had been totally unafraid of a tarp the day before, but today the wind is up and everything is flapping unpredictably, but the volunteer is still expecting the same level of calm.

In explaining my observations of the problems to the volunteers, I always came back to this: you have to set your criteria at a level that the horse can achieve, regardless of what their past performance was. If this means lowering your standards, there is no need to despair. By helping the horse to feel successful, you will be training a useful emotional state that will naturally help the horse to be more success in the future.

I believe this is the same attitude we must take with ourselves – we are successful. Period. When we are faced with situations where we feel our horse is performing below par, we should not condemn ourselves for it. Neither should we feel badly when we are not meeting our own expectations. When it comes down to it, all of us, no matter our species, are doing our honest best in any given moment. If we could do "more" or "better" we simply would.

Creativity, timing, flexibility, balance, focus, strength, and every other aspect of our performance ebb and flow on their own unique rhythms. Sometimes the waves of these rhythms coincide, creating a flood of greatness that leaves a new high water mark. Sometimes they cancel each other out, leaving us feeling like sludge in the bottom of a barrel.

We cannot control these fluctuations. The only thing we can do is choose our actions when confronted by them. As Elizabeth Gilbert suggests, what we can do is continue to show up. We can choose to keep doing our part, to be engaged every day, regardless of whether we're being pulled by a strong current or feel stuck in a backwater eddy. If we just keep stubbornly, lovingly, showing up and playing with our horses, we will find that we have found a very real way to express the wonder of the life we live.