10 Life Lessons I Learned From Horses - The Last 5

Here's the second part meaning another 5 of the ten life lessons I've learned from horses so far.

  1. You are allowed to make mistakes. Have you ever felt reproach in a horse‘s glance? I haven‘t. Not because my project horse isn‘t fed up with me from time to time. I make mistakes, am unfair (though not on purpose), am not in control of my emotions or loose patience. Still: The horse stays friendly, loyal, polite and patient. In the worst case, he‘ll just tolerate me and waits until my mood changes for the better. The horse is never angry with me. He is forgiving and accepts me for what I am. I am allowed to make mistakes. He doesn‘t hand them to me on a silver platter afterwards or spells them out for me (of course, he makes sure I notice that I screwed up. But he‘s subtle about it and not accusing). It is ok to make mistakes. And so it is my job to accept and tolerate my horse‘s mistakes as well. To give him the chance to make mistakes and learn from them instead of preventing them from happening. This is what you do when you hold your reins tight all the time. You suppress mistakes instead of allowing them to happen and fix them afterwards. Only if I let the mistake happen, we are both able to learn from it. Accept help. The herd of horses lives that concept day in and day out.
  2. Together, we are better off. We don‘t have to fight our way through life on our own. We can accept help. It doesn‘t cost us a thing and often, others are glad to help. I don‘t know about you but I am always happy to help someone in need. It makes me feel better about myself.
  3. Appreciate your horse‘s tries. How easy are we to please? Are we ever content? If we have trouble to be content in our every day life, we‘ll probably have challenges with our perfectionism being with horses as well. Therefore it‘s vital that we are aware of our horse‘s tries, that we appreciate and reward them. Our horse tries to understand us, and we should give him the respect he deserves - even if his answers are not the ones we were hoping for.
  4. Find happiness in the little things. If we are only happy when our horse does a nice piaff or flying lead changes, we might wait for a life time. But there are so many little things and bright moments worth noticing and to be grateful for while working towards our goals. The more we become aware and grateful of those moments of happiness the more content we become. We experience happiness every day in small amounts - instead of waiting for it to flood our lives at once. Because we might wait until the end and still haven‘t experienced it yet.
  5. Let it happen. Sometimes, we work really hard on a certain manoever with our horse. And we become frustrated because it just doesn‘t seem to improve. We ask over and over again, hope that our horse will react more quickly or subtly, step further under the body or finally bend the haunches. But we just don‘t come together with the horse. Sometimes, we just work too hard. Our focus is too narrow, we are strained and stressed. Sometimes it helps to back down, let go of the goals and just let things happen instead of making them happen. 


    10 Life Lessons I Learned From Horses - The First 5

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