Episode 268: Seeing your horse dream on a daily basis

In this episode, Stacy discusses the importance of seeing the connection between your dreams and your goals. Developing the skill of seeing your dream daily inside your goals is important for continued progress.

  • identifying if you are overly focused on the goal
  • how to tell if you are mostly focused on the dream
  • examples of dreams anchored in goals
  • the unseen nature of obstacles and lessons
  • separating fact-based obstacles from story-based obstacles

Stacy draws parallels between her dreams and teaching her horses. She reflects on how the mundane yet essential skills learned by horse and rider have a pivotal role in achieving broader dreams.

Episode 268_ Seeing your horse dream on a daily basis.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 268_ Seeing your horse dream on a daily basis.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Stacy Westfall:
Inside of my goal, I see my dream on a daily basis.

Announcer:
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy's goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.

Stacy Westfall:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall and I'm here to help you turn your horse dreams into skills and goals so you can see progress and reach those dreams. Happy new year. Question for you. Are you more naturally a dreamer or are you more naturally a goal setter? I had to pause and think about this one for a minute, because at this point I think I'm both. I do, however, think that by nature, people tend to default to one or the other one more naturally. But if you want to do both, you can develop it as a skill. I'm actually teaching a class on this subject on Saturday, a strategic planning session for your horse related dreams. You can register for that over on my website or if you're listening in the future, just be sure to join my email list so you'll know about future free teachings that I offer. But if we go back to the dreamer or the goal setter, I think one of the reasons it's important to learn how to do both is because if you lean too far towards goal pursuit, it can be easy to lose sight of the dream or the reason why you set the goal in the first place. You're going to know if that's what you're doing, because if you don't reach the goal, it's going to feel like you failed. So it's almost like your goal becomes a pass or fail test. However, if you lean too far towards the dream, then oftentimes you risk not creating a path that leads you closer to achieving that dream.

Stacy Westfall:
So there is a beauty in learning to be able to set the goal and remember the dream, or the reason why you're pursuing that goal. Let me anchor this into an example for you. I bought a yearling just a few months ago, and technically by AQHA standards, she would now be a two year old, but my goal for her this year in 2024 is to be able to safely trail ride. And on the surface, that looks like a pretty flat standard goal if I even look further out. I bought her because she's bred for reining, so one of my more long term goals would be to show her in reining, but that one's even further out, and I see the ability to safely trail ride as a stepping stone to becoming a solid reining horse. But if you listen to me talk about it, you can hear how these sound like goals. So this would be very goal oriented, the way that this ties into my personal dream, or why is because I personally want to learn all I can about horses. This explains why I like doing different disciplines. It explains why I want to do reining and dressage and trail ride and mounted shooting and working, equitation and bareback and bridleless and liberty and on and on and on. Because I get to experience life through the eyes of a horse, and I get to experience life through one horse, say, Willow, doing many different things like reining and dressage and trail riding.

Stacy Westfall:
And I also get the opportunity to work with different horses and see life through their eyes. So when I bought Ember, I knew that part of owning her was that I get to teach her. And I get to learn from her. I believe that every horse that I train has a lesson that they are here to teach me. So if I look back through each horse that I can name that I have trained over the years, I have assigned a lesson that they came into my life to teach me. And I also believe that I very rarely know what this lesson will be until after it has appeared. So I don't get to pick the horse and the lesson they're going to teach me. I get to pick the horse and then I will be learning a lesson from this horse. So can you hear how these are more of my dream and my why? And then the goal for this year is to trail ride and inside the goal to trail ride this year that does not even list all of the things that will have to happen. So think about all the things that will have to happen for me to reach that one goal of being able to safely trail ride, there'll be a first saddling, a first bridling a first ride, and they'll be all kinds of obstacles that I don't even know of. I know of a lot of the steps because I've done this before, but I don't know all of the possible obstacles.

Stacy Westfall:
For example, I didn't know I was going to break my hand in 2023, so that was an obstacle that I faced and I didn't know it was coming. Just like this particular horse will teach me lessons that will be revealed along the way. I know they're coming. I know this horse can be my teacher as I am being this horse's teacher. But just as the lessons that I will learn will be revealed, many of the obstacles that I will face will also be revealed. Now some obstacles I'm going to be able to guess, like the first saddling and the first bridling. Others I'm not going to see coming at all. But what I do know, because I know obstacles are coming, is I know that part of what's going to be tested in the next year is my ability to recover from an obstacle, to pivot in the face of an obstacle. Basically, how am I going to handle the obstacles that I do and don't see coming? Because that always happens on the way to a goal. Now, what's really interesting is that when I'm working, especially with a younger horse like Ember. When I'm doing a lot of groundwork for emotional control, what I can see is that I am actually testing her ability to recover, her ability to pivot, her ability to handle obstacles, literally obstacles like tarps or swimming pools or balls. But mostly what I'm testing is her ability to handle things emotionally.

Stacy Westfall:
And so as I work through 2024 with Ember, I want to remember my bigger why or my bigger dream. As I'm pursuing this year's goal of safely trail riding and looking forward to my even longer time goals of showing her in reining. The reason it's so important to me to do this is because I'm going to develop skills through setting specific goals, and oftentimes the skills are not that exciting to look at. So I think about when I was a child learning how to write or when I was a teenager learning how to type. Those were physical skills that I learned, and I enjoy the benefit of knowing how to speed type to this day. But that skillset was very – day after day putting my fingers on a keyboard – learning how to type. So the skill set part of it didn't feel that dreamy while it was doing it. But it makes my life a lot easier now, and it has made it possible for me to move towards other dreams that I have because I'm able to type. So when I'm working with Ember and I'm teaching her the emotional control of being able to lunge, being able to cross a tarp, being able to stand in her stall and be tied. I realize that these skill sets that she's learning, that are measurable and easy to see on the way towards my goal of this year are going to be skills that don't feel dreamy, but they do move us towards that idea of being able to trail ride.

Stacy Westfall:
And for me, they always, every day I can find how this particular horse is teaching me something, how this particular horse is revealing to me something. Another way I could explain this is that often the dream or the WHY that you have may seem vague. Like for me, continue to learn, learn all I can about horses. That's kind of vague. It's not very measurable. But the goal this year of being able to safely trail ride on Ember is very measurable. And in my case, it's also a goal that I've had many times over the years with different horses. So what keeps it exciting? Well, the thing that keeps a goal exciting is remembering how it's tied to the dream. I can sit here right now, and even though she's never had a saddle on, I can imagine being able to ride through the trails and enjoy the scenery and be there. For her first experience of a water crossing, be there for her first experience of a deer showing up. Be there as she works her way up and down the hills that she's never navigated before. So inside, the measurable goal contains all these opportunities for me to see smaller pieces of my dream that are coming true every single day. As I was thinking about recording this podcast, one thing that stood out to me was the idea that we've got dreams, we've got goals, we've got obstacles.

Stacy Westfall:
And then one of the obstacles that you will likely run into is going to be your stories, or the way that you are interpreting things. So some obstacles are going to be very fact driven. It's raining out. It's icy out. I broke my hand. Those could be obstacles that you would run into that are very factual. And then there are going to be other obstacles that you're going to run into that are going to be much more story based. They're going to sound more like why you can't or why you can, or why it won't work or why it could work. This came to my mind when I was out lunging Ember, and I was sending her over a tarp, and she'd had several days off because of the holidays and my boys being home, and just the busyness of Christmas and New Year's, and as I was lunging her, I was doing an exercise with her of emotional control and speed. And as I was doing this, I realized that when she was making some of the choices that she was making, some I really, really liked, she was holding on to the training that I had done really well, even though she hadn't been worked recently. She was staying out of my space. She wasn't trying to roll back, but she was offering very creative, fresh, sassy baby things, jumping through the air, twisting, turning, kicking out and doing all these different things. And it got me thinking about you. The podcast listener and my students, and I got thinking about how it would be for you if you were lunging this horse and you were seeing what she was doing.

Stacy Westfall:
What I recognized in that moment is that when I see her bucking, jumping, twisting, turning and doing all these different things, there are many different stories that could be told about that, and the stories that we tell ourselves impact us in a big way. So the first question for you to ponder for the next week or the rest of the month is do you recognize when you're telling yourself stories? And the reason this is such an interesting thing to ponder is because if you see Ember, jump and twist and turn and react and you see her and you think she is a spooky horse, you're more likely to handle her in a different way than if I think she's being playful. The other thing that comes up is that if you see me doing a particular exercise, if you were watching me as I was lunging her at speed, testing her emotional control, and you went to copy me and physically copy the actions I was doing. If you were just copying my physical actions, what would most likely happen is you would disconnect from the why you would be copying what I was doing, but you wouldn't have an understanding of why I was doing it, or how I was interpreting what I was seeing. And whenever you disconnect from the why and you go just into Stacy was doing this, therefore I will do that same action.

Stacy Westfall:
I will send my horse at this same speed over this same thing. What you're disconnecting from there is why I'm sending the horse like that. What I'm doing is different than why I'm doing it. And the why I'm doing it also helps inform how I'm going to interpret it. And a lot of this comes back to understanding your reactions. So if you were watching the video of Ember lunging at speed and jumping and kicking out at the sound of sand hitting the tarp or the swimming pool, if it frightens you, how do you respond? If it angers you? If you're the one in that situation, how do you respond? Because your story about, "oh my gosh, this horse is always going to" or "oh my gosh, this horse will never" these become obstacles because just because the horse is doing a certain action today doesn't necessarily mean it's always going to be like that. Being able to separate your stories from facts is a very important skill to build. So notice if you say "my horse is bored" or "my horse doesn't like this", notice that you're presenting this as fact and if you present it as fact, go back and double check. Is it a fact? Is the horse really bored? Or how do you separate the difference between bored from distracted or unfocused, or confused, or exploring other options? The first step in understanding if you are creating your own obstacles through the stories that you're telling yourself, is to learn to watch your own thinking and recognize how many times you tell yourself the same story.

Stacy Westfall:
So if you begin noticing that you frequently say your horse is bored, or you frequently say your horse doesn't like a certain thing, when I notice repetitive thinking like this, I pause and question myself. What else could this be? When I see Ember blasting around after a few days off. My story is that she's a playful yearling. My story is I better keep the doors shut. So in case she chooses something unexpected, I'm prepared for it. Which is interesting because I'm prepared for something I can't prepare for. Yes. That's possible. My story is that it doesn't have to all be perfect. I have a few rules. She's got to stay out of my space. She's not supposed to roll back, and there's a lot of leeway, and things don't have to be perfect. So inside of my dream, I have a goal. Inside of my goal, I see my dream on a daily basis. Inside of my goal, I see my obstacles. Inside of my obstacles. I see my own thinking as one of those obstacles. That's what I have for you this week. Again, I'm teaching a class on Saturday. Register for it. Or if it's after the fact, make sure you sign up for my email list so you'll know about any future teachings. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

Announcer:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit StacyWestfall.com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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