Episode 288: Dancing with Discomfort: Steps of Faith and Evidence

Episode 288: Dancing with Discomfort: Steps of Faith and Evidence: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 288: Dancing with Discomfort: Steps of Faith and Evidence: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Stacy Westfall:
And in the middle of all of that, when the rider is reacting to the discomfort, scrambling for evidence, wrestling with belief, what they do is they don't see their horse as clearly.

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 understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. On today's podcast, I want to talk to you about the dance of belief, discomfort and evidence. That's just a different way to say that. I want to talk to you about your goals. So I know it's May, and that might not be a traditional checkpoint for many of you when you're checking in with your goals. But I'm asking you the question today. How's it going? Did you set a goal? Are you taking weekly action towards that goal? Daily. Monthly. What's that been like for you? For me. I shared on the podcast that I signed up for the Tevis Cup Virtual Challenge. One of the reasons I wanted to record this podcast today is because I am so close to reaching this goal, and yet I haven't reached it. And something came up for me that I thought would be very valuable to share here on the podcast, because if you pay attention, you're probably having this experience also. You might be having it before you ever set the goal, and it may be preventing you from setting the goal. Or when you begin the goal, you may rush. So let me explain. For those of you who may not have listened to some of the previous podcasts about the Tevis Cup virtual Challenge, the Tevis Cup Virtual Challenge is a fundraiser for the non-profit that maintains the trails for the Tevis Cup Endurance ride.

Stacy Westfall:
When you sign up for the Tevis Cup Virtual, the goal is to ride 100 miles in 100 days and signing up for the goal is you have a very clear timeline, goal and deadline. And immediately upon signing up, I could feel that pull to complete it. I could feel that desire to rush. And now that I'm closing in on that 100 miles, Willow is at 94 miles and Presto is at 82 miles, I can feel again with even more strength. That desire to rush, that pull of being able to say it's completed. And that's what I want to talk about today. Because when you are stretching yourself and learning something new, or when you have a goal that you are headed after, there is a dance of belief that you could do it. There is a dance of discomfort, of having it. I'm going to say it the way it feels right now for me hanging out there, it's there. It's just out of reach. It's just right there. So there's that discomfort. And then depending on where you are in the process, there's this desire to look for evidence. So let's talk a little bit more about that dance and where it might be impacting you. So before you even set a goal, you must have some level of belief without evidence that you could complete it.

Stacy Westfall:
So if you've never done something before, then you actually have to have a level of belief that you could do something that you've never done before. Now, if you have done the thing before with a different horse, or you've done the thing before in the past, it may seem easier because you have some belief because you've done it before, but there is actually a different flavor of the belief of can I do it again? So start paying attention to how belief plays a role in setting your goals, and then it's still going to be there as you move through the process. I actually wonder sometimes how that dance of belief, before you have any evidence, how that feels different than the belief when you have a tiny bit of evidence. Let me put that into an example. If you went out on a limb and decided to sign up for the Tevis Cup virtual and you had enough belief to sign up and register, but let's say that you haven't been riding your horse regularly in the last few years, or you just bought a new horse and it feels like a big goal to set, then you have to have enough belief to sign up and get started. But the second hardest, and maybe even harder than that first belief is sometimes when you start, let's say in this example, tracking miles, and then you get a bunch of rein, and you've racked up 1.3 miles, and then you miss a week because of rain, and then you get another mile, and then something happens in your life and it feels busy, and you decide not to ride that next week.

Stacy Westfall:
And then you put in two miles. And so now you're up to four miles. But that's nowhere near what you thought it was going to be when you signed up. That's what I'm talking about. When you have a tiny amount of evidence, is that spot harder for you than when you just had the idea, the belief, before you even started? I could do this for me. I actually do think that that second step, when you have a little bit of evidence, but it's nowhere near on track of what you imagined. I actually often find that that spot is harder than the, let's call it the blind belief before you start collecting evidence. So notice as I'm talking, if you think back to goals you've had in the past, and think about how that experience has been for you, or if you're in the middle of pursuing a goal that might be a full year long goal, then for me, what happens a lot of times in a year long goal is that you are in that little bit of evidence. This is not looking like what I thought it would. You're in that for a lot longer.

Stacy Westfall:
When you have a year long goal versus, let's say, the 100 day goal that the Tevis Cup challenge would be. And the reason I thought this would be a valuable topic to talk about is because oftentimes when we set a goal, we don't understand that we are literally signing ourselves up to be in a bit of a tug of war. That's that discomfort of saying, we want something different than what we have right now. And for me, as I sit here with Willow at 94 miles and I know I could go out and I could do one ride and I could complete that. And yet I am packing and getting ready to go on a trip, and I have to make some choices. And one of the things I've committed to is not rushing. And when I think about not completing this before I leave on my trip, and I don't ride for five days, when I think about leaving that undone, I can feel that discomfort, that pull, that desire to go out there and rush. And the reason I'm experiencing that right now is because I'm thinking that when I get. Done with this 100 miles. It represents something. So 94 miles in my mind is drastically different than 100 miles, even though that's one ride away. So I'm actually going to prevent myself. I'm going to choose not to complete the 100 miles before I go on this trip, because I want to feel and study the discomfort of that in-between.

Stacy Westfall:
I want to hear all those things that my brain offers me when I think about the fact that I'm so close, but I haven't completed it very often, it is that discomfort that prevents people from setting goals in the first place. Have you ever noticed that if you set a goal, have you ever noticed that what you often want to do is you want to go out and double down, triple down, quadruple down the next day and you almost want to just rush and overdo it. That is a piece of what I'm talking about right now that I'm experiencing with this last few miles hanging out there. When I say hanging out there, it feels to me like they're hanging over this ledge. It's like just a little tip and it would be over the tipping point. But I'm choosing to sit here in this discomfort and study it versus rushing past it, because I have plenty of time. This rush isn't coming from an external deadline. This rush isn't coming because somebody is going to pass me on the virtual trail. This rush is coming from the way I'm thinking. Which brings up another point that I wanted to make, which is when you decide that you're going to set a goal, you have a current belief system, a current set of habits that's creating something.

Stacy Westfall:
And when you choose to set a goal that's going to stretch you or change your habits in some sort of a way, it takes a belief that you're going to do it, but oftentimes it also requires a change of belief systems. And that is something that I very frequently see with riders who have a goal to improve something with their horse. So when I am coaching somebody in the Resourceful Rider program, I can see that when they first sign up, they have to have enough belief to join the program, and then they have to have enough belief to watch a module, and then they have to have enough belief to go out and try what they learned. And so step by step, they have the opportunity to exercise their belief. But when they go from watching to executing now, what they're going to step into is they have to step into using different techniques and looking at their horse in a slightly different way, because if they were already looking at their horse exactly the same way, they wouldn't be learning anything. So there's a discomfort that comes in changing your habits, even if that change is for improvement. And when the students come in and I, let's say, do a video review like I did a few months ago for a student that joined in February, when I do a video review and I describe what I see, oftentimes I'm describing something that's physically evident.

Stacy Westfall:
So in the example I'm thinking of, a rider came in and the horse was very light and sensitive, and it gave the rider the feeling that the horse was flighty, and she wanted to be able to ride and feel safe. And so for her, she needed to begin using cue systems that took this horse that was too light. Yes, that's a thing. If your horse is hiding from your aids or evading your aids, or is essentially like, I can do this and then you don't have to touch me when the horse is overreacting, even if it's in a positive way, like they're trying too hard. I believe a horse can be too light, and when they become too light and sensitive to physical cues, then it becomes challenging for the rider because it's almost like you can't miss. Did you have a lack of clarity when I said that? Because I said you can't whisper quiet enough? Notice that when I whisper, the clarity of what I'm saying is lost. So if. If your horse becomes too light, it can cause issues. And that's what I saw. But if you and your horse have been operating in a zone where this feels normal, then what you're about to encounter is a belief system change in the middle of trying to change. When you give your release to your horse, so you executing a new technique and a new system often also relies on you looking at your belief system.

Stacy Westfall:
So now we have to go back to that again. You must believe that this change is possible without any evidence. And then you must begin executing. And you must be able to believe and look for tiny amounts of evidence. And as you gain those tiny amounts of evidence, it's very common for your brain to offer that there's a little bit of evidence that's working, but there's a mountain of evidence that you have from the past that it didn't work. Can you see again where that tiny amount of evidence stage can almost feel harder than when you just hope you can find something that works? So we've got this dance of belief, and then that discomfort that comes with physically changing your habits and the discomfort that comes with changing some of your belief systems that go with changing those habits. So when I recently got a success story and an updated video from this rider, I was blown away because what happened is she already met her goal for the entire year and it's only May and she joined in February. It's amazing to me the things that are possible when you do the work of opening yourself up and embracing the new system, but also the belief system that makes the execution of the physical system possible.

Stacy Westfall:
In order to take a horse that's too light and make it where it's handleable moldable, where it's not trying to hide from your aides, where you're both more comfortable in that exchange of information, in that conversation that requires the rider to change the release point. And that sounds simple when I say in a sentence. And I know that for this rider to make the change that she made, it's huge because she had to look at her own belief system. She had to choose how to change the belief system, and she had to go out there and put it into practice by physically practicing and changing her timing. And then she had to look at her horse through the process and read him better. So when I watched the video of this horse that had been too light, too sensitive and overreactive in moments, and now I see a rider that can confidently use the aids, that the horse looks relaxed and nobody looks like they're holding their breath. I couldn't be more proud of a rider like this. I know this rider danced with belief, discomfort and collecting evidence, and she went out there and did this day after day and in just a few months, drastically changed her relationship with her horse. I love how she said it, she said. I can't believe I've actually met my goal for the entire year. I feel like a whole new world is opening up for us. Thank you.

Stacy Westfall:
So when I ask you, how's it going with your goal? If you're in this situation where you're reaching it faster than you thought you would, that's amazing. Make sure you slow down and really look at how you created that. And if I ask you how it's going with your goal and you think I didn't even set one, I'm just so discouraged when I set them, it's not even worth it. Slow down for just a moment and think back to one that you've set. Or imagine setting one now. Because a lot of times when I think about setting a goal, if I sit down and actually start thinking about it and picturing it, I can already begin to feel the pull, the rush, and the belief systems and the things that would have to shift for me to go after that goal and really try to notice in life, when you're in one of those moments where you can feel that pull or that rush, like the example I gave of where I am right now when I'm at 94 miles and the end is so close. Or imagine when you're at the very beginning and you're excited and you take those first few steps. What's it like for you when you are in the middle? When you're in between the beginning of setting a goal and you haven't reached it yet, what is that tug like for you and does it change? What's your experience of setting a goal and feeling that excitement that often comes up at the beginning, or that drag that happens when you realize that you actually maybe don't know exactly how this is going to look, and it might not pan out the way you imagined it.

Stacy Westfall:
And then what's it like when you hit that halfway point or that three quarter point, or where I am right now with Willow, what's your relationship with being in that discomfort and where is that discomfort coming from? There's so much more that you can learn about yourself when you set a goal that is specific and measurable, because it will give you the opportunity to know yourself better. So often when riders are wanting to improve something, they aren't as aware of the pull and the push and the rush and the grasping for evidence and the looking for the belief and the running away from the discomfort. And in the middle of all of that, when the rider is reacting to the discomfort, scrambling for evidence, wrestling with belief, what they do is they don't see their horse as clearly. So whenever you have the opportunity to slow down and look at yourself, you're doing your horse a favor, even if it feels uncomfortable. That's what I have for you this week. 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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