Episode 318-Noticing Progress While Embracing Reality

Episode 318-Noticing Progress While Embracing Reality.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 318-Noticing Progress While Embracing Reality.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
You begin to realize that you can see the tiny moments you were missing before, when you were resisting what is.

Speaker2:
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.

Speaker1:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall and I'm here to help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. Today I want to expand on last week's episode where we took a look at the things that your horse might have considered highlights throughout the year, and what I hope you took away from that episode was how your horse might have noticed moments that we humans might consider insignificant, like Ember and the blow dryer. Most of the time, I choose to imagine that my horses have a more childlike view of the world. Which is not to say less than, by the way. In fact, I love the quote by Picasso that says it took me a lifetime to learn to paint like a child. There is a beauty in a childlike view of life, and I think being December and around Christmas, you can really see that highlighted in movies and songs. In this episode, I want to introduce you to a thought that, when embraced, explains how you can have both the childlike wonder that I talked about in last week's podcast, or that you see around Christmas while still acknowledging the struggle. If you've been a listener for a while, you know I like to talk about the four square model. It's actually what the first four seasons of this podcast revolved around, and it's the idea that we can look at challenges using the framework of breaking it apart into the rider's mind, the rider's body, the horse's mind, and the horse's body.

Speaker1:
Where last week's episode focused on the horse. This week's episode is going to focus on you, the rider. I want to share two examples of things that came up for students of mine while they were doing the work of reflecting on 2024 and planning for 2025. I'm going to point out what things I think are important to notice, and then I want to share with you a concept that I was originally resistant to. And now I embrace as you listen to these student examples. Pay attention to what I'm pointing out about their experiences. Because when I share the concept of 50 over 50 with you, you might find yourself noticing subtle changes in your mind or your body. I was recently on a coaching call with a student, and as we were discussing one of her challenges, I asked her a question and as she thought about the answer, she observed that she was looking down, which was different because she also recognized and verbalized that normally when she's thinking for an answer, she normally looks up, and as she verbalized this to me, she wondered what was causing her to do that. But there's the missed moment right there. Let me say it again and see if you can catch it. Imagine yourself in that same situation. Imagine that I ask you a question, and you know that when you're thinking, trying to come up with an answer you most frequently look up, but this time in the conversation with me, when I ask you a question, you notice you're looking down.

Speaker1:
Why? I think it's natural to jump to the why. The why am I looking down? But the missed opportunity here is before you go to. Why am I looking down? I suggest that you first celebrate that you noticed this at all. And that's what I told her. Hold on. Before we go looking for what's causing that change, it's a big deal that you noticed your behavior shift there. Noticing the change in your own body is huge because it's telling you something about your own experience. If you move too quickly to the next step of wondering why you're looking down instead of up, you miss celebrating that you are now fully present. That's the thing to celebrate. Why is it important to celebrate something like this? I believe it's important because something is happening that's tied to an unconscious thought. And sure, she might notice it and then question, why am I looking down? And maybe if this happens to you, you'll know the answer immediately. But I find when you are noticing subtle changes, you might actually have to observe yourself 20 times, 46 times, 103 times in other moments similar to that one, to figure out the pattern of why this subtle change is happening. This is what happens with horses. You can often notice a subtle change, but if you jump to absolutely having to know why, sometimes you'll actually block yourself. So back to this example.

Speaker1:
If this student doesn't celebrate just noticing that she's looking in a different spot, she will likely become frustrated by not having an immediate answer. If the cycle goes I just noticed I'm looking down. Why am I looking down? Why don't I know why I'm looking down? Why am I looking down? Why why why why? Can you see where that would cause frustration? That would block her ability to watch herself another 20 to 120 times more to find that subtle shift? And that answer. I could ask the question like this. Can you learn to listen to what your body is telling you, even when you don't have the full story? A different student just got to the end of the year, and has been doing her own year end review and realized that she accomplished way more than she anticipated or even dared to hope or dream. But it doesn't feel the way she imagined it would. She says she also feels burned out, unable to recover and disappointed. And she wonders, how could I accomplish and accomplish and accomplish and not feel amazing? But what if, before jumping to answer the question, how could I accomplish all this and not feel amazing? What if she stayed with the disappointment long enough to hear what it was telling her? Disappointment is unpleasant, but it's often like an indicator light or a red flag, and it usually is pointing to something else. And again, in this example, that something isn't immediately apparent to this person.

Speaker1:
Something she might find happening is that a lot of times when people are struggling, they have a belief that if it fill in the blank with whatever you're working on, if it had worked out, things would be great. So imagine you spend lots and lots of time thinking if that had just worked out, it would be great. If that had just worked out, that would be great. It's a really common thought to practice, and now she's experiencing the opposite. The flip side, it did work out, but I don't feel great. And in that moment when you realize that it's not the working out or the not working out that created the feeling of great, it's like your brain has been believing that. It's a guarantee that if things worked out that you would feel great, and now you're here and your brain is going, wait, what? I was pretty confident that if this worked out, we would feel amazing. Now here's something I find even more interesting. I actually remember this rider celebrating the individual moments throughout the year. I don't remember how many, but let's just say there were seven high points and she celebrated each one of them. And yet here she is at the end of the year, and collectively they don't feel big. But it's also not like she rushed past the individual success moments. So this points to something being different in this collective review of successes than the individual success. One at a time.

Speaker1:
If she can avoid the temptation to rush forward that I talked about back in episode 278, if she can allow herself to stay here and feel what's really happening, even though it's not what she imagined, I bet she will discover some things. Many years ago, one of my coaches introduced me to the idea that life is 50 over 50. When I heard it, I didn't like the idea and I did not agree. But I liked a lot of her other teachings, so I kept on listening. I'll put links in the show notes of this episode over on my website so you can hear what I heard. She would bring it up in different ways, and at one point she said, this doesn't mean that each day will have a perfect balance, and I found myself agreeing with that. What I want to do now is walk you through my personal journey with the concept of 50 over 50, beginning with no. I think she's got this one wrong and ending with yes, this is life changing. The very first thing that happened for me was I heard the concept and I did not agree. I love learning, but I also have no problem with doubting or questioning the things that I'm learning. I have always asked why? To the point where multiple teachers told me to stop asking why I didn't, but I understand. I was asking a lot of why I am willing to change my point of view, but I will require answers.

Speaker1:
I won't just go blindly. Side note this is where my concept of your horse is asking questions came from. The concept came from me realizing that the teachers thought me asking why was the problem when my why was really genuine? Maybe the teacher was tired, or was overworked, or didn't have the words to explain it any further than what they had already told me. But my why was labeled as the problem, and my why really wasn't the problem. I was genuinely wanting to learn more. Okay, back to my journey with 50 over 50. Do you believe life is 50 over 50? My first response was doubt, but a willingness to learn and listen. Another concept I remember is the idea that life is inherently unfair and expecting consistent fairness leads to disappointment. And when I was hearing that, I thought, well, I agree that life doesn't seem to be fair, but I never thought about how expecting consistent fairness might leave me feeling disappointed. And then I heard it taught from a different angle, where the idea that when people strive to be 100% good and virtuous, they make perfection their ultimate goal, which leads to dissatisfaction. And I remember thinking, well, aren't we supposed to strive to be 100% good? Then I heard it taught from a different angle, where the idea of rejecting your imperfections leads to exhaustion and unhappiness. And I remember thinking, wait, I'm getting it. I actually understand I'm not perfect, and I know that, but it seems like I'm supposed to be.

Speaker1:
So if I'm supposed to be and I'm not, I must be doing it wrong. Or maybe I just need to try harder. And what fit for me out of that is I am the hardest on myself. But it also just brought up more questions. If I embrace my imperfections, what kind of a world would it be if I didn't try this hard? Then I heard her talking about the concept of good versus bad, and the idea that society teaches a simplistic view that good must completely defeat bad in order for happiness to occur. What struck me in this teaching of good versus bad is that I believe there is a value in simplicity, but I also recognize in many areas that simplicity has limitations. It leaves out some of the details and life seems to have some complexity. And it got me wondering if it's not as simple as good versus bad. I wonder what else that could mean. That's when the concept of shifting away from an either or mindset into an and mindset made sense to me. Shifting into an and mindset helped me embrace life's complexity. Life is complex, and I can feel how the idea and softens me. Accepting imperfection. Humans and the world are inherently imperfect, and striving for flawlessness is unrealistic. This concept was oddly easy for me because of the horses. With the horses, I embrace their quirks or what some people think are imperfections.

Speaker1:
I believe it's what makes them unique. So I was opening more and more to the concepts that build the idea of life being 50 over 50. Life being 50 over 50 is the concept that life inherently consists of both positive and negative experiences, and that accepting this balance leads to greater peace. During the many months that it took me to go from, I don't think so to I really believe this. I also noticed that I was paying attention to how nature reflects this. Day and night. Dark and light. Hot and cold. Birth and death. That's when I started to realize that maybe I did believe that life was 50 over 50. That life was a mix of good and bad. And instead of trying to make everything perfect and declaring that if it wasn't perfect, something was going wrong. It was better to accept both and find peace with it. And then she blew my mind. I hope I can do this concept justice, she said. When you resist life being 50 over 50, you are resisting the negative parts, the unpleasant parts, and you're wishing you could make it a higher ratio 80% pleasant, 20% unpleasant or something like that. But the more you resist the negative parts, the more time you spend focused on the negative. You magnify the negative. You actually make your experience. That could be 50 over 50. You make it worse. And if you accept that life is 50 over 50 and you know that the unpleasant parts are going to happen, and you accept that this is part of the process and you don't resist it, which means maybe you cry or you experience whatever that negative feeling is you can now experience that unpleasant feeling without magnifying it, without rushing away from it, and without painting all of it positive when something's clearly not positive.

Speaker1:
Embracing 50 over 50 is the opposite of toxic positivity. Life is a mix of good and bad, and instead of trying to make everything perfect, it's better to accept both and find peace with it. And it's like magic, because when you stop magnifying the bad, you begin to realize that you can see the tiny moments you were missing before, when you were resisting what is. Remember the first student who noticed she was looking down? That noticing that awareness in itself was a win, even though it revealed something else yet to be discovered. And the second student who accomplished so much but encountered unexpected emotions. She's an example of how we can accept both the things we planned and hoped for, and the surprising parts. It's that 50 over 50 concept in action. They both remind us that awareness and acceptance of what is happening right now aren't just nice ideas, they're actually practical tools that help us see our progress, even if that progress is a 50/50 experience. Thanks for listening. I'll put those links over in the show notes, and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

Speaker2:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall. Com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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