Episode 326.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Speaker1:
And the word enjoy that shows up all the time. Oftentimes we have these ideas floating around in our mind, but we don't clearly define what they mean to us or how they would be expressed physically demonstrated if we did have them.
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. In this episode I want to talk about goals. Specifically, I'm going to explain a process you can use for starting with your hopes and dreams and then using them to set your goals. And as And as soon as I say that out loud, two things happen for me. Number one, I imagine people immediately dividing into I do goals. I don't do goals. If you did that, I saw that coming. And number two, I immediately hear some of my own students teasing me about having them set goals again and again and again. Linda. Diana, I'm talking about you. Although there are more, you just happen to be the first to into my head. Thanks. These are people who I converted into goal setters. And that's what I'm hoping to do today with you. But before we go there, let's just talk right now about why so many people resist setting goals. I think it's because writers often perceive goals as non-relational. And I can easily see why. The very same thing that makes them specific and measurable makes them excellent for a checklist. And it's one short step from checklist to mindless activity. And the last thing you want with your horse is to show up as a mindless robot. That's why today we're going to use a backward process that will help you see how your goal can be in service of your dream. But before I walk you through how to do this, let's actually discuss some terms.
Speaker1:
Many times when people use the word goal, they are actually talking about a dream. A dream is often big and guiding. It shapes the kind of rider that you want to become. An aspiration is a bridge between your dream that might be five or 10 or 20 years out there, and your daily actions. It reflects what you actually want to experience, let's say, in the next year. A goal is clear and specific. It is a series of action steps that lead to a specific outcome. If you're a regular listener and you created a yearly theme, odds are your theme has some elements of your dreams, your hopes, or your aspirations in it. Listen to these two that were mailed in presence and partnership. Deepening trust through connections. Your yearly theme is another tool that can help keep you focused on the way you want to experience progress with your horse. Here's a quick example to help you see the difference. If I say I have a goal to trail ride Ember, it sounds like a clear goal. I could even list the time and where I want to go. But to me, it also sounds empty. Is that really all I want? Not exactly. If that was literally all I wanted, then I could swing my leg over Ember's back and survive a ride through the woods and call it a success. But that's not what I picture for the experience that I want either of us to have.
Speaker1:
That's not my actual goal, that's not my aspiration, and it's not a part of my bigger dream. So although it's true that I want to trail Rider, it's actually more than that. Before I go into detail about how I ask myself questions to arrive at my specific goals based on starting with my dreams, I've actually been thinking at a very high level view of my goals, my dreams, my life. And I think it might be interesting for you to hear it, because when you look at it from a, you know, ten zero zero zero foot view, you see a different angle of it. I've actually been thinking a lot about how all the horses I have right now are relatively new to me, except Gabby, who is pregnant and due to full this spring. So in a way, although she's not new to me, her role in my life and with me is completely new. So I think on one hand it would be easy to look and see a lot of change if you were looking from the outside and looking in on my life, because from one angle that would be very true. Yet when I look at my life and I look at my desire to learn all that I can about horses, I can see that I've been pursuing that one dream, that one direction, for as long as I can remember, whether I rode one horse for ten years or back when I was a trainer.
Speaker1:
If I rode ten horses in one year, no matter which way that panned out, I've always been pursuing that dream of learning more about horses. This also explains my desire to do lots of different things with horses. From one angle, I could be seen as hopping around when I show and reining and traditional dressage. And then I sign up for the Tevis Cup virtual trail ride, and then I compete in mounted shooting. From one angle, it can look scattered, but from the angle of my long term dream, it looks consistent with a desire to learn. Experts say that a beginner's mind is important. Well, I promise you, the easiest way to find a beginner's mind is to be an actual beginner. What I hope you're seeing as I explain this, is that the outward expression of my dream has lots of flexibility. Which brings me to my next point aspirations. To me, this is where my dream that much more vague, much more far out there. This is where my dream starts to meet the real world. It reflects what I want to experience in the foreseeable future. This is where I tend to look at the horse or the horses that I have in front of me, and I ask myself, what will I be focusing on? Because my personal dream is broad. I have lots of short term aspirations that can fit into it. I can trail ride or show. I can ride English, I can ride Western, and all of these things happen to fit into my personal dream.
Speaker1:
But a few podcasts ago, I mentioned a rider who had a dream of winning the National Reining Horse Association Reining Horse Futurity maturity for 27 years. I'm just guessing, but my guess would be that his yearly aspirations would have been much more specifically aligned with that one outcome, because he personally had a much more specific dream. So the dream is the bigger, broader. I like to look at it like a direction. Then the aspiration becomes this more visible expression of the dream. And then we get down to the level of goals. So each year I set goals with my horses, things that I plan to do, action steps that I plan to take that will help me move eventually towards my dream. Here is a really effective way to make sure that your dream shows up in your goal. We'll start with the dream and then work backwards. Words. So when I say dream, the one that I've shared with you that's really broad for me is learning all I can. But a lot of times I have more specific versions of that when I buy a particular horse. So with Ember, I want to learn all I can, but I also want to develop a relationship with her. I also specifically bought her long term with the hope of reining in mind. So in the process of going from a yearling when I bought her to showing her in reining, I'm going to go through many different stages.
Speaker1:
That's where different goals or different aspirations are going to show up. One of those stages is trail riding. So let's look at that specifically. I wrote this out as a Q&A because two things I actually do ask myself questions and have myself answer them. That's actually really fun to do in two different colored pens. One color for the questions. One color for the answers. I also did it because I want you to be able to potentially follow this same structure by simply listening to this. So the first question that I would ask would be this question, what is your dream or long term vision of success with your horse? My answer would be to develop a meaningful relationship with my horse and enjoy our time together. Question. How do you define a meaningful relationship? My answer. Meaningful relationship. We enjoy our time together, which includes feeling safe. Our communication continues to improve. Question if you already had a meaningful relationship as you defined it, how would you would you choose to spend your time with your horse this year? Hmm. My answer? Someday I would like to show her in reining. But right now, I want to spend time developing her strength and balance by trail riding. So right now, I would choose to trail ride. Question. It sounds like your focus right now is on trail riding. Can you describe that to me? Answer. I'd like to have a horse that I trust in a trail riding environment.
Speaker1:
I'd like to enjoy our time together while improving our communication and building her physical strength. Question. What does trust look like during a challenging moment? For example, if a deer jumps out or a branch comes crashing down. My answer? Trust in a challenging moment means I will respond in a way that ensures the safety of both of us. It means I will have practiced with Ember ahead of time. For example, I know she's a hotter horse, as evidenced by her groundwork, and I would predict that if a branch came crashing down, I would want to feel confident in stopping her quickly and smoothly. This includes stopping her from bolting forward, but it also includes stopping her from rolling back to the left or the right, because I find that challenging to ride and it's not a habit I want her to have. I will likely need to be quick and smooth with my reins in the event of one of these things happening, so I want to practice this ahead of time. So Ember's not surprised by my cue. Trust would mean I trust my immediate response, and Ember trusts her response because we've practiced it ahead of time. Question. What do you imagine might keep you from enjoying your trail ride? Answer. Fear of the unknown. Tree branches, deer, etc. and if I don't put in the practice ahead of time, there would also be a concern of how she would react to my cue in that moment.
Speaker1:
Question how will you know when you have accomplished this? I will know I have achieved this when I can ride the red trail alone, without having to proactively direct ember to prevent escalation. I'll be able to easily walk or trot or stop and dismount. She will be responsive to my cues without signs of resistance. She will be observing the environment while also checking in with me. I will be responsible for receiving information about her experience and noticing when she might need support. But I'll also be able to enjoy the surroundings because I'll feel safe and prepared for any challenges that we face, like the unexpected deer or tree branch falling, will reveal her understanding of my queue system and my ability to teach it. And I will practice to ensure that even though these moments may not happen, if they do, they will serve to strengthen our communication. Okay, I covered quite a bit there, and what I actually want you to see is how my dream with this specific horse is actually something that can be broken down into an aspiration. The example that I used in this was my desire to trail ride her and enjoy our time together, while improving our communication and building physical strength. That's my aspiration. That's the current expression of my dream that I hope to have with this particular horse. And inside of that would then be my goal. This is actually the middle point where I'm going from dream to that aspiration.
Speaker1:
This for me, is when I would then be actually transitioning into setting the goal when I go to set the goal. The goal is going to get even more specific. It's going to say things like ride the red trail alone from start to finish. It's going to say things measurable like complete the ride with Ember, maintaining a steady walk or trot on light contact, or a loose rein for 90% of the trail. It's going to start to say things that are very actionable, like doing groundwork 3 to 5 days a week, or riding 3 to 5 days a week, confidently walking, trotting and cantering in the arena, mounting and dismounting multiple times a day, ponying ember on the trail. And a lot of these things are going to become checklist items where I can say yes or no. Pay particular attention to how I questioned my own answers when I gave the answer that I wanted a meaningful relationship. What does that mean? How do you define a meaningful relationship? My definition might be completely different than yours. That doesn't matter as much as you getting clear on what it means to you. If it shows up in your definition, what does trust look like? During a challenging moment, a lot of writers say they want to trust more or they want to be trusted more. What does trust look like during a challenging moment? Answer that question and you'll suddenly have more clarity on what you need to work on to develop trust and the word enjoy that shows up all the all the time.
Speaker1:
So asking the question, what do you imagine might keep you from enjoying your trail ride is a twist on how are we going to define what enjoy actually means? Oftentimes we have these ideas floating around in our mind, but we don't clearly define what they mean to us or how they would be expressed physically demonstrated if we did have them. Your answers to those questions will tell you exactly what you need to work on. When I said this includes stopping her from bolting forward, but also from rolling back to the left or the right. I need to be quick and smooth with my reins, so I need to practice ahead of time, so Ember is not surprised. Do you hear how my definition of trust in a challenging moment begins to become very measurable, very Specific, very actionable. And oh no, it's starting to sound like one of those Smart goals. I hope this podcast has been helpful to you. If you'd like to learn more, I wrote an article. That is titled Goals are Dreams Made Real, but it doesn't always feel that way. And this is just one piece of what I taught in that full length article. I will link to that in the show notes of this episode, and you can find it over on my website at Stacy. Westfall. Com thanks for listening and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.
Speaker2:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.
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