THE SECRET SAUCE (Is not horse poop)

E S P í R I T U ?

THE HORSE GUY?

Coaching with Horses?

Story #118

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THE SECRET SAUCE

( It’s not horse poop )

It is impossible to move an 1100 pound animal if it doesn’t want to move or be moved. A horse will not partner with you if you have no interest in or don’t even consider partnering with it an option. ‘Let’s just get to work’ is a mindset that can quickly get you into trouble with a large animal much like it can with your teams at work. Particularly in the virtual Covid world, something else is needed. Connection.

Absent face to face connection, something often goes missing that must be restored if we are to come into our own. Fortunately, horses know something about connection. Their lives have depended on it for centuries.

When humans try to survive, much less thrive, without connection we become like dry river beds we read about in the American Southwest. All sorts of debris are revealed in the barren, cracked remains of our meetings that we were once able to cover up with PowerPoint chatter. We become more cautious and?reactive or worse.

Poet David Whyte has this to say:

SWEET DARKNESS

When your eyes are tired

the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone

no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark

where the night has eyes

to recognize its own.

There you can be sure

you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb

tonight.

The night will give you a horizon

further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

Our lives don’t work like computers; we don’t get ‘software update’ notices. Periods of prolonged fear, frustration, boredom, fatigue and/or exhaustion may serve this function. We are outgrowing something. Something vital has gone missing. The old conversations, i.e., Let’s get to work, may have worked when we could huddle in person together but those days have changed. When we don’t see each other in person our conversation has to evolve. We must go deeper. We must go ‘…Into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own…’?

The virtual world invites us to consider a level of vulnerability and transparency which, when added to our conversations, could bring us alive again. We cannot afford to get stuck talking only about our ideas, opinions, viewpoints and position on topics. Models, frameworks, our perspectives, where we agree or disagree with others can take us only so far. Then our ‘…eyes get tired and the world becomes tired’…as well. Covid has revealed we have outgrown these conversations. What are retention and turnover dynamics if not proof that life has left the building.

Normal work life has become too small for us.

“What’s going on with you?” This is a basic question which invites reflection and self awareness before answering. It’s really the only question horses have of us when we are with them. I’m surprised at how many people, beginning with myself in the past and many of today’s leaders, don’t know how to answer this question. They don’t know where to look. A quick check might include these elements:

What am I thinking about?

What am I feeling??

What are my current concerns and hopes?

Where is my attention now?

How is my breathing?

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Horses demand honesty and congruence in the inward parts of our hearts. Sometimes this is a harsh place of anger, judgement and bias. That works fine with horses provided we know that’s what is happening within. No pretending. The remedy? In meetings (virtual and in person) we might begin with a brief check in to see how we are each doing and what thoughts, feelings, hopes and concerns we are bringing into the meeting. It is lunacy to think none of this matters, and yet we act as if our inner experience is irrelevant.?

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What if our real job was to bring each other alive?

The secret sauce is connection and connection only happens when we speak to, see and hear others from deeper, more vulnerable places. Sitting in a paddock with horses eating close by, my breathing slows down, muscles in the neck and shoulders relax. I begin to smile at how simply beautiful it is to watch these magnificent animals graze so close to me. Worries of the day slip away. Mental chatter quiets. For just a moment or several moments my mind goes into a relaxed alert space.

The open space of possibility. Anything can happen here and everything good and useful that gets created originates in this space.

Maybe I could bring our horses to your next meeting! Or better yet — Join me here.

E S P í R I T U?

www.espírituhorse.com