Enjoyment v Achievement

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WHEN ‘NEVER ENDING SELF IMPROVEMENT’ BECOMES ‘NEVER GOOD ENOUGH’. 


I have had a lifelong love affair with horses. My love for horses is a dominant part of my earliest memories.  I share a common story with so many others, a story of being magnetically attracted to the sight, sound, smell and feel of horses, a yearning to be near them, to ride them and to be magically transported into a life where I could be surrounded by them. My goals and dreams have always been attached to a life with horses. 


Along the way, new elements were added to my dream of a life with horses. Competition goals, pursuit of knowledge and competence, of excellence and even a career involving horses came into my reality. As I look back on my life with horses, both personal and professional, I cannot exactly pinpoint where my dreams of enjoying the company of horses began to include the dream of professional achievement with horses.  It was just a natural progression for me. I was keen to share whatever I learned, for their own benefit in the company of horses.   


My very first ambition around horses was about identity.  Right from a very early age I was desperate to be identified as a ‘horse person’. I was so happy to step onto the town bus every weekend I could, on my way out of the suburbs to where I kept my first horse, with my plastic bucket containing my horse’s brushes, hoof pick and treats, dressed in my dirtiest jeans and long sleeved shirt, my gumboots (oh how I wished for proper jodhpur boots!) and my hair in a pony tail. By the time I took that bus homeward, I smelled like horse, and I was proud of it. I hoped every person on that bus would look at me and think ‘that’s a horse girl’. 






(photo taken at around age 10, riding a borrowed Standardbred gelding called 'Flash'...2 years before I was given my own 'first horse' Tania, and before I grew that pony tail!...my gumboots would fall off as soon as I mounted...but you can see that bucket in the background that I took on the bus)

My horse brought me joy and contentment, adventure and exhilaration. The first thing I wanted to achieve as a young person was to be seen as a horse person. 





​In adulthood, I eventually found myself in the competition arena, and then in the role of riding instructor… I built a career as a horsemanship coach, which to date is over 30 years long. My chosen horsemanship career path, and the mentorship I was drawn to, was very much oriented towards people and programs that lived up to the idea that how the horse 'felt' should not being sacrificed for the human’s desire for achievement, whatever ‘arena’ that might be in.  
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Now, 30 years in, although my competition career got shelved early on, I can say that there was still a constant push and pull during my career between focusing on my achievements as a teacher and what I could show others with horses, and the enjoyment of ‘personal’ time with my own horses. Somewhere in my pursuit of ‘never ending self-improvement’ with my horsemanship, my teaching life and my career achievements,  I lost sight of the enjoyment part of my life with horses, and it became a feeling of ‘never good enough’. This started as a judgement of myself as I compared myself to others, gave more time and energy to other people’s dreams and goals with horses and got bogged down with trying to live up to some perceived ‘goalpost’ that kept moving further and further away it seemed.  I realise now, this internal voice was silencing the joyful, adventurous and playful self.  Achievement and enjoyment were no longer in sync for me, they were in competition. Eventually enjoyment was being set aside as less important. I discovered, when enjoyment was put on ‘the shelf’, achievement loses it’s appeal and dread creeps in…for the very thing you love. 


The lockdown years of 2020/21 were ‘pause for thought’ for me and I know they were for so many others as well. I was very aware of how privileged a life I was living during that time, but I needed to lean into that ‘enforced pause’, to allow myself to ‘enjoy’ what I had already achieved and turn loose to ‘time for self’.  I was having my achieve/enjoy coin flipped big time.  NOT achieving anything professionally for 2 years was hard, allowing myself to just enjoy an ordinary, a daily life that did not need a career outcome, giving up any future goals however temporarily, was hard, but in retrospect a gift.  I had become addicted to ‘never ending self improvement’ at the expense of being present, content and happy with where I was already at, and now I had permission to celebrate what I had already worked hard to achieve, rather than remain addicted to the labour itself. Even in the middle of so much uncertainty during those years, I felt relief.


I embraced the ordinary during that period, the daily horse duties, the property maintenance and building projects, the grooming, the hoof trimming, the constant presence of my  herd of horses and the mindful meditative action of manure collection…life slowed, the rhythm got regular, I felt more in step with nature, the sun’s rising and setting, the seasonal changes…the pace allowed me to think more, notice more, reflect and recharge…to consider the ‘reset’ on the other side of that period, without the pressure of any timeline or deadline. I heard that word a lot after the covid lockdown years. Reset. Like a computer being rebooted, my brain got the chance to think differently. 


I like to think about words sometimes, their meaning and sometimes different angles of their construction. The word I keep thinking about at the moment is - extraordinary.  I think about how if you say it like this - extra ordinary - it twists the interpretation of it. I like the idea that to live an extraordinary life is very simple. Just live an extra ordinary one. My life is extraordinary….I know this, I have exceeded every expectation, every dream I had as a child of what I hoped my life could be with horses. I also see that this was made possible by the extra ordinary moments, every one of them. Every extra ordinary moment I have with a horse is a gift I am so grateful for, and when I focus just on those extra ordinary moments, something extraordinary develops. I enjoy my time with my horse more, and ironically, I also achieve more. I just need to remember to keep balancing by focusing on the enjoyment element first. 


So this is what I remind my students, just as I remind myself. Enjoy your horse! Yes, you want to achieve things, so do I…but first, enjoy this moment and every one that follows, think about what a gift it is that you are in the presence of this horse. How lucky we are. Let’s not forget, in our pursuit of ‘excellence’, to more often give ourselves a moment of appreciation for getting to exactly this point, right here, right now….on our way to our dreams and goals.  Let’s not forget, we are already living our dream with our horses, the one we had as children. It was simple, we just wanted to be around them. Let’s not allow our desire for achievement to overshadow this enjoyment…and trust that enjoyment will always make room for us to achieve more.