I was listening to one of Deepak Chopra’s meditations this morning in the Expanding Happiness series – lovely they are – and something he said was sooo… appropriate to what we do with our horses, that it had me roaring with laughter at the truth of it.
He said “Few people are given any training on how to be happy.” Derrr… that’s because most people don’t know how to be happy in the first place, to be able to teach anyone else.
“They look at others and imitate the things that seemingly make them happy.” he said.
“In the field of positive psychology it is generally accepted that this method isn’t very productive”. This was where I roared with laughter. Deepak is sooo… dry and understated in his humour, he could be an Aussie.
We may look at others who seem to be happy with their new better stretching, better sticky jodhpurs, their cute jacket, the latest horse rug or new boots – although new boots could bring me happiness on a cold wet morning when I have a hole in my gumboots. 🙂 And a well fitting, waterproof rug brings me a glow when I watch my horse all snug and comfortable and warm out in a winter storm.
But these are temporary happinesses that we watch other people experiencing and they can only bring us fleeting happiness too.
Lasting happiness isn’t gained by winning that competition – one of these days I’ll give you the interview with double world champion Kristine Nesbitt giving me feedback after a lesson, to give you an eye opener about what winning really does and doesn’t mean! Lasting happiness isn’t gained with the approval of your new trainer, or even with a new horse, as big and wonderful as that is.
All these things are temporary feelings of happiness. Looking for happiness in things, or in temporary events, means that we have to have more and more, buy more and more, spend more and more time looking for someone else’s approval – until we are chasing our tails too often, chasing that happiness.
And all the time, lasting happiness was available right at our fingertips.
Picture me holding my finger up in a “but”… If life was non stop happiness, we wouldn’t know what happiness is.
I can feel some of you frowning at this thought. 🙂 Think about it. We wouldn’t even know we felt good if we didn’t have anything else to contrast it with, everything would be the same old same old all the time and life would be boring.
Happiness is knowing how to find our way back to feeling good quickly.
There is a natural ebb and flow of emotions in our lives. Those of us who have horses are luckier than anyone else on the planet, because we have these very special, amazing beings that can show us a path to get back to happiness every time we hit one of those “ebb” moments, who make it possible to find our way back to the flow of peacefulness and excitement and joyfulness and happiness quite quickly when we know how.
So the key to lasting happiness isn’t keeping happiness, trying to freeze it in time and hang on to it; lasting happiness is not to be found in trying to copy someone else’s fleeting happiness (although the advertising people would LOVE for that to be true).
It is first found in the absence of fear or nerves or anxiety or worry, whatever words you want to use to label fear. Lasting happiness is found in understanding the message of all these kinds of fear, understanding how to help both you and your horse be and feel safe, so that neither of you are nervous or anxious or afraid.
In the absence of fear, lasting happiness is found by having happiness and peacefulness and wholeness and inspiration and excitement as normal – and then knowing how to get back to those good feelings whenever you are not in that state.
Deepak Chopra said that lasting happiness is achieved through inner fulfillment.
He said that long term happiness happens when a person accomplishes something that they REALLY value, when they devote themselves to a higher set of values. He talked of spiritual things, but I want to bring this back to talk about the horse.
People have been known to pay therapists thousands and thousands of dollars for this
When we really value our horse, for everything that they bring us and everything that they are, understanding that their “faults” and their “problems” are all part of what makes them uniquely them and that these “faults” or “problems” are what they bring to us in richness of experience that helps us on our own path to find happiness – as we help them – then we can understand the same perspectives about our own faults and problems too.
Pause there for a moment and breathe on that last paragraph – read it again and again if you need to, until it lands in your heart. People have been known to pay therapists tens of thousands of dollars over years and years to get to where they understand that.
Achieving happiness with a horse is a thing that can happen so much easier than with other relationships, because the horse is completely non-judgmental and actively and thoughtfully works with us to achieve these personal growth goals that mean so much to them in their own sensitivity.
I guess this very sentience is why people who know all this as fact, can get sooo… upset at the abuse of horses. We know how much a horse will willingly and thinkingly do for a human, so watching humans thoughtlessly and willfully hurt them can be painfully inexplicable.
As we use inner awareness to help our horse find satisfaction and happiness in their life and as we find that in our own lives at the same time, we find that inner fulfillment that Deepak talks so beautifully about.
So many people have emailed me about the joyfulness they discovered when meditating with their horse in our life changing program Journey to Feel
Whatever you do folks – BE happy…
What a wonderful article. Perfect timing for me as I had Sam in the round pen to work of some pent up adrenaline. He flew around buck and kicking. Then down into what a cutting horse would do. Back and forth, then down to his knees and into a roll. It was strange and scary. Before the meditation program he had done this and I was scared skinny. Thought he had lost it.
This time I spoke softly on how much I loved him and to let it all out. My only goal was to move around each way. How he did it was up to him. After he walked over to me and out we went.
Well done Debbie! Did you do a Quiet Mind with him afterwards to find out why he had that pent up, somewhat scarey energy? Fast Track Lesson 46 would support you to get the answer or you could use one of the 21 days to a Quiet Mind simple meditations and adapt it to your needs. You handled it brilliantly!
Hi Jenna, I live in Kalgoorlie Western Australia The spiritual path is I think the hardest road to walk at times, but also the most fulfilling. I find that once you’ve built that connection and trust in it it starts to influence other connections in your life.
When I got Emma she was nasty, pushy and constantly grumpy. Em had been shown in dressage and made it to the Royal only to be withdrawn because she was “naughty”. I look back at photo’s and she looked beautiful. but she was so unhappy and fearful.My first connection was when I told her that she didn’t have to be perfect all the time. Next we had to have quite a few discussions on who is the leader, my compromise is when I take her out for grass, she is aloud to move me along so she can graze normally ( I live in the desert and our horses are stabled 24/7). To cut a very long and massive learning curve for us both short Em calls to me every time I come to the stables, on the rare occasions I can put her in the arena she will canter beside and pass me as we run, no halter. We have taken big steps forward and just as big steps backwards, and these backward steps come whenever I push and don’t ask, I love approaching riding from a more spiritual level ( and I do take a lot hum bug from others but I don’t let it get in my way, as people who saw her when I first got her keep commenting on how quiet and trusting she is now. She is still a part Arab part Andalusian chestnut mare and she has mare days, we just accept them cause hey I’m menopausal so I think it’s a fairly even share of moody days hahaha
I enjoyed that Emma thanks! It’s been a big deal for me too to walk a spiritual path with my horses and be confident in that privately and publicly. And like you, the validation from the horses themselves is worth it and demonstrates what we stand for hey? Which desert do you live in?
Paul,
Well done for such a wonderful connection. Your horse has the “double back” that Xenophon and lately Pete Ramey and Jaime Jackson have written about.
I hope the halter that your horse is wearing is not on him normally when he is free in the field. Halters, wheelbarrows and stable yard equipment, and gates are and can be accident magnets. I cringe every time I see a photo of a horse with a halter on in a field.
Okay Jenny, well here is my personal encounter with “happiness”:
Last year June, I got a foal, Azzari. His mother is a traumatized beautiful mare, Avanti, and I when I bought her, she was already carrying him. (didn’t know about that). So when he was born, I was both happy as well as pretty concerned, because raising a stallion, was something I had totally NO experience with. And so many people told me that it would be very dangerous, and I had to be extremely strict etc etc…. bla bla bla…. Putting it that way, it seemed to me I’d have to wage a war against him, and that didn’t sound like fun at all.
So I went about it in my own way, with the same intention I had with his mother, with warmth, kindness, and yes, happiness!!!
We still keep him in the herd with the others, and he has grown into an extremely “masculine” proud, and happy young stallion-boy.
He’s already as large as his mother, so I think he’ll grow some more too. he thing is, that he is always extremely happy to see me, he comes to me charging from over the field, prancing, showing his beauty and strength, and he always goes where I go, we have become a team together. He also displays typical stallion behaviour amongst the horses, like chasing and circling the herd, digging holes, etc etc… As young as he is, he seems to feel confident and strong. And HAPPY! And he makes me happy!
Of course I notice him testing me from time to time (this is probably where a stallion can become dangerous if we don’t see it happening, and react in a friendly but very clear way). He has started trying to mount the mares, so, very recently we had him “gelded”.
At that moment I was pretty afraid he’d turn into a dull “piece of work” Losing such beautiful spirit and power would have made me very sad. But he has not changed a single bit. He is still (although about 100grams lighter) powerful, proud, happy and strong! Ad I’m so glad about it. He still dances and moves like a King… People around us say they’ve never seen a horse like mine before, so full of Life and expression.
(here is an example photo-link:)
https://flic.kr/p/oyFxih
You will read “happy” throughout this post, and I’ve experienced, if we create an environment where there is safety, trust and happiness, the horses are drawn to this like a magnet! The want to stay! To me that is the magic of happiness…
Wow that photo of him – he has such a strong elevated back in his natural “dance”. That is not something I see very often even in an untrained horse and rarely in a trained horse either, specially with conventional training. That’s lovely Paul – the whole story is lovely. Did you find that solving that small “problem” of testing your boundaries (clearly not really a problem at all) solving that in such a positive way, added to the happiness that you were experiencing together?
Yes Jenny, indeed,
As I understand it, testing me is a natural thing for a horse to do, and especially for a stallion this is imperative. Actually I feel that every horse should do this, which is a clear sign that he/she is spiritually alive!
So I do not feel threatened at all, I only will have to “reply” properly, which in that case is making him feel that I am “way ahead of him”. I am happy that I can muster the inner power and the eye for minimal details, to satisfy him. In comparison to Azzari, the other mares are very easy and predictable.
The great thing about all this is that we both feel happy and safe, that we can be “ourselves” in all situations. And this makes a real friendship possible, and I try to encourage him to be a stallion as much as he can be, although he is gelded now. Whe he is uncerain of puzzeled, he comes to me for help. And I am so happy to see he is so brave, playful, and expressive. I have never had my own foal before, and I feel so happy that I now have a horse,, who’s history is fully known, and contains NO trauma at all! That’s probably why he collects all by himself, he’s fully enjoying his body and his life…
He’s Happy!
I love that you do this understanding what is behind his testing you so naturally, Paul, seemingly with no effort at all. That’s the sign of a person with natural heart feel. Noora Ehnqvist is another person with natural heart feel – I love her work too. I define heart feel as the natural and automatic ability to see behind what’s really going on, so there is no thought of judgement or blame. I can hear in your writing that it wouldn’t occur to you to behave any other way and it would probably puzzle you as to why other people are scared or nervous of a young stallion testing the boundaries and then over-reacting. Is this approach effortless to you or did you need to work on it/expand into it, like I did/do?
Ahhh! Interesting subjects and questions! Well, actually I do remember the days I was scared. Even from a pony with those soft, friendly eyes!
So I still understand those others being scared, and reacting “wrongly” to a horse. What I don’t understand, is people don’t wanting, even rejecting new knowledge, not informing themselves about horse psychology and self development (the latter i.m.h.o. being the most difficult, but most important part)
On behalf of my daughter I “had to” overcome this fear, so I started reading and searching for answers, and I also noticed small ponies dominating large horses. So then I guessed, it had to be about the power of the mind / spirit.
And I saw amazing things from K.F. Hempfling, A. Nevzorov, Native Americans, etc.. they all had their mind sorted out!
It then took me a couple of YEARS to find enough inner power to be able to do what I do today, but now, yes it goes effortless… I like to dance with my horses a bit like Hempfling does it, and of course I dont know all the tricks, but because the horses are WITH ME ALL THE TIME, I learn from them too, and it all becomes a “flow of Life” in the moment, like Chopra also talks about, The NOW… I try to document these events with photography, my daughter rides now, and helps me with the photo’s One other shot I’d like to share is one of my mare, Avanti, who comes charging at me, fully collected, and radiating so much power, all in harmony and love: https://flic.kr/p/jME7Mw
Wow… another horse with a beautiful back – well done you!
I just had a thought about people not wanting and even rejecting new knowledge that will make their lives and their horses lives easier and happier together. Firstly it comes back to “they don’t know what they don’t know they don’t know” and that’s where we come in as (hopefully) shining examples to show them that something else exists. And secondly, people reject even beautiful new knowledge if it is presented with judgement or negativity about what they are doing now. They are so busy being defensive that they resist. We wouldn’t present new information to a horse like that – because the horse would resist us too, hey?
I am sooo laughing at myself quietly as I write this, because it has taken me a long time to get to the mental and emotional place where I can usually see what is going on behind the facade and even now I will still occasionally catch myself pushing against their resistance! 🙂 I have this beautiful picture and words above where I sleep “BE the change you wish to see in the world”. It truly is the most perfect way to facilitate change when I remember it all the time!
funnily enough Jenny, I had similar thoughts to this morning about my horse sharing happiness, sometimes Sasha gives me questions but that is all good, and when the happiness is there she is happy to be with me too……..
Did Sascha have what looked like faults or problems Mary, that turned out to be the very things that when you worked through them, increased your own lasting happiness?
not really sure about that, but yes maybe she did – maybe that is the whole big picture for us humans the horses are sent to teach each of us so much, I have always known Sasha came to me to teach me heaps
What an excellent story!!! Love it!
I am glad that you enjoyed it Paul and Leanne. I was thinking of including my own personal individual horse stories where a “problem” or “fault” with a horse turned out to be the most awesome progress to happiness for me – starting with Bobby whose massive resistance to me brought me so many, many positive change places to my own happiness, bless his precious self…
To Oliver, our giant Warmblood who from his damaged body and bad reputation, from his feeling of everything being “wrong” with him from his size to his behavior, has brought me the biggest part of the heart connection – I just love him to bits!
What about you guys? What “faults” or “problems” in a horse have turned out to bring you positive change and happiness?
Jenny that”s fantastic!