The first step of maintaining balance is noticing when you’re not in it!
When people think of horses and balance, usually the first thing they think of is riding a horse and keeping your balance, but horses can make us aware of a much deeper connection to balance, the balance within ourselves.
Mike* was a writer who hadn’t written anything in a while. He wasn’t feeling inspired and he was just all around down and depressed. One day he decided to take a risk and see if we could help him get out of the slump he’d been in for over a year.
Mike found himself drawn to our golden horse whom he named “Goldie”. In one session, we set up an obstacle course and had Mike name some of the challenges in his life. When Mike was working on a challenge where the word “work” was written on a barrel he needed to pass, “Goldie” would plant his feet and refuse to walk past it. Upon reflection, Mike realized that the more he focused on work, the harder it was for him to write. “Work” had become a chore. “I used to love my work, it was fun”, Mike shared.
We asked Mike what fun looked like to him now. He thought for a minute and noticed how long it was taking him to think of anything “fun” and said “Well, that can’t be good.” When asked if there was anything he could remember doing in the past, that he did “just for fun.” Mike remembered that he used to go horseback riding with friends once a month, but stopped it felt like it was a “waste of time.” He had deadlines to meet and he needed all of his time and energy for productivity at work. Mike realized that around the same time that he stopped this fun activity, he felt more stressed, anxious and unable to relax or tap into the creativity needed to write.
When asked if his experience with Goldie was reminding him of anything, Mike reflected that he and Goldie were having great success as a team in prior sessions but now he felt a resistance that was making him feel the need to work harder. The more he tried to pull his horse towards the barrel with the word “work” on it, the more the horse pulled back. It was then that Mike realized that work wasn’t necessarily the challenge he was having. Somewhere along the way, fun had started becoming the challenge! He had become out of balance. No time for play, only work, work, work. And the more he focused on work, the harder his tasks became for him.
Mike realized he needed and wanted to have more fun, to let go of work for a bit and see what it would be like to have fun again!
In response to this revelation, Mike decided to take a break from working so hard with Goldie and try a more relaxed approach. He disconnected his lead rope & started to walk away from the Goldie. The horse followed. Mike stopped and Goldie stopped, he walked faster and the horse walked faster, staying with him. Mike zigged and zagged and so did Goldie. Then Mike turned to the horse and tried to chase him off and the horse turned away in a burst of energy and ran to the fence with a little buck. Mike started laughing and called out to Goldie asking him to come back. The energy in the arena was vastly different from before.
We checked in with Mike about his latest interaction with Goldie. He shared that when he decided he wanted to leave “work” behind and Goldie kept following him, it made him laugh at the irony. So he started playing with that idea and just went with the fun of playing instead of working. He remembered what it felt like to actually be having fun instead of working so hard all of the time and was made even more aware of how out of balance he had been. After this debrief, Mike decided to give the “work barrel” challenge another shot. He tried a more balanced approach this time, focusing on the task at hand, but remembering that work isn’t all that there is. Sure enough, he and Goldie walked around the barrel with ease.
Prior to this day with Goldie, Mike hadn’t realized how much he’d lost touch with fun in his life. His observations about the way he approached “work” in the arena with Goldie, helped him realize how out of balance his approach to work in his life had become. Once he felt the shift back into fun and away from work as a chore in his exercise with Goldie, the more creative and alive he felt. He was more connected to who he was as a person – someone who loves to have fun and knows that life can’t always be only about work. Goldie helped him get back into balance.
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