Dressage Lessons: Failing Forward

Horses and little girls are a classic combination made more precious by the life lessons learned in the saddle. Fortunately, the lessons don’t stop as I’ve been reminded recently of the importance failing and failing forward.

Here in Central Texas we are fully in the grip of summer heat after an exceptionally wet spring. The blistering temps feel extra harsh against the back to school sales, especially for work at home mamas with bored 6 year olds (that would be me). I’ve run through my bag of tricks to make “working with mama” fun and he is ready to head back to school. This week I found myself needing to take a moment to breathe – the hectic juggling act of balancing work, home, family, fitness and friends had me spinning my wheels.

Like so many times in my life, my best time out happened in the saddle. There, I can simply be in the moment. Fully present and focused on what I’m trying to communicate to Elf, my rides are often the most centered point of my week.

For the last 6 weeks or so, we’ve been working on horse show homework to make the most of the 2nd half of our show season. We’ve had really tremendous progress – which I have to keep reminding myself by revisiting video from February.  But at the same time, I’ve struggled with frustration. I know what Elf is capable of but the consistency we need to put up the scores I want is elusive. Yesterday, as I was searching for the balance point between forward and engaged, my trainer recounted an anecdote:

a friend was working with a well respected trainer and would get frustrated with what felt like “ugly” rides. But then she realized that there were days that the trainer would get on, have a ride where nothing really looked like it was getting done, then suddenly things clicked and the horse knew passage. It’s okay for an attempt at a movement to fail if he learns something, if the wheels are spinning and he gets closer.

[bctt tweet=”In the saddle, I can simply be in the moment, the most centered point of my week #equestrian”]

Right at that moment, it was a reminder to take a deep breath. I needed to ride the horse I was on right that second, not what he did a minute ago or the previous movement. But later, those words and my instinctive relaxing in reaction popped back into my head. I had a day of running around in a hurry: to my lesson, to the store, home to do as much work as I could, off to swim lessons, then home to immediately cook dinner. In my head, I was working through a delay in launching my most exciting side project – Blogging In Balance – and how to balance that changed schedule with the freelance work that needs to get done this week. I was feeling frantic, to be honest, wondering where I was going to find the extra hours and how I ended up behind, yet again.

[bctt tweet=”The work doesn’t have to be pretty – it needs to be effective.”]

I thought of that moment in my lesson where the canter work felt a little frantic because Elf was blowing through my correction. The work doesn’t have to be pretty – it needs to be effective. In my lesson, that meant holding the half-halt until he accepted the correction and stepped further underneath himself, allowing him to balance. Although I might have a tendency to fuss at him when it doesn’t work immediately, the one thing I have definitely learned in 7 months of dressage lessons is that most often I have to wait and give the horse the opportunity to think through the offered correction and either make it or not. For me, that is the essence of “ugly work”.

In our personal and professional lives, “ugly work” is the idea of failing forward. Failing forward acknowledges that growth is rarely perfectly linear – we have to flail about a little. In weight loss, in making healthy lifestyle changes, in parenting, in growing a business: I make mistakes and wrong turns on a regular basis. But when I look back I know I have made so much progress. Each time that I don’t quite hit my goal ( like forgetting to actually turn on my slow cooker and picking up pizza instead), I have to make a choice. Do I thrown in the towel or just hold and give myself a little grace?

Here’s the secret of failing forward: Pause for a minute, do you need to change something or do you need a little more practice? Can you make a small adjustment to change your results or make it easier? Now, implement and keep going.

[bctt tweet=”Here’s the secret of failing forward: evaluate, make needed adjustments, keep going. “]

It’s easier said than done. For me, riding is how I plug back into this learning process when I feel like I just can’t take it anymore. It is easier for me to offer Elf the gift of time to learn than to be patient with myself. Those weekly dressage lessons are more than a time out. They remind me to plug back in and allow myself to fail forward.