#98 Tik Maynard: Starting in the Middle

Episode Transcript
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Intro (00:02):
Welcome to Creative Spirits Unleashed, where we talk
about the dilemmas of balancingwork and life. And now here's
your host, Lynn Carnes,

Lynn (00:19):
Welcome to the Creative Spirits Unleashed Podcast. I'm
Lynn Carnes, your host. My guestfor this episode of the podcast
is Tik Maynard. If you followRoad to the Horse known as the
World Championship of Coltstarting, you know him as the
winner of the last two years.
Besides that distinction, he's athree day event writer,
clinician and horse trainer. Yettick shared a very simple bio

(00:40):
about himself, author of twobooks, father of two kids, also
three day event writer, husband,juggler, dad joke teller, Road
to the horse, competitor. Thereis a lot more to tick than this
bio indicates, and I'll leave itto you to look him up on the
internet to find out all thethings he's accomplished.

(01:01):
However, talking about thissimple bio was a great kick off
to a very deep and intentionalconversation. The conversation
ranged from the very practical,how did you prepare for the road
to the horse to thephilosophical? How do we balance
our training with horses in waysthat are acceptable? Confidence
was a theme that ran throughoutthis conversation as well. We

(01:23):
talked a lot about his latestbook, starting in the middle,
how horses, those who studythem, and 265 minutes with one
Colt helped me find myself atmidlife. This is a horse book
that's really more aboutlearning, navigating doubt and
cultivating a spark. It's by farmy most highlighted book in the
last few years. I really dothink you're going to enjoy this

(01:46):
deep and wide rangingconversation with tick Maynard.
Tick Maynard, welcome to thecreative spirits unleashed
podcast.

Tik Maynard (01:57):
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Lynn (01:59):
I'm I'm excited to have you here for lots of reasons,
but I I'd like to start becauseI'm coming off. People will have
just heard me read your bio, andI'm probably going to elaborate
on your bio, because it is themost the bio you sent me is the
most focused, real bio I've evergotten. It's like the essence of

(02:21):
you without all the I'm going topardon my French, but the wall
and the bullshit of youraccomplishments, and yet they're
in there. So tell me how you'vecome to be able to make that be
your bio, as opposed to, what ifyou listed your all of your
accomplishments would be severalpages of information.

Yeah, I guess I just start to feel like it's,
it's it's unneeded, it'soverkill. I'm in a position now
where we hire staff to work atour place, at our barn, and
working students. And you know,it's just like you said, it's
refreshing when you can seesomebody that can be succinct,
that can be honest, that can beauthentic, rather than having

(03:08):
stuff go on for on and on. Youknow, sometimes almost when you
see somebody put all this detailand you have a five page resume,
it doesn't mean as much assomebody that can just put it in
a few sentences. It reminds meof the quote. I don't remember
exactly what it is, but somebodythat said a real expert is
somebody that could explain theconcept to a 10 year old child.

(03:29):
You know, you don't have all thejargon and sum it up. And I kind
of like to apply that to mywriting as well.

Lynn (03:36):
It comes through in your writing, having just read for
the second time your book,starting in the middle. You do
have that essence, and I like tocall that and there was a client
that mentioned this to me once,and I've adopted it. But it's
something, it's a quote thatsays something like, I would not
give anything for simplicity onthis side of complexity, but I

(03:57):
would get give everything I havefor simplicity. On the other
side of complexity,

Oh, that's good, yeah, I see what you mean. I
like that, yeah,

Lynn (04:06):
yeah. And so there's like a texture there that it's
earned, like it's like youressence is earned because you
have been there, done that, andjust the first two lines, author
of two books, father of twokids. And it's kind of all some
summed up in there.

Yeah, there's a lot just in those sentences. You
know, everything that goes intoyour life, to become a to become
a dad, to get married and toraise children and to feel good
about it, and proud of the kids,and proud of the job you're
doing. And then same thing toget to the point in life where
you feel like you have somethingto say and you feel comfortable

(04:45):
and confident sharing it withthe world and writing a book. I
mean, it does sum up a lot. Ithink you're right.

Lynn (04:53):
A lot of people might go to when they see that sort of
work life balance. Yeah. And Ihave, I'm coming up on the 100th
episode of this podcast, andI've, I've begun to realize, as
I'm looking back on the themes Istarted this podcast talking
about work life balance. Becausea lot of people come to me

(05:16):
asking me, they're busycorporate executives or
whatever, how do I get morebalance in my life? And I've
started challenging the notionthat there is such a thing. And
when I listen to my themes and Ithink about what I've what I
learned reading your book, whatI'm starting to recognize is

(05:37):
what may be more valuable isbalance under pressure. And for
example, when I read starting inthe middle, which we'll just go
right there and talk about it inthis podcast, to me as I listen,
as I listen to you, because youwere in my head as I listened to
you describe your journey toroad to the horse in 2024 it

(06:00):
was, how can I perform at a highlevel in a way that honors the
horse? Is it even okay to dothis, in other words, and still
manage to be a good husband anda father to my children along
the way, knowing what it wasgoing to take, and in the end,
it was about, I think StacyWestfall had, might have been
the one that had a nice quotethat said something like, Who

(06:21):
are you under pressure,something along those lines. So
did you feel that as you weregoing through that process?
Like,

absolutely, I felt, I felt a lot of pressure, both
about the competition itself,how I was going to do pressure,
about how I would come across,you know, in this day and age
with a large audience and socialmedia, and whether I felt
comfortable doing that in frontof an audience. You know, a lot
of people can start a horse athome, but do you feel really,

(06:52):
truly comfortable with yourprocess, that you can do it in
front of television cameras anda live audience? And then I was
also worried of exactly what yousaid, was I going to be able to
also be a good father andhusband and take care of the
other horses that we had at homeduring that time? And when I
look back on it, I don't think Iwas perfect. I don't think I was

(07:15):
a perfect dad or a perfecthusband or a perfect cold
starter, you know, in largeparts of that process, but what
I will say is that it wasconstantly at the front of my
mind, and I was constantlytrying to find the balance, and
I was constantly trying to askthe questions that I should be
asking, and and I try to givemyself permission to sort of

(07:38):
just be human and say it's okayTo not be perfect and not get it
right, as long as you're trying,because that's what I expect.
You know, that's the first thingI try to teach horses, is you
don't have to do it, but I wantyou to try and appreciate in a
horse, and that's what I try totrain into a horse as well. Is
that try is, is whether it'swith pressure and release, or

(08:00):
whether it's with food, orwhether it's with play, or
however I'm trying to motivatethem, the first thing I'm trying
to motivate them to do is tokeep trying for me and and feel
overwhelmed that they have a wayto tell me that they're feeling
overwhelmed that is productive.
It's not bucking or spinning.
And so I tried to essentiallytrain myself the way that I was

(08:21):
training horses.

Lynn (08:23):
Gosh, there's so much in there so many threads I want to
follow, but I'm going to startwith a perfect piece, because
there was a quote in your bookthat I actually also quoted in
my book, dancing the tightrope,and it probably in a little bit,
maybe different way, but it saysthe saying, There's a saying
that the master is not the onewho is never knocked off
balance. He is the one whoregains with more grace. Yeah,

(08:46):
and if we come to realize that,then I feel like that awareness
or that principle is theantidote to perfectionism,
because balance, a lot of peoplethink is a state of being that's
constant, and I've learned it,especially through water skiing.

(09:06):
It's actually more like dynamicalignment, and it's just like
walking. We're out of balancewhen we're walking, we're
falling and then catchingourselves with our feet, but
with grace. And then, of course,the analogy I use is, if you
want to watch somebody forgethow to walk, put them on a 12
inch beam 100 feet in the air,and they can walk, walk a 12
inch beam on the ground or 12inch path. But sometimes, even

(09:29):
if it's a beam on the ground,they can't do it, you know,
because the consequences aredifferent. The pressure is
different, and so it's just amatter of regaining balance, as
opposed to constantly beingperfect,

yeah, and I think in water skiing, you know, I'm
definitely not a competitivewater skier, but I've water
skied a few times in my life.
And I, you know, when I trainhorses, I think about having
three stages for each thing thatI'm. Teaching them. And one is a
stage where they're learningsomething new. They're learning
something for the first and aseparate stage is where you're

(10:06):
practicing something thatthey've learned. And the third
stage is now where you'regetting ready to do a
performance or a demonstrationor compete. And sometimes people
you know trying to get theirhorse ready to compete before
they even learn the thing. Soit's like they're skipping two
full steps. And when I think ofmyself, and I think back to when

(10:26):
I was a young teenager learningto water ski, there's that first
part where you're actually youcan't even stay up on the water
skis for 10 seconds, water, andthen they get the rope gets
pulled out of your hand, andthen you get halfway over the
water, and then the road. Anddepending on, you know, your
background and other sports andstuff like that, it can take
you, you might not even get iton the first day. It might take

(10:48):
you a few days before you canget pulled out of the water. And
so we have the grace in that,you know, to try again and to
not give up, and to to, youknow, how you handle that for
yourself and the people aroundyou that are in the boat, you
know? Do you say, Oh, I don'twant to waste your time like
I've fallen once, let somebodyelse have a turn. Or can you do
it in a in a smooth way thatfeels good to everybody, that

(11:11):
you want to keep trying, andthat you are going to kind of
find, find, find the balancethere and then once you've kind
of learned that, now you're in apracticing stage, and you're
trying to find the grace andrefining your balance, and then
also, when you become an expert,those little moments where
you're going to be off balanceon such big moments, you may not
even fall you may just you mayeven be the only one yourself

(11:31):
that realizes you're a littlebit out of balance, and you'll
bring yourself back intobalance. I think that never, it
never goes away. No matter howgood you get. It just gets kind
of more and more more and moresubtle, but you still have to
yourself to talk yourself tohave that self talk where you
can refine, find balance, again,with grace

Lynn (11:50):
that. And that's I think the self talk is important. And
one of the things that's becomesomewhat aware to me, especially
when we're working with horses,as as I've mentioned to you, I'm
on the board of rain rescue,where we bring in more wild
horses, either feral orMustangs. And I have I'm a

(12:11):
relatively new horse person, butjoy Baker, who is the founder,
is a deep, deeply experiencedhorse person who has frequently
commented to me how differentthese horses are than the
domestic horses that she hadraised. And what we have noticed
is that even our self talk, evenif we're beating ourselves up

(12:33):
quietly, in other words, it'sjust the vibration. It's really
not out loud. The horses that weare now working with are
sensitive to that, and one day,it just hit me. I was like, Oh
my gosh, I owe it to thesehorses not to beat myself up
because they don't know if I'mbeating them up or the or the or
me, like they don't know thedifference. So it feels to me,
to them, like I'm telling themthey did it wrong when I'm the

(12:56):
one who's frustrated with me.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think something that is
that could be that small, thatsort of self talk that you're
having, I think it affects yourbody language, you know, your
intention that you put out, theenergy that you put out. I think
it affects you being clear inyour mind about the plan that
you have, what you're wanting tounit communicate, and I think,

(13:20):
more than anything, unlessyou're really present with that
horse and you're not having thatnegative self talk. I think it
affects your timing. With ahorse, horses are so aware of
your timing, especially in thatinitial stages where you're
building a rapport with them andthey're learning something new
for the first time, because ifyour timing is off, they just

(13:40):
learn the wrong thing instead ofthe right thing. I mean, those
horses are especially those,those wild horses, or those
feral horses. They are so quickto learn, and in those initial
stages, it just depends whatthey're learning. Are they
learning to stay away from you,or are they learning to trust
you?

Lynn (13:54):
Gosh, I just what? I just realized we were having this
conversation, actually on theski dock yesterday, about the
difference between the skiers atthe really high levels, we just
had the World Water Skichampionships, and it was the
highest scores, or the bestscores that have ever been
posted in this competition, witha couple of one, one who's more
of a veteran, and one who'sactually a Canadian, a young

(14:15):
Canadian man almost won likehe'd met. He missed it by one
buoy, and he's an up and comer.
He's 20 years old. But what isgood, what's strong about both
of them is neither one of them,when they make a mistake on the
water ski, register it so theydon't lose that split second,
that timing, yeah, they keepgoing. And it's almost like in

(14:36):
every every time there's abauble. And even at their level,
and as good as good as they are,there's a bobble, but for them,
it's more like, how do Irecalibrate, versus, Oh darn,
look what I just did, I gottarecalibrate. And just that
momentary thought of, Oh darn,look what I just did messes up
the timing. And it justconnected to me with the horse.
It's also affecting the timingof the horse. If. You do that,

you have to. I think, I think there's a moment
to, if you make a mistake, tolearn from it. But it's, it's
not in a moment of action. It'sa moment of thoughtfulness that
happens on a break or a pause,or at the end of the day, or in
a conversation with your coach.
You know, to learn from thosemistakes, but during the actual
when there's action going on. Imean, I try to put exactly put

(15:23):
those things behind me as quickas I can, and think about where
we're at now, not what happenedfive seconds ago. And there's,
there's no, I don't thinkthere's any animal that humans
work with as much on a regularbasis that are so in the
present. You know, people areconstantly thinking forward and
thinking back, and you know,even dogs have the ability to do

(15:44):
that a little bit more thanhorses. I think horses are are
living much more truly in thepresent than almost any other
animal that we we work with on aregular basis.

Lynn (15:54):
And that's the tricky part for people like me and a lot of
the a lot of us who just kindof, we tend to be one or two
seconds ahead, sometimes even,and staying in the moment while
knowing what your next thing todo is as, I think, another real
important Balancing Act. We allhave

exactly, exactly, you know, you kind of have a
plan, and then you put in theback your mind so you can be
right there in the present. Andthen on the break or the pause,
or at the end of the session.
Then you bring what's at theback of your mind to your
forefront, and you think aboutyour plan again. And then you
have the back your mind whenyou're actually there with the
horse. So it's a kind ofconstant back and back and
forth.

Lynn (16:32):
That's it's interesting, because I back to the
conversation we were havingbefore, and we talked a little
bit, obviously, in theintroduction about the road to
the horse, I watched your roadto the horse both 2024 and 2025
24 was the most interesting tome, just because you had written
about it in your book. Yeah. Andhere's what really struck me

(16:55):
when I watched it after readingthe book, and I kind of did it
simultaneously that you weretalking to yourself through the
audience as you went through allthe motions. And that's very
different than talking to us,which puts you outside of the

(17:16):
round pen.

Yes, yeah, that's a real I, you know, I've never
thought about it that way, butthat's really, I think that's
really insightful, that you saidthat. Yeah,

Lynn (17:26):
so how did you get yourself in the mind space to do
that? Because we already justtalked about two layers, which
are really incredibly difficult,which is, I have a plan. I've
got 265, minutes to start thishorse over three days. Oh, my
God. I mean, it's like, what?
And then, then you so you haveto have a plan. I did notice
also that there were a lot ofmoments. You might have had 265

(17:49):
minutes, but I bet you had anequal, if not more, momenta, I'm
going to call them catches,moments where you stopped,
almost like you declaredvictory, checked in with the
horse, and now we're doing thenext thing. And so it now that
you've described it, so we'relike, I'm going to go back into
my back of my mind and bringforward what's next. Now that's

(18:10):
one layer, and then this otherlayer of speaking it into a
microphone in front of anaudience while not making it
about the audience. How the helldid you do all that?

Yeah, so the speaking thing is something that
I deliberately began practicingin my mid 20s. Before that I'd
never, you know, all throughelementary school, high school
and five years of university, Isomehow managed to avoid any
public speaking to any class,you know, I would, I would not

(18:46):
show up at school that day. Iwould take a whole different
class, even if I really wantedto do it, just to avoid any kind
of public speaking whatsoever.
And I somehow managed to getthrough, you know, that whole
time until I was probably 25 notever doing any public speaking.
And when I kind of started goingdown the road of wanting to
learn about horsemanship andwanting to become a horse

(19:07):
professional, I started to thinkahead that where do I want this
to take me? And I realized, youknow, when I looked around the
people that are competing andthe people that are clinicians
and the people that are able toshare successfully what they're
doing with their students andwith the world is they have to
talk about it. And you know, youknow, there's, there's probably

(19:32):
a lot of people that are goodhorse trainers or dog trainers
or good at anything in theworld. But if you can't
communicate what you're doing toother people, you're going to be
pretty limited, I think. And soI consciously kind of realized
that I got up my nerve and Isigned up for a public speaking
course, and it was oneinstructor and five of us in it,
and it was probably one of thehardest things I've done in my

(19:56):
life. Actually, I felt soawkward. And embarrassed. We met
once a week for like, threemonths, and it was really
difficult. And then from thatpoint on, I started to try to
put myself in situations where Icould, you know, what I felt
most comfortable talking aboutwas stuff that I knew well,
which was horses. And I tried toput myself in situations where I
would speak about, you know,either handling a horse, what I

(20:17):
was doing, or it would be justin front of a group, speaking
about something that I had done,or a concept that I, you know,
was getting clear in my mind,and, you know, it just grew to
the point where I got it washappening more and more often,
and it was something that I gotmore and more comfortable doing.
And so even though I didn't hearabout road to the horse until

(20:38):
2012 and I didn't compete in ittill 2024 you know, probably in
about 2006 was when I startedpracticing being able to talk to
a crowd. And it was a verygradual, long process that
involved a lot of practice andrepetition before I could
actually do that.

Lynn (20:58):
Well, I It's interesting, as I'm listening to you talk,
because, you know, I mentionedmy, my example of the balance
and the walking on the 12 inchbeam. But the same thing that we
can all do generally by the timewe're three or four is being
pretty proficient talkers, untilyou get in front of a crowd
under pressure, and then all ofa sudden we can't talk, you
know. So my, my theory, is thatskill practice isn't necessarily

(21:22):
the way out of that. It'sbuilding your pressure
threshold. That's the way out ofthat, building your internal
mental tools to prepare you.
Yes, you need to practice underpressure, but it's reaching for
something that I think was moreGod given at birth, you know,
sort of courage in that case,and and bravery and that kind of
thing to get through, which youclearly had had done ahead of
time, so much so that you didn'teven mention, I don't think you

(21:44):
mentioned in your book that youwere going to have to talk to
everybody while you were goingthrough it, which really strikes
me as just a sign of where youwere. Yeah, like you were
worried about how to put aWestern saddle on and and were
you gonna be the only onewearing a helmet? Which, yeah,
kudos for you, by the way, forthat. But yeah, one of my
favorite moments was when youthrew the western saddle over in

(22:07):
such a very good way, and yousaid, how would you say I've
been practicing this for a longtime? Or,

yeah, you know, I just started using a Western
saddle, maybe, maybe six monthsbefore that competition, and
it's a lot heavier than anEnglish saddle, and it's a lot
more awkward, and there's a lotmore pieces kind of hanging down
and hanging everywhere. Anddoing the cinch up is a little
bit different than doing thegirth up and then you brought
the back cinch. And so you know,to just get a Western saddle on

(22:35):
a horse, it doesn't take muchpractice. You can learn how to
kind of plop it on and do it upin a rough way, in five minutes,
but to do it with a horse that'snever been saddled before, where
the stakes are that high, it wassomething that I knew I wanted
to do really well, which meansboth smoothly and quickly. So

(22:57):
it's something that I practicedhundreds of times, you know, to
the point where sometimes it wasjust for the horse that was
comfortable with it, and I justput the saddle on and I take it
off, put the saddle on and Itake it off. And a few times, I
would have somebody therewatching me do it, you know, I
had Martin black there one timewatching me do it. I'd have Jake
bierenbaum watching me do it,and just for 10 minutes, just
put it on. 30 or 40 times, youknow, so my arms got tired. And,

(23:19):
you know, they'd say thingslike, it's got to be smoother.
It's got to be quicker. You gotto get the front end higher, you
got to get the back end higher.
You know, very you know,something that's really tough is
you've got this outside stirrupthat actually has a little
weight to it, and so when youget over, if you swing too much
or too high, that outsidestirrup comes back around and
kind of hits the horse side.
You've got a horse that is thevery first time in their life

(23:40):
that they're being saddled. Youknow that can surprise them. And
you know the worst casescenarios with saddling our
horse are. You know, you go tosaddle in the first time, and
the horse spooks away from thatand the saddle falls on the
ground, and with that fear thatcomes from disturb hitting them,
and then the saddle falling tothe ground and them getting away

(24:00):
from you. It can sometimes takes30 minutes or an hour, even
more, to sort of build theirtrust back up again. And when
you only have four hours, youknow, an hour, half an hour, an
hour is a big deal. The otherthing, the really worst case
scenario, is you get the cinch,the girth, sort of partly done
up, and then the horse spooksaway. And then, of course, the
saddle falls underneath thebelly the horse box and kicks

(24:23):
and and then, you know, theygallop a lap around the arena,
and then it finally falls off orand then they're really scared,
and then it's going to take youprobably days to recover from
that. So that that first momentwhere that saddled for goes on
for the first time, wassomething that I was really
aware of, that I wanted topractice.

Lynn (24:40):
That's huge. Is there an option at the road to the horse
to start with, like a like atrain, we use a small racing
saddle first before we putanything else on. Is there an
option to use a different horse,different saddle, or is it just
not time efficiently?

Oh, yeah. So both years, what I did was I first
got the horse used to my body,because. Kind of around the
weight and feeling the movement.
And then I got the horse used towhat most people call a bareback
pad, which is sort of a leatherpad with a strap in front and a
cinch or a girth that goesunderneath, you know. And if I
wanted to add even another stepin, I would have done the bare
back pad, and then an Englishsaddle, and then the western

(25:17):
saddle. And I was prepared to dothat. But both saddles did
really well with my both horsesdid really well with my body
bareback pads. So then at thatpoint, I went straight to the
western saddle.

Lynn (25:29):
Yeah. Well, you it was a really beautiful, elegant move.
And I remember seeing you, Ithink it was the 2025 one. You
probably did it in 24 too. But Ispecifically remember you like
crawling, like getting up overon the horse and then getting
right back off. And that was theother thing I noticed that you
did a lot was, I think I'veheard this called being in and

(25:50):
out like you, you get you do thething, and then you don't hang
on. You let it. You let it go,which seems so smart for horses
and so difficult for humans todo, because we win and we've got
that saddle on, and then wedon't want to take it off again,
or we're up there, so we don'twant to get off again. How did
you find

and I would just said there that in and out. When
you for anybody that's watchesroad to the horse, you know, it
goes back to 2003 you know,there's obviously somebody wins
every year, and every yearthere's some people that do
Okay, and there's some peoplethat kind of get in trouble. And
I would say, you know, I wentback and we watched many years
of road to the horse and reallystudied. And I would say the

(26:31):
single biggest reason thatpeople get in trouble at road to
the horse is not doing what youjust said. They keep the
pressure on, too much pressurefor too long without retreating.
And you know, I call thatretreating, that in and out
thing that you can you can getout, and you can give them a
chance to settle mentally,physically. You give them a

(26:51):
chance to let them know they'reon the right track, and they
learn something, and you lettheir heart rate and their
adrenaline come down. Andsometimes that might just be a
second or two, sometimes itmight be 30 seconds, sometimes
it might be a minute or two oreven longer, depending on the
situation. But I would saythat's the single biggest reason
people get in trouble is justand probably even on a day to
day basis with horses, is toomuch pressure for too long.

Lynn (27:15):
I feel like that has come that applies to a lot of places
where we get goal oriented ashumans, and we don't realize
that letting go is the answer.
Like I've come for myself, I'mstarting to call them I didn't
die moments, but in raising mypressure threshold, and I got

(27:36):
the I didn't die moments fromStevie Delahunt, because when I
met her, I met her at WarwickSchiller journey on podcast
summit in 2023 we were bothspeakers the same year, and her
t shirt said, but did you die?
And she was talking about howshe helps people get over fears
to do things like Mongol Derby,gaucho Derby and so forth. And

(28:00):
at that stage, I had only beenback on like riding horses. I I
had a I had a bad accident after40 years of not being on horses,
so I had a lot of recovery toget back on. So I was still kind
of just trail riding, nottrotting, not cantering, and she
said she could teach me how togallop. And so the next March, I
went to her workshop to learnhow to gallop on a horse, which

(28:22):
was really cool. But then Istarted realizing the way she
did it was we didn't gallopforever. She found, like, a
little short run where we couldget two or three steps, and then
she found a longer run where wecould get a few strides, and
then she found a longer runwhere we could, you know, go up
a hill for a good ways, but itwas in and out, yeah. Then I

(28:43):
realized, okay, if I'm not goingto do it forever, I can get my
actually, I'm more balanced atthe Gallop than I am anything I
discovered. But I realized, if Icould just collect those I
didn't die moments, then I canraise my pressure threshold. And
I think that's what you'resaying. You do for the horse, is
you get in and out and theyrealize, Oh, I didn't die, and
so you're helping them. And theother thing I also noticed, by

(29:07):
the way, I don't remember thelanguage you used, maybe it was
that you would say he wasthinking forward, but you were
looking for moments for thehorse's brain to relax too, not
just his body. So say more abouthow you were, how you figured
that out.

Yeah, so when I think about training a horse,
just like we talked about at thevery beginning, is the first
thing I'm looking for is thetry, trying and and for a horse,
what a try looks like, for me isthat they're thinking about it,

(29:48):
considering it. They don't haveto be doing it yet. You know, if
I've got a horse, for example,and I take them to a water
crossing, I'm on a trail ride,and I want the horse to walk
through the water, and the horseis nerve. Nervous about the
water. The first thing I wantthem to do, whether they're five
feet back or 10 feet back or 50feet back, or they're about to
put a foot in, or it doesn'tmatter the distance, doesn't

(30:10):
matter how they close they arephysically, it doesn't matter
how fast they're going. But thefirst thing I want them to do
is, I want them to be able tolook at it and study it and be
thoughtful about it. So whatthat looks like is it looks like
their neck gets longer, theirnose tips out, their eyes are
studying it. Their ears areforward. Now, if they can study
it, what's going to happen atthat point is one of two things.

(30:33):
They're going to either get morecomfortable with it, or they're
going to go, the water is goingto all of a sudden be turbulent,
or something like that, andthey're gonna go, okay, oh, hell
no, I'm scared of this, andthey're gonna try to spin and
run away, right once, I think sowhat I want to do is I want them
to think about it at a bigenough distance where it feels
okay to them, and thatthoughtfulness turns into more

(30:56):
of a relaxed thoughtfulness,where they where they become
maybe curiosity As the next stepwhere they start thinking, what
is that? Or could I touch that,or could I explore that, or
could I interact with that, orplay with that? And once they
start having that kind ofthoughtfulness about it, almost
inevitably, what happens is thehorse gets closer to that thing

(31:17):
on their own. I don't have toclose my leg, I don't have to
use the stick, I don't have touse the spur. I don't even have
to clock, you know, the horselooks at it. And horses, by
nature, are curious animals. Ifthey're looking at it in a
relaxed, thoughtful way, they'regoing to want to get closer.
They're going to want to paw atthe tarp. They're going to want
to drink out of the stream.
They're going to want to go likethis with their muzzle back and
forth in the water and kind ofsplash around. Some horses will

(31:39):
really pot the waters if they'rekind of in it, or even want to
roll in, roll in it. And so thatvery first initial step, you
know, where they're looking atsomething, and it's that turning
point between, are they going tolook at it and become more
thoughtful and relaxed, or arethey going to look at it and get
scared and want to spin? That issuch a small moment, if you're
not trained to look for it, ifyou're trained, it's a big,

(32:03):
obvious moment, but if you'renot trained to look for it, it
happens very quickly, and it'svery fleeting and it's very easy
to miss. And so the subtlety ofobserving the horse's eyes,
their breathing, listening totheir breathing, seeing their
lips, seeing their muzzle,seeing if they swallow, seeing
their ears, seeing theirbreathing feeling, even if
you're riding their breathingthrough their rib cage, their

(32:23):
heart rate, sometimes you canalmost feel through the saddle
their tail swishing. Is it highor low? Are their feet getting
faster, getting slower? All thisbody language sort of adds up
idea of when they're in thisthis tipping moment of becoming
more relaxed and thoughtful ortipping away out of fear. That
is such an important moment. Andso that's something that I

(32:45):
really have trained myself totry and look for on a ever
deepening level, and to alsoencourage other people when I
teach clinics to try to watchfor that moment.

Lynn (32:56):
That is a magical moment for humans too. But what do you
do to capture it like is thatthe moment when you feel to try,
that you sort of completelyrelax and let them just

get out. Yeah, when you say get in and out, when I
feel them try, that's the momentto not ask for more,

Lynn (33:16):
saying, okay, I'm good.
And you know, so I have acharacter that lives in my head.
I learned about her from fromreading the Julia Cameron's the
artist way. I don't know ifyou're familiar with that book.
It's a it's a book aboutrecovering your creativity and
being sort of locked down in thelike left brain black and white
world of the corporate worldthat I grew up in somebody on

(33:39):
one of our mergers gave me thisbook as a as an idea to unlock
my creativity, because I said Iwanted to, and one of the
exercises is to find out thevoices that live in your head.
You know, it's like thecommittee that leave lives free
up there. And one of thecharacters in my head is the
sports mom bitch, and she's thecharacter that would be like the

(34:01):
one in the stands going choke upon the bat, or you're not doing
it hard enough, you know. Andwhen that character shows up at
a moment like what you talkedabout, which is as subtle as a
butterfly wing, you know, andthat voice is trying to tell
you, yeah, but just go ahead andcross the damn stream, which is
what the sports mom bitch, willdo right? It takes such self
awareness, not consciousness,self awareness, to sort of let

(34:28):
that voice go to the side andsay, look what this was. This
was a win. We're going tocapture the win. Is what you're
doing?

Yeah, exactly. And I think the more small wins you
can capture, the faster theprocess goes. And one of the
things that I didn't even reallyrealize until, I think recently,
is in the in road to the horse,is how fast everything happens.
You know, everybody says you gotto start a horse in three days

(34:57):
and four hours, like you.
There's sort of this. It's sortof implied that to get that
done, you have to skip steps,you know, you gotta, you gotta
go straight from A to D, andyou're skipping, you know, B and
C. But what I learned in mypreparation for road to the
horse is actually to have moresteps. That's what I saw. And
before I started preparing forand competing on road to the

(35:21):
horse, I actually skipped moresteps, and the faster my
timeline had to be, the more Irealized I've got to kind of
have a like I used to think yougot to have a point, you got to
have a 1% improvement, and thena 1% improvement, and then a 1%
improvement, whereas for road tothe horse, it was actually more
like a point 1% improvement,pause. Point 1% improvement.
Take a break. Point 1%improvement, and you're

(35:44):
actually, you know, if you cango and have all these very tiny
improvements, that's actuallywhen things happen the quickest.

Lynn (35:53):
It's like changing the frame rate on a camera from what
we used to have in the 50s whenTV first came out, and the high
definition that we have today,where they can capture you know,
so many more frames per secondthan we used to, and that's what
I saw, was all the littlemoments of capturing. That's why
I said you had 265, of them. Butmaybe even more than that,

(36:13):
exactly every few seconds youwere pausing and then doing
another thing. And it was a itwas a clear delineation, so that
the horse could and you werechecking in with the horse, and
what was surprising to me washow quick after each thing, the
horse would be turning back toyou, going, Okay, so the saddles
on, what's next? Kind of like,Is that all you got?

Yeah, you know, I did a, I did a, what's called
Chicken camp, where I flew outto Seattle and I trained, uh,
chickens for four days. And whatwe're training the chickens to
do is stuff like dog agilitytype stuff, up and down an a
frame, through a tunnel, pullbanding over a teeter totter.

(36:59):
Stand on this. Don't stand onthat. Peck this. Don't Peck
that. Knock this over with yourbeak. And we're training them
with clicker training. So wehave this little clicker and a
little kind of bowl with crackedcorn in it, and we would train
the chickens. We'd make a plan,so we're going to say, Okay, for
the next, next little bit, we'regoing to train them to peck this

(37:22):
red poker disc, which was thefirst thing we trained the
chickens to do, and then wewould have 30 Seconds to train
them. At the end of the 30seconds, we would take a break,
and we would chat about it withour partner, who is observing us
training, and we would kind ofmake a plan. We would reflect on
it and say, how did that go?
What would I do differently nexttime? What's gonna be my plan
for the next 30 seconds? Andevery 30 seconds would have that

(37:45):
little break. And partly it wasfor the chickens, but I think
more so it was for the humans totake that pressure off and to
say, am I going on the righttrack? Am I going on the wrong
track? And to have some feedbackfrom another person that's
watching, that's not so investedin it, but they can give you a
more neutral kind of feedback onhow you're doing. And one of the

(38:05):
things that we would alwaysdiscuss in that third after the
32nd is what was our rate ofreinforcement? And the rate of
reinforcement is how often wewould click and treat and when
we're doing it with horses, whenwe're not using clicker
training, and I didn't useclicker training. I wrote to the
horse, I use pressure andrelease, which is what you just
said, which is, you get in andyou get out. And with the
chickens, how many times would Iget in and out in 30 seconds?

(38:28):
And with with the chickens, whatwe were looking for is about,
you know, in a 32nd period, youknow, about 12 times, give or
take amazing under 14 timeswhere that we would click and
treat if we were doing it morethan that, like we're clicking
and treating all the time, thatmeans the exercise is too easy,

(38:48):
and if we're not doing it, youknow, eight times in 30 seconds,
it means the exercise is toodifficult. They're not getting
enough reinforcement. So thatrate of reinforcement needs to
be high enough. And so withhorses, I really try to take
that lesson from chicken camp toheart. And whenever I work with
a horse, I remind myself, what'smy rate of reinforcement? Which

(39:09):
means how many breaks Am Itaking to let the horse know
they're going in the rightdirection? I would say the
biggest difference betweenhorses and chickens is that with
chickens, the breaks could bequite short, or the click and
treats could be quite short,whereas with horses, sometimes
the breaks that I take will bequite long, you know, 30
seconds, a minute, two minutesin certain situations. And so
then your rate of reinforcement,if you were to time, it is not

(39:32):
really reflected as well as withchickens, but it's still the
same ideas. I've got to take alot of little breaks along the
way, and sometimes even a lot ofbig breaks.

Lynn (39:43):
And is the rate of reinforcement correlated to the
number of steps you're breakingit down into?

Yes, so if my rate of reinforcement is too high,
which means I'm giving them toomany clicks and treats, that
means I need to break it downinto smaller steps. Right the.
Exercise is too hard. I need tomake the steps smaller. I need
to show them the way more. Sofor chicken as an example, let's
say I want to teach the chickento the very first thing, just as

(40:12):
an example, is peck the reddisc. If the disc is too far
away from the chicken in thislearning phase, the chicken has
got to travel further, and it'sgoing to get distracted, and
it's going to still be a littleconfused, and it's not going to
be very motivated. And so itmight only peck the disc, you
know, twice in 30 seconds,right? Maybe not at all. So then

(40:32):
what I do is, at the beginningstages and the learning stages,
I bring the disc closer to thechicken, almost right underneath
it, and then it picks it, let'ssay it packs it packs it 10
times in 30 seconds, and then Iclick and treat it. I give it a
little corn, and it does that 10times in 30 seconds. Then I make
it a little further away. Thenit can walk with a little
hustle. The chicken walks with alittle hustle to check it. And
then I move it further away. Andthen it gets the point where I

(40:55):
could start the chicken on oneside of the table and have the
red disc on the other side ofthe table. And now all of a
sudden, the chicken, instead ofmeandering and getting confused
and getting distracted, thechicken goes in a beeline off
like a shot, checks the disc,and then you can click and treat
that.

Lynn (41:11):
Okay, I've got chickens, so I'm gonna have to go try
this, because as I was readingthat part of your book, I was
fascinated, first of all,because I have chickens that I
could train. But the but theother thing was, what made you
realize that that would be sucha productive four days is a long
time, and you went across thecountry, what made you realize

(41:32):
that was going to be such aproductive thing to do?

So when I realized, and this is something that I've
kind of started to probablyrealize there are, maybe not
realize, but get into, getexcited about, is, is learning
theory and how animals learn,whether it's something as simple

(41:57):
as a as a reptile like a frog,or something that's more
complex, like a mammal, like adog or a horse or or or a cat or
a person or an elephant, orwhether it's something that's as
a very different way oflearning, like a parrot or crow
or a raven, the fundamentals oflearning theory is very, very

(42:17):
similar across all species, andit was something that I started
to get more and more interestedin. And so I began reading books
and listening to podcasts andtrying to understand how
different animals learn. Andthere's a lot of horse trainers
out there, or trainers of anyanimal, like a dog trainer, for
example, that have a lot ofnatural feel, and they've sort

(42:40):
of learned one way from aninstructor, but they're not able
to explain the theory of whywhat they're doing works. And
that's something that I wascurious about, and it's
something that I just gotinterested in. So I there's,
there's another thing that I didthere called portal, which is a

(43:02):
it's a tabletop game where wetrain other people using animal
training techniques, P, O, R, T,L, and it's developed by some
people at Texas A and MUniversity. And for those people
that are interested, I think thewebsite is behavior explorer.com
and I hosted a clinic, a portalclinic, at our place in Florida.

(43:24):
We had six people. We flew theinstructor out from Texas, and
we basically applied learningtheory to training other people.
And when we trained the otherpeople, we couldn't use English
and we couldn't use mimicry orcharades or acting. We had to
sort of train another person isif they were an animal. And
while training chickens andtraining people doesn't apply

(43:45):
directly to horses, 95% of thelearning theory does apply
directly.

Lynn (43:53):
So, and you did that before you went to road to the
horse as well. That was part ofthe prep.

Yeah, that was a few years ago. I didn't include
the portal in the in the book.
But, yeah, I did that. I was

Lynn (44:02):
wondering if I forgot it, because I was like, Man, I think
I'd have been all over that,because that was something that
I did when I took over credittraining at the bank I worked
at. It was a huge bank. It feltto me like we were getting about
a 10% learning yield lots oflectures, but nobody could
really do it after they werelectured at about how to assess

(44:22):
credit, and interestinglyenough, trying to figure out
whether somebody's going to payback a loan is not that
different than trying to figureout if a horse is trying or not.
There's a lot of fields, yeah.
And so I dove into acceleratedlearning theory, adult learning
theory, all that stuff,experiential learning when I
took over and we dramaticallyimproved the learning yield, you

(44:43):
know, by applying some of theseprinciples. So I'm very tuned in
to when you say learning theory,I'm like, all over it. It's
like, tell me, tell me more.
Because that's been kind of thedirection my career has taken
the last well,

we're going to, we're going to do another
another portal clinic. At somepoint in the next year or two,
so I'll, I'll make sure toinvite you to come. You need

Lynn (45:03):
to invite me because you live you're not far far from
Ocala, right? We're

20 minutes north of Ocala, on

Lynn (45:11):
301 Yeah. That's the drive I take between teaching a
leadership program and doing mywater skiing. Yeah? So you go
right by our place. I go rightby your place in on 301, and I'm
thinking about going down andnot, I'm skipping the the work
part, and just going to go,possibly ride Reiners and in
Ocala, because that's what I donow, is ride reining horses and

(45:31):
go to and ski at the same time.

So you're a reining horse trainer, or where do you
go? Well, I'm not

Lynn (45:37):
a trainer. I just have that happened to be because I
grew up in Texas. I'm a Westernwriter, and actually didn't even
know what reigning was until theWorld Equestrian Games came here
and they started talking aboutthe one Western discipline was
raining. And I'm like, where'sthe barrel racing? You know,
because that's what I grew upwith. And then I went to the

(45:57):
qualifier. This would be May of2018, before the games were in
20 September, 2018 and I justwas like, smitten. I was like,
those horses are so beautiful.
And it turned out that just amonth later, or two months
later, I found out that one ofmy dear friends who had never
talked about horses, had boughta reining horse or two that

(46:18):
turned out to be the winner ofeverything that year. And now
she has this wonderful reigningplace called Seven lakes in
Purcell, Oklahoma, with a lot ofwinners. And she just happens to
have that gift. And so I go rideher Reiners, and I have a
reining trainer here. Andobviously I just like to lope in
circles. And I really loveendurance too. I go ride the

(46:41):
endurance horses with Stevie outin Oregon, but, but, you know,
sort of back to where I just getso lost in it, like I'm like, I
don't even know where to go nowbecause my brain is lost, but I
would love to do that. And likeI said, I'm going to be down
there. So if you do another one,you have to invite me, and I
will. I'll just combine all thetrips because I'm super excited

(47:03):
watching like, as I said, I workwith rain rescue, with these
horses that are Wilder, andthere's nothing what we've what
we've found, and I'm guessingthat you experienced this. So I
want to ask this as a question,as you're taking a horse from
untouched to able to be yourpartner and and be your partner

(47:25):
in a very specific way, which Ithink of as power with. That's
what I mean by on the tightropewhen I think dancing the
tightrope, not power over andnot power under, but power with.
Yeah, as you do that, how doesit change you as a human,
because we have found it rain.
All of us are finding depthswithin ourselves and freedom

(47:48):
within ourselves that we didn'teven know was there as the
horses have taught us how to bewith them.

Yeah, it's, I'd say, the biggest ways, it's,
it's teaching me to be a betterdad. You know, when I get a
little lost with the kids, I tryto think about what I would do
with horses. And, you know, mywife one time, and this is
either the the best complimentor the or the worst insult, or

(48:22):
something like that. But I camein one day and she was having
some quiet time. You know, inthe kitchen, the lights were
dim. She probably had a candlegoing, and she was having some
water, and she was reflecting onhow her horses were going, and I
think she had her notepad out,and she was just kind of doing
some quiet work in the kitchen,and very thoughtful. And I came

(48:44):
in the front door, and I waskind of throwing, you know, my
shoes here, and slamming thedoor behind me and going over to
open the kitchen, open, open thefridge in the kitchen, and being
like Sinead, like I just didthis. I'm so excited. I want to
tell you about my day. And shejust kind of looks at me and she
goes, You know, I wish you couldread me as well as you read the

(49:07):
horses, or treat. You couldtreat me more like how you treat
the horses, or something likethat. In other words, like being
worth being more like thoughtfuland aware of the, you know, I
came into that, into that house,and I was excited about me. I
wasn't thinking about she neededat all. You know, around them,
with the horse, I immediatelyswitch. It's not about me at

(49:29):
all. It's got to be about thehorse, right? And, you know,
with the horses, sometimes I'msaying, sometimes I'm firm with
them, sometimes I'm soft withthem, sometimes I'm giving them
food. Sometimes I'm not doingclicker training. Sometimes I'm
saying we're gonna do somethingathletic. Sometimes I say we're
doing something soft. Sometimesthere's a whole range of stuff,
but I'm basing it on what thathorse needs, not what I not what

(49:53):
I need. Sometimes they needboundaries, but I'm not doing
that because I'm feeling like ajerk that day, and I need to
take it. On the horse. I'm doingthat because that horse needs
boundaries that day. So when Iget a little lost with the kids,
you know, Sinead is much betterwith them than I am, especially
with, you know, I get them riledup. I'm like the I'm like the
sugar, you know, I'm like thejunk food the kids and I got

(50:15):
sometimes I gotta slow it downand be more present and have
boundaries that are moreconsistent. And so I try to
remind myself, you know, like,what would I do with the horse?
And that's what I should do inthis situation. And

Lynn (50:30):
yeah, I'm reflecting on moments in my own household with
both myself and my husband,where both of us have walked in
at different times and sort ofchanged the energy, or been a
little bit of a tornado, or notlet the other person tell us.
And we work so hard with thehorse or or other people to like
be just so and then with ourclosest people, we forget

(50:50):
sometimes, hey, they need, theyneed the same respect. Yeah, and
what respect? If you care, Idon't know what the word is.
What is the word? I'd say

the word is awareness or thoughtfulness.
Yeah, and the more you know onone hand, one part of my brain
will push back and say somethinglike, oh, shouldn't Sinead be
aware and thoughtful of you?
Like, why do I have to be alwaysaware and thoughtful of her? You
know what I mean? However, if Ishow up being aware and
thoughtful, almost inevitably,she is also then aware and

(51:25):
thoughtful, and it becomes apartnership. And it's the same
with the horses. Horses, when Ishow up and I'm aware and
thoughtful and I read them andthey feel seen and heard, what
starts to happen is they startto watch me, and I start to feel
seen and heard by them. And soI'm maybe I'm showing up first

(51:46):
for the horse, but inevitablythey start showing up for me,
and then that's when we get thatpartnership.

Lynn (51:54):
It does sync up, isn't it amazing,

and after a while, you know, at the beginning, if I
don't make a lot of mistakes,and I'm totally aware and I'm
totally present and I haveconsistency in that, then after
a while, what can happen is,maybe I do make a mistake, maybe
I do take something too quick,or I'm in the wrong place at the
wrong time, but if I've been asconsistent as I can possibly up
to that point, then what happensis, they'll start to cover For

(52:20):
me.

Lynn (52:21):
Yeah, we call that taking up our Slack, and it's pretty
dang amazing when they take upour slack when we've missed it,
yeah, and they're pretty darnforgiving. I've found, and I
have a question about theboundary thing, because we I've
worked with a number of people,and again, I've brought some of
my corporate people to this, andit can be very hard sometimes

(52:45):
for them to set boundaries witha horse. The horse could start
pushing into them and what.
Sometimes we're just having themstand, you know, but some of our
horses will, like, get allcrowded and they're
uncomfortable, and our formulafor a non horse person to move a
horse is just to do jumpingjacks to create enough energy
that the horse doesn't want tobe in there.

I love that, not about the horse. Then, if you
can make it about them, doingjumping jacks

Lynn (53:12):
Exactly? No, we're not exactly. Because I actually went
through this thing when I waslearning we called it attack
jacks, because at first I didjumping jacks, horse didn't
move, and then I kind of went atthe horse, and it all of a
sudden became a judgmental, badhorse thing, right? And that's
when I realized I'd gotten offthe tightrope, and I was making

(53:35):
it about the horse, as opposedto creating my own space. And
there's a very big distinction.
This is kind of where myquestion is going is going is,
how do you work with that idea,with yourself and with people
about pressure with horses?
Because, especially if you gointo face, if you start

(53:55):
scrolling in Facebook land,there is a wide range of
viewpoints around horses. AndI've encountered a lot of the a
lot of these viewpoints in reallife, where some people think
you should never put pressure ona horse, other people think you
absolutely have to put lots ofpressure on the horse. And I
feel like somewhere in themiddle, as your book says, is

(54:16):
the answer. How do you find thatmiddle for you? I

I think, first of all, I think that's a really
good question. I think maybethat even might be the most
important question. And I thinkI think part of it is about the
person meaning, what is theperson comfortable with? And

(54:48):
recognizing that there'sdifferent ways to train a horse.
So first of all, just because Iuse pressure to train a horse,
which I do? I use pressure andrelease often, I also. Will do
other things like clickertraining or train without much
pressure, whatever like. Have awide variety that when which I
like to train horses dependingon the situation the horse the
situation the person I'm workingwith. So first of all, it's

(55:11):
about the person, and torecognize that there isn't
really a right and a wrong way,but there can definitely be a
faster way and a slower way. Andone example, partly as a joke.

(55:32):
You know, I was talking toanother horse trainer, and they
said somebody came in and theysaid they only wanted their
horse trained with clickertraining, no pressure and
release. And she said, that'sfine, as long as you understand
the expectation that what'sgoing to take me two months is
now going to take me fourmonths, and what would take me
four months is now going to takeme eight months, and is okay

(55:55):
with double the price tag to getthe same amount done. You know,
if you're training a horse attwo or $3,000 a month, it's
going to add up pretty quickly.
And, and that can be the samewith a lot of things. There can
be a faster and a slow way and,and everybody's a different
point on their learning journeyand what they feel comfortable
with. The second thing is, howwell do people read horses and

(56:17):
and sort of think like a horseor really get into horses skin.
And if you were to ask me, bothfor myself and for just a horse
in general, do I have a badrelationship with pressure? I

(56:38):
would say I have a pretty goodrelationship with pressure, and
I also want my horses to have agood relationship with pressure.
And what that what that means tome is that horses don't think of
pressure as it means faster ormore adrenaline, or you're in
trouble, or I don't like you, orI hate you, or this is going to
cause pain. I want myrelationship with pressure and

(57:00):
the horse's relationship to bepressure is more like this is
uncomfortable, and if I think myway through it, then it's going
to be comfortable on the otherside, maybe even good, maybe
even great, maybe even fun,maybe even playful, maybe even
food, maybe even Whatever, onthe other side. But that being
uncomfortable and feeling thatpressure is not necessarily a

(57:23):
bad thing, and I don't thinkhaving myself or my horses go
through discomfort or go throughadversity is bad as long as the
emphasis at the beginning is onwhat we talked about earlier,
which is building trust,building try, building the
rapport, building therelationship. I don't think the

(57:44):
emphasis should be onboundaries. I think the emphasis
should be on the rapport and theand the warmth and the horses
have a good feeling from us.
That doesn't mean I don't havethe boundaries. I do have the
boundaries. I just don'temphasize the boundaries. Now,
sometimes you get in a situationwhen you're teaching and the

(58:06):
person and the horse have noboundaries, and then at the
beginning, I've got to say,Okay, let's make these
boundaries clear. But if Icontinue working with that
person over the course of ayear, I've still only emphasized
it 1% of the time that I'veworked with that person and the
horse over the year, it happenedto be the first 1% first 1% but
you know, once we have thatboundary established, they go,
Okay, now we can work on allthis other stuff, which is way

(58:28):
more fun and way more about playand way more about
communication. The other thingis thinking about the definition
of kindness. And a lot of timespeople say, Oh, I don't want to
have this boundary, because Idon't want to be mean to my
horse. I want to be kind to myhorse. And for me, I think of
kindness much more asconsistency and having a
communication that theyunderstand, and having them get

(58:52):
to find me as predictable as Ifind that we can find each other
predictable. What's going tohappen if I do this, you're
going to do this. If you dothis, that I'm going to do this,
and we start to find it. Westart to understand it. If I
were to say, the number onething that I think causes horses
anxiety and ulcers, which Idon't want my horses to have

(59:13):
ulcers, I don't want them tohave prolonged anxiety, is I
would say it's notunderstanding. Yeah, I would say
it's confusion that horses areoftentimes confused about their
interactions with humans. Whatdo you mean by this? Do you want
me to try it? You want me to canyou want me to back up? Am I
allowed in your space? Am I notallowed in your space? And so

(59:33):
the consistency of having aconsistent boundary is really
important, and I think it makesfor happier horses in the end,
if you can be consistent, ifyou're applying boundaries in a
way that is emotional, you'reangry, scared, frustrated or in
a way that is inconsistent, thenI would say you're probably
better off not interacting withyour horse that day, getting

(59:57):
help from a professionalrelaxing, getting in a. Our
mindset and then working withyour horse again the next

Lynn (01:00:04):
day, that that needs to be listened to by every horse
person on the planet. Because asI'm as I'm listening, first of
all, the idea of discomfort,it's something that I've worked
on, and it actually, I remembera very specific moment when I
was learning to water ski and onthe course, and this coach, who

(01:00:25):
was the most genial, encouragingcoach I had ever had, and I had
not yet run a full pass on thewater ski, and we get down to
the end, and he goes, Lynn, ifyou ever want to run the course
you're gonna be uncomfortable?
Yeah, and I had equateddiscomfort with death. That's

(01:00:47):
back to not, you know,collecting the didn't die
moments. And that was sort of atleast one of the beginnings I
remember, of me starting torecognize that there's a
difference between discomfort,or the scientific word might be
agitation versus anxiety, whichis actually just fear soup. And
if I could just make itagitation and find a better

(01:01:13):
story to get myself through itlike you're you just described,
because what you're doing isbasically saying, I'm going to
help, help my horse have adifferent story. When we're
uncomfortable, we can think ourway through this. There's life
at the other end of thisdiscomfort, as opposed to this,
is going on forever and it meansdeath.

Tik Maynard (01:01:33):
Yeah, it's like, what it is is it's your
relationship to learning. If yougrew up as a kid, and you become
what I call a good learner.
You're the person that'sinterested in having
conversations where, not wherepeople can have different
viewpoints. You are interestedin, you know, not everybody's
interested in all these things,but things like crossword
puzzles or Sudoku puzzles, oryou maybe are interested in

(01:01:56):
learning a new language onDuolingo, or you're, you're
interested in learning somethingthat you don't know anything
about. And if you go to, youknow, a cocktail party and
you're having a drink and you'rechatting with somebody that you
just met, are you interested inlearning about what they're
doing? And even you know thatyou might know nothing about I
don't know anything about, like,how to, you know, change the oil

(01:02:16):
on my car. But let's say I'mtalking to mechanic to actually
in my mind, try to ask them thequestions where I can really
visualize it and try to learnit, and spend five or six
minutes actually learning whatthey're trying to say and not
just kind of glossing it overand having that really
uncomfortable feeling where youthink I don't know this, I feel
like a bit of an idiot. Theperson maybe is looking at me

(01:02:39):
like a bit of an idiot, but I'mgoing to be uncomfortable, and
I'm going to get through it, andinevitably, what happens is you
feel better about it on on theother side, and also that other
person actually probably findsyou more interesting for being
interested in them, and actuallyprobably has more respect for
you For kind of admitting thatyou didn't know. So it really

(01:03:01):
comes down to that relationshipto learning. And I think humans
relationship to learning startsprobably when they're three or
four years old. And I thinkhorses relationship to learning
also starts well even beforethat, a horse's relationship to
learning starts from minutesafter they're born. In
particular I would talk thoughabout their relationship with
learning with people. You know,horses first start and they're

(01:03:25):
first interacting with a person.
What does that feel like to ahorse? Does that feel like they
can be uncomfortable and theycan figure it out and they're
starting to understand? Or arethey constantly sort of
manhandled through the situationand they're getting from point A
to point B, but they're notreally having a depth of
understanding about what'shappening

Lynn (01:03:44):
that, and that's back to that piece of consistency where
it's like, yeah, we don't dothat, like we don't come into
people's space, so we don't rearup or spin and kick or whatever
dangerous things they can do.
And that, that's what we've seenwith the Wilder horses at rain
rescue, is we got to really begood at what recognizing early
well before they do it thosebehaviors, so we can catch them

(01:04:06):
and show them a better way,exactly. And they definitely do
get there. They definitely getthere. But you have to be really
good at reading those things.

Yeah, and as part of reading it, you know, it's
reading that, that the sign whenthey first start to feel
overwhelmed before they actuallyyou wait five two seconds or
five seconds or 30 seconds, andthen that overwhelming feeling
to them turns into the buck orthe kick or the spin. And if you
can recognize that first sign ofthem starting to feel

(01:04:36):
overwhelmed and just back offand take a minute, like you
said, get in and get out, andthat you can get out, and you
can give them a sec, then theystart to feel like you're
recognizing it, and it's andthey go, Oh, I don't need to act
like that, because

Lynn (01:04:49):
they can see me do it.
Yeah, one of our Mustangs goesvery quickly to a new one of
behaviors that we had never seenbefore. None of us had. It's a
we call it the. Cougar crouch.
And it happened one day in thebar, and he was just as fine as
he could be. It took him a longtime to even go in the barn, but
at this point, he's lookingfine. And then joy picked up
just a saddle blanket because wewere going to be doing X rays,

(01:05:12):
and she was going to use it toprepare him, and the second she
picked it up, he just went downinto a crouch like a cougar. And
it was the first time in my lifeI had actually been standing,
and the horse was under me, andthen the question is, where is
it going to go from here? Andwhat's, what's beautiful is we
don't judge it. We're not like,Oh, bad horse or anything like
that. We're all just kind oflike, Oh, come on, whatever. And

(01:05:34):
then he comes right out of it,like, quit being silly. And he's
like, Oh, nothing to worryabout. Okay, I'll stand back up.
But you know, you really do wantto be paying attention before
you get crosswise with one ofthose things. And, yeah,

yeah, if you're in the wrong place at the wrong
time, and that horse kind ofknocks you over when they when
they spook, it's very difficultnot to get emotional. It's not
very difficult not to get scaredor angry or frustrated. Whereas,
if you've been paying attentionand been thoughtful and been
observant, then that horse couldhave had that same reaction, you
would have been out of the way.
And then you can just laugh itoff, and then

Lynn (01:06:12):
you're just and what? And both of us, actually, the day I
I'm thinking of a veryparticular day, both of us were
aware enough about him that wejust don't put ourselves in
harm's way. And then when ithappened, neither one of us made
a big deal out of it. I all Iwanted to. I just did a quick
measurement of if he leaps, canhe reach where I am? And then it

(01:06:34):
was like, Ah, whatever. Andthat, to me, is where the human
training gets interesting,though, because I've had to do a
lot of self awareness work torealize I get very judgmental at
times like that, when I getscared and it's easy to
reactively blame the horse, or,you know, the old classic line,
well, you naughty horse, you asopposed to the horse just acting

(01:06:56):
like a Horse. And then how can Ijust stay even keel with that,
rather than getting emotionaland letting it hit all my old
buttons. And I'm curious ifyou've noticed the same thing
for yourself, and if so, anytricks for sort of decoupling

(01:07:18):
those buttons from thosemoments?

Yeah. I think the biggest trick is just really
recognizing how in the momentand present horses are, and how
and how horses learn, and howthey think. And a Horse, horse
is not going to do what youhope. They're going to do. A
horse is going to do what theirinstinct, what their
instinctual, you know, thoughtpattern is going to do how
they're born. They're born.
They're going to do that, orthey're going to do what they've

(01:07:42):
been trained to do. So if theydo something you don't want them
to do is because their instinctis kicking in, or you've trained
them somehow to do the thingthat you don't want to do, or
you got to retrain them to dothe thing you wanted to do. It's
like, it's like this phone righthere, same thing. This phone
isn't gonna do what I hope it'sgonna do. It's only gonna do
what it's been programmed to door what I inputted to do. So if

(01:08:04):
it starts doing something else,there's no point in me getting
frustrated with this phone. Imean, I get frustrated with the
phone more than with the horse.
But you know, it's not out toget you. It's not there's no
emotion. Yeah, it's not out toget me. You might think it's out
to get you, maybe sometimes, butthe phone Exactly. There's no
inherent like emotion in thisphone where it's where it's

(01:08:25):
trying to do me harm, if, ifanything in that phone is trying
to give me harm, it's becauseit's been programmed to do that
by me or by somebody else. Andit's the same with the horses. I
don't believe any horse is outto get anybody. You know, it's
what that horse is instinctuallygoing to do because of their you
know, you can't get mad at asnake for slithering. You can't

(01:08:45):
get mad at a fish for swimming.
You know, it's their instantkicking in. It's who they are.
And you also can't get mad at ahorse for doing what they've
been trained to do, and ifthey're doing something that you
don't want them to do, you gottaeither reframe in your mind what
the capabilities of a horse are,right? Maybe a horse. Maybe you
need a dog or a motorcycle,right? Or you got to train the
horse to do what you want.

(01:09:06):
There's no they should do this.
They either do it or they don't.
If they don't do it, you got totrain them to do it. If they do
do it, great. There's no should.
There's no hoping,

Lynn (01:09:14):
yeah, I often call it when I catch myself. I was doing this
with my audible book. I wasshooting on myself, right? And
the shooting for me was somehowI thought I was magically going
to become an audio engineer, andthat's about as logical as
thinking that the horse is outto get me, right? It was like,
oh, wait a minute. You hired ayou hired an editor to edit your

(01:09:38):
book, and you hired a bookformatter to format it. And
that's all an audio engineer isgoing to do, is he's going to
edit the audio and format it soyou can put it

online. And they're and they're trained to do that.
You know, that's a job. What'sthat? What's that? Quote from
the Marines. It's somethinglike, we don't rise to the level
of our dreams. We fall to thelevel of our preparation. That's
it better be. Paired like, Yougot to learn it. The horses got
to learn it. We got to learn it.
There's nobody that's going tojust magically do something they
haven't learned. We got to learnit.

Lynn (01:10:09):
That's exactly it and and boy, is that the truth, because
in like, I told you, I'm in thewater ski world a lot, and that
quote came up this week asAustin was coming back. Austin
Abel, who runs the ski schoolright here, where I have my our
ski Lake, just came back fromcompeting at Worlds, and he was,
we were so thrilled with how hedid, because he went right to

(01:10:31):
where he like. What you reallywant in water skiing is, are you
going to ski at the level thatyou've been practicing at every
now and then you practice beyondyour normal, but under that kind
of pressure, if you can ski atyour normal level, then you've
accomplished a lot, especiallywhen you're across the country.
They'd lost his ski. He wasthere with his family, and he

(01:10:51):
came out right where and endedup, you know, he didn't win, but
he out of, I don't even know howmany 1000s of people water ski
in the world, but out of several100 competitors, he ended up at
number 30, so that was prettygood. That's really good. That's
really good. That was exactlyhis quote yesterday. He said I
was at my level of preparation.

So in Are you familiar with Liberty training,
where we were? Yeah, without awithout anything attached,

Lynn (01:11:16):
yeah, we just had nan zmaster come to a Liberty
training clinic, Carolyn Resnickmethod at Ryan rescue this, I

love that. I love that. And David litchman from
California, who's, you know,given me a lot of good advice
over the years about Libertytraining. One advice, you know,
one thing you said to me when Iwas getting ready for
demonstration in front of acrowd was, only show 80% of what
you can do. Yes, you startworking at liberty with a horse,
and you try to start to show 100or 110% of what you're able to

(01:11:46):
do, and that horse is going tostart leaving you, you know, you
know the horse is when you startworking without a without a
halter and without a lead rope,unless they're feeling really
connected and with a greatrapport, and they really have a
lot of draw with them. They canjust leave. And I think it's
really important when you pickthe moments, especially with
horses. You know with ourselves,for sure, in water skiing, but I

(01:12:09):
would say even more so withhorses than with ourselves,
where you pick the moments whereyou're pushing the envelope.

Lynn (01:12:15):
It's funny, because that made me think about something I
saw about, I think they call itthe Carl Lewis rule, because, as
they were studying Carl Lewis,who was such a great runner, it
turned out that most of theraces he won, he won using 80%
of what he had. That exactnumber, 80% so that's how you
train is I need to be able towin with 80% of my effort, and

(01:12:38):
then every now and then, thatbrilliance will come through.
But, yeah, liberties, Libertytraining is really interesting.
And a lot of our horses reign,we have found we kind of almost
have that magnetic connectionwith automatically. And when we
don't, we then have to reallycheck in, you know, kind of
what's going on, what's great.
What I just cannot get over isthat these formerly wild horses,
we have huge pastures, and whenI go out to catch them, they

(01:13:01):
they always catch me. I lovethat. Yeah, I would really not
want to have to chase them allover these pastures. So it's a
good thing.

Really, good. No, that's a sign that you guys are
doing something right. I

Lynn (01:13:13):
think we're doing a lot right. I had, you know, I give
joy like so much credit for whatshe's done in the team she's
built. So I have a questionabout like, so you did roadie
the horse the last two years.
You're not doing it this comingyear, but, but I know kind of
like having just and it wasn'tas long, but having been on this
road with Austin as he'sprepared for the World Water sea

(01:13:33):
championships, there was acertain kind of intentionality
and focus and pressure to ourpractices over the last several
months leading up to this thatwas daunting and fun at the same
time. And I know you've beenthrough that the last couple of
years, and you you documented itand starting in the middle. So

(01:13:55):
what are you doing now? Are youenjoying riding without that?
Are you not wide riding thatwave, if you will. Are you
finding another wave to ridethat kind of keeps you on that
growing edge?

Yeah, I'm taking a, you know, from road to the
horse. Until now, I'm kind ofjust still going with the
regular things I have, you know,I have, you know, I have some
event horses that are competing.
I get horses in to train, and tostart, got my family, my wife
and my two kids, Brooks andviolet, and I'm just taking a
few months to kind of take alittle family time, figure out

(01:14:34):
what I'm going to do next. And Ido have some ideas, but I think
there'll be some more big kindof projects and some more big
asks in the next year or two.
I'm just trying to figure outexactly what that's going to be.

Lynn (01:14:47):
And are you? Are you at liberty to talk about what any
of those things are? Are youstill waiting to see what it
looks like?

You know, one idea is another book, and I have a
couple ideas for books. And. Aone of them is it would actually
be, have something to do withLiberty training. Oh, cool, a TV
show or something. I don't knowwhat form it would be on
television, but or on video. Youknow, I've done a lot of stuff

(01:15:15):
with the NF plus the NoelFlorida equestrian master class.
And if anybody hasn't seen that,they have, I think, 40 different
instructors, of which I'm one.
And they teach all kinds ofstuff, from sports psychology to
English riding to Western ridingto horse behavior. And with that
platform, with the NF plusplatform, I've done a lot of
instructional stuff, butrecently we also did some, what

(01:15:36):
you might call a docu serieswhere we delved into what I
called the four ingredients ofhorse training. And I got the
idea from Simon nos rats book,salt, fat, acid, heat, the four
ingredients of all good cooking.
Oh, yeah, that was a good book.
Yeah, they made that intoNetflix Docu series. And so I

(01:15:57):
had the idea of what are thefour ingredients of all good
horse training. And the four Icame up with were observation,
communication, motivation andplay. And so we made a little
Docu series with horses and withother trainers about that. And I
had the idea of taking that intothe wild world, the wider world
of animal training in general.

(01:16:19):
And so it's just a matter of,kind of making the connections
and maybe raising money andtalking to the right people, and
trying to figure out, you know,how I can make some of these
projects happen.

Lynn (01:16:29):
Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that, because there might be,
very well, somebody listening tothis podcast that has that kind
of connection or has an idea.
And one of the one of theprinciples that I teach is if
you, if you declare something,and there's a poem about this,
when I had Christine Dixon on,we talked about this poem. But
when you declare something, theuniverse has a way of moving all

(01:16:52):
kinds of things to make thingshappen, and then you just have
to pay attention, because thehelp will come. Have

you found that to be true in your life?

Lynn (01:17:09):
Unbelievably true, unbelievable scarily true. So
that if I I've learned that, ifI declare it, just watch and see
what happens.

Yeah, I to be totally honest, I've, I've found
that to be true only rarely inmy life, more often than not, I
find myself knocking on 100doors and getting 100 nos before
I get a yes.

Lynn (01:17:35):
Well, that must mean you're really good at discipline
and patience. Then, you know,

just even getting invited to row to the horse, you
know, it took me 10 years oftrying to make connections and
put it out there. You know, foranybody that wants to compete at
that, it's by invitation only.
And, you know, I maybe you canjust put it out into the world,
and it's going to happen, thatyou're going to get invited. But
for me, it took a lot of kind ofeffort and thoughtfulness and
hard work to make it happen.

Lynn (01:18:02):
Well, what I found interesting is I read your book
about that, was that the the wayyou took us behind the scenes of
that whole process, along withyour questions, especially
around the social license of isthis something that we should
even be trying to do? So Iquestion whether I should do it
or we should even be doing it,and yet I really want to do it

(01:18:25):
like I really loved thatdichotomy and that tension that
you held in the book, yeah, and

I think it's a fair question to be asking, you know,
what you said about should we beusing pressure with horses? I
think, you know, I do, but it'ssomething that I still think
about, and it's something that Istill have questions about, and
then I talk to other people thatI respect about, and read books
about. So I think it's notnecessarily that there's a right
or wrong. I think the importantthing is to continue asking the
questions and to continue havingthe conversations, just like

(01:18:52):
we're doing today, which Ireally appreciate

Lynn (01:18:55):
I do, too, and I love bouncing these ideas back and
forth, because it's a hugequestion for me as a teacher. Me
as a teacher of humans and andalso now working with horses is,
how do we handle the pressure oflife? Because there is no way to
escape the pressure of life. Youknow, it is we. We are going to

(01:19:18):
have pressure. Horses are, Imean, we are pressure. I mean,
you put them in a pasture,you've got pressure. You know,
there's tractors, there's cars,there's leaf blowers, there's,
you know, I I mean, even thehorses out in the wild have
pressure. They have the pressureto find water and to eat and to
stay away from whatever chasesthem.

Yeah, and our minds that way, do we think of all of
these things as bad things, andwe want to take a horse and a
person and give them no pressurein their life ever, where they
never have any discomfort ornever any work, and we supply
them with food and water on atable and they, you know, if
they ever get tired andexercise, we immediately stop.
You know, is that what we'retrying to do? Yeah,

Lynn (01:19:57):
is that really and is that really what we want? Our own
lives, so, you know, but I'vebeen playing, I'm playing with
an idea, because this experienceof my fall off the horse and
then getting back on and gettinginto this world has made me have
to be really tuned into thenervous system. And I think I a

(01:20:20):
lot of my coaches up until Ifell off the horse, were of the
school of thought of, you've gotto get rid of fear. Your nervous
system is your enemy, enemy. Andit never rang true to me, like I
would get so mad when they say,get rid of your fear. And I'd be
like, But shouldn't I be afraidof that thing over there, you
know? And they'd always give mereasons why I shouldn't be

(01:20:41):
afraid. And then I realizedthere's mind created fear, and
then there's danger. And as I'vebeen playing with it and really
starting to understand how ournervous system works, I've
actually begun to think it's mybest friend and almost like a
power plant that creates theenergy and the hormones that I
need to get going, and also thehormones I need to rest and feel

(01:21:03):
good. And it's my job to learnto treat it as my best friend
and my guidance system, whichmeans I can push myself not as
something to be afraid of, thatI need to never trigger. And so
I've come to believe for myselfanyway, that pressure is
actually the solvent that helpsme get through the hard stuff.

(01:21:28):
So I'm playing with it rightnow.

Yeah, no, I, I agree. I think, I think fear
definitely has a place in our inour life and in our preparation
and how we approach things. Ithink you're absolutely right.
There's two kinds of fear, offear that is actual danger, and
fear that is sort of imposedupon ourselves because of how
we're feeling. And I think fearin the right amount and with the

(01:21:51):
right preparation can make ussharper and faster and make
quicker better decisions. Haveyou ever, ever heard the quote,
you know, the person's goinginto the arena and says, you
know, I'm scared. I gotbutterflies. And the competitor

(01:22:12):
next to him says, you know, I'mscared too. He goes, but the
more composed person says, thedifference between your
butterflies and mine are thatminor flying information. I love
that one.

Lynn (01:22:24):
Yeah, I love that one. And and the one, one that struck me,
and I actually heard this. Itwas on highway 301, it was very
dark, late at night. I think Iwas probably not quite to where
you live. I was north of that.
Maybe it's stark where they havethe cops that are, you know,
trying to do the speed trap. Butit was, it was maybe on NPR.
They were talking about thedistinction in a study they'd

(01:22:47):
done between three emotionalstates, calm, nervous and
excited, and what they the testwas ambush karaoke. They ask one
group to be calm, one group tojust let their nerves run, and
the other group to say, you weknow you're feeling something.
Call it excitement. That's allthey did. And then they had them

(01:23:09):
all sing karaoke, which none ofus want to do, if we can help
it, unless we're, you know,Taylor Swift. And then they
measured how well they did withsome they have some way of
measuring the tuning, orwhatever. Well, guess which
group outperformed all the otherones by a long shot, the excited
group,

the calm was the worst. Really interesting.

Lynn (01:23:37):
And so I I immediately applied it, because I was on my
way down to the ski, like, thenext morning. It's in the middle
of winter, and we haven't skiedin a while. You know, I hadn't,
I probably hadn't had a ski onfor like, three or four months,
and it's a very intense sport,so when you get up and start to
ski, it's like, I don't evenknow if I can do this anymore.
And so I was standing on thedock, and Chris, the driver,

(01:23:58):
goes, how you feeling? I said,I'm so nervous. And then, wait a
minute, I'm excited, and I hadone of the best opening passes I
had ever had, just by that stepreframe. And to me, that's the
butterflies flying in formation.
So I just think it's interestingwhat we do with our discomfort
at the end of the day, maybethat's the sort of the crux of

(01:24:20):
the conversation, isn't it?
Yeah, our discomfort anddiscomfort, we're we're both
helping our horses get throughand maybe giving them, maybe
what you know, asking them to goover a fence. I've seen those
cross country fences you jump,holy crap, like I've ridden the
cross country course that that Iwatched you do on horseback,

(01:24:44):
just for the try on trail rides.
I'm not going over them, but asI walk behind by beside him, I'm
looking over there, going, Ican't believe anybody can take a
horse over this. But you do.
Yeah. Think, Do you rememberwhat it felt like the first time
you ever took a difficult jump?
It's been a long time. I knowbecause you've done 1000

million dollars.
You know? The thing is, if, ifyou do a good job with the
horses or your coach that'straining you does a good job
with you is there's no onemoment where you'd go from an
easy jump to a harder jump,because you're going in such
incremental amounts as you'reprepared for it. It doesn't feel

(01:25:30):
like there's a jump where you'regoing, Okay, now I've done
something easy. Now I'm doingsomething hard. You know, you
get used to jumping six inches,and then you get used to jumping
nine inches, and then you getused to jumping 12 feet. And if
either you know a good coach ofa person and a good trainer of a
horse, as soon as they see alack of confidence, you're going
to go down a level. Okay, gonnaback off. You're gonna go from

(01:25:54):
12 inches back to nine inches,or three feet, back to two feet,
or four feet, back to threefeet. And then you're going to
gradually build it up again.
What you don't want a person ora horse to feel is, is
essentially that moment you'retrying to avoid. That moment
you're trying to not have themsay, this is the hardest thing
I've ever done.

Lynn (01:26:13):
Oh, that's brilliant.
That's probably what stops morepeople than anything, is that
they think they've made a bigjump. You know, we do that in
water skiing. So the the speedsgo up two miles an hour. But
Austin is such a smart coach, hedoesn't do the two mile jump
because you can really feel it.
Yeah, two miles an hour time oror a big rope length jump, we

(01:26:33):
break it down and sometimes dojust a few increments, like just
half a mile.

That's really smart, and that's exactly what
you're trying to do with the thehorses, and exactly what you're
trying to do with people whenthey're learning to jump
confidently. And as soon as youfeel like they're getting, you
know, too nervous, or they'relosing that confidence, you
just, you know, you back off onthe speed. You get the
confidence up again, and thenyou go a little forward again.
It's just like that, in and out.
Kind of thing that you said youdon't even in session. You can
have different heights of jumps.

(01:27:00):
You can warm up over some lowjumps, pepper in some slightly
bigger jumps, and cool down oversome smaller jumps. So you're
really, you're really constantlytrying to be aware of that
confidence level and trying tokeep

Lynn (01:27:11):
it high, yeah, well, I think, I think that's huge.
Confidence is such a big player.
And as we, as we start to, like,sort of close out, I'd be
curious, because we've used theword confidence a lot too to go
with pressure, what do you thinkare the essential nutrients of
confidence?

I would say I'll have to think about this a
little bit more, but I would saythe biggest ingredient for me is
the preparation that you're notyou're not making big jumps, and
that you're really prepared forwhatever you're going to do. And
I think that preparation for mepersonally is what gives me the

(01:28:03):
confidence, you know, headinginto something that's unknown,
or heading into something that Ihaven't prepared for, that's
when I would say I would havethe least amount of confidence.

Lynn (01:28:14):
Well, you dang sure, prepared for the road to the
horse in a really powerful way,and you took us inside, perhaps
my biggest takeaway from thebook, and I'm gonna ask you,
sort of what you most wantpeople to take away, but I'll
say what mine was, was that itwasn't perfect, and that you

(01:28:35):
weren't always 100% in, and thatyou did two things, which was
you oscillated between should Ior shouldn't I? And then you
also really went far out to eachedge of talking to the different
trainers, including talking tothe woman who doesn't believe we
should be riding horses at all.
And so when you startedlearning, you went very far out.

(01:28:58):
And so you showed us inpreparation that rather than
narrow your world, you expandedthe world. If that makes sense,
yeah,

yeah, yeah. And I think, I think maybe a takeaway
is that you can have doubt aboutsomething, and you can question
it, and if you truly believeit's something that you want to
do, that you should do it. Ithink, I think within each of us
there's a little a little flame,a little light somewhere deep

(01:29:29):
down. And to really look atthat, to kind of strip
everything else away, and tothink, is this something that I
truly, truly want to do? Andthere can be a lot of excuses
not to do things, time and moneyand family and a job and
responsibilities, and the personthat it's easiest to lie to is

(01:29:53):
yourself and to say to myself,you know, I don't want to do
this because I'd rather spendthe time with my friends.
Family, and I don't want to dothis because it's going to be
too hard on horses, and I don'twant to do this because I'm not
sure about it, but to lookreally deep down inside yourself
about about what it is you trulyfeel you want to do, and let

(01:30:18):
that be your guiding light.

Lynn (01:30:21):
Wow, that's profound. I had a coach once say courage is
commitment plus doubt. Yeah,yeah. So I think you just gave
the definition of courage andnot to lie to yourself is
because we are the easiestpeople lie to we it's easy to

(01:30:43):
lie to ourselves. Yeah. Sothat's a great, great takeaway.
So as we close, tell people howto find you, and let's also give
your wife's podcast a shout out,because your wife has a great

podcast. My wife Sinead Maynard. When she when
she was inventing her top horsetake she was known as Sinead
helping. But for the last 10years, she's been Sinead
Maynard, and she has an amazingpodcast called in stride, which
is hosted by ride IQ. And youcan find that wherever you find

(01:31:19):
podcasts and my book, my mostrecent book, is called starting
in the middle, and hopefully youcan look for that at your local
tax shop or bookstore or at thewebsite of the publisher, which
is Trafalgar books.com. Thepublisher is Trafalgar Square
books. And for those of you thatwant, don't want to go to all

(01:31:40):
that trouble, there is, ofcourse, Amazon, and just check
it out on Amazon.

Lynn (01:31:45):
Yeah, we we had somebody had a copy down at rain and Joy
said she'd let me borrow it, andI had it for one day. And I was
like, Well, I have to give thisback because I'm borrowing it.
So I just went to Amazon, boughtit. I was like, I'm going to get
my own copy, because I'm aboutto market this

I would say that's very nice to you. And for the
people that you know there's,there's a small author that you
really like, you know, I'm nottalking about the Stephen Kings
or James Patterson's the world,but if there's, if there's a
smaller author that you like, Iwould definitely encourage you
to buy it rather than get itfrom the library or lend it to a

(01:32:23):
friend, because, you know, thevast majority of authors are not
making a living writing books.
They're, you know, they're ajournalist or a professor, and
so every book that sells countsfor them.

Lynn (01:32:36):
As a fellow author, I will agree with that, and it means a
lot for people to buy our work,and we wouldn't be putting it
out, would we, unless we wantedI don't know about you, but I
processed a lot of stuff bywriting my my books, especially
in my last book, dancing thetightrope, I was processing
getting back on the horse. Howabout you? And then, then I want

(01:32:58):
other people to share or see,kind of what I what I learned
along the way, is that how itwent for you? Yeah, I mean,

it's really, it's really nice to share some of
these things with other peoplethat are interested in what
we're interested in, you know,the horses, and also these,
these bigger questions thatwe're asking, and then it also
initiates conversations likewe're having here. And some of
the most interesting people I'vemet recently have come up to me
and they've said, you know, thestarting point was, I read your
book, and then we kind of wentoff on a tangent and talked

(01:33:27):
about something totallydifferently. So it's, it's a
nice way to meet people as well.

Lynn (01:33:31):
It really is. And as I was, as I was reading your book,
there were 100 times where I waslike, I've just got to talk to
him. One of the ones when youtalked early about improving
versus improving, and Iliterally have that in my
materials with people of theimproving mindset versus proving
mindset. I was like, I justgotta talk to him. So I'm so
glad you said yes to this. Thishas been an incredible

(01:33:53):
conversation. So thank you forbeing

and hopefully we'll see you at portal in Ocala at
some point. Yeah, no,

Lynn (01:34:00):
we're working when we hang up for everybody that's
listening, we're about to stopthis podcast, but we're going to
keep talking, because I'm goingdown to Citra. But for those of
you listening, thank you so muchfor being here. And if you are
interested in following more ofwhat I'm putting out in the
world, you can find me at Lynncarnes.com sign up for my
newsletter at the coachingdigest.com and we will see you

(01:34:21):
on the next podcast. Thank youfor listening to the creative
spirits unleashed podcast. Istarted this podcast because I
was having these greatconversations, and I wanted to
share them with others. I'malways learning in these
conversations, and I wanted toshare that kind of learning with
you. Now what I need to hearfrom you is what you want more
of and what you want less of. Ireally want these podcasts to be

(01:34:45):
of value for the listeners.
Also. If you happen to knowsomeone who you think might love
them, please share the podcastand of course, subscribe and
rate it on the different appsthat you're using, because
that's how others will find it.
Now I hope you go. Go and dosomething very fun today. You.

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