“Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson~

We’ve all been there: we think we are not achieving our goals fast enough; our horses are not where we want them to be; we are not where we want to be. This feeling of impatience can cause frustration and disappointment. The funny thing is, though, that we have absolutely no control over the future, or how quickly or slowly things happen. Some horses learn fast, while others take years to come around. I once trained a horse that learned how to jump in two weeks, and was sold within two months. On the other hand, I originally bought my current horse [Chance] as sale horse and planned to only own him for six months or so… Three years later, I still own him and he is just now really starting to come around. Sometimes things are simply just not meant to happen the way we want them to, and we have to trust that everything will work out exactly the way it is supposed to. We just have to do the best we can with what we have, and things eventually work themselves out. We must practice the art of patience!

I am a very ambitious, goal-oriented person. I have big plans for myself – particularly in the equestrian world. So, it safe to say that the past several years have been tough for me because things have not worked out quite the way I had planned when I was eighteen years old and decided that I wanted to be a horse trainer. Here I am, twenty-five and still not a horse trainer. I train horses, yes, but my job title is real estate agent. I only own one horse, the barns jobs I have had did not work out, my show career is no where near where I had thought it would be by now, and I spend my days at a computer or showing houses instead of outside at a farm. Yet somehow, in spite of all this and all the disappointments I have endured over the past several years, I have not given up on my dream to be a horse trainer. I still believe that it will happen. I haven’t given up on it. And you know what? It is finally happening. I am going to be living on a farm next year, so I will be able to have more horses at a time as well as train and sell them. As for my show career, Chance is finally starting to come around and as difficult as he can be he is very talented; so I have hope that he will help me get where I want to be. Much like I believe that I will achieve my goals, I believe in him; I believe that he has the potential to be great. Things with him did not go according to plan, but I really think that is because they are going according to a better plan. So, I am being patient.

This post did not turn out the way I thought it would, much like my life. I planned to write a post about patience in training and riding horses, instead I wrote about patience in life. Patience is key when working with green horses, or when riding seasoned horses; and also in just about every other area of life. Sometimes things do not work out the way we want them to, or when we want them, so we just have to trust that everything will work out exactly the way it is supposed to and do the best we can with what we what we have.