The Discipline System - Ask, Tell, Promise, Enforce
Welcome Message
Welcome to this week's You Are Destined For Greatness, coming to you this week from the round pen. I'm here with my little mare, Purdy, just getting her started, just a handful of rides on her now, and I'm going to tell you about a horse training system that I adopted from my good friend Rick Steed.
Then I'm going to tell you how it applies and why it's important in relationships with your kids and with other people. It's a four-part system, and here it goes: ask, tell, promise, and enforce are the pieces.
What's important to know about this system is that it's very important and that it has a tremendously positive result if you take the time to use the system. I'm going to demonstrate that system right now with this mare in asking her to do something that she hasn't done too many times before, which is to back up.
Step 1: Ask
The first thing that I'm going to do in this system is I'm going to ask, okay? So what that means is I'm going to communicate to this mare what I want her to do by simply asking or making a suggestion. I'm going to make just a little request that she backs up.
First of all, I'm going to suggest that she stops. Let me get repositioned. Okay, here we go again. So what I'm going to do in this sequence is the first thing I'm going to do is to ask. To do that, I push my feet forward and I put my hands here, okay? When I've done this, this is me asking her to back up.
She's not backing up. I'm going to go to number two, which is to tell.
Step 2: Tell
Now I'm going to add pressure to her mouth and I'm going to wave my legs. She backs off, and I let all the way off. I only made it to two, and I got the result that I want. I asked, I made it to tell, she complied, I let off.
Had she not let off, I would have continued the pressure that I had on two and I would have increased the pressure. I would have pulled harder on my hands. I would have bumped harder with my legs until she let off.
If she still didn't comply, then at that point, I would have—and I've given her time to think that through. So here's the thing. If I gave her time to digest it, in other words, did I give her time to think it through and understand, did I believe that I clearly communicated it to her, and then did I believe honestly that she just said no. If she did, I would move to number four, which is to enforce, which would be to do everything I could to increase the consequence and the pressure until she took a step backwards.
Step 3: Promise
I'm going to try it one more time. I'm going to put my legs forward, come here, she's not backing up, I go to two, I add pressure, I wave my legs, she's still not backing up, now I'm going to go to three. And she came—I just increased the pressure a little bit with my hands in number three, promise, and she backed up.
Step 4: Enforce
Now, had she not backed up in this situation, then I would have gone to four. Now, number four is not a place we want to go to with horses and people too often. And if we're doing it right, you don't get there, okay? But every one of these pieces matter. They're key.
How This Relates to Parenting
Step 1: Ask
I'm going to give you a quick rundown example of how this works with people and why it's important, okay? Here it goes. Number one, I'm going to ask my kid, my child, a teenager—or let's go with a kid, okay? You're with your teenager. You're going to ask him, and you're just going to make the ask, and it's just what it says:
"Hey, I need you to do this. Will you do this for me?"
It's a simple ask. You approach it as if you're going to get cooperation with the expectation that they're going to respond to you and communicate with you like an adult. That's how you approach it.
Now, if they comply, if they respond and if they agree and they do it, end of story, it's over. You're back to zero, back to your happy place. If they do not, you go to two, okay?
Step 2: Tell
What is two with people? Number two is taking the time. Men, we're not very good at this. I'm speaking for myself mainly. This is the hard one. You've got to take some time. You're going to have to take the time to sit down with that kid and say, "Hey," and take time to try to understand what's going on with them. Find out what's going on inside there, what they need emotionally, what they're lacking, what's going on, okay?
You're going to have to have really a heart-to-heart conversation and ask them to tell you what's going on with them. You're also going to ask them to consider what's going on with you. You're going to state your case, you're going to have an adult conversation as much as you can with a young adult, and you're going to be willing to communicate long enough to come to an agreement, okay? That's two, just take some effort. Trust me, it's worth it.
Step 3: Promise
Now, we have an agreement. Let's just say that they follow through. End of story. We back off, we're back to our happy place, end of story. If they don't, we must go to number three, which is the promise. Here's what that looks like:
"Hey, we talked about this. I tried to understand you and accommodate everything, and you agreed to do this thing that's important to me, but you haven't been doing it. So I don't know, I mean, I don't want to do a consequence."
Three is basically, you can call it a threat, okay? It's a warning. It is, "Hey, I don't want to do this, but I'm going to because not doing so is not an option. And I need you to follow through with this thing. And I'm letting you know I don't want it to be a surprise like where did this come from? I don't want to do it. I'm giving you a fair warning that I'm going to enforce the consequence that we agreed on if you don't follow through with this thing." Come in a loving way. That's important.
Step 4: Enforce
A lot of times, men, me too, I like to jump to four from asking. We don't get what we want, then it's time to raise hell and punish, basically. Bad way to go about it, okay?
Now, we have to have the courage and the wherewithal. Sometimes women I talk to, not always, but I'm not making generalizations, but sometimes women have a little bit harder time than men generally and follow through with consequences because it's so hard to watch our kids suffer. And so then we let it go, but when we do that, we become irrelevant. The things that we've done and said lose meaning, lose value. We lose our relevance. We teach them bad lessons. They don't know how to follow through. It creates chaos, ununity, and the trust level, it's bad news, okay?
Final Thoughts
So this little four-part system is a really big deal. One, two, three, four. If you have the willingness to take the time, understand, talk to your kids, follow through in the end, here's what the result's going to be.
You're going to have what we're going to have here in the end. You're going to have a well-adjusted, willing, high-trust, willing participant, a willing partner that I fully trust. The trust is going to be so high, and the connection and the bond are going to be so strong between me and this mare. It's the same that we can create with the people that we love in our lives.
Think about it, take some time, check out the podcast for more on it. And to find out more, you can also check us out. This is stuff we deal with all the time in Stable Living coaching. Hey, thank you for joining me today, and remember You Are Destined For Greatness.
.jpg)