Transcript for this weeks Podcast

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this segment of The Horsemanship Journey Podcast. This is episode one and I'm Shane Jacob, your host, and this is The Horsemanship Journey. So, I want to begin, I'll tell you a little bit about me. I live here in Las Vegas, Nevada with my wife, and I'm in the horse business. What I mean by that is I'm involved with horses. I've been involved full time with horses for...More than 25 years, probably 30 years, grew up with horses. Had a lot of experiences, I'm a farrier. And I've been shoeing horses for that long of a period of time. I have a horse boarding facility, I have a horse feed company, I used to have a horse auction, I'm an auctioneer, and The Horsemanship Journey.

I've had a lot of experience and been involved in the horse. I'm grateful to horses. You know that? I am grateful to horses. I think you are too, if you're already, if you're joining me here, I think you can relate to that. Horses have brought a lot of goodness and depth to my life. I'll tell you about The Horsemanship Journey and what it is. It's like, well, what is  The Horsemanship Journey? The Horsemanship Journey is an idea, okay? And that idea is the inside out approach. And what that means is, is that basically it takes, excuse me, there are three, elements to excellence in horsemanship. Okay.

Number one is the technique or skill you have to know what how to do it Excuse me again, you have to know what to do, right? So we don't we don't we don't know what we don't know So we have to know what to communicate to the horse right in order to get what our desired result To get our horse to do what we want our horse to do. We know we have to know how to care for the horse how to talk to the horse, communicate, train, whatever you'd like to call it, we have to know how.

The next thing that we have to do is we have to actually do it. This is part two. You have to get out there and you do it. You have to have the experience and you have to have the courage and you have to take the time, the time on task. And we can sit and talk about it all day long until you're right in the middle of it. Nothing's happening.

Part three is the mental attitude or the mindset in which you go about it.

 Those are the three elements of excellence in horsemanship. So here's the deal. They're all required and they're all necessary to be great. The thing of it is, is that we have it backwards most of the time in most cases in the horse businesses because we put the least emphasis on where we should put the most emphasis and that is here. We're constantly looking elsewhere for the whole deal, for the answers to what we're looking for. I'm gonna ask you what you're looking for here in a minute, but I'll tell you a quick story.

So we're...I was riding along, I've shown some horses, I've shown in reining and a teeny bit in working cowhorses. I'm excited to do more of that in the future. I spent most of my time showing horses and showing reining horses. And so I school on a horse one day and this particular day, this horse jumped out from underneath me and I hit the ground and I hit the ground hard.

I was laying there kind of dazed and confused and staring. I think I hit a rock or hit the side of the arena fence or something. I don't know if I got knocked out and came to or what, but I was laying there looking up at the sky, which was pretty bright at that time of day. My horse was wandering around like, what the hell is your deal, you know, and stepping on his rein and just kind of checking things out. He nosed over to me, came pretty close and I'm like, hmm, I kind of turned my head over and I could see him putting his nose down, like checking me out. And I'm not sure what he was thinking, but I said, you son of a b- what? I'm like, why did you do that to me? You know, I was pretty mad. And I looked away and that horse said, You did it to yourself. Now, okay, no, let's just be clear about that. I was drinking at the time, but something said, okay, somebody, and I looked around, there wasn't anybody else there. Maybe it was all in my head and I dreamed it up, I don't know, but I swear to this day, that horse said that to me. And you know, it's kind of a silly story, but it's a damn truth, you know? We were constantly looking outside. I really, I took that of a lot of meaning, and it began, it was the beginning right at that moment sitting there and staring up at the sun and the dust and getting a broke, well, luckily the only thing I broke was my set of reins that he stepped on, was the beginning of The Horsemanship Journey and the idea that finally at that time,

I kind of took a hold of that and went on the idea that, hey, it's about us, it's not about the horse so much. And that's the thing that, you know what, I've looked at this idea and I said, well, This is a big commitment to do a podcast, right? It's a big commitment and there's 250,000plus podcasts in the world. Why am I doing with a podcast? Why are you here listening to me? And what value am I gonna bring to the world? And as we sought to think about that, I said, well, hey, do I have, do we have at The Horsemanship Journey a message that, you know, enough words and enough, a message and a purpose and a what's the word I'm looking for? It's more than a message But do we have the purpose and passion to bring our message to the world? And as we thought about this the answer was you're damn right we do absolutely 110% 100% we do No question about it because the thing of it is most of the horse world. Okay has it backwards

That's a pretty bold and broad statement and controversial. And you know what? It's the damn truth. And here's what I mean by that. We are constantly looking elsewhere for the solution. Think about it. We have an issue with our horse. We have to learn how to fix the horse. What is the problem? So then we go to trainers or we send it to the trainer or we ask a trainer. We try to find a this. If we do this, then we'll get this result from the horse. Right? Or we're...

 If we're having issues with our horse misbehaving, then a lot of times we're looking at a calming supplement or a drug, or we could be looking for the next bit, right? Or it's probably because he needs his back adjusted. That's the whole problem. Whenever he doesn't have his back adjusted, he ends up bucking me off, or whatever. Or he gets anxious, or he gets this, or he gets that. So...

I'm gonna have his back adjusted, I'm gonna find a calming supplement. It's definitely the bit. He doesn't like that bit. It's the bit. Or, you know, he doesn't feel good. Maybe he has an ulcer. That's why he keeps kicking at me every time I go to pick up a front foot. And I could go on, and I could go on, and I could go on. And I'm not trying to say that nutrition isn't important. Saddle fit, maybe it's a saddle, right? It's always something.

We're always looking for the answer because we want the answer. I want the answer, you want the answer, and I think that's why you're here, and I think, and I'll guarantee you that's why I'm here. So that you and me can get the answers moving forward. I've discovered some of the answers that I'm going to help you get the answers that I have, and then if you stay with us, and I hope you do, we're going to find more answers as we go forward because we have an open mind. We're going to talk about that too. But the thing of it is that that's not it.

The thing of it is, is the thing that influences our horse's behavior more than anything else is ourselves. It's none of the rest of it. We're not going to find that answer out there somewhere, which doesn't discount that you need to take care of those things into consideration. The thing of it is, is the emphasis is totally on something else. If I said this in a different way, it would make total sense. Let me try this. Let's just say that you're married. If you're married...and your spouse is not doing what you want. Okay, your spouse is definitely not doing what you want. And I don't know why, but they're not doing what you need them to be doing. And so you can try to, you know, there's a lot of things that you can try to get that. You can try to control it. You can try everything you want in the world to get them to change, okay?

 But the thing that is going to change them and that is going to get you towards your desired results yourself about how you're feeling is what you do. And the thing you can't control what they're doing. They're going to do what they're going to do no matter what, no matter who they are, what relationship it is, spouse, horse, any other. There you don't have control over it. So there's you're not going to go find a technique. If I were to hear today and say this Podcast is about I'm going to give you a skill that if you use this skill or if you use this technique on your spouse, they'll do exactly what you want all the time. I'm gonna give you the technique, and that is true, but the answer is to start with inside yourself, okay? That's the only thing that it works. Because you know, if I were to hear to tell you that about your spouse, I would hope that you wouldn't believe me because there's not something that you're gonna do to them that's gonna change them. If they change, it's gonna come within themselves. So what we at...have to do, and I think we all know this if we look at it this way, is that the thing that we can do is change ourselves if we want to influence them in order to improve the relationship.

And the thing about it is, is men and women and horses, that men and horses and women with horses, it's a relationship. It's the same deal. It's not identical, but the part that is the same is A, it's a relationship, and B, the thing that influences the relationship the most...is what comes from inside of our heart and soul and our thoughts. Our thoughts is actually what it comes down to, is what has the most influence on the other side of the relationship. Okay, and our thoughts is what is going to impact our results the most. And when we turn that focus, that is when we can begin to have the results that we're looking for.

 But I want to talk a little bit about what I wanted to talk about today is...you know, kind of like, what do we want in the horse business? Like, why are you here? Why did you come to The Horsemanship Journey? You know, just you're, uh, just curious or what, what value, what kind of people come here and what do you, what do you want? So, you know, when, when we look at the horse industry, here's what happens. The first thing I want to talk to is, is this a podcast for you? Okay. So here's, here's a couple of things.

Number one is. Are you open to learning? Okay. And you hear a closed mindset or an open mindset. Nobody wants to say they have a closed mindset. We all think we have an open mindset, right? We wanna have an open mind to be learnable and to be teachable, but a lot of times we're not. Here's an example. Particularly in the horse business, here's the deal. In most cases, okay, in most cases, all of our circle of influence, if we're a horseperson, we may out of all of our circle of influence, only a few of us, or maybe we might be the only one that is a horse person, that has a horse, that takes riding lessons, that rides, that competes, that loves horses, we're the horse person, or we're one of a few in our total circle of influence. And so we have interactions all the time with people that are not horse quote unquote horse people, okay? And so as just by that alone...

The people on our circle of influence that are not what we would call horse people, they don't have a ride, they're not heavily involved with horses. Just for the fact that we are, whether we're good or not, or we have any information or we're qualified or not, just for the fact that maybe that we own a horse, they deem us to be the total horse professional and the all-knowing horse everything. Which is kind of cool, you know? Oh, there's Shane. He's the horse guy. He's a real cowboy, he has horses and he rides and that's what a real cow. That's the, he's the horse guy, right? And so that's kind of fun to be this, to be the expert on horses, cause we have one. And so we kind of think we sort of got it, you know? We don't need to know anything else. We already have a horse. And as a matter of fact, we've had a horse for along time. I've had a horse since, you know, my whole life. Ever since I was a kid. And so therefore. I know everything about horses, which is redamdiculous, is what it is. You know, I've been around people my whole life too, and I've talked to people, and I've listened to the thoughts that came out of their brains, which does not make me a brain scientist. You know, I love air conditioning, and I've been living in Nevada, and I've been around air conditioning for a number of years. Matter of fact, ever since I've been here, but I don't know how to fix the unit that's on top of my house, or I'm not very good at fixing one of my pickup truck either.

 So the point is, is just because of the virtue that you have a horse, a lot of times we think we're really good, but really we might not be. The point, it doesn't really matter where we're at. What I'm talking about here is what matters is your openness to look at horsemanship and life really as like go after it like, how good can I be today? It's unlimited, horsemanship is unlimited just like your life is unlimited. The results in your life with horsemanship and the results in your life are unlimited. And if you look at it that way, if you can wake up in the morning and say, how good can I be today? What can I accomplish today? I'm on my way towards my goals. This podcast is gonna be for you because there's gonna be some things that we're gonna talk about. There are gonna be answers that you're looking for and the things that you want to accomplish with horses and in your personal life. And so what are those things? Like, what do we want, right? If we do have an open mind, what else do we want? Why else would you be here and what other value could I get? Could you gain from The Horsemanship Journey Podcast? What would that be? And you know what? If you, I think you could agree on this, okay. But what we want as horsemen and what we want as, um, human beings, one of the biggest things we want is confidence. I want to be confident. I want to be a confident rider. I want to be a confident horseman. I want to show up large and on charge. I don't want to be small. I want to be riding tall. Right? I want to be a good communicator. I want to feel like that I connect with horses. I want to feel like that I'm a good caretaker because I know I want to feel like I got this. Like I am, I am confident. I am fully confident. Right? I think that the more...

 Here's what I've learned about confidence. I think that the more confident that we become, really the better off that I'd be. I'm really serious about confidence. I think it's one of the two major principles that if we focus on in our life, that we should focus on in our life. I really do, and I don't think it's a good idea. I think it's more than that. But so, confidence, so what's the deal with that? If you could agree, first of all, let's just take a look at it this way. It's like, I'm a confident person. You probably think you're a confident person, right? I got this, Shane. I don't need to be confident. That's more of the closed mindset. I'm not saying that you totally lack confidence. I'm not saying that you're unconfident. I'm saying, Here's what I am saying. I'm saying that confidence isn't an arrival, that you have it or you don't, okay? You may have confidence in a thing and not anything, but what I'm talking about right now is self-confidence. What I mean by a thing is, I may be good at drinking out of a bottle. This is an example, okay?

I may be good at drinking out of a bottle. I just took a drink out of that bottle and I was confident that I wasn't going to slurp it all and spill it all over my cool shirt. So I am confident in that thing, that I can drink out of a bottle. That's being confident in a thing. Self-confidence is how I feel about me. So let's just talk a little bit about that. I am also the host of The Horsemanship Journey series, video series on where we took two seasons, 75 of the top horsemen and women in the world and also experts inhuman behavior, which is The Horsemanship Journey Show. Anyway, one of the guests on the show was Sheryl Green. Sheryl Green said to me in that interview, she said, Shane, she said, I believe that every negative behavior that human beings do and have done and forever will is as a result, or can be tied to at the result, is a lack of self-confidence or a poor self-image.

 That's a pretty powerful statement. Everything, every negative behavior, really? You know, the more I've thought about that, I really can't dispute that. That's how important this is. Everything has to do with self-confidence, the way that we feel about us, our worthiness, and how we view ourselves.

 Okay, and the one thing that I do know about this is this is not like coming back to I have it or I don't that's not the way it works the way it works is I have committed to a To a lifelong pursuit of a loving relationship with me and I can I pretty much like me. Okay, it hasn't always been that way. I didn't always like me I'll tell you more about that someday. I got a bunch of sad and truthful and funny stories about that, but not right now. So it's not like you have it or you don't, right? Sometimes you're going along and you're working on your self-confidence. If you know how, if you have the tools and the skills, remember that's part of the deal, and then you're doing it, that's part of it. And so I'm working on it. And then sometimes things happen and they take a little chink in our armor, right? And we need our self-confidence to pull us back up.

 And you know, and it's kind of a, it's a, it's a lifelong deal. And hopefully it's a lifelong, you know, up and down that ends up eventually climbing higher and higher over a period of time. That's what I hope for you because it's so important. If you don't think it's important, let me just try this because here, this may prove to you the importance of it. When you know, people were drawn to confidence. Okay. We are totally drawn to confidence. If you, if you have no confidence in me, you're not here right now.

 If you began listening to this podcast a few minutes ago when I started recording it, and if you're still here right now, you have some amount of confidence in me. People are drawn to confidence. We know that. I don't want to follow somebody that just looks like they don't believe in themselves. I can feel it. I can see it. It's important to me, and we have this natural draw to people who feel good about themselves.

 The thing of it is, horses have the same draw. They need us. They need us to feel good about us. They need us to be confident in us. They need calm, decisive, confident leadership. Horses need leaders. They do need leaders. Horses do not make good leaders over men. If you want the horse to be a leader, I recommend that you have 911 on speed dial or have somebody ride away for flight for life because that's usually what results when you give the leadership in the relationship to the horse. Horses need us. They rely on us to be confident in ourselves. I'm not talking about, you're not going to be perfect in everything that you do in this relationship with your horse. You're not going to know everything you're supposed to do. You're going to make mistakes. Sometimes you're going to be unkind. Sometimes you're going to be unfair.

 Okay, these things can happen. And that's okay. That's a normal part of a relationship. What is important is your commitment to yourself-confidence. That is what is going to drive you to constantly be improving yourself, which will result you'll be a better support for your horse in the relationship. You will be able to actually have the strongest amount of bond and the best horse experience that you can, that's how it gets to be as good a sit can be is through this process, and it is a process. By the way, the same thing applies to our lives, right? And that's the deal, and it's through my experience and what I've learned from other people and from the Horsemanship Journey show, I have some of those skills to be able to give you, then that's the good news, that confidence, self-confidence is a skill. It's a skill that can be learned. It's a skill that you can practice on a daily basis. It's a skill that when you get your ass kicked, you can...

Go back to that skill and you can use it the next day to come back to where you were and to come back better the next day. And improve and increase and increase until most of the time, and it's not gonna be all the time, you're not gonna be all the time 100% fully confident in everything that you're doing. It's not gonna go that way. Just know that. But what you're gonna know as a result of confidence is you're gonna know when the fear comes, when those, when you're hyperventilating, when you're almost on the verge of panic attack, when you're pressing yourself, when you feel nervous, when you feel the negative emotions. The thing of it is, is we talk about courage a lot, right? And courage is associated with a totally positive emotion. We think of courage as like, yes, I wanna be courageous. I am courageous. I wanna be courageous. And people that are courageous are tough and it's a positive thing. But the thing of it is, is exercising courage is hard. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good when you're in it. It feels good after it, right? After you've exercised your courage. So part of confidence is learning how to handle, process, let be emotions. Emotions that can crush yourself-confidence or emotions that can help you of this pursuit of this relationship with yourself that equals in the feeling of confidence. Confidence feels good, man. It feels good. It feels empowering and it feels good. It feels really good and your horse gets it. That's the deal. That's how we get the good results.

Now let's be clear about one thing about compliments. I want to talk about this. Confidence is not arrogance, okay? Arrogance is the opposite of confidence. So let's just be clear about that. The fact that I think that I am a total badass, I know it. I have to believe in my heart and my soul, okay? That fact has nothing to do with anybody else. It does not mean that you, if you have confidence, that you,  self-confidence, that you think you're better than anybody. It's not a comparison thing. It has nothing to do. You measure you against you.

 Arrogance is actually the opposite of self-confidence. It's rooted in a lack of confidence, and that's where the arrogance comes from, where I need to prove that I'm better than you, so I feel better about me because I don't feel good about me to start with. That's arrogance, that's not what we're talking about. I'm talking about the, I'm talking about humility. I'm talking about the solid confidence intense inner strength to accomplish. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind that you're horsing all the people in your relationships, beginning with yourself, that everybody around you feels. And that, my friends, is what creates the strength and the connection. You're able to have the connection and you're able to have better relationships. I used to not think, I used to go, well, you can't love other people unless you really love yourself. And I'm like, oh, I don't, bullshit shit. What do you mean? I can love somebody else just fine. What's that got to do with me? This is about them. See, this is the mindset I began with, the way that the world and we have perceive horses. The, our relationship, men's relationship, man and women's, men's relationship with horses. It's the same way. We look at it, I used to look at it and say, well, I don't believe that. I believe that I can be just fine to other people and it has nothing to do with how I feel about me.

Here's an example. And maybe this will help if that's you, I don't know. If you've ever thought this, try this one. A mother sees her very young child, let's say the child's maybe four or five or something, and they spill their food on the carpet. And the mom's like yells at the kid, bark bark, lashes out at the kid. Then the mom, she's mad at herself. She is upset with herself. She says to herself, she's like, I can't hold my shit together. I can't believe I did this. And she yells at herself on the inside and she goes on about how bad she did and how this and that and the other. Okay. And the kid spills the food again a few days later on the carpet and the mom lashes out on the kid again. The mom is used to lashing out to herself. She lashes out on the kid. The kid learns that the kid learns the mom's thoughts without the mom telling her the thoughts.

Here's example two. Mom too, same age kid, spills food all over the carpet. And the mom says, hey, hey honey, we need to do that different next time. I'm going to help you clean it up. These things happen, but we're going to work on not having that happen anymore. As a result, the mom is proud of herself, but she gave her kid forgiveness and grace and tried to teach her patience and to have a lesson and a life's lesson. And she's proud of herself for doing it. Okay. That kid grows up in a different way and it happens again and the mom. The kid gets the result of that parent's speaking, or that parent's thoughts, excuse me, inner thoughts in this example. That little story made it very clear to me of how this works, you know, of why it's important that I care about me the way that I do, because it is true. And I've seen it, I've proved it in my own life, there's thousands of examples, but if you ever thought that's not true, I will guarantee you that's the damn truth.

We can't give it unless we have it. And I think that if you want confidence, if that's something that you want, if you want more self-confidence, you're gonna like this podcast because it's one of the two main principles that I mentioned early that I believe that if you focus on those two principles that your life is going to result in more joy, your relationships are going to have a deeper and stronger connection, and that you're still going to have plenty of problems. Let's just talk about that for a minute. The fact, confidence, I'm not here to give you the secret recipe to have all your problems go away and you're going to live in blissful happiness and joy 24-7. That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

I am talking about...knowing how to handle the about half of life that's not going to be all that pleasant. Okay. What I mean handle going through it with grace and style. Okay. Because it's sometimes things that happen to us are just damn hard and there's no other way to say it. Okay. But when you have the inner strength that comes from a strong self-image, when you have self-confidence that you are committed to working on and improving over the course of your life on a daily basis, things start changing results. It's absolutely incredible of what can be. What I've accomplished and what I've seen in my life, it's way worth it. So I'm glad you're here with me. So as a matter of fact, I believe that, you know, I give a lot of lessons and I've given a lot of lessons, you know, horse riding lessons and I've trained horses and I've sold a whole slew of horses to.

 The impact that we have is, it's extraordinary how much impact we have on the world. How much, what I mean by that is it's extraordinary how much impact the thoughts that we get to choose that go through our head, let's define a thought. A thought is a sentence or a phrase that goes through our mind. Okay? There's tens of thousands of those that we have a day, consciously and unconsciously.

 Those thoughts that go through our mind, the power of the thoughts that we have, that we get to choose which thoughts we have, we get to decide what we think about, and those thoughts have an extraordinary impact on the relationship and on the world. If horses are your thing, we're your people, man. Glad you made it to be here.  Confidence in, in my world. It's not.

 Like I mentioned earlier, it's not just a good idea. It's not something that's gonna to do because it'll help you out and things will be better and you'll have better relationships. All that is true, but the reason that I believe that it's better than a good idea is because I believe it's actually our duty, our responsibility to horses and to the people in our relationships and first and foremost to ourselves that it's not just a good idea, but it's our duty and our responsibility to cultivate a loving relationship with ourselves. And that's what I can leave you with today. We're going to talk more about in the future. Appreciate you, man.

Remember, Don't Ever Stop Chasing It!

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