Transcript for this weeks message

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to this episode of The Horsemanship Journey Podcast. I'm Shane Jacob, your host, and I appreciate you taking your time to be here with us today. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, as you may know at The Horsemanship Journey, we use principles learned from horses that can be exhibited by horses. Those principles we use and teach in our stable living program. And so, there's so many lessons and parallels that we can make when we observe horses who are interacting with each other and interacting with people in relationships that relate to us. That we can take lessons, and sometimes they drive home and help it make it easier to understand.  And it's kind of an interesting idea that the way that horses behave with each other and with people, that these lessons we can use in our own life to help improve our life.

So, I didn't want to talk about our core principles today. Maybe we'll come back to that in another episode, our four core principles of Stable Living or faith in God, faith in self, responsibility, and communication. Those are the four, but that's not this day. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about the difference between circumstances and thoughts and recognizing that and how to gain power, personal power, when sometimes when we feel helpless and relate that to horses.

So, there's a couple things that have happened recently that I wanted to relate little stories about. So one is, I was here at our place last week and I observed a lady leading a horse, attempting to lead a horse up to the wash rack. Okay, and the horse was refusing.  The horse was refusing to go. He was stopping and throwing his head and his neck up and digging his front feet in. He wasn't going forward, and she was trying to pull him forward to get him up onto the concrete pad and over there to tie him up and unsaddle him or whatever she was going to do, and he wouldn't go.

I watched this for a couple of moments.  And as I noticed this I could see, and the lady finally also saw, that the horse could see that there was a plastic bag over by the wash rack, over by the hitching post. It was tussling around and blowing around a little crinkly little garbage, like a sack that you might get at the grocery store. This plastic bag goes making noise and it's blowing around and up and down and around, and it was kind of swirling around there in a little bunch of wind.  And apparently to the horse that seemed pretty scary, and he wasn't going nowhere near that thing. So she looked around, the lady with the horse that looked around and she found someone nearby, much more nearby than me, and asked them if they would get the bag, get the bag, and move the bag. And then so somebody went and got the bag.  And eventually, she was able to get the horse coaxed up onto the pad and over there and get him tied up so she could get the saddle off. Okay, so that's example one. Okay.

Example two is also last week.  It's hot here in Las Vegas, Nevada. And last week, it's in July, and last week was the Fourth of July weekend. And I had a customer call me and say, message me rather, and quizzing me about - the question was, is do you have, you know, a recommendation for a vet that will come by and sedate my horse? That's the question. So, apparently, she was kind of relating that more to like some dogs, right? Some dogs and fireworks don't mix well. And so she was worried about her horse and how he would react to the…I think she's a new owner, and maybe the first 4th of July that she'd been through with her horse. And so, she was worried about that and asking about getting her horse sedated in preparation for fireworks that he may have a reaction to. And so, I responded that no, most of the time, vets don't generally, as a general rule, sedate horses for fireworks on the 4th of July, at least here. Okay. That's usually, that's not how it goes here at our location where we have horses, or really in our area. And my experience is generally speaking.

So, okay. So why am I bringing these up, and what the hell do they mean about you and me and how we operate?  Okay, so let's just see about the questions. Let’s use example one. I see that there's a plastic bag. The plastic bag appears to be the problem. If we remove the plastic bag, then the problem goes away. And in fact, when the plastic bag was removed, the horse did actually get onto the thing, and she was able to get the result that she wanted.

Now, let's talk a little bit more about that because what today what I wanted to talk about was the difference between circumstances and thoughts. Okay. So, let me just give you this. There is a plastic bag blowing around near the hitching post. Is that a thought or is that a circumstance? Okay.  Let's just define those words.  A circumstance, in the way that I define that, is something that will hold up in a court of law.  It doesn't have an opinion wrapped up in about it. It's not subjective to anything. It's just the way it is, period.  It's indisputable. Okay, so if I say there's a plastic bag blowing around near the hitching area, the near might be subjective.  But there is a plastic bag blowing around over there.  Okay, so we're gonna call that a circumstance because that is just a fact. If you had to, it would hold up in a court of law that there in fact was a plastic bag floating around over there.

Now, so what's the problem with that? Is the problem the plastic bag? To me, the owner of the horse looked at it as if the circumstance was the problem to the situation. And like I said, once the circumstance was removed, she was able to solve her problem and move her horse forward. The question I have about that is, what happens when the next time that the bag comes and there's not somebody to remove the bag? What happens next time you're riding your horse down the road, down the street, down the field, down through the willy-wads, wherever the hell you are, and something else blows by? Then you're at the horse show and, you know, whatever.  So if you continually have someone be with you to remove whatever the object is, then probably you'll be okay.  But I would suggest that the problem is not the circumstance.

The problem to address if you can change the circumstance, I'm not totally against changing the circumstance. What I'm against is you solve the, in this case, you solve the immediate, but you didn't solve the long term. So I look at the situation as if the thought, the thinking, or the reaction that the horse is having of why. And so we'll call that I don't know, inside of a horse's brain, but I have a pretty good idea about how our brains and how human beings operate. So we'll just say that the way that the horse thinks about his thoughts about this bag is the problem, okay? Because if he had a different thought about the bag, then maybe he wouldn't be afraid of the bag. If his thought was that's a big scary whatever, then that is the problem rather than the fact that there is a bag being a problem.  If you're with me, okay?

So if we can ask the thought, the horse, excuse me, through communication to change the way he thinks about this bag, we have solved the problem now and in the future. Okay? Now it's going to be longer. It's going to be more difficult. It's going to take more time. It's going to be more painful, probably.  At least more difficult, maybe not more painful.  But it's going to take more time and effort probably.  And it's going to be more difficult than just, hey, and hey, can you move the bag? Okay. Right.  Now, so we've solved that problem, but we haven't solved it in the long -term. It's going to be longer and harder and more difficult to solve the way that we think about the bag. But once we've gone through that, game over problem over. Okay.

So, Michael Singer in his book called, what's the title of his book? The Untethered Soul. Wow. What a incredible book, by the way. I highly recommend it. But in his book, he tells a story about a lady, a woman, and this is his analogy of how he explains this. The lady has a thorn in her arm, okay? And she is either unaware that she can remove the thorn, or she doesn't want to remove the thorn because it would be painful to remove the thorn. So, therefore, if she does nothing about it, it doesn't hurt.  But she keeps bumping it. So, therefore, she builds a box. She has a box built that will hook onto her arm that doesn't touch the thorn.  And it keeps, like if she goes down she bumps into something it hits the box because she's got this box around her arm.  And it doesn't hurt; it doesn't wiggle the thorn, so it doesn't hurt.

So, then she goes on throughout her life.  And eventually, she has to change her bed to have a certain way to sleep to hold the box, so that the box stays up so she doesn't roll over and hit her box or crush the box when she rolls over in the night. So, she changes her bed to hold her arm up to do whatever, and she has to change the way she's sleeping. And then she has to widen the halls and the doors in all of her house so that she can get through. And then she has to change how she goes to work and the people that she talks to and where she sits in rooms. And he goes on and on and on of all the things that she ends up doing to accommodate everything to not wiggle the thorn so it doesn't hurt, which kind of goes back to this horse in this bag. Right? Because if we do nothing, if this lady does nothing about the bag, she's constantly gonna be changing the horse's life.

First of all, I think you're gonna feel powerless. You're gonna be like, damn it, there's bags all over the place. It's constantly something with this horse.  It’s scaring him every time I go somewhere, and I don't have somebody with me all the time. And it's just, you know, it's just, this is just a bad deal. So, we can feel powerless, okay, over circumstances. Because you know what, we are. But what we're not powerless over is the way that we view circumstances, our thoughts about circumstances. So the thing about it is, here's my message is, is are you, and am I… Because I do this all the time, and I really work at it.  But a lot of the time I will look at a circumstance, I will look at a thought that, excuse me, rather, I will look at a thought that I have as if it is a matter of fact circumstances beyond my control. Okay.

So that's my message here today is that, that if we basically do three steps, okay, when we encounter a situation, if we're having a difficulty, if we have a problem, if we have a challenge, whatever, whatever you want to call it.  If we will do three steps, we will end up finding what we call in The Horsemanship Journey, our personal horsepower, and we'll be able to move through it. We'll be empowered, and we'd be able to move through it and get the result that we want. Okay. So this big, big stuff here. And it begins with identifying whether what we're looking at is a thought about a circumstance, or if it is in fact a circumstance that is actually out of our control. Okay.

Circumstances are things that that don't have the… We make meaning about circumstances, and we call those thoughts. So, what's a thought? Okay, let's define a thought.  A thought is a sentence or a phrase that we either speak or goes through our mind. Okay, and there's lots of them going on.  They estimate that we have each, a human being has 60 an adult has 60,000 thoughts per day.

The thing about it is, is most of those thoughts are generated by our supercomputer brain and they're unintentional. They're based on… Because we have this incredible brain/computer that is made up of our genetics plus all the input that we've had since we've been breathing, combine those two together.  When something happens to us, or when we do something, we immediately make meaning or create a thought. Okay.  Those things are thoughts.

So, let's go back to the 4th of July horse just as an example because we're using horses to relate to us. So, the 4th of July horse right. Well, the thing about it is, is there are going to be lots of popping and noise and whatever, and so we're looking for a solution. We're looking for a solution. We're looking to change the circumstance. So how can I? I guess in this way, if you were sedated that may be a way to change the way that you think about the circumstance. But the way that I look at this is, that the question I would prefer to ask of myself, and by the way for my horse the question that I want to ask is, is if my horse is afraid of this, of this fireworks, how do I change how he thinks or how he perceives or his perception or his paradigm or his meaning that he's making out of what's going on so he's okay with this? Because guess what? There's New Years, there's Fourth of July every year by the way, and then there's New Years, and then there's, I don't know, in Utah, there's 24th of July.  I'm sure there's different this's and that's where there's, there's gunshots, there's random fireworks, there's kids with cap guns.

Wait a minute, do kids even still have cap guns? Is that even a thing? Probably not. Probably nobody even knows what I'm talking about. Bang, bang, bang! You know, these little mini fireworks that used to have these little pretend pistols that would make a noise.

Is there a car backfiring, I mean really what kind of noise is this horse afraid of? And so what I would look at, the question I would ask is not, you know, where's the vet? Because if my horse is afraid of this I'm gonna get him sedated.  The question is that I would be asking and trying to communicate to my horses is, if this is a thing for you… In other words, if you're afraid of these noises, how can I help you get through that and understand that it's going to be okay? And then we'll be done with it. You know, we'll go through the hard and the more difficult and take a little bit more time to go through it, so that we're removing the thorn.  Right? It may hurt just a little bit to wiggle that thorn loose and get rid of it, but then we can heal up and not have our feel powerless about what's going on around us. Okay. And that we constantly protecting this thing that's what that's there. Okay.  When it really can be as simply as changing the way that we think about circumstances.

Okay. So what does this mean? I mean, what are the thoughts? When do I catch myself thinking about stuff like this, right? Kids don't have the work ethic that they used to. I'll never have enough money. It's too scary to do this. I'm too old to do this. I'm too young to do this. I don't have enough information. I don't have enough time. I have so much stuff going on right now, I can't handle it.  More thoughts about money, you know, I don't… Money is hard to make.  You know, you could go on and on and on about the, you know, the I shouldn't be chasing method. You have, it takes a lot of money to be in the horse business.  It takes money to make money. Well on and on and on, you can just think of a of the thought that you're having, and a lot of times if I'm not careful, and I think we all do it to some degree, is that we take these thoughts that we're having and we think that they're facts or circumstances.  When in fact these are thoughts that we're making meaning out of that we actually, if we recognize, we have control over. Okay? We have control over these thoughts. The same way that we can help our horses change the way that they think about things, we can change the way thatwe think about things. We can actually create beliefs.

Let me ask you a question. Give me a circumstance, any circumstance, whatever it is in your life. Your bank account is “X”. You are “X” years old. Okay, let's go with your bank account as “X.” Your bank account is $10,000. Okay, now here's a question. That's a circumstance, by the way. That's just a fact. Let's pretend that it is, okay, so it is.  Your bank account has $10,000 in it, period.  Okay. What if you could think what any thought that you wanted to that's available in your imagination?  What if you could think any thought that you wanted about that fact? Let me ask you another question. What if you could think anything that you wanted about you, to believe about yourself? Because you see, the thing of it is, is we can think. We have the ability to choose. We can think whatever we want to about whatever we want. Okay?

Now, in order for these thoughts to yield us the results that we want, we're going to need to believe those thoughts. And sometimes getting to a belief takes a little bit of doing; it takes a little bit of time. Okay.  Now, in other words, I can say I am a total badass, and I just love me, and I'm Shane.  Okay. Now maybe I believe that fully, and maybe I don't.  Okay, but if I don't believe it, I can move towards that by holding that thought in my mind and continuing to prove it to be true.  Sometimes we use a sort of latter thoughts, which are a little bit lesser thoughts that we kind of piecemeal it at a piece at a time and latter taking a step at a time until we get the full thought that we can accept as a belief.  But we can change our beliefs about circumstances.  Those are our thoughts.  And those are what change our results.

Because here's the deal, circumstances are just things that happen.  Okay.  They're out of our control.  Things happen to us, and things happen in the world that we don't have control over. We get to control our thoughts, and our thoughts are what drive our feelings. And our feelings are what drive our actions.  And our actions is what equal our results in our life. Okay, that becomes who we are and our total results.

So my, challenge for me and my challenge for you right now ,this week, this month, in the future is this... When you encounter something that, a situation a circumstance a challenge whatever a problem whatever you want to call it, my challenge for you is to just do, in the beginning, just todo a three-step process.

Okay, and that is number one identify whether it's a circumstance or a thought. Okay.  Is this a matter of fact or is this something that I mean? Are you really, do you really make me mad? Hm. Can I really not work with you? Is this really just too much for me to handle right now? Or is that just what I'm thinking? Is that a thought that I could change about a circumstance? Okay, so identify whether it's a thought or a circumstance. And that takes a little practice to get good at until you can really recognize, is this something that I just think about something? I mean, would anybody else in the world, is it possible that they could think differently, have a different thought about this same circumstance?  If the answer is yes, then it's a thought, not a circumstance. Will it hold up in the court of law; is it just a flat fact? Okay, those are circumstances. If they're not, they're thoughts. And so much of what is going through our mind is thoughts. And a lot of times we do this, as we take those thoughts as facts, and we live our lives on them.  Right? We don't identify that that thorn is a thought that we can A, first of all, see it for what it is. And B, that we can choose to either keep it if it serves us, or B, to take the time and the difficulty to remove it and heal it and get a different result. Okay.  So, step one is to identify whether it's a circumstance or a thought.

Step two is, once we've done that, is to accept responsibility. Basically, that means that to understand and accept the idea that, hey, this I get to choose. Okay.  Accepting responsibility, that means that you can change that thought if you don't like it. Even if it was an unintentional thought that your brain fed you about a certain thing.  You're like, hey, why am I thinking this? I just recognized that I'm thinking a thought that's not helping me, and it's not making me happy.  And now I'm aware of it. And so, guess what? Number two is to accept responsibility. That empowers me to be able to change it once that I accept the responsibility. So, accept the responsibility that it's mine, and that I get to change it.  And that I can, and if I want to it's my responsibility.  Okay, my thoughts are my responsibility.  What goes on inside of here, that's up to me. Okay.  A lot of it's happening automatically, but if I look at it and I'm aware of it then I know that I can be able to change it if I choose to.  Okay.  That's accepting responsibility.

And three is, is that, is simply to choose to change the thought if you believe that the thought is not serving you. Okay, so just choose to change the thought. So more on exactly how to do that. Sometimes, occasionally, it's as simple as recognizing the way that you're thinking about a certain thing.  The way that you're making meaning, the story that you're telling yourself about a certain thing is not the way that you want to hear that story. It's not the belief that you want to have. Recognizing that, deciding what would serve you better if you thought a different way.  Hey, if I thought this about that, rather than what I'm thinking about it, I would feel differently.  And those feelings would give me I would be doing different actions, and so therefore I would get a different result.

That, my friends, is the basics of your own personal horsepower. When you fully understand that circumstances that are thoughts, the difference between thoughts and circumstances. And that our thoughts create our feelings.  And that our feelings create our actions.  And our actions create our results.  And that we have the ability, the agency, the God-given right to change the way that we think about what happens around us. That is an incredible power that we have.  That will fully influence our results.  And it my friends, you've experienced it to some degree; we all have.  And I hope that this little exercise, if you apply it in doing these three steps identify, accept the responsibility, and then choose whether to change the thought if it's not serving you, choose to change the thought. And if it is then keep it.  That those three are the beginning of the process of empowering yourself to the change that you want to have in your life.

Hey my friends, remember, you're always gonna be on the road to success as long as you Never Stop Chasing It. Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode. We'll see you soon.

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