Transcript:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of The Horsemanship Journey Podcast. My name is Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. This episode is brought to you in part by Cowboy Cuffs, our partner at Cowboy Cuffs. This particular awesome shirt I am wearing is called Overo. If you're not familiar, overo is a color pattern for registered paint horses. So yeah, this is overo—black and white with gray, black and white overo maybe. Yeah, this is black and white with the black cuffs, double cuffs. Elevate your style to elevate your life, Cowboy Cuffs. Appreciate that.

Anyway, today we want to talk about focus. Focus. So, I recently hosted a horse riding clinic here in Las Vegas. A friend of mine, Rick Steed, was the clinician, and he came. What that is, is, you know, with horses, horses are kind of like people, okay? In that, they don’t always do what we want them to do. Getting them to do what we want them to do is a project. It takes good communication. It takes patience. It takes all the things that it takes basically to be good at relationships because it’s a relationship.

So the thing of it is, we host this so that people who are interested in being excellent, being better, or improving—if they have a problem, solving problems, or getting great at whatever discipline or sport they’re in with horses—can be better communicators, better horsemen, and learn how to do it all better. So, that’s what a clinic is. We had this two-day clinic here at our place in Las Vegas, Nevada, just about a week ago. I want to share some observations and something that I noticed and that was taught at the clinic.

Sometimes, as riders, we get fixated on what the horse isn’t doing right. Some of these riders came in, and some of us—we just get fixated on what’s not happening, what we want the horse to do but isn’t happening. Of course, we do this with people too. I specialize in this with the people who work for me. If I’m not intentional, my default is to go straight to all the things that are wrong. I just get fixated on this and this and this, and I can’t see not only what’s going right but also what to be focused on—the result.

One of the things I noticed at the clinic—well, I’ll just tell you. One of the riders came into the riding arena, into the clinic, and started listing all the things the horse wouldn’t do: how he was stubborn, how he wouldn’t do this, how he was just being a jerk. She listed, like, nine things. Finally, Rick just kind of stopped this lady and said, “Okay, hold on just a minute. What exactly—how do you expect this to go when you’re thinking that way?”

Well, she hadn’t really thought about that. In her mind, she was just explaining what the problems were. But it’s a great point. Let’s use this example. If I’m thinking of all the things my horse isn’t doing right—he won’t do this, he’s a jerk, he doesn’t do this, he won’t do this, no matter what I do I can’t get him to do this—and I’m thinking about all these things, you can imagine how that affects my mindset. When we think this way as riders, we start to get frustrated. Sometimes we get angry. We just feel like we’re out of control or have no control. There’s nothing we can do, so we start to feel helpless.

What do you think happens as riders when we feel frustrated and helpless, like we have no control, or even angry? What do you think we do? With horses, the frustration we’re feeling comes out. It’s there. It comes out in ways we—we get more aggressive. We try to fight back. We try to manipulate. Sometimes we get angry and act fast, with less intention. We’re just reacting to this anger we’re feeling.

Now, here’s the next question. What don’t you do when you’re feeling frustrated, angry, helpless, or out of control?

So one of the things, some of the things that you don't do is you don't seek help, you don't slow your mind, you don't act with intention. And as far as riding, you don't clearly cue. In other words, you don't clearly communicate to your horse what the result is. And if you don't know what the cue is, then you don't go find the result. If you're frustrated and helpless, if you're feeling helpless, you don't find out the answers that you seek.

Now, I give credit to everyone who comes to any of these clinics like that because those are only the people, the top tier that stay active, that are constantly learning and improving. And those are the people that become or are excellent horsemen. They're continually learning. So not knocking anybody for sure at this clinic because this is the top. These are the good people that are out there striving to be better.

But when you feel frustrated and helpless, when you're feeling that in the middle of that, you're not getting help and getting education and being open-minded to take it in and then clearly communicating it to your horse to get a better result. So things get worse.

The result that happens when we as riders focus on what's not going right, the horse starts reacting to us, and then the horse gets frustrated. The horse starts trying to figure out what we want. He's trying harder, and we're getting more angry. Then we're punishing him, and he's just trying to figure out what we want, stay out of trouble, and get away from pressure most of the time. Eventually, he’ll start fighting back. If we continue to add pressure and stay in this frustration and anger, things spiral into a bad situation.

We both, the horse and the rider, end up not in a good way. Nobody really gets what they want. The horse doesn't get any relief. Then he starts dreading being ridden and being saddled, developing bad habits. These bad habits take along time to fix, erase, and reestablish new things. It's a bad cycle.

It's just really the importance of focus. You may think, you know, when I complain about what people won't do, what our kids won't do, or even if we're just complaining to our spouse and not letting the kids know...

When our focus is not on the result we want but is on what's going wrong, it has a bigger impact. We all know this at some level, right? We all know this, but a lot of times, we're not aware of the profound impact our focus has.

That’s the message for today.

Here’s the thing. At this clinic, Rick Steed, the clinician, helped riders focus on what they wanted to happen. It was so evident—not necessarily for the riders in the middle of it at the time, but for the rest of us observing. When they started focusing on what they wanted to happen, and Rick helped them believe it could happen, and then showed them how to make it happen, things shifted. First, they didn't know for sure if the horse would do what they wanted. Then, as Rick talked them through it, they began to have hope. They started to believe it might happen.

What followed? They started to feel curious—a big difference from frustration. You could see their wheels turning: Okay, maybe I can do this. How do I do it?

From there, they started feeling encouraged as they got results. That fueled a positive cycle, and they started making real progress. You could see horses relax and be more at ease. The whole willing partnership started to mesh together. It was incredible to see.

It begins with the focus of our thoughts. For a long time, I didn’t believe this. I thought only actions mattered—not thoughts or feelings. I damn sure didn’t want to talk about feelings, and I didn’t want to consider thoughts. But I was ignorant in thinking that.

Now I realize that thoughts—or more specifically, what I choose to focus on—matter deeply. When I am conscious of my thoughts, I know I can choose them. And when I can choose my focus, that drives my feelings. Feelings then drive actions, and actions determine results.

We saw this with the riders. When they thought about what they wanted to happen, it was fun to watch. I’ve seen it time and again during lessons. When the chips are down, the key is to move your focus from what’s going wrong to the result you want.

If we want cooperation—from kids, employees, or anyone in a relationship—we must influence with our focus. But if we only focus on what they’re not doing, we’ll stay stuck. Again, we start to feel frustrated. We feel like we can't control, we start to feel helpless. We feel more frustration, and then we feel angry. This starts a cycle of us continuing to not get what we want.

The other day, I had an experience related to this. I own a company that sells horse feed here in Las Vegas, Nevada. One of our trucks was making a delivery and went around a corner too fast. Several bales of hay fell off the truck. When the driver realized it, he stopped, intending to pick them up and get them out of the roadway. But by the time he returned, a man had already moved the hay out of the road and into his truck.

When my driver tried to retrieve the hay, the man refused to give it back. He’d decided it was fair game since he found it on the road. As this situation was relayed to me, I could feel myself getting angry—at the man for taking the hay, at my driver for not securing it better, at the whole scenario. But here’s the thing: I had two ways I could respond.

First, I could stay fixated on my anger, let it spiral, and take it out on my team. Or, I could shift my focus to the outcome we wanted: preventing this from happening again. So I talked to my team. I asked, "How did this happen? What steps can we take to ensure it doesn’t happen again?"

Once I moved my focus to finding a solution, my thoughts shifted. Internally, I started brainstorming. How can we prevent this risk in the future? How can we avoid losing hay like this?

We implemented two new systems as a result. One, we now rotate our load straps on a regular schedule to ensure they’re in good condition. Two, we added a checkpoint system. After leaving the hay yard, drivers pull over within a short distance to double-check the load’s security before continuing. These solutions came from focusing on the result we wanted, not from dwelling on what went wrong.

Now, imagine if I had stayed stuck in my anger. My employees would’ve felt worse than they already did. The situation would’ve perpetuated negativity and solved nothing. The hay would still be gone, and the frustration would linger. But by shifting my focus, we created a plan to reduce future risks and feel empowered as a team.

Here’s the broader message: when you focus on the result you want—whether with your team, your kids, or a relationship—you start feeling empowered. That empowerment changes your actions.

For example, if you focus on what’s going wrong with a child or partner, you’ll stay stuck in frustration. But if you shift to what you want to happen, you start implementing changes. Your feelings improve, and your influence on others improves too. But until you change your focus, neither your feelings nor the other person’s behavior will change.

Church leader Russell M. Nelson once said something about focus that applies beautifully here, “The joy that we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives. If we focus on the joy that will come to us or those we love, we can endure what presently seems overwhelming, painful, scary, unfair, or simply impossible.”

I don’t think I could say it better than that. So I’ll leave you with that thought for today. Thank you again for taking your time to join me for this episode of The Horsemanship Journey Podcast.

Remember, you cannot fail if you Don’t Ever Stop Chasing It.

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