Learn how empathy, clear communication, active listening, and small wins boost patience with horses and people.

Welcome to The Horsemanship Journey Podcast

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of The Horsemanship Journey Podcast. My name is Shane Jacob, your host, and I appreciate you for taking your time to be here with us today.

You know, at The Horsemanship Journey, we demonstrate how horses behave to show ways for people to behave to get the results that we want in our lives. It's kind of a magical, a magical connection, connecting horses and people and how it all works out together.

The Link Between Horses, People, and Patience

Today, I wanted to talk about patience—something I haven't quite mastered. Maybe you haven't either, but hopefully will with the five practical tips to be more patient.

The thing about horses and people is, I'll let you in on a little secret about that, and that is becoming good at horses or being a good horseman and being successful in relationships with people—they’re the same thing. It's the same principles, and those same principles affect all of our outcomes.

Impatience in Practice

Haha, so anyway, about patience. A friend of mine, Mr. Davis, he used to work with me. And we'd be riding around together and he'd belike, “Shane, you don't have very many patience.”

I used to ride with Rick Steed a lot. He's a trainer, very successful trainer, and I used to ride with him a lot. And one of the things that would happen is he'd say, “Quit asking for the whole enchilada.”

And what he meant by that was, is basically my impatience. I know what I want. I know what it feels like. And I want that horse to do exactly what I want completely a hundred percent right now; I don't know why we have to wait for it.

And here's what was happening that I couldn't see. As I was riding, I couldn't see everything that was happening, but he could see. And what was happening that I came to realize was, my expectation was causing—you know, we were both starting to get frustrated. I was getting frustrated. The horse was getting frustrated. Then we both started to react to the frustration.

Neither one of us felt like we had cooperation from the other. The horse started to get more confused. I lost focus. Progress stopped, and we actually started going backwards, where we actually made things worse than if we wouldn’t have even rode that day.

Patience Principle #1: Empathy

So, there's a few things that have helped me with horses and with people. It's an ongoing project for me, and a few things that I think that will help you also.

Number one, believe it or not, with horses and people, is empathy. And that's just understanding people's feelings and perspective, or attempting to. We've talked about honoring people's perspective. It's just giving people the space to be them and attempting to understand people's feelings and why—and caring, and just to have the concern and care for who's in this with you. If I care about the outcome, then I must have concern about who is in this with me.

Patience Principle #2: Nonverbal Communication

Next thing is, you know, our nonverbal communication and just being aware of body language.

I wasn't really aware of this, but horses—I mean, they demonstrate this incredibly because they pick up on everything. I mean, they pick up on everything. There's no secrets with horses, and you can make little subtle differences and they're clued in on it. Horses are a dead giveaway on our body language and the tone.

And how they're queuing in—they are reacting on our body language. You know, the thing of it is, is we really don't realize it, but people are too. You know what I'm saying? We may not realize it, but people are too.

And so, the awareness that we have—if we can just be aware of the body language of what we're communicating to people that we may not want to—is a big thing. And, you know, you may be, you know, tapping your foot or looking away or, you know, acting anxious.

And just little subtle things that if you're aware of can make a really big difference as far as your nonverbal communication, your body language.

Patience Principle #3: Respect

Respect is an interesting principle, as it relates to patience. Basically, you know, valuing people's individuality and trying to acknowledge people's needs.

Rick Steed said—I interviewed him on The Horsemanship Journey show—and he talked about respect. And he said, you know, respect isn't something that you can demand. It's something that—people that demand respect never get respect—and that it's something that you have to give in order to get.

And so, I think that's a really important piece of respect to know, particularly when it comes to patience—that if we're giving respect, we can expect to have respect. I mean, it's the only way that we're really gonna have it.

Patience Principle #4: Time and Realistic Expectations

Another piece of this is time, and just recognizing that growth and learning is a gradual process. You know, retention is something—I heard the other day that people have to hear something like nine times before it really totally sinks into their mind.

I believe that's true. Sometimes I get frustrated with, you know, training people and training horses. And I can understand people's frustration with me, you know, in the same thing.

And I think a lot of times we set an unrealistic expectation for how much time things take. And really, and then optimizing how well people retain, you know, and just being aware of that.

But time—being willing to commit the time… I mean, if we really want the outcome, if we want the outcome—being willing to commit the time upfront is, it's a requirement.

You know, and expecting it to happen in less time… and a lot of us try to put too many things into too small amounts of times, and then we don't get the outcomes. And when it comes to relationships that are so fragile, with horses or not, all relationships are to some degree, I believe, kind of fragile.

And so, when we expect too much of an outcome out of a relationship in a short period of time, it puts so much pressure in it—it just sets things up for, usually sets things up for a negative outcome.

Five Practical Tips to Be More Patient

So, I wanted just to briefly cover the five practical tips to be more patient.

Tip #1: Set Realistic Expectations

Number one is kind of what we've talked about in expectation, and that is just to be realistic with your expectations. Don't expect the immediate results—progress takes time.

And when you set it up in your mind, okay, when you set it up in your mind—if you don't know what realistic expectation is, don't guess. Talk to someone who has a better idea; talk to someone who's involved in the relationship with you.

Talk to someone that you need cooperation with to get the desired results you want, and come up with an agreed-on realistic expectation.

And that doesn't mean that—a lot of times I used to say, in regards to expectations, that we should always expect the best, and expect too much, and expect it's going to take half the time. You know, we can have a worthy goal, but that's a lot, you know. And a hard goal—that's different than having unrealistic or unthought-out or unplanned or unresearched expectation.

They're just not realistic. And then when they don't happen, what ends up happening is we have a negative feeling, or a negative thought that causes a negative feeling. And then that starts the cycle of downward, you know, lack of cooperation—things just start to go bad.

So one is basically, completely, is just to set realistic expectations.

Tip #2: Stay Calm and Manage Your Mind

Two is to stay calm. Of course, if we don't maintain our composure, you know, things escalate and then things go bad from there.

And that's just our mind management. There's steps that we can take with breathing. And really it's awareness is the big thing here—that as we're going throughout this process, this relationship, whatever it is—that we're on our way to our desired result.

If we feel ourselves, just being aware of what's happening with this is just such a big thing. A lot of times we'll get reactive, and we do things and then we regret it and then we have to go back and fix it. And then that takes more time, because now it's taken longer than we thought it was going to take because we're trying to keep everything well, because we didn't keep our mind managed. Right?

You know, our thoughts in check. And so then our feelings got out of whack, and then we started that cycle. So, if we can be aware of ourselves, stay calm, notice that if something changes as far as our emotions—stop, take the time, analyze and fix ourselves before we create a negative situation.

Number two is to stay calm.

Tip #3: Communicate Clearly

Number three is a big one. That's just to communicate clearly.

Man, with horses, I'm telling you what. I have made, it seems like, all the mistakes. I've made so many mistakes with horses. That's one of the things that's made me pretty good with horses—it's all the mistakes I've made. But I watch people, and I'm sure they watched me at one point. And some of the things I've done, I just have to laugh at because they were just terribly ineffective and the communication was terrible.

A lot of times we... This is another thing I learned from riding with Rick, and that is he would stop and say, “Okay, stop right now. What are you doing? Describe to me exactly what you're trying to communicate to that horse and how.” Now, a lot of the times when he'd asked me to stop like that, I didn't have any idea. I couldn't answer the question. I’d be like, I don't know, I'm riding over here trying to do this. I don't know, I can't explain that.

Well, the thing of it is, is if we can't explain it to ourselves, how in the hell do we expect the horse to know what we're doing? And the same thing goes with people. If we can't, in our own mind, articulate what we're trying to communicate, how on earth could we expect anyone else to?

So, clear communication. Communication is a big, broad subject and it's a big, important skill. I think that it's something that I'm committed to improving over my lifetime, and it's something that has tremendous results. Just being clear in communication is a good start.

And the beginning of that is saying, can I clearly say out loud what I'm trying to accomplish in this communication? Okay. If you can't do that, don't expect it—it's going to be a clear communication or don't expect very good results.

Tip #4: Practice Active Listening

Number four. Okay, number four of the five is to practice active listening.

Okay, just show that you're engaged. Show that you're interested. Show that, you know, you're interested in other people's thoughts or feelings. You know, it's easy to say, “Listen with the intent to understand rather than with the intent to reply.” It's easy to say that, but it's more difficult to do it. And that's something that I practice and work on.

As you become aware of what's happening, as you're taking in someone else's information, a lot of times it's hard just not to. You know, you're just hoping that they'll be quiet so you can fire off what you want to say—like finish, finish, finish, finish, “I have something, I have something, ”rather than taking a breath and actually having the wherewithal and the intent to just be quiet and be settled.

And not think about you, and actually listen with the full intent of fully understanding what you're trying to communicate to me. This makes a tremendous difference in how people react to you, and it makes a tremendous difference in the outcome.

And it's something that is, like I said, easier said than done, but it's an excellent skill. Active listening—showing that you're listening with the intent to understand, not to respond, and you're just engaged.

Right? You're not on your phone, you're not looking over here, you're not tapping the floor, you're not… You've taken the time, right? You've taken the time, and you're committed to understanding someone else. And they can feel it, and that's where the difference is.

Tip #5: Celebrate the Small Wins

Number five, this is a pretty cool one—celebrate the small wins.

Okay? I used to think this wasn't necessarily that good of an idea. “Why am I celebrating? I haven't really won anything that big, and I haven't got the prize, and I haven't got to my goal… So why am I stopping to take a party right now?” Well, the thing of it is, with people and in relationships—and even with ourselves—I didn't realize this until I started a little bit with myself and other people. We all, when we acknowledge, okay, the progress that we're making when we take the win. Take what you have won.

Like they said in The Count of Monte Cristo, “Take what you have won. Take the woman. Take the money. Take what you have won. ”Haha, anyway.

When we celebrate the small wins, it gives us a shot of energy. It makes us feel better about what we're doing. It makes us feel better about ourselves. It makes us feel like we've accomplished something. It's motivating, it's inspiring, it reminds us that we're on the right track.

I used to think that it was, you know, that we shouldn't really do that—because kind of we're getting the trophy before we won the game, was kind of my thinking. I've come to realize that it wasn't good thinking. You know, I didn't have to get the total trophy, but I did need to acknowledge and celebrate those small wins as they were happening.

This makes a tremendous difference. If you're a leader—in any capacity—it makes a tremendous difference. And like I said, it makes a difference to ourselves—just to take that, you know, if I make a promise to myself that I'm gonna start, you know, waking up at a certain time, or I'm gonna start my exercise program on Monday or tomorrow or whatever… And I actually keep my promise to myself, and I follow through when I do it…

Even the acknowledgement—just the verbal acknowledge mentor the thought process to say, “You know what, you said you were going to do something, you did it, good job.” Maybe that's enough. Maybe you want to celebrate just a little bit more, you know.

And just the awareness, for other people that we lead, letting them know that we see their progress—that is so powerful to other people. You know, the way that it makes us feel good about ourselves when we doit for ourselves, and when we're able to give that to other people—that's a gift.

And it helps us get cooperation, helps them feel better about themselves, and it helps them keep the momentum—or get momentum—to make the progress that they want to in the areas of our lives.

Closing Encouragement

Hey, let me just tell you this. If you've listened to this show today and you've got anything that you can take about becoming more patient—if that's what you'd like to do—this is a win. This is a win. Take it. Take it.

Remember, You Cannot Fail If You Don't Ever Stop Chasin’ It.