“You’ll get into positions where you’ll just get real frustrated. (…) Things will get real tough, then that’s when you’ll start getting mad and frustrated. That’s the time. Don’t let it get that far. Just stop. Shut the machine off, idle it down, park it, get off and go someplace. Go someplace for ten minutes. As soon as you start to get tired of it, go do something, even if it’s just rest for ten minutes. Then come back to it and then it will be real easy.”
– Tom Dorrance
Most of the time, that’s all it takes.
Just a walk in another direction, breathing different air.
If you haven’t experienced this already, you’ll learn it pretty fast working with humans and animals. You can’t work to figure things out in a frustrated mindset. Especially with animals. They’ll refuse to cooperate when they feel aggressive, frustrated energy coming from you. If they’re doing something, it’s because you’re forcing them to. When it gets to that point, they’ll take the next chance they can to run away.
This applies to everything in life. Writing a paper, doing a math problem, working with a dog, horse, or rhino. If sitting for a few minutes doesn’t seem to calm you, then shut everything down. Go walk and do something else – do anything. A fresh start is always the right choice.
Remember, you don’t want it to get to that point where you have steam coming out of your ears and you’re as mad as can be before you go take this breather. Shut it down right when you feel frustration or anger coming on. You don’t want that in your life – affecting what you do.
Here are some updates of my project horse from the BLM – a mustang named Eclipse.
Make it full screen, or go to the actual page, to see the subtitles I added – there are also more on my Youtube channel (click on Follow to find my channel).
First time with a saddle on! Went amazingly well – check it out!