The Best Student

One of the worst statements you can make in any given learning situation is, "I know that already." As soon as you utter these words, either out loud, or to yourself, you have just shut down any learning opportunity you might be afforded. We have heard this statement come out of many student's mouths over the years. As soon as I hear the words come out of someone's mouth, I know that their ability to learn has just been impeded.

Ray Kroc once said, "when you're green, you're growing, when you're ripe you rot." I am not fond of the McDonald's food chain, but I must admit that as far as horsemanship goes, this saying is right on. As soon as you close your mind, nothing else can enter.

The best students that we have are the ones who come to lessons open minded about the learning process. This is very tough for adult humans to do. For some reason when we are young, it is easy to come to a learning situation without having to utter the phrase, "I know that already." When we grow into adulthood, the phrase gets thrown around quite a bit.

When we teach clinics we tell people that the only dumb question is the one you failed to ask. But people fail to ask questions all the time, and I think it is because they are afraid of looking dumb. To which I say, get over it. If you want to learn you have to get over the fear of looking stupid, or of asking the wrong question, or of not knowing something.

According to Albert Einstein, "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I cannot tell you now many times I have witnessed people with their horses doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the horse to behave differently, all because their ego gets in the way of saying a very simple four letter word: "help."

Imagine you have just fallen off of a cruise ship by accident. There you are bobbing in the water with the ship sailing away from you into the vast beyond and you don't open your mouth to yell help all because you are afraid of looking bad. This is what many people do with horses. They get injured, then when they heal, they change nothing about the horse or themselves, then they get injured again, then when they heal they still dont change anything, then they get injured again... you get my point.

Change something. Anything, but preferably for the better. Admit that you don't know something and get some help. Isn't that better than expecting a different outcome and getting hurt again?