I am live today with Ginny Telego recording from the Loko Bean in Loudonville, Ohio. Today is a milestone, because this is episode 50, so I thought I’d do something different and share our special conversation with you. We are both very busy, so we kick off the show talking about something everyone struggles with. Work life balance. In fact, I don’t even see balance as something that’s possible. Life has seasons. We may have balance for a moment, but it’s more about adapting and moving from one season to the next.
We talk about what balance really is and if it’s even possible to find. We talk about how it applies to horse training, writing in nice journals, and if it’s possible to balance life, work, family, and business. We also talk about what you do when life throws you off balance like recently when Ginny’s house burnt down. We talk about adapting, grieving, and fear of failure. We really just take you on a conversation with two busy horse professionals who are trying to live their best lives.
“When people get in trouble with horses it’s when they want balance every day.” Stacy Westfall
Show Notes:
[01:53] Stacy has moments of balance, but she doesn’t really view life as a balance. She looks at it more like seasons.
[03:22] Fall makes Stacy want to lay down in the grass and have a nap in the sun.
[05:35] Balance is more like a mindset. There is no one solution.
[06:01] Stacy talks about how daily balance shouldn’t be the goal when training horses.
[07:33] Sometimes when training horses everything has to be deconstructed and taken all apart. If you have balance, you wouldn’t want to take anything apart.
[08:48] Stacy has been buying Fringe journals. She writes more carefully in her nice journals, but her notepad is for messier thoughts.
[11:35] When you’re on a horse with no stirrups you have to be able to adjust yourself moment to moment. The stronger rider you are, the easier it is to rebalance.
[13:04] Balance is really more of a mental balance, even if physical balance is a great analogy.
[14:49] Ginny had to have the mental ability to adapt when her house burnt down. It’s not really balance, it’s adapting.
[17:39] Ginny lost her dogs in the fire, and she had to open herself up to getting new dogs.
[20:05] We really don’t have control over anything. Our brains seek certainty, uncertainty is certain. It’s healthier to learn to adapt than to try to control everything.
[25:36] Grieving can happen for the death of a dream.
[29:27] We talk about avoiding things when you don’t want to fail. Ginny took her own journey of self-awareness.
[31:34] After a loss, we are forced with decisions of whether to take a safe path or to put ourselves out there again.
[34:48] We have to take chances and allow vulnerability. Negative things can also happen after success.
[41:05] Why do we feel like we have to force ourselves to do things we don’t want to do? Why do we discount what we are really feeling?
[47:45] As human beings, we practice incongruence, because we don’t want other people to feel uncomfortable.
[53:49] We have organic conversations, because we are congruent with who we are.
[54:58] We are always trying to help our clients take information from horses and use it in a useful way.
[01:02:20] If we ask our horses to step into uncertainty, it’s only fair that we do the same thing.
[01:07:44] Ginny is doing her graduate program for her not other people. She is being congruent on why she is doing it.
“It's been more important for me to find the ability to regain my balance fairly quickly. So that even when something uncertain happens, it doesn't completely throw me off.” Ginny Telego