Tag Archives: horses

Innovation and Creativity – A beginning

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I was doing a bit of musing about some low-tech innovations that I am the beneficiary of but first need to take the photo that explains it, so when an article appeared in my inbox about creativity, innovation the neuroscientific understanding of the process, I thought I’d talk about creativity and innovation in general.

So lets get clear on what I mean by creativity.

I feel the need to do so because for many years I had a very narrow definition of what creativity meant. Where or how I picked it up I don’t know but it  is so deeply seated that it tries every now and again to steer my thinking. In my little universe I divided people into two types, those who are creative and those who aren’t. Those who are creative are artistic, and those that are artistic do one of two things, paint (and draw) or play music. So if someone said to me “you are so creative”, I’d bemusedly deny it as both playing music and drawing are way out of my skill set. And besides, I’m a scientist I’d say. (Even though it is many years since I have worked in any scientific capacity, I still identify myself that way which is is why I get so excited about Neuroscience articles). So sorry all you photographers, writers, film makers, dancers, cake decorators, knitters of the world according to DjD you are neither creative nor artistic.

How silly is that! I probably got told in an art class at primary school that I had no future as an artist and from then on art meant painting and I was hopeless at it.

Here are a few definitions of creative garnered from almighty Google

  1. Characterized by originality and expressiveness; imaginative
  2. The tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others
  3. Any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one
  4. Relating to or involving the use of the imagination or original ideas to create something
  5. Having or showing an ability to make new things or think of new ideas
  6. Generating new ideas and concepts, or making connections between ideas where none previously existed.

I particularly like the one from this mornings article “the purposeful generation and implementation of a novel idea”. Within an organisation that becomes valuable when it “results in a measurably useful outcome”. In fact we can all be creative (regardless of our ability to wield a hog bristle filbert) and we can develop our creativity given the right conditions.. Our organisations, our world, is crying out for us to increase our creativity in response to the ever increasing complexity of life. We need creativity to pervade everything from the response to how to improve customer service to tackling climate change and species extinction.

The first step –  Idea generation

A fallow field

After the rain

In traditional agriculture a field was left fallow (no crop) one year in three. A period of rest for the soil, that led to a stronger and more productive crop the following year. In order for creativity to flourish we need a fallow mind. Not an empty mind, a fallow field is not devoid of life, but one where there is space for new ideas to generate and be noticed. To put it another way, an open mind, a mind that is not overly constrained by rules. From a Neuroscience perspective – lower cognitive control. A playful mind

creative play

When we take people out of their normal environment and into the paddock with our horses, we give them an opportunity to open their minds, to be a bit playful, to be unconstrained by the usual clutter of their work day mind. We offer them a fallow field in which to open to their creativity.

No internet !

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My connection to the world has finally been restored after three days.  Kind of hard to work from home when the world out there ceases to exist, or might as well have. Trouble with the tower (existing in the dark ages of a 3G network here) .

So no blog content for the last few days but a chance to play around with the camera.

So here is a mysterious tall dark and handsome stranger coming to steal your heart (he already has mine).

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Let’s talk about …….

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After in my last post highlighting meeting expectations I thought I had better not complete the title with the refrain that keeps playing in my head “Let’s talk about sex Baby, Let’s talk about you and me” as I have no intention of talking about sex. Maybe about you and me, but only in the general humanity sense, not the familiar sense.

So back on the topic of what gets in the way of your achieving success (however success looks for you). I was going to muse about perfectionism though it is not an over bearing trait of mine (I did a quiz to find out and and wasn’t 100% happy with the result so I did another one, so now I can safely say that I am not overly hampered by perfectionist tendencies). Actually the real reason I did the quizzes was because I was putting off going out into the rain to feed my poor wet horses. Now procrastination, there’s a topic that sits really close to home. My perfectionist tendencies come to the fore when I am using them to procrastinate. I am not a tidy person (and I say this with pride – hmm). I don’t mean I am an absolute slob, but I really don’t notice little things out of place, or feel compelled to have everything in its place, except when I am procrastinating! It is amazing how important it can be to make sure all the books are back in the book shelf IN ORDER when there is something else I need to do.

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From a neuroscience perspective, we are rewarded for procrastination because we get little hits of dopamine when we complete those so very important tasks of lining up our pens in size order (because you have to many different ones because you just cannot resist a free pen with someones company name on it) or your coloured pencils by hue. I mean really who want their coloured pencils or textas to not look like a colour chart.  That why it is such a hard habit to break. Its the real marshmallow now versus waiting test. All those kids that waited to eat their marshmallow went on to be  more focused on the end goal than the eat and be dammed mob who no doubt went on to become epic procrastinators. I want my reward NOW.

You will be happy to know that somewhere in the middle of writing this I did don the waterproof (semi as it turned out) gear and took care of the mob.

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Next time I will write about perfectionism  – unless someone has messed up my coloured pencils again.

7 Ways To Achieve Success

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One of the ways is to exceed expectations, so I guess that means I have to come up with at least 8 ways.  And do what I say I am going to do so I have to produce a list, even though producing that list was not my reason for this mornings musings. So here goes:

  1. Start. If you never start how can you ever be successful?
  2. Fail. I’m not advocating racing out and finding someway to fail spectacularly – do not jump off a tall building testing if you can flap your arms like a bird and fly, but give it a go, jump off a small wall or something.
  3. Regroup. Learn from your failure, adjust, start again.
  4. Don’t give up. You are running a marathon. You can see that big flag thing across the finish line. Your throat and chest are burning, your muscles feel like lead and the other 400 contestants are already finished. You can stop short or you can push on just that bit extra, even if you have to crawl, and get over that line. In the end you may still have come last in the race but how different will you feel about yourself for having not given up compared to quitting.
  5. Ask for help. Many of us like to give help but we aren’t so good at asking for it. Whats the worse that can happen if you ask.
  6. Celebrate the small wins. When we have one of those big hairy audacious goals its very easy to look at how far we still have to go and feel dispirited. How about looking at how far you have come and celebrating the steps along the way.
  7. Don’t lose focus. Or in other words, don’t fritter.  I love the ethos behind “does it make the boat go faster” which was behind Australia’s successful Americas Cup win. I cannot recall much about who was who, who bankrolled, who said what, but that phrase says it all to me about not frittering. Lots of “nice to have” things will come up but if they don’t make the boat go faster, park them till you have achieved the original goal.
  8. Be flexible. This might seem to be in opposition to point before but being flexible does not mean following every passing whim that floats across your busy mind (what i think of as the Kaleidoscopic mind). It means adjusting based on your failures, small wins, experience and what gos on out there. It’s pretty pointless having a goal of say being the first person  on Mars if someone landed there last week and sent a postcard. Adjust your goal, be the first person to hold a party on Mars whilst wearing a pink tutu perhaps.
  9. Exceed expectations. That’s 9 things !

Gratuitous photo of my horse,  that’s far to good for me.

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Ah now I am finally getting round to what started me off on this mornings musing. Not what are the ways to be successful, but what gets in our way. For, to be honest, there was not one original thought in that list above (shocking I know!) I mean, 100 people could read that list (or another of its iterations) but will they go on to be successful? I don’t think I could write a list of what gets in our way because there are as probably as many ways as there are people creating them (Setting expectation – no list).

There are some common themes though. I think I have lost count of the times I have read “my horse is too good for me, he deserves his chance to win the Olympics under a better rider” (or words to that effect). So lets deal first with the horse in this equation. What does he want out of the relationship? Does he settle down at night dreaming about future Olympic glory, cursing the fact he cohabits with middle aged beginner who gets nervous at breaking into trot? If he cogitated at all (which he doesn’t) he’d probably be thinking how lucky he was to have a bunch of mates to hang out with, a full belly, and no lions on the horizon. What he actually does is enjoy the feeling of his full belly, the slight breeze o his skin, the teeth of his mate scratching his itch. Lucky horse.

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So whats it really about?  I’m not good enough. There, it’s out there, i know in my deepest core that quite simply I am not good enough and I don’t deserve to be happy, successful, loved, cherished, valued, to own a wonderful horse.

Bunkum. Says who?

Apparently my little inner critic says it to me and your little inner critic says it to you. Now my horse, he doesn’t have a inner critic. He does not have someone that says “your pasterns are too long, you don’t deserve to have an extra bit of hay tonight, let the one with the perfect pasterns have it”. For him its more like “yum yum this hay is good EEEEK here comes bossy pants with teeth bared,  hay isn’t worth getting bitten over, I’ll just eat grass”. He is reacting to what is happening in the moment, making valid choices based on his experiences and then he relaxes, goes back to grazing.

So think about how you snatch joy away from yourself by listening to that refrain from you inner critic and next time he pipes up say inner critic, I hear you, but today I am not listening. You will never shut him up completely. He will always be there ready to throw a bucket of water over your enthusiasm but you can learn to take what he says with a hearty pinch of salt.

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And now I had better stop procrastinating and do some jobs that need doing and will come back to other ways we get in our way in another musing, when the moment is right, when I have done all the things I need to do first before I can start, when …………

Not a Dry Eye in the House

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Tribute

Perhaps a slight exaggeration, its called artistic license.

We have just had our annual Equitana trade show and competition weekend and the handsome hunk of horseflesh and keeper of my heart, Django, competed in the Grand Prix and Grand Prix freestyle. The four days are always a hustle and bustle of clinics, competition, lectures, demonstrations and for those so inclined, shopping.  For us Dressage tragics the big day was Saturday. It started with a 3 hour clinic with Carl Hester , British Dressage superstar and Olympic Gold Medalist and ended with the Freestyle competition. The above photo however reflects a solemn moment in the proceedings. A wonderful gentleman known to the dressage community as Stable Mike passed away all too young this year after a battle with illness. He  had much love for the horses and Django held a special place in his world. (Long black hair, big brown eyes – does it every time).

In a break in the competition tribute was made to Stable Mike and Django was chosen amongst his charges to represented the horses he looked after so well. My big black stallion who had not long completed his own moment in the limelight stepped into the arena and stood like a statue. For the duration of two speeches, a silence and the playing of Mikes favorite song he did not even move an ear. It never ceases to amaze me how our horses respond to the energy around them. He did not understand the words, no one was able to explain it to him what is role was, but nether less he carried it out to perfection (even with a camera man hopping around filming close ups). It is getting in touch with this sort of knowingness that the horses are so good at teaching us.

Thanks to his sponsor Baroque Horse Magazine for a photo that captures the moment so well.

As for the competition its self he did us all proud: not a winner on paper but a winner always where it counts. He may be playing bashful in this but it is quite clear Jeremy is feeling pretty happy.

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Oh and I did go shopping. Early Xmas present.

My Rat Barrow.

A Journey to Horsanity

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Chances are if you are reading this, if you are not yet a horse owner, you are at the least someone who’s dreams resonate to the to sound of galloping hooves or the distant neigh on the wind. As horse owners, riders, lovers, dreamers  we are all, to some extent, aware of the almost mystical hold they have on us. In our horses we find something that talks to us without words, that binds us with emotion,  that both calms and excites our energy. It is not an accident that the horse has accompanied humans in their journey through the ages from wandering hunters to cubicle dwelling knowledge workers .

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Those ancient hunters did not have our sophistication of language, of tools, of machines to do some of our thinking for us. Rather, like the horse, they survived by being able to absorb and interpret the subtle changes in the world around them, to know without needing to analyze, to connect without having to explain. As we have flooded our bodies with the energy of our thinking brain, of our worry about the past, our concern about the multiples possibilities of the future, of the endless what if’s we have lost touch with being fully in the present with our bodies. We have silenced the messages of our emotions in response to everyday life and decisions, sidelining them into a small part of our lives, distrusting their power, their ability to trip up our rational, dispassionate, logical thoughts. Yet thoughts that do not listen to the messages of our energy, that rely purely on words, miss the largest part of what both others and our own bodies are trying to communicate.

Those of us lucky enough to have horses in our daily lives, even if not consciously aware of it, are able to take that metaphoric walk alongside the horse to that place where we can live in the now. By tuning into them, we tune out the maelstrom left over from our day at work. By joining the horse in the now, we find our own sanity.

Thus three women, corporate warriors all, were brought together through their knowing, from their horse sponsored sanity, to designs journeys for others to embark on; reigniting the creativity and innovation and leadership so much needed in our, doing, striving, busy corporate world. To bring together the wisdom of the horse and the creativity of the human. To open the doors of self-knowledge and awareness and to build paths to understanding and working with each other. To look not just at the individual but to look at the whole system in which they operate. To look at an organisation not as a machine which works like clockwork, each part meticulously carrying out it’s predetermined function, but as an organism that must always adjust and accommodate in order to reach peak performance. To take people out of their four walls into the paddock where they can reconnect with a forgotten or hidden self, but also take that approach back into the design of long term cultural change and leadership development initiatives.  To create Horsanity.

Love is 2

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I was going to say “got to love your job” but that would have been wrong on at least two counts. For a start I don’t think of what I do as “just a job”.  Having been able to meld my passion for my horses with a way to reach people and allow them to access their own passion for life through leadership, it is my life. Or part of it. The other part that has been keeping me away from the keyboard, and hence this blog, is my love of travel.

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Its been a very busy few weeks. It started with a seminar we,

Horsanity, facilitated at the magnificent

Emirates Wolgan Valley Resort in the Blue Mountains. Its an extravagantly scenic location and 5 star facilities.

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From there I traveled to Daylesford in Victoria to attend an Equine Psychotherapy week long intensive. This was my final seminar leading to my accreditation as an Equine Learning Practitioner, Foundation Level based on a deep understanding of Gestalt principals.

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Then after all this forced time in gorgeous locations doing something I love I just had to take a holiday! I know, its a hard life but as they say, someone has to do it. The thing is though, its about choice. I remember the day I sat in front of my coach in my former business with the tears yet again streaming down my face saying “I have no choice, I can’t leave, I have loans to pay, obligations to people, I’d be letting people down” but he didn’t let me off the hook. There is always a choice, even doing nothing is a choice.

It took me awhile but to bring it to fruition but that day I finally made the choice to live a life that fills me with joy. Well most of the time, there are somethings you just have to knuckle down and do whether you like it or not, but as long as they are in service of your real intent then that’s ok, you can survive.

So where did I end up in my travels. Well after freezing my freckles off in a cold snap in Daylesford I melted them off at the other extreme in Kakadu and Kununurra taking in the scenery and wildlife.

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Just because ….

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Its a bit hectic at the moment. Big workshop coming up and have been busy preparing all the materials, packing the car with all the extra equipment (there is just enough room left for me) and trying to get all the things done that need to be done (that for some reason I have left till the last minute) before you go away.

We are off to introduce a group of people to “horse time” and here I am wondering how to find some for myself.

We called the business Horsanity for a reason as it is the horses that bring the sanity to our otherwise hectic busy working lives and it pains me to be sitting here (supposedly typing up materials) instead of outside sopping up a bit of that. So just to indulge myself I’ll share a few photos of my therapists.

 

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On this we agree

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There is a joke that says that there is only one thing two horse “experts” can agree on (and expert is used very loosely here) and that is that the third horse expert is wrong.

We can agree on breed but disagree on discipline, or we can disagree on discipline but agree on colour or disagree on colour but agree on tack. We can disagree about just about every manner of husbandry, training or any other thing remotely connected to our beloved equines.

There is one thing, however, that we can probably all agree on. What goes in one end, must come out the other end. Our gorgeous, powerful, dainty, impressive, cute, old, young, tired, playful, strong, timid, fearless equines are all, without exception, perfect machines for turning green stuff into brown stuff. And that means someone has to clear it up, and it is never them.

That is why they have us a body slaves.

More than you need to know? Why am I telling you this?

You can treat it as a mindless task. A mechanical picking up and clearing up whilst your mind wanders off to think about the argument you had with you boss this morning, or how you can attract the attention of the cute bloke at the feed store. There are a multitudes of tasks like this that we do in a day; and so the day slips past, half unnoticed and we wonder where all the time has fled. So I have started applying a form of mindfulness to “poo patrol”. It has its practical side of course, you can tell a lot about the health of your charges by considering their poo. Does it look different today? How many little piles and so on. That is not what I mean however. I mean being fully vested in the process and aware of my surroundings . Instead of think about the emails still to attend to,the bills to pay, the shopping list I keep my attention on the sun on my back, the feel of bending and straightening and lifting and tipping. Of the sounds of the birds, a car in the distance, even the faint sound of a train.

Surprisingly having my attention on the now of what I am doing seems to make the job go faster but the time is not lost, instead it expands. I can move on to those other tasks without the tail chasing feeling of never catching up because I have experienced every moment as it occurs.

And of course it can be applied to everything we do, not just picking up poo. Living life to the fullest does not have to mean a bottomless pocket and a candle that burns at both end as you grasp at more and more experiences, but rather getting more and more out of each experience you have by being present to it.

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