Think Like a Horse: Lessons in Life, Leadership, and Empathy from an Unconventional Cowboy
272
Think Like a Horse: Lessons in Life, Leadership, and Empathy from an Unconventional Cowboy
272Hardcover
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Overview
Grant Golliher is what some would call a “horse whisperer,” able to get a wild horse to calmly accept a saddle and a rider without the use of force. Through training thousands of horses, many traumatized or abused, Golliher was able to learn essential lessons about communication, boundaries, fairness, trust, and respect—lessons that apply not just to horses but to humans as well. It’s why celebrities, Fortune 500 executives, professional coaches, supreme court justices, and even ordinary families from around the world flock to his Wyoming ranch every year to take part in what one CEO called “the most transformational experience I have ever encountered.”
Horse whispering may sound like magic, but as Grant explains in Think Like a Horse, it’s not really all that mysterious. The lessons he shares are as fundamental and ageless as the relationship between horses, the people who ride them, and the beauty of the West. In fact, it’s an approach that anyone can learn, and should learn, in order to better understand our common humanity, overcome trauma, foster more fulfilled relationships, and unlock untapped potential in virtually every aspect of our lives. All you have to do is think like a horse.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780593331927 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/31/2022 |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Sales rank: | 46,627 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
You Can't Lie to a Horse
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
They see through us at a glance.
-Herman Melville
The galloping hoofbeats slowed and came to a halt. The frightened young horse had stopped running around the pen and turned toward the middle, where I stood. I could hear his heavy breathing and smell the sweat that streaked his rich chestnut coat-the inspiration for the name we'd given him, Wildfire. Not long ago, he'd been living wild with a herd of mustangs, never touched by a human hand. Now it was up to me to teach him how to live and work with people so that he could be adopted into a good home.
"He's considering that maybe I'm not so scary after all," I told the group of people watching from the fence. "I can't force him to trust me; he has to decide to do that for himself. I want him to choose to face his fear, rather than fleeing. So what I'm doing is making the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult. Running away is hard work. Coming to be with me is easy. He can rest here in the middle."
The horse hadn't quite realized this yet, but I noted that his expression had changed. His wild eyes were softening, and he was lowering his head, a sign of submission. Soon, I could tell, he'd be ready to walk slowly toward me, and I'd feel his warm breath as he reached out his head to sniff me. I knelt down in the dirt, making myself as small and unthreatening as possible. He'd shown respect to me, so now it was time for me to show humility to him, to release the pressure and indicate that I was not a predator.
As I waited for the colt to take those first tentative steps of trust, something on the other side of the pen caught my attention. Standing by the fence was a young cowboy, tears streaming down his handsome face.
Jeremy Morris was our first employee at Diamond Cross Ranch, and at that point he'd been working for us for just a couple of weeks-or rather, as my wife, Jane, and I liked to joke, we'd been working for him. A born leader with natural confidence and charisma, Jeremy was the kind of guy people loved to be around and were quick to follow. But he didn't take direction easily. Not long after he began working for us, I asked him to ride a horse I'd recently gotten in a trade.
"Don't tie him up tight," I warned. I'd already learned that this triggered panic in the horse. He would pull back violently, fighting the rope and risking injury to himself and anyone around him. But Jeremy didn't listen, and that horse freaked out. He reared up, breaking the rope, and then flipped over backward, scuffing up Jeremy's saddle. Luckily no one was hurt, but they could have been.
Jeremy was good at his job, but he'd always push the boundaries. He'd show up tired for work because he'd been out partying the night before. Still, he was talented with the horses and cows (and great with our corporate clients, who thought he looked like a Western movie star in his buckaroo outfit and silk necktie). The other ranch hands liked him, and our kids adored him. So we tried to make it work. Jane and I were inexperienced leaders ourselves at that time, so I'm sure we made our share of mistakes.
Jeremy had been around horses his whole life and had come to us because he wanted to learn my training methods. Like me, he'd been raised with the tough cowboy approach, but he was intrigued by the possibility of a way to train horses that didn't rely on fear, pain, or force. I'd explained to him that I couldn't really teach him a method, but I could share the philosophy-the set of principles that all my training is based on. Every horse is different, and each one requires a somewhat different approach, but the principles stay consistent.
I know these principles-which I'll be sharing in the pages ahead-work with horses. I've seen it hundreds, if not thousands of times. But back in those days, I had only a hunch that they might apply to humans as well. So it surprised me to see the impact of my words and my demonstration on the young cowboy by the ringside.
Today, almost two decades later, I wouldn't be surprised at all. It's become common for people to approach me after demonstrations with tears in their eyes. I've seen powerful CEOs grapple with their own shortcomings as leaders while watching a wild horse respond to firm but gentle boundaries. I've seen fathers break down in tears, recognizing that they were too harsh with their children. I've seen grown men and women begin to release decades of hidden trauma as they understand for the first time that it's safe to trust. I've learned that the horses have an extraordinary ability to reveal people to themselves. In so doing, they become a powerful catalyst for personal growth and leadership development.
Like I always say: you can lie to others, and you can lie to yourself, but you can't lie to a horse.
A Horse Is Like a Mirror
Why is it that so many of us can be truly ourselves around a horse? Perhaps it's because horses see us for who we really are. As prey animals, they're highly sensitive, attuned to human body language and energy. Horses have a direct line of sight to what's inside of us. They see who we really are, not who we pretend to be. They intuitively know what we're made of, and they can sense our intentions.
"Put a wild horse in the middle of a group of people, and it will pick out the most dangerous guy, every time," says my friend Mike Buchanan. Mike worked at the nearby Honor Farm, running a program that taught ex-convicts to gentle and train mustangs. It's a win-win idea: these men, who are getting ready to reenter society, get to learn some valuable skills, and the horses get trained so they can be put up for public adoption. Mike said that when a new group arrived, he would tell the guys to stand around the edge of a big pen, and then he would turn a horse loose inside. That horse would run around, and pretty soon it would throw its head up and snort at a particular fellow in the group. Without fail, the horse knew which among the men was the most dangerous criminal. The horse could also pick out the least threatening guy-the one at the bottom of the pecking order-and would be drawn to him.
Sometimes a horse knows us even better than we know ourselves.
A favorite poem of mine is called "The Guy in the Glass" by Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr. It's about the idea that we all have to answer to ourselves in the end-"The feller whose verdict counts most in your life / Is the guy staring back from the glass." Oftentimes, for this very reason, we avoid taking a good hard look in the mirror. We're embarrassed, ashamed, or just not brave enough to reckon with who we are.
This is where I'm grateful for the horses in my life. They've acted as a mirror, reflecting my own shortcomings back to me even when I didn't want to see them. They've helped me to see myself as I am, not as who I hope to be or pretend to be. Too many of us hide from ourselves, pushing the parts we don't like out of sight and going about our business, hoping others won't see them. But if you're walking through life trying to look like someone you're not, that's hard work. You can't keep it up for too long. You build up shame and self-hatred around the things you're hiding, and you live in fear of them leaking out for all the world to see.
Many people find it hard to admit their own faults, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, wounds, or fears-even to themselves. For someone in a leadership position, whom people look up to, this can be doubly true. And yet it's critical that we find a way to be honest about all of who we are. If we are to grow, as leaders, as parents, and as human beings, and be able to help others do the same, we need to stop pretending. I think that's why so many people find the experience at our ranch to be life-changing. No one's pointing out their faults or confronting them with their fears, but they naturally start being more real with themselves. It's a safe place to see themselves honestly-and to see the possibility of transformation.
We Live What We've Learned
For Wildfire, like hundreds of other horses I've known over the years, I was his last chance. He'd been adopted by well-meaning but inexperienced folks who loved the romantic idea of owning a mustang but hadn't the first idea what to do with a wild horse. He'd ended up in their backyard, and they couldn't even get close to him. After a few failed attempts and a couple of close calls, he'd been written off as "dangerous" and "untrainable."
"That horse is more trouble than he's worth," I'd been told. As I began to work with him, it wasn't hard to see why. At first, he galloped wildly around the pen, clearly terrified of human contact. I just waved the long-handled flag I carried, encouraging him to run. I didn't blame him for his behavior. Who knew what he'd been through in his short life. Had he been terrorized by helicopter roundups and loud-voiced men who tore him away from his herd? Had he been trapped in a narrow chute, branded, vaccinated, and packed into a dark, noisy truck with other frightened colts? As I told Jeremy and the others watching that day, "He's just living what he's learned."
Every horse that comes to me is living what he's learned. He has a story, but he can't tell it. If I don't know his story-and I often don't-all I have to go on are the signs he gives me. Pay close enough attention and it's not hard to connect the dots. Certain triggers will provoke certain reactions. A horse that's head-shy-afraid of having his face or ears touched and being haltered-may have been beaten. A horse that's aggressive may have been spoiled, allowed to get away with disrespectful behavior until he's become dangerous. Humans traumatize horses in countless ways-sometimes out of cruelty, but more often simply out of ignorance. Many people don't realize there is a better way.
Sometimes you need a lot of patience to see the good in a horse when the fears from his past are overshadowing his strengths.
"You gotta believe in him and treat him like the horse you know he can be, not the horse he's being right now," I told Jeremy and the others. "It's not just about today; it's about the rest of his life. If you only focus on what he's doing wrong, you won't have the patience to help him grow into his potential." I always say, if you don't believe in a horse-or a person, for that matter-you shouldn't be working with him in the first place.
Over the course of an hour or so, Jeremy watched as I drove the colt in circles-letting him run, giving him the freedom to move his feet. Horses are flight animals, and they're naturally claustrophobic. If you trap them, they'll panic and fight. But if you let a horse run, he'll gain confidence. I don't hobble horses or tie them down in the way the old horse-breakers did. With enough rope, you can restrain a horse, but that won't make him trust you. It just drives the fear inside. Like the great horsemen I learned from, I do almost all of my initial work with horses in a round pen, without restraints. The round pen has no corners where a horse can get trapped, so despite the fact that it's a small space, it allows them to keep moving. They always have an escape route. A round pen has soft footing and solid fencing, so they can't hurt themselves. This makes it a perfect environment for training because the horse feels relatively safe.
I want horses to feel like they have the freedom to choose. I respect their intelligence and their instincts. I keep my body language as nonthreatening as possible, and I let them keep running until they make the decision to turn toward me and face their fear on their own terms. Horses appreciate being given this freedom.
I think human beings are very much the same. We don't want someone telling us what to do and forcing us against our will. We're much more likely to trust and learn from others when we're allowed the freedom to make our own choices. That's what Wildfire did. Panic slowly gave way to curiosity, until the young horse chose, of his own accord, to approach me, head lowered as a sign of submission.
There are few moments in life that are more magical than those when a wild animal freely decides to give you his trust. As I reached out to touch him and let him sniff me, I felt the sense of wonder I always feel at that first moment of connection, which some horse trainers call "hooking on" or "joining up." But in this particular instance, my mind was also on the cowboy. What was Jeremy seeing as he watched the horse? What had moved him to tears?
What story was he carrying inside?
Unlocking Hope
It wasn't the moment to ask, that much I knew. People are like horses in this regard: you can't force them to trust you, or corner them and expect that they'll open up. All you can do is create an environment in which they feel safe, be patient and consistent, and give them the freedom to choose. Trust is the essential foundation of any relationship, whether with a human or an animal. And it doesn't come easily to most of us. That can be hard when you care about someone. "Why won't my teenager talk to me?" "Why didn't my partner share what's really going on?" "Why don't my employees tell me what they actually think?" The answer? They haven't yet decided it's safe to do so.
When Jeremy worked for us, it was clear he didn't have the words to speak about what had happened in his life, any more than the mustang colt did. But I sensed that it had been hard-much harder than anything I'd personally experienced. Eventually, he moved on to work for a neighboring ranch, but we remained close. It would be many, many years before I would learn what was behind those tears.
"I didn’t have the language or the bravery to tell anyone my story,” he confirmed later. “I didn’t even admit it to myself. I didn’t know the pain I was in.” The only clues to his troubled past were a certain look he’d get in his eyes—a combination of fear and anger, not dissimilar to the eyes of a wild and frightened horse—and a set of self-destructive behaviors that I had come to know all too well over the two summers he worked for us and the years that followed.
Jeremy had spent his whole life trying to stay ahead of his past, fleeing his inner demons. When he felt cornered and couldn’t outrun them, he’d try to drink them into submission instead. He lived in our bunkhouse and we loved him like family. People were drawn to him wherever he went, but perhaps that only drove his secrets deeper inside—as if he was afraid that people wouldn’t like him if they knew the truth.
"Secrets can kill you,” Jeremy says today. “They almost killed me.” He means that literally. After he stopped working for us, he bounced around a lot, met and married a wonderful girl named Mary, became a father, and almost lost all of it when his secret drinking and compulsive lies drove a wedge into his marriage. Life gave him chance after chance—several dream jobs, talent to burn, and a wife and friends who loved him—but none of those things could free him from the destructive effects of his self-hatred.
"There was this pit of pain deep inside me," he says.
For years, his buried story ate away at him, robbing him of sleep, of peace, and of any ability to trust, particularly when it came to women. Eventually, separated from his wife and baby'son, he reached a point where he was drinking a bottle of whiskey a night, all by himself. He drove blackout drunk from Arizona to Wyoming pulling a trailer full of horses. When he woke up in a truck stop, missing a mirror, he had no memory of how he got there. But even that didn’t stop him. The next day, after dropping off the horses, he was pulled over and given a DUI—his fourth. He kept drinking as he drove back to Jackson, Wyoming.
"I’d reached a point where it felt like life wasn’t worth living anymore. I considered just driving off the road," he recalls. And then, as he was heading up Teton Pass, he heard a siren behind him. His fifth DUI, the second in forty-eight hours. And in Wyoming, this meant going straight to jail and staying there until you see a judge. Jeremy had no choice but to stop running.
That night, standing in the corner of a crowded holding cell with more than a dozen other men, he felt utter despair. He was in so much trouble. Five DUIs. How was he going to tell his wife? There was no way his fragile marriage could survive this. He was broke, and now there would be legal fees and fines to pay. He might face jail time. And he didn’t know if he had what it would take to beat his addiction. He’d tried so much already—gone to the meetings, counted the days, done the counseling.
Table of Contents
Introduction All I Really Need to Know I Learned from a Horse 9
Chapter 1 You Can't Lie to a Horse 23
Chapter 2 Feel Can't Be Taught, but It Can Be Learned 43
Chapter 3 Give Him the Name You Want Him to Live Up To 61
Chapter 4 Clear Boundaries Make Happy Horses 81
Chapter 5 Make the Right Thing Easy and the Wrong Thing Difficult 111
Chapter 6 Slow to Take and Quick to Give 129
Chapter 7 It's Not About Today, It's About the Rest of Her Life 155
Chapter 8 If You Deal with an Attitude, You Won't Have to Deal with an Action 175
Chapter 9 You Can Be Bitter or You Can Be Better 195
Chapter 10 Don't Be Afraid to Move Your Feet 213
Chapter 11 Every Horse Needs a Purpose 237
Chapter 12 Show Your Other Side 261
Acknowledgments 283
Photo Credits 287
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