Stop Standing In Your Own Way

A couple of years ago, I found a “free horse.”  She had been emaciated, abused, and then neglected for the first four years of her life.  Eager to provide a better home for her, I took her.

Previously, I had owned horses and I have dealt with many problem horses, but Calypso was different.  Nearly as wild as a mustang and as hungry as a fox in a hen house, I soon became quite aware that there really is no such thing as a “free” horse. She was quickly depleting my horse budget.  More than anything, though, she was eating up my time and energy.

When we brought her home, she would literally start shivering if you touched her.  As an Arabian, she had retained her spirit amongst the horses, but as soon as a human entered the pasture, it seemed to be broken and replaced entirely by terror.

I spent four hours a day with her just to get her used to human contact.  Even then, I never knew what mood she would be in when I went out.  Her mood swings were as swift and severe as a storm over the ocean.  As a result, it wasn’t long until I began to be gun-shy of her as well.

So, I consoled myself by trying to convince everyone (including me) that I was just letting her adjust.  She’d already had a hard life, why not just let her be a big puppy dog for a while?  I did some self-fulfilling searches on “training a rescue horse,” only clicking on links that seemed to give me more excuses:  The horse needed to be treated different, given extra time, it’s all about trust. 

What about respect?  I had apparently lost it in myself, and so had she.  The truth was not that the horse’s past was getting in the way, but rather that I was getting in the way.  I had let my own fears of failing completely take over and stop me from achieving anything.

I was standing in my own way, effectively immobilizing myself. 

As a perfectionist, I do this a lot.  If I know I can’t do it perfectly, I don’t want to do it at all, and I’ll spend hours doing backwards research (looking for validation that doing nothing is the right approach, I guess).  It has to be all or nothing, because mediocre is not acceptable. 

How many times do we do this with our finances?  We know the end goal we’re shooting for, but we don’t want to take the time to fix what’s wrong with our current financial reality.  Moreover, if taking control and investing won’t mean gaining all the income we want right away, we don’t even want to get started.

I finally got out of my own way, both financially and with training.  Cali and I do a little at a time, always ending on a good note, and my dividends are adding up much more quickly than I thought they would.

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