Ellen Besso Coaching

Once in a long while I find something I like so much that I reprint it in it’s entirety. The following newsletter sent to me by Martha Beck is one of those. It’s about taking charge of our life…being the leader:

I’m sitting on a horse who is going nowhere.  Supposedly I’m learning to ride but actually I’m learing to tolerate frustration.  The horse, damn her, has intentions of her own.  These include leaning up against things and eating.  They do not include loping with me on her back.

Koelle, my fellow coach and riding instructor, shouts a question: ‘What is your plan?” she asks me. “Where do you want her to go?”

“Wherever,” I say.

“That’s not good enough,” Koelle says.  “She needs a leader.”

I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and picture a path that winds around some of the obstacles in the riding arena.  When I open my eyes and touch the horse with my heel, she sets off, as brisk and willing as she had been recalcitrant.

This is a metaphor for every time I’ve come to a stalemate in my own life.  While waiting for external circumstances to make my decision for me, I’ve found myself utterly frustrated, sometimes near despair.  The solution for this is so simple; I need to close my eyes, visualize a clear path, and then move forward.

This simple process is nine-tenths of the so-called Law of Attraction.  The focused intention of getting somewhere has enormous power to help us get there.  Right now close you eyes, breathe, and picture exactly what you would like to happen during the rest of this day.

Now imagine your life in five years.  What exactly would you like to be doing?  The point of this exercise is not to nail down the future-we cant do that-but to take up the position as the leader of our own lives.  Leaders are sometimes wrong.  If they’re worth a plug nickel, they change their minds when new information becomes available to them.  But by creating plans and acting on them they create an energy zone of clarity and power.  That alone can change your life.  That alone will get the horse moving.

I still can’t ride worth a darn. But now when I ride I know that failure to move forward is not her fault, it’s mine.  And I know that my life, like my obliging mare, cannot take me to wonderful places unless I hold the energy of leadership the whole time I’m on her.  Your life is a horse.  Lead it.