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If You Want to Achieve Something, Quit Moving The Goal Posts.

Writer's picture: Asha WolfAsha Wolf

James and I trail ride frequently. Right from the property where James lives, we can head out and enjoy trees and ponds, hills and farmland, views of the mountains and sky, eagles and hawks. There are great places to trot and canter, and places to just gently stroll along. I challenge myself on these rides to be more like James. To be more in the present moment like a horse. To ask my mind to quiet, and to just sense and feel and be with everything around me. I try to taste the oneness I imagine that James experiences. 

When James and I are together it has always seemed that James reads my mind. Like he can just go inside my head and know what I am thinking. When I am in that right space, I can go inside his. One morning we were in a section of our ride where we were leisurely walking. I found my mind taking over instead of feeling the world around me. My thoughts went off on a trail ride of their own, focusing on all the things I need to do with the new venture I had started. This needs to get done, and then I should do that, and after that I’ll need to do this and then that, and the list was building. In that moment I was feeling as though I never get anything done, and there is only just more to do.

Suddenly, my tangent of thoughts about all the things I need to accomplish was interrupted by a rather clear comment from James inside my head:  “If you want to achieve something, quit moving the goal posts.” My gallop of thoughts instantly stopped. James shows me an image of an arena with an entire course of jumps set up for us to do. He shows me another image of us starting to sail over our first jump. It’s a red oxer. He shows us taking off, he shows us sailing above the red oxer, clearing it beautifully. But, before we land on the other side of the oxer it gets moved further out in front of us. He keeps repeating this little video. Like a reel that keeps playing. We keep jumping, but the jump keeps moving further out in front of us. We never get to land on the other side. It’s like the jump never happens. We never have the thrill of the jump and the exalted satisfaction in the landing on the backside of our jump. 

I chuckle about how James uses something so familiar to us and our partnership to show me how I was forgetting to celebrate my little wins. How I was cheating myself of the thrill of the ride by setting a new goal before I had a chance to fully experience the one I was right in the moment of accomplishing. James was eloquently spot on. Quit moving the goal posts. 



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