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December 5, 2006

the don’t look back manifesto

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This is terri­fic. From Doug Emer­son over at Pro­fi­ta­ble Hor­se­man.

Don’t Look Back Mani­festo
Hor­ses have been trai­ning me for a long time. Directly and indi­rectly, my expe­rien­ces with them have sha­ped my life. Thoughts on dwe­lling on the past follow.
Riding hor­ses over jumps is life: fast, slow, up, down, con­trol, rec­kless­ness. Thin­king about jum­ping on hor­se­back, I recall the words of a riding ins­truc­tor about show jum­ping. He said, “When you hear the jump rail get clun­ked by your horse’s hoof, DON’T LOOK BACK! Keep both eyes for­ward and focus on the next jump; you can’t fix anything back there!
That defi­ni­tive “clunk” of hoof on wood is paraly­zing to the rider. It means one of two pos­si­ble things have hap­pe­ned. The rail has only been tic­ked and the rider will escape faults on the round or the rail will fall from the stan­dards pena­li­zing the rider on his imper­fect ride.
When clunks occur, the temp­ta­tion to turn to see if the rail came down is addic­tive. Loo­king back blurs the rider’s focus on the next fence. An expert rider already has his eyes and atten­tion on the next jump as he clears the rail directly under him. Timing is cri­ti­cal and focus is impe­ra­tive.
Good timing and power­ful con­cen­tra­tion are uni­ver­sal suc­cess ingre­dients.
Com­pe­ting on a horse in a jum­ping class is much like the way we all do our jobs or run our busi­nes­ses. The jump class is a series of obs­tac­les of dif­fe­rent types over a map­ped course. The horse and rider are a team that meets each cha­llenge head on.
Your job is to be pre­pa­red to do the best you can on each jump in your day. Some­ti­mes we tick, knock down or crash on the jumps in our way. The riding coach speaks the ulti­mate horse sense when he says, don’t look back.
Metapho­ri­cally, the next jump is coming quickly from the future to the pre­sent and the past jump is unchan­gea­ble his­tory.
Focus on the next hurdle with all of your power of con­cen­tra­tion. The time for analy­sis of what hap­pe­ned is later, when the round is over. Too often, we get hung up on what has hap­pe­ned ins­tead of what is hap­pe­ning right now. We know that we can’t change his­tory but that doesn’t stop us from dwe­lling on it.
I don’t sus­pect my horse has spent much of his day worr­ying about which jump rail he knoc­ked down. He is only con­cer­ned with the mat­ters at hand, that being the next jump or his next flake of hay. Horse sense comes easy only to hor­ses.
Unders­tand the impor­tance of today, here and now. Focus and ready for pro­gress. When thoughts mean­der back to “knoc­ked rails” from pre­vious expe­rien­ces, the chance of losing focus heigh­tens and his­tory repeats.
Don’t Look Back.

Thanks, Doug! Great stuff.
[gaping­void mani­festo sub­mis­sion gui­de­li­nes are here.][Mani­festo archive is here.]

3 Responses to “the don’t look back manifesto”

1. Doug Karr says:

   December 5, 2006 at 2:53 PM

   Fan­tas­tic advice… but so tough to do! Thanks, Doug. This is won­der­ful advice.
2. Robert says:

   December 5, 2006 at 2:55 PM

   hey Doug, that one was ama­zing!!! thanks a lot for that!
   prin­ted it out and put it on my wall!
3. Celestria_xt says:

   June 13, 2007 at 1:08 PM

   Kon­nichiwa!
   Check this out!
   *