I live my life with courage and with no regrets, reaching for what I aspire to and facing my fears. In other words what a horse can teach you about challenging fear and living life at its full potential.

Artur Rojek (Polish musician) said once: 'it is so nice to go for a head-on crash and to see what it brings you (...) It is when I am afraid of something when I actually go for it, against everything'. I got inspired and intrigued. I thought: 'I wonder how different life would look like if to follow his example?'. It took me a while before the moment to practice the same strategy appeared. The strategy somehow tricky as opposed to the natural flight instinct to escape from what we are afraid of. The strategy though that encourages to leave the comfort zone and broaden the views of new possibilities. The strategy, at least, that feels like living life at its full potential. 

 

I found a teacher of the Artur Rojek's strategy in a horse called Czarek. Not too tall, an auburn horse with a funny punk hairstyle mane and a charming trouble-maker look. Meeting Czarek turned out to be an excellent test for my self-confidence and the key was the activity of cleaning his hooves (an essential activity before any ride that requires a horse to pick up a leg). Every time I approached the horse and asked him to lift his back foot, he would pull it away and kick. And I would get back absolutely frightened. The more I tried the more scared, angry and frustrated I became and the more impatient and annoyed the horse would be. Eventually he ended up having no clue of what I expected him to do. I gave up a couple of times and I asked someone else for help. But as I witnessed their success I knew that the problem was not the horse, but my fear and lack of confidence.

Horses in a natural way feel safe being accompanied by calm and confident people (not aggressive). This is a typical herd behaviour. Horses are highly social herd animals that seek for the leader to follow. If you trust yourself and you have confidence in your decisions you can gain horse's trust. Likewise, you can win other people's trust too.

Fot. Darek Gross

 
One day I decided to take the risk. My strong focus on the aim managed to outbalance the fear. I approached the horse with a great care yet much more decisively than before. Instead of reaching for his back leg from a distance I lent it confidently on my hip so that he felt well my presence and felt safe too. I calmly cleaned all his hooves. This time Czarek did not even try to pull his legs away. I succeeded! This was so much more than a routine hooves cleaning. This was a practical lesson of challenging the fear. A lesson of living life with courage.

In an amazingly natural way Czarek explained to me how important self-confidence is. Thanks to him I also experienced that perhaps the best way to overcome the fear is to face it. Addressing the fear is liberating. It helps us to regain the control over our lives and we re-win strength to reach for what we aspire to.

This story is not to encourage you to put your live or other people's lives at risk. This is an inspiring metaphor for everyday life, our relations with others and the surrounding world. The metaphor for challenging consciously and carefully anything that stops us from reaching for our goals. Marie Curie summarized it with a beautiful sentence that I have heard just today: 'Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood'

And you, what do You aspire to reach in your life?