52 Fridays 2012 – #9 Being A Gift To The Horsebiz

52 Fridays is an ongoing series for equestrian professionals and equine business owners and managers, with marketing and public relations stories, ideas, tips, and resources shared here each Friday.

It’s kinda funny and has become something of a pop-culture joke, but among the most perplexing questions humankind has wrassled with over the millennia are the infamous ‘who am I?’ and ‘why am I here?’ ones.

Do you ever have those moments when life trips you up and you say ‘why?!’ During those times, I work on seeing it as an opportunity. Sometimes there’s grief, consternation, anger, sadness, etc. – yes, absolutely! And then, rather than getting stuck there, I ask myself, what is the gift in this? What am I not seeing? What can I do differently?

The horse world has been going through some tremendous challenges and shifts these past few years. Some lament ‘the good old days’ and others have set about creating new ways of being and doing in the horse world. Which approach is working for you?

Don’t get me wrong, I have a healthy respect for, and love of, equestrian tradition and history, and all of the movers and shakers and legends and unspoken heroes and horses that have brought the equine world to this point in time.

The questions I’m asking myself these days are about what’s best for the horse, what’s best for the rider, and what’s going to be the best whatever to take us forward from where we are? What will allow the horse world to thrive?

I watched a webinar this week, a global one with over 20,000 viewers from countries around the world. Very cool to be thinking about the folks in Estonia and India that were interested in and watching the very same thing on their own computer screens.

Anyway, this webinar featured a whole bunch of speakers, topic ‘thought leaders’ who are considered ‘experts’ in this particular field. They had a whole bunch of viewpoints on the topic at hand…and in general I found many of their views to be heavy and uninspiring. What I would rather have heard were some questions getting me to think about how I might better discover my own solutions, answers, and path forward. It’s been  food for thought in the days since then.

So this time, rather than providing answers to a perplexing marketing problem or pointing out some horsebiz resource, I thought I’d ask a few questions….

• What if the thing most tripping you up in life and work right now simply resolved itself? What would that look and feel like?

• How might each of us be a contribution to the horsebiz, to the horses and people in this world, and work together to create more and not less?

• What if every day had moments of joy that, rather than being engrossed in email and a to-do list, we could actually see and experience and acknowledge?

• What could we allow, gift, and receive that would create a thriving horse world and provide equine interaction opportunities for anyone that wanted it?

I realize there are loyal and faithful readers out there who might be going ‘WTF?! How does this apply to horsebiz marketing?!’

It’s a really good question. I would turn it around and ask YOU – how DO those questions apply to your horsebiz marketing? I’m really curious what might happen if some of us started percolating, or percolating even more, in this direction. What else is possible? What can we co-create? What’s the amazing horsebiz gift just waiting for us to collaborate on and make happen?

Do you think this is all hooey, or does it inspire you to see exciting possibilities?

I love this Albert Einstein quote about miracles:

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”  

If that one doesn’t float your boat, there are other miracle quotes here. One little miracle I recently discovered was a whole bunch of papier-mâché birds that someone wired into the leafless lakefront trees during our recent spell of summer-ish weather. That’s one of the birds in the picture in this post; they’re a little gift of joy every day I walk by them. And someone did it not for money or to achieve fame or a business goal, but because they thought it was a cool idea. Do you think they’re aware of the joy it’s brought me? How many of us are aware of how what we do affects others? If we were, would we do things differently?

My final question for this post is…

What if everything that happens in the horsebiz is already a miracle?

Well, what if it is?

Many thanks to my friends Jennie and Blossom for the questions they’ve asked me.

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