You might have seen that I’ve been building my skills in working with horses over the last year. I’ve been learning a ton through lessons and workshops, reading, practicing what I’m learning with different horses. Because horses are highly sensitive beings, I’m learning about myself as an HSP, or highly sensitive person (learn more about the HSP trait here), the nervous system, power and the use of it (or avoidance of it), authentic leadership, and parenting. I’ve even taken some of what I’ve learned and applied it to my rescue dog who’s had trauma in her life. It’s stretching myself in ways that I’d hoped for and didn’t expect.
Mark Rashid, a lifelong horseman, aikido practitioner, storyteller, and musician, has become one of my favorite teachers (though I’ve not yet met him). He wraps his lessons about building partnerships with horses in stories, which makes it fun and easy reading and memorable, too. I just finished reading “Nature in Horsemanship” in which he explores what he has learned through aikido and horsemanship and how they inform each other.
One of his stories particularly resonated with me. He described what might have been his most challenging learning experience, a seminar in which he earned his second-degree blackbelt in aikido (which literally translates to “the way of harmony with universal energy.”) A lot of people took the seminar and space was limited, so they had to practice without mats. When they were thrown to the ground, then, they landed on a hard wood floor. Because of this, the teachers instructed everyone to be mindful to not injure each other needlessly.
Mark was paired with another student, who was also a teacher of his and had more training and experience. Mark respected him, but by the end of the seminar, Mark had taken a real beating. Though the teachers reminded his partner repeatedly to take it easy, he flung Mark on the floor over and over with great force (sometimes with more force after the reminder). As Mark got weaker, it seemed the attacks got even more forceful. Mark earned his belt, but his body was so battered by the end that it took him a month to physically recover and longer emotionally. He almost quit.
Mark had a really hard time reconciling his experience with what he believed were the principles of aikido. In his own words, “The biggest problem I was having was that in the very beginning, the thing that drew me to aikido was the idea of developing harmony even during the most difficult of situations, and taking care not to injure an opponent even when they were attacking.” Even though Mark accepted that physical injury was part of learning aikido, he had expected a harmonious relationship, one in which his partner was as concerned with his well-being as he was.
Mark spent months reflecting and soul-searching before he came to a new understanding of the situation and harmony. He realized that his perspective was limited. He had been focusing on why his partner had taken advantage of him and didn’t seek to harmonize with him. What he came to realize was this,
“He trained hard and with spirit. I, on the other hand, stood around and waited for him to change…without changing a thing I was doing.”
According to Mark, partners train together to improve. Each person is working on themselves and their aikido. “The only way for harmony to be achieved while they practice together is if both individuals train honestly and to the best of their ability.” He wasn’t doing his best, but his partner was.
“My partner refused to back off that night because then his best aikido would have been substandard and untrue to himself. In other words, he would have been doing my aikido, not his. By the same token, by allowing him to throw me around unchecked like I had, I had unwillingly given up my best aikido, and instead I ended up only doing his aikido. I had sold myself short.”
Mark goes on to connect this to working with horses, but for me the story fully registered as a leadership story. How often as a leader do you do someone else’s leadership instead of your own? I’m sure you’ve had an experience, maybe a recurring one with a certain person, that you have walked away shaking your head at how it went. You imagined it going so differently and were taken aback by how the other person reacted. Maybe you were embarrassed or ashamed at how you let them take control of the situation. Maybe you weren’t even aware that at some point you let them take control of the situation. Maybe you wish you could’ve gotten out of your own tunnel vision to see the possibility of doing things differently.
There is a lot of talk and content out there these days about authentic leadership. I am a strong advocate for showing up authentically as a leader, and I also recognize it is easier said than done. Authentic leadership requires self-awareness and reflection. You can’t do your own leadership without knowing what that means to you. It also requires grace, compassion, and holding things lightly. Without those things, one can feel immobilized by the fear that is associated with stepping bravely into one’s own shoes to lead others.
Returning to Mark’s story. After realizing that he wasn’t giving his best aikido, he also realized that it was just with that one person. He decided to change that and the next time he had a class with that person, he realized the falling feeling in his stomach that he’d always had practicing with that person was gone.
You might ask yourself where you are doing someone else’s leadership. Can you recognize it? What in your body tells you that you’re not aligned with your authentic leadership? What might you do to choose your leadership? Does making that choice shift how you’re feeling it in your body? If you need help with this kind of self-exploration and alignment, you might want to check out coaching with Gathering Elan.