The Real Secret
A Relationship with Your Horse
wholly irrational. They weren’t. Because they were driven by passion. Passion led me through the creation of a unique international motion picture superstar, with no help whatsoever from Hollywood. And passion led me through the creation of a national best selling book on an entirely different subject about which I knew nothing a couple of years before. Two completely different incarnations in this life.
All passion driven. As it was with horses. Passion made me care. So where did it come from?
Where else? It came from a horse. Because I allowed it to come from a horse. Because I allowed my very first horse to choose me. To tell me that he trusted me to be his leader. Not the other way around. It was his choice. And when it happened everything changed. For me, and my horse. He was no longer my horse. I wasn’t his owner. The first line of the movie Hildago said it right. Cash was now my little brother.
And I promised him that day that he would have the best life I could possibly give him. And I meant it. No stone would be left unturned because I now cared deeply about this
there were things in his life that needed to get better. If what I was being told did not appear to be in the best interest of this horse who had trusted me and chosen me then I was not going to listen to someone else telling me what I needed to be doing to my horse that I loved and he didn’t even know. I would get the answers myself. The true answers. Because I now had the passion to drive me through the barriers. And to withstand the onslaught from those who did not care about their horses as much as I did.
I rejected their lists. All those things you are supposed to do when you find yourself owning a horse. Or six. And Kathleen and I set out to find the real answers for ourselves.
Now that we have eight horses living happy, healthy, stress free lives with none of the traditional problems and issues of so many horses living a more traditional life, what do you suppose has happened. Barely a day passes that someone doesn’t ask if I have a list of everything we’ve done in order to obtain the results we have.
A list. I can’t believe it. A list.
If you don’t have passion for what you’re doing, for your horse, no list will make even the slightest difference in your success. If you don’t care enough about your horse to passionately want the very best life in the world for him or her, then none of what I’ve written before, or here, will make any difference whatsoever. To you or your horse.
Steven Covey has his seven habits of highly effective people. Andy Andrews has seven decisions. There are twelve keys to success. Thirty secrets. Eight principles. Five things you must know. Eight ways to the top. Six lessons in life.
But I believe my dad had it right. There’s really only one thing you need to be successful in whatever you’re trying to do. And that one thing drives all the others. I remember the conversation as if it were yesterday. We were driving home from my part-time job at Bob’s Camera Store and I had been thinking a lot about the future. How was a sixteen-year-old supposed to know what to do with his life; which way to point? There were so many things to consider, and college was barely a year away. As we rounded the corner from Highland onto Southern I turned to my dad.
“How am I supposed to go about choosing a career? Where do I start?” His response was profound, and not of the times, and for some reason that surprised me.
“Do what you would do if you didn’t have to earn any money at it whatsoever,” he said. “Only then will you be passionate about your life and your work. Only then will you do your best job. Only then will you be happy.”
It all came down to passion. Just that one thing. Without passion the obstacles usually win.
That conversation with my dad was fifty-nine years ago and it changed the direction of my life forever, ratifying dreams that I had only thought of as wholly irrational. They weren’t. Because they were driven by passion. Passion led me through the creation of a unique international motion picture superstar, with no help whatsoever from Hollywood. And passion led me through the creation of a national best selling book on an entirely different subject about which I knew nothing a couple of years before. Two completely different incarnations in this life.
All passion driven. As it was with horses. Passion made me care. So where did it come from?
Where else? It came from a horse. Because I allowed it to come from a horse. Because I allowed my very first horse to choose me. To tell me that he trusted me to be his leader. Not the other way around. It was his choice. And when it happened everything changed. For me, and my horse. He was no longer my horse. I wasn’t his owner. The first line of the movie Hildago said it right. Cash was now my little brother.
And I promised him that day that he would have the best life I could possibly give him. And I meant it. No stone would be left unturned because I now cared deeply about this horse and I would be asking everywhere I went how do I make his life better. Not how do I make my life better. My life would get better when his did.
And with that perspective it soon became very clear that there were things in his life that needed to get better. If what I was being told did not appear to be in the best interest of this horse who had trusted me and chosen me then I was not going to listen to someone else telling me what I needed to be doing to my horse that I loved and he didn’t even know. I would get the answers myself. The true answers. Because I now had the passion to drive me through the barriers. And to withstand the onslaught from those who did not care about their horses as much as I did.
I rejected their lists. All those things you are supposed to do when you find yourself owning a horse. Or six. And Kathleen and I set out to find the real answers for ourselves.
Now that we have eight horses living happy, healthy, stress free lives with none of the traditional problems and issues of so many horses living a more traditional life, what do you suppose has happened. Barely a day passes that someone doesn’t ask if I have a list of everything we’ve done in order to obtain the results we have.
A list. I can’t believe it. A list.
If you don’t have passion for what you’re doing, for your horse, no list will make even the slightest difference in your success. If you don’t care enough about your horse to passionately want the very best life in the world for him or her, then none of what I’ve written before, or here, will make any difference whatsoever. To you or your horse.
By Joe Camp