Slow Down To Be Fast | RES 043

When I was much younger my sole aspiration was to become a calf roper. The absolute best one I could be. At the end of the day, I’d go practice flanking and tying calves, well, really legging them since I was so young. And one of my heroes at the time was Ernie Taylor, a full rodeo champion. I remember one day he stopped by our arena and I got the idea to go and impress him. I tried tying the calves as fast as I could. Which, of course, meant I was making plenty of mistakes. After a while, Ernie turned to me and said, “Van, I think you need to slow down to be fast.” I applied that advice to my roping and got much better. With even more time I came to realize this is one of the best lessons I ever learned in my horsemanship, or my life at large.

Key takeaways

I’d like to go ahead and say running around trying to impress people isn’t a great use of your time. When you look at someone and see where they are at in their journey it can make you want to perform on their level to gain their respect. But that’s just an invitation to make mistakes. You’re more likely to be respected by staying composed and being yourself.

See, when I was a boy scrambling all over those calves I made mistakes by going as fast as I could. Slowing down meant I didn’t have to redo any of my tying. I could be more efficient by taking just a little more time. It’s this slow and steady mentality that helped me grow in more than just my horsemanship. Taking time let me do things in a way I could live with. What I mean by that is I learned to not skip any steps and hinder myself down the road. I put in honest, hard work and built myself up from a sturdy foundation.

At one point I had a reputation for being the last one to get my horse saddled. Often times that extended to being the last one to actually get on the horse too. But that led to me being known as the guy who never had a horse buck. That doesn’t mean you should just dilly dally around, but be confident and take the time you need to set yourself up for success. Efficiency isn’t always rushing through things.

Your relationship with a horse is all about the long game. Not about what you want right this minute, but what you want to be capable of over a lifetime. See, there is no ultimate horsemanship. No one is ever going to reach some final destination there. So, you might as well enjoy the strides you take along the journey. Take what you learn and use it to make fewer mistakes. Remember, horsemanship is an opportunity to practice humanship every day.