Poor Decisions = Painful Lessons
Slow down and think before climbing back on the horse
My ribs hurt so bad tonight that I can’t sleep, so I thought I would try to draw a lesson from the bone-headed decision I made a few hours ago. I got a call from a neighbor earlier this evening asking if I would be willing to come to look at his horse. I felt honored that he would reach out to me for advice. Three years ago, when we moved here and started getting into horses, I asked local horse owners for advice. They had been extremely helpful, so this was a chance to give back to another first-time horse owner. He had recently purchased a horse that had been was advertised as kid-friendly. They had been riding it for months without incident, but lately, it had become high-spirited.
Because the horse seemed so calm, when my son Eli, who had come with me and is a very seasoned rider, asked if he could ride her, I said yes. Everything was fine for the first several minutes, and then out of nowhere, she bucked him off. He quickly jumped up unhurt and dusted himself off as though nothing had happened. This was when my reptilian brain kicked in. You’ve probably read about brain mapping. Reasoned and informed decisions occur in the prefrontal cortex, but when we’re angry or stressed, our decision-making quickly moves to the primitive part of the brain near the spine, sometimes called the reptilian brain. So when I saw the horse throw my son off, the fight part of the “Fight or Flight” reaction was activated. We had to get back on that horse, or it would feel like it had won, so I made a snap decision and stepped into the stirrup and swung my leg over the saddle, but before I could even get my foot in the other stirrup, she started bucking again, and as the picture shows, I was thrown into an ignominious heap on the ground, landing hard on my left shoulder and ribs.
How could I have been so foolish? I am 52 years old and have never ridden a bucking horse. Why do we make rash decisions so often? Slowing down and considering the consequences of our actions is always the best course of action for leaders. I recently read Daniel Kahneman’s excellent book on decision making, “Thinking Fast and Slow.” Unfortunately, I didn’t heed his sage council, “If there is time to reflect, slowing down is likely a good idea.”
Postscript: It looks like I’m going to be forced to slow down, I just got back from the hospital, and I have four fractured ribs☹
