Save Your Pennies
For An Overnight Success
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It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. ~ Confucius
Just about anybody who has been called an overnight success will refute that statement. They will talk about endless failures, long days of despondency and despair, and years that seemed like they would never end and even when they did, brought no relief. No light at the end of the tunnel just because the last number on the the date changed, only the unsettling sensation that the only thing at the end of that tunnel is likely another oncoming train.
Gardeners have a refrain that gently reminds them to be patient with a newly planted tree or shrub. First year sleep, second year creep, third year leap. Thought leaders like Mary Morrissey and Michael Beckwith talk about a kind of bamboo that is so busy developing it’s root net underground that it can seem dormant for years before suddenly growing eighty feet all but overnight.
It looks like an overnight success, but in truth, it’s been years in the making.
I often remind myself and my students that training horses, especially green or project horses, is like trading in pennies. Every day you can add or subtract a penny by how well you handle and work with the horse. A penny can be easy to gain but just as easy to lose. It may not seem like much, but pennies make up dollars, and until you have a hundred of them, all you can count in are cents. The steps are tiny, the improvements can seem all but invisible, but one day, by Golly, you’ll look at your penny jar and realize you’ve saved a whole dollar, and now you can start trading in dollars.
And if you do that well, before you know it, you have ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred dollars, a thousand! A thousand dollars made up of pennies, and a horse that has gone from being green and rough around the edges to a finely polished gem that is a pleasure to ride and handle. A horse that, to paraphrase my old teacher, Walter Zettl, you can ride up into heaven itself.
So yes, it all starts with just a humble little penny. With giving time to a spreading root net that will support the growth above ground that can withstand the challenges the world will throw at it. A solid foundation is the hardest part of any endeavor, and the most important as well as the most time consuming. It often takes boring footwork, and a willingness to just not stop, however slowly you are getting there.
Benjamin Franklin said that if you look after the pennies, the dollars will look after themselves. You can’t skip a penny to get to a dollar, you can’t leave out a brick to get to a solid wall. A house is built brick by brick, and it’s overall beauty and solidity will only be as fine as how well each single brick was manufactured and placed.
As a rule of thumb, the equestrian masters tell us that it takes a solid two years to put a good foundation on a green horse. If mistakes have been made and the horse has already been compromised by rushed and unfortunate training, you can easily double that. If the first part is hurried along because doing it right is deemed too slow, we will soon learn that it is even slower on the rebound. Once the bloom is off the rose it is gone for good, and so is the innocent trust of a young horse, and we will work doubly as hard rebuilding trust and rewiring a body gone awry. The same applies to principles of business and any relationship building, for that matter. Anytime we overpromise and underdeliver, it will hurt and slow our progress towards any desired goal.
Ultimately horses teach us that the slow route IS the shortcut. And while some horses seem able to skip ahead in the first few years, injuries, strange limitations and behavioral issues will inevitably dog them for the rest of their lives while young horses with a solid foundation will fly past them two or three years later. While compromised horses struggle with the advanced work as they twist and turn to make up for the gaps in their education and development, the solidly developed horse will dance on, enjoying the challenges and seemingly skill building overnight with no mental stress or physical injuries to hold them back.
There is no replacement for the step by step process that builds a horse, a relationship, a business. A life. We have to show up to grow up if we want our glow up. And while the process can feel confusing and painstakingly slow, the rewards are not only just and exponential, but durable.
They say a penny saved is a penny earned. A penny earned, then, can be a horse saved from a path of pitfalls, a life built, a road paved to a better future. It may be just a penny, or it may be the first step to a life we thought only possible in our dreams.
That penny, that itty bitty little thing the horse learns every day…that seemingly insignificant phone call, email or any little step towards our goals can be dismissed or it can be treasured. It’s all in how we look at it, and life will respond accordingly.
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