In Life, Ride the Path, Not the Jumps

The first thing I’ve learned about leading an extraordinary life is you don’t ride the jumps in your path, you ride the path itself.  

So if you’re an equestrian and you’re trying to learn to jump you horse over little cross rails, you’re coach will tell you, “Don’t look down at the jump.  Don’t focus on the jump. Focus on the path you’re gonna take with the horse, on the flow of that vector on that journey and not on the obstacles that are in the path of you and your partner.  And that’s a great life lesson. 

So you think about people that have led extraordinary lives from Abraham Lincoln to Henry V, to Gandhi to Oprah Winfrey, all of these people in all of these different places in times, they were all consciously or directly riding a path.  And I mean, jumps, the obstacles, the trees that fell along you know, along the flagstones were things they cleared and then learned from as opposed to something they reacted to and got stuck on or you know, became huge black holes of doubt for them.  

So you ride the path, you don’t ride the jumps.