Spring is in the air, or, the long cold winter............

This time of year separates the men from the boys.

When I got to the barn yesterday I found the key and opened the door. I could see my breath when I opened the door but the sweet smell of horses and the nickers and whinnies made me smile. I unpacked  my truck and lit my forge and felt the warmth immediately start to rise around me. I walked past the horses and pet a few anxious noses and found Tommy. He was slow getting out of his stall but loosened up quickly. Once I got him in the cross ties and cleaned the mud off his feet I pulled the nails one by one and then started to inspect the hoof. I started paring with my knife and was surprised and pleased at how easy it was to use my knife since the hoof had so much moisture in it from the rain/snow the night before. Just then a shaft of sunlight came through the barn door and illuminated everything around me and made me feel a familiar warmth. I stood up, took a deep breath, and it was then that it dawned on me that..................

On my way to the barn, traffic was terrible and I had to fight it all the way. Although I was told someone would have the barn opened I had to locate the hidden key and get in the back door. The horses hadn't been fed so they were noisy and unruly. I had forgotten to put my tools in the front of the truck so when I unpacked everything was ice cold and to make matters worse I was running a bit low on propane and could only run my forge for a while to warm up. I had to walk all the way to the other end of the barn to get Tommy, a chronically lame horse who was slow getting up and down and it took forever for him to get into the cross ties. His foot was covered with mud and it took a good while to clean it up so that I wouldn't be covered with mud when I finished. Once I got all of the mud out of the foot I had to pull each nail individually so that I wouldn't break up the foot since it was so soft. There was only a small bit of sunshine that came through the barn doors that morning and it wasn't clear that would last for long by the looks of the sky.

I think you get the picture. Every day we make the choice to have a good day or a bad day. Are we chronically reactive in our orientation to life's events, or are we responsibly proactive? Steven Covey said this. "You are not the product of your circumstances. You are the product of your choices." Here is a great 5 minute video from the late Steven Covey about the power of the proactive mindset. I hope you enjoy and choose to have the best day of your life.

"You only have to work 1/2 days!"

In 1995 when I made the decision to leave my management job and become a blacksmith/farrier, I remember talking to my mom and dad. We lived on the other side of the country from them (which was a constant source of irritation for my mom) and I suspect that they felt a bit anxious about this decision. I told them kind of nonchalantly that I was going to learn to shoe horses and open my own business..............shock, then chocked back tears from my mother. She quickly dismissed herself and told me to talk to my father. I said, "dad, I thought this would be hard, but tears?" Dad went on to explain that they didn't know anyone who shoed horses for a living, "oh, with one exception," he said. "There was a man that lived in a clapboard shack in the back of your grandfather's Phillips 66 station in Victor, ID named whiskey Bill." He said, "the good people in the south end of the Teton valley could take their horse to Bill and for any portion of a fifth of whiskey he would shoe their horse." I guess if tears was all I got, I got of easy.
My dad went on to say how marvelous it was to be self employed. (he had been self employed for my entire childhood) He said that it had many advantages over employment one of which was only having to work 1/2 days. I laughed and said, "really only 1/2 days?" He answered, "you bet, and the best part is, you can chose which 12 hours it is!"

Not too long ago I received a phone call from a young man who said that he wanted to shoe horses for a living. He asked if he could come work for me to learn how. I wasn't looking for an apprentice and I had a funny feeling about it so I started to ask questions. He informed me that he hated his job, hated his boss, hated the people he worked with, and so it went. He said he loved horses, so he was just certain that if he could shoe horses for a living, all would be right with the world. I was sorry to do it but I just had to. I took a deep breath and said something like this. "You know I think your problem is not with the kind of work you do, I think your problem is with work itself. You go solve your problem with work, and you might find that you don't need to be a farrier to be happy,"

These two experiences really serve to illustrate what an important role work plays in our lives. With rare exception, it is necessary to work really hard to either make ends meet, or just to keep a good thing going. For us to have a comfortable and peaceful home life, we need to work at it very hard. To keep the bills paid we need to work very hard. To keep our loved ones safe we need to work very hard. To raise responsible children of integrity we have to work very hard.


I love this quote from Sam Ewing:

Hard work spotlights the
character of people: some
turn up their sleeves, some
turn up their noses, and
some don't turn up at all.