Q: How to make sense of the Charlotte Dujardin situation?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXx0_aB03Wo

The privilege of being the Personality Decoder in the equestrian industry is that in times of shock, people turn to me to make sense of what is happening.

I say that it's a privilege, not because I believe that my thoughts are more valid or important than those of others, but because sharing my thoughts potentially carries a lot of weight - certainly in the lives of my students.

I want to be clear: I do not condone abuse. And in the same breath, while I always try my best, I would be a hypocrite if I said that I have always been the horse's best advocate. I am ashamed of times when I've taken shortcuts, knowingly or unknowingly. I feel deep remorse for the times I hurt my four-legged friends, even if unintentionally. It is from this place of ground zero that I write my post answering a student's question about making sense of the Charlotte Dujardin situation.

When we face shock, we must realize that there are four separate realities at play:

1. What happened - only time and authentic recordings will tell what actually happened (not to be confused with our PERCEPTION of what happened. These are cold, hard facts).

2. How we are affected by what happened - what is our immediate reaction when encountering the issue (not to be confused with our reaction to others' perspectives. In other words, if we weren't there or didn't see the video, we are likely to simply jump into point 4, and respond to others' reactions.)

3. How the world is seeing what happened - what information we surround ourselves with, and who has our ear. Who are the people that we trust and outsource our thinking to.

4. Our reaction to how the world sees the situation - depending on the four ways we deal with shocking situations (listed below).

The four main ways we can deal with any of the above 4 points are:

1. Fight - blame, shame, and assert our reaction onto others.

2. Flight - pretend that nothing happened.

3. Freeze - wait for it to run its course, and hope for the best.

4. Fawn - take sides according to whom you believe will protect you to get out of the eye of the storm.

So, if you look at the 4 realities, as well as the 4 possible ways we deal with the 4 realities, you can see how complex it is to actually make sense of the situation.

Sometimes, I envy the black-and-white thinkers among us who are so sure about the ultimate truth of everything. But then I remember that life is not black and white. I remember this old quote from Bertrand Russell:

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

My point is that life is complex. Black-and-white thinking does not allow evolution. It traps us in perfectionism and the belief that we are not allowed to fail and thus learn great lessons in life and show up as a better version of ourselves.

So, to make sense of this situation, the first thing I will do is to take a breath and make sure that I AM NOT throwing rocks at glass houses. I am taking full responsibility for my learning journey and do my best to extend grace to those who are learning the lessons glistening in my rearview mirror.

To put it bluntly, getting onto bandwagons with other people without introspection is careless and a little lazy. Outsourcing our thinking to others... what does it make you? The only way any of us can make sense of what happened is to stay with ourselves as we process it.

And when we know better, we can DO better. There's a lot to be done. So let's do our inner work, so that we can get to work to transform this industry that we love, and to be a safe space for our horse whom we so DEEPLY love.