A Junior's Point of View "SUCCESS"
Submitted by Franziska Valerio

Trainers, breeders,amateurs and everyone else in between all strive to be successful in the Arabian Industry. My question is, how do you decide what success actually is? For many people success is earning a ribbon, or breeding a champion. However, success is more than just a ribbon. The ribbon shows yourself and others what you have accomplished, but has much more meaning than just being a winner. Generally people set a goal and they proceed to accomplish their goal. Once the person's goal is accomplished, they are now satisfied, happy and normally feel successful. Many people set their goals too high like winning at the Nationals. Setting a high goal is fine, but there needs to be many other goals in between in order to not get discouraged and stay positive.

I have seen many people, including junior riders, adult amateurs and even trainers come out of the show ring angry simply because they did not place or recieve a tri-colored ribbon. Trainers: every time you teach a lesson ask your student what they would like to accomplish that day. Be sure to know their future goals, and that those goals are reasonable for them to achieve. I guarantee you that the client will have many more days of success because both of you will know what needs to get done in order to improve and meet their goals.

For those of you who do not take lessons and/or do your own training, have a goal each time you ride or handle your horse. If you only set one main goal and that is something that may take awhile to accomplish, yuou are only setting yourself up for disappointment. Each time you work your horse, riding or not, have a goal. It could be something simple like having your horse not run away from you in the pasture, or it could be something complex like teaching your horse lead changes. Every time you leave the barn you should leave happy and not frustrated. With that said though, not everything is easy and that is how it should be! There would be no fun without a challenge.

My piont is: to find success and be successful you have to make goals for yourself. Set several goals that are ideal and even some that may take awhile to accomplish. LEarlier I wrote, how do you decide what success actually is. Think of this: success is a proces of setting goals, achieving those goals and then repeating.