The Perfect is the Enemy of The Good
I was looking up some info on Kathleen Lindley (see www.kathleenlindley.com for articles, clinic info and more) and ran across a news story write-up about a clinic Kathleen had done where she had quoted Voltaire. This quote resonates with me on so many levels it felt like a jolt when I first read it.
"In his writings, the wise Italian says that the best is the enemy of the good". It is commonly quoted as "the perfect is the enemy of the good".
So a person can have adequate competency and yet be stuck in the extremism of perfectionism. One can effectively ignore one's own progress (and that of his/her horse's) because of this vision of perfect. We can miss the try, miss the improvement, miss it all.
Consider along with this concept, the levels of learning:
unconscious incompetency (you don't know how to do it and probably don't know you don't know)
conscious incompetency (you know you don't know but are learning)
conscious competency (you know how to do something but concentration is required)
unconscious competency (the skill has become 'second nature').
Many of us do not allow for a learning curve both for ourselves and for the horse and expect to go from Stage One to Stage Four in one giant leap.
There is a principle called the Golden Mean attributed to Aristotle among others which counsels against extremism. The Pareto Principle applies math to it and comes up with an 80/20 rule. So, it takes 20% of the time to accomplish 80% of a task, however, it takes 80% of the effort to complete the final 20%. So, the way I view these concepts and mesh them together, if you simply think you are going to jump all the way to 'perfect' and not spend the 80% of effort slugging it out in the muddy ditches of the learning curve, you have doomed yourself before beginning.
Taking a more pragmatic approach, learning your theory, putting it into practice in steps that follow a progression and recognizing the progress along the way, (the sorta good, the almost good, the definitely good), sets one up for success and eventually, a glimpse at 'the perfect'.
Interestingly, I read a passage in Mary Wanless' book "Natural Rider" this morning where she stated about her progress: "My elation and despair were things of the past, and I could say that something was "good" or "bad" as a statement of fact, without making a moral judgment about myself".
As someone who has struggled my whole life with being able to accept criticism (I attribute it to a rocky childhood where literally nothing was ever good enough---there was no good....only perfect), these words have magic for me. I know now that regardless of how I got to the point of being so hard on myself, I have to continue to breathe life into that in order for it to perpetuate.
I've noticed a gentle progression into being able to be more 'in the center', literally as well as figuratively. A natural inclination to being driven can also be redirected into less extremes. Learning to be satisfied with 'ordinary' or 'satisfactory' is itself an accomplishment!
Sue (aiming for 'good').
"In his writings, the wise Italian says that the best is the enemy of the good". It is commonly quoted as "the perfect is the enemy of the good".
So a person can have adequate competency and yet be stuck in the extremism of perfectionism. One can effectively ignore one's own progress (and that of his/her horse's) because of this vision of perfect. We can miss the try, miss the improvement, miss it all.
Consider along with this concept, the levels of learning:
unconscious incompetency (you don't know how to do it and probably don't know you don't know)
conscious incompetency (you know you don't know but are learning)
conscious competency (you know how to do something but concentration is required)
unconscious competency (the skill has become 'second nature').
Many of us do not allow for a learning curve both for ourselves and for the horse and expect to go from Stage One to Stage Four in one giant leap.
There is a principle called the Golden Mean attributed to Aristotle among others which counsels against extremism. The Pareto Principle applies math to it and comes up with an 80/20 rule. So, it takes 20% of the time to accomplish 80% of a task, however, it takes 80% of the effort to complete the final 20%. So, the way I view these concepts and mesh them together, if you simply think you are going to jump all the way to 'perfect' and not spend the 80% of effort slugging it out in the muddy ditches of the learning curve, you have doomed yourself before beginning.
Taking a more pragmatic approach, learning your theory, putting it into practice in steps that follow a progression and recognizing the progress along the way, (the sorta good, the almost good, the definitely good), sets one up for success and eventually, a glimpse at 'the perfect'.
Interestingly, I read a passage in Mary Wanless' book "Natural Rider" this morning where she stated about her progress: "My elation and despair were things of the past, and I could say that something was "good" or "bad" as a statement of fact, without making a moral judgment about myself".
As someone who has struggled my whole life with being able to accept criticism (I attribute it to a rocky childhood where literally nothing was ever good enough---there was no good....only perfect), these words have magic for me. I know now that regardless of how I got to the point of being so hard on myself, I have to continue to breathe life into that in order for it to perpetuate.
I've noticed a gentle progression into being able to be more 'in the center', literally as well as figuratively. A natural inclination to being driven can also be redirected into less extremes. Learning to be satisfied with 'ordinary' or 'satisfactory' is itself an accomplishment!
Sue (aiming for 'good').
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