When We Stopped Living From The Heart
I found a letter I wrote when I was thirteen.
It was tucked inside an old journal I hadn't opened in years. The handwriting was mine, but younger—rounder, more confident somehow. Reading it at thirty-seven felt like meeting a stranger who knew me better than I know myself.
At thirteen, I wrote about what I wanted to do with my life.
Not carefully.
Not strategically.
Just what felt true in that moment.
The dreams were big. Unapologetic. No hedge words like "maybe" or "if I'm good enough." No backup plans or realistic alternatives.
Just: this is what I want.
I sat with that letter for a long time. Not because the dreams themselves surprised me, but because of how I'd written them. There was a clarity there that I'd lost somewhere along the way.
Somewhere between thirteen and now, I learned to be afraid of that light.
Afraid to fail. Afraid to look stupid. Afraid to want something that big and miss.
I don't remember the exact moment the shift happened. It wasn't dramatic. No single event or conversation that changed everything. Just a slow, steady erosion of trust in my own instincts.
So I switched strategies.
I stopped following my heart and started following discipline.
Seeking structure, a systems and the right way to do things. The must-dos.
It felt safer, more adult, more professional. Like I was finally getting serious about life instead of just dreaming.
And it worked, in the way these things work. I built a career. From the outside, it looked like I was doing everything right.
But that shift didn't stay contained to my personal life.
I brought it straight into the arena.
At thirteen, I would have shown up to work with a horse and asked: what does this horse need from me right now?
I would have watched. Listened. Felt my way through it. Trusted what I was seeing and adjusted based on what the horse showed me.
At thirty-seven, I showed up with the training plan, the timeline, the must-do list.
I had systems. Structures. The right exercises for each phase of development. I knew what we were supposed to be working on and how long it should take.
I thought I was being professional. Responsible. Taking my work seriously.
What I didn't see was that I'd stopped asking the horse what they needed. I was telling them what they needed. And when they didn't cooperate with my perfectly structured plans, I called them difficult. Misunderstood. Problem horses.
Horses have hearts five times bigger than ours.
They feel what we're leading from.
When I lead from must-dos instead of what feels true, they show me immediately.
Resistance.
Stiffness.
The exact behaviours I was labelling as problems.
I spent years thinking I needed better techniques. More training. Different equipment. A new approach to fixing these misunderstood horses.
But they weren't misunderstood.
They were responding exactly as they should to someone who had stopped listening.
They were waiting for me to come back to what I knew at thirteen. That inner knowing I'd learned to override with systems and shoulds.
Finding that letter changed something.
Not overnight. Not dramatically. But it started a question I couldn't stop asking: what else did I know at thirteen that I'd trained myself out of?
What instincts had I buried under all that discipline and structure?
And more importantly—what were my horses trying to tell me about the person I'd become?
Because here's what I'm learning: leading from the heart isn't unprofessional or undisciplined.
It's not naive or unrealistic or impractical.
It's the only thing that creates real connection.
The horses have been showing me this all along. Every time I showed up with my agenda instead of my attention. Every time I chose the plan over the partnership. Every time I valued being right over being present.
They reflected it back perfectly.
And they're still waiting. Patient. Clear. Ready to connect the moment I remember how.
What did you know at thirteen that your horse is still waiting for you to remember?
⤥ The Horse Listener framework: https://www.nikavorster.com/the-horse-listener
