You’ve no doubt heard the expression that if you “fall off the horse”, the best thing to do is to “get back on the horse again.” OK, that’s cute, we get it’s “insider meaning”, which refers to anything that you’ve done before that you’ve failed at for any reason, the best thing to do is to try again.
It’s a little subtler than that, too, of course. It also refers to things that you may have been doing and were interrupted from doing for events outside of your control. In other words, no so much that you failed at anything, but perhaps you were just stopped, for whatever reason.
So, this is my one-year celebration of pulling myself back on the horse – the horse of life. You see, one year ago, a team of surgeons, acting as a team of rehab experts that included a framer, a plumber, and an electrician, rehabbed me. They took my heart out, re-plumbed the feed lines, and put it back.
How I got to that point is anyone’s guess, and the team of cardiologists who looked at my heart muscle and say that it’s a strong as a horse’s, just the feed tubes got clogged. They believe that there is a large amount of heredity in that equation. Who knows, really.
I never actually fell off the horse, either. I stopped the horse, I said “something’s not quite right”, got off the horse, and sought assistance from my health-care coaches. No one forced me to “do” anything, but what they did do was make strong recommendations for that rehab I described above.
Once that was done, they told me to go home and let the automatic processes of the body rebuild the damage and the trauma caused by the surgery. Then I got handed off to another set of coaches that guided me back to re-building physically.
They were called the cardiac rehab team, and they did a lot of stuff that I was already familiar with from my exercise and training background. But this time it was different. This time I wasn’t just showing up at the gym to get buff and look good – I was rebuilding my systems just to stay on the planet.
That’s a big “why”, don’t you think? Because my “why” was so huge, I heard every ounce of instruction in a new way – I was completely and entirely coachable, and I took on the instruction with vigor and big intent. And as a result, I got better faster. My recovery was fast, and my coaches remarked on that.
One year ago, I discovered the issue that had me “get off the horse” when, after a pretty intense cycling training session, I had heartburn that would not go away. Today, one year later, I am back on that horse with my bike, getting my proverbial butt handed to me in training sessions. No more heartburn.
My cycling coach knows all of my health details. Now she knows what to look for, and exactly how to coach me for the fastest and safest recovery and restoration of my power. We measure this stuff on a computer, and I have a ways to go to recover the muscle and breathing, but it’s coming.
Because I can’t see it in the heat of the training session, she will come up to me and ask if I am feeling this or that, check my power, my heart rate, cadence – all of it, and make training corrections for me.
All of this had me realize that my swift recovery, my returning excellent health, and my happiness in life has all been at the hands of people I entrusted – my coaches – to lead me down this path of recovery. And it’s also made me realize that there are a lot of areas in my life that could use a coach.
I am on a quest to fill those gaps. While I already knew the value, I see it more clearly now from my distinct vantage point back on the horse.