Horse Sense for the Leader Within

Book excerpt: Horse Sense for the Leader Within is a must read for everyone! With innovative vision and grounded experience, Ariana Strozzi bridges two seemingly different worlds, creating a powerful new platform for human development, growth and learning. She eloquently reveals how horses mirror our inner world and provide dramatic, transformative shifts in the way we perceive ourselves. Strozzi takes the reader on a journey into the natural world where a wealth of knowledge already exists about what it means to be a leader of one's life. She defines a path to leadership that begins with understanding ourselves from a biological perspective. Leadership as followership comes to life as she encourages the reader to step outside of the human's narrow view of leadership. "Are you leading your life or is it leading you?" becomes the topic of exploration. By becoming aware of our animal nature and our innate drive for survival, we develop the capacity to respond with choice versus react to the pressures of life. The journey continues with insights into the powerful elements of intuitive and emotional intelligence and the significance of nonverbal communication. Ariana demonstrates how horses reflect our patterns of behavior, thought, perceptions and performance in a thousand pounds of visual imagery. They show us the gap between how we actually present ourselves to others distinct from how we think we are being. They ask, "Who is leading?" and expect us to know what we care about and believe in ourselves. In so doing, they help us understand that leadership begins with the self we are. Horses teach us how to find self-acceptance in a world of judgment. As we learn to think more like a horse, we develop our intuitive imagination and can create new possibilities for our lives. Rather than focusing on what is wrong with us, we shift our attention towards what we are naturally good at. On this path of becoming, we focus on staying connected to what has meaning and purpose.