09/13/2026
Thoughts Are Not Facts
That was the topic for Stable Paths yesterday, and by the end of the day, the horses had helped us take the conversation somewhere we hadn't expected.
We started the day the way we usually do, working together. Stalls needed to be cleaned, hay needed to be hauled up to the barn, and then we had lunch together before getting into our discussion.
We gave everyone a scenario:
You're walking down the hall at school toward a group of your friends. They're talking, one of them glances over at you, and suddenly the whole group laughs.
What do you think?
The answers came quickly and were mostly this:
They're talking about me.
I won't interact with them now.
I'd feel like an outsider.
But one person saw it differently. Only one person had looked over. If they were laughing at me, wouldn't they all have looked at me?
Then we gave them the rest of the story.
The person who glanced over runs up to you and says, "Someone just told the funniest story. You HAVE to hear this!"
Nothing about the first scene had changed. The glance happened. The laughter happened. What changed was the information we had.
That opened up a really good conversation about how quickly our minds fill in the parts we don't know, and how easily the story we tell ourselves can become fact in our minds.
One person said the discussion reminded them not to assume things and to keep an open mind. Another talked about how remembering that everything isn't necessarily about you can help you stay level-headed instead of thinking everything is going wrong. Someone else pointed out how differently people can see the exact same situation.
One of the takeaways was simple: the more information we have, the more informed our opinion can be, instead of making an assumption.
That led us into another part of communication: listening to understand rather than listening to respond.
I used an AA meeting as an example. When someone is talking, you don't interrupt them. You don't argue with them or prepare your answer while they're still speaking. You listen. You don't even get to respond to what they said.
I've often thought that's part of why kids feel safe here. They feel heard.
After lunch, we took the conversation out to the horses with a "Ground Tie" activity.
The point wasn't to teach the horses to ground tie. The challenge was for the kids to figure out whether they could communicate with their horse well enough to get the horse to remain in place while they walked ten paces away and then around them, within some very specific rules. They couldn't touch or bribe the horse, and if the horse moved, they started again.
Most of the horses figured it out pretty quickly.
Chico wanted to follow Allie until she turned around and gave him one of those unmistakable mom looks.
Chico apparently speaks fluent Mom, because he stopped. 😂
That tiny interaction gave us som**hing else to talk about: how much we communicate without words, and how changing the way we communicate can change the outcome. Fred connected that directly to his interactions with other people.
And then there was Lefty.
Lefty didn't understand why his person was walking away from him. So, naturally, he tried to follow.
As they continued trying, he became increasingly confused and anxious. Eventually, in the middle of all of it, he started looking for me.
So we stopped.
And suddenly the exercise wasn't about whether we could successfully complete the challenge anymore.
It was about whether we were listening.
We had spent part of the day talking about how important it is for a person speaking to know they've been heard. Now Lefty was communicating with us just as clearly as he knew how.
We heard him.
We talked about fairness and kindness, but also about an important distinction. Sometimes horses have to do uncomfortable things simply because we need them to. They need veterinary care, farrier work, medication and other things necessary for their health and safety, and training. We can't stop every time a horse would rather not do som**hing.
But this wasn't one of those situations.
There was absolutely no reason Lefty had to complete this exercise. Continuing simply to accomplish the task would have missed the much bigger lesson he was giving us.
And that became part of what people took away from the day too.
Amelia talked about watching Lefty become anxious and recognizing that stopping kept him from becoming more stressed, and how that could apply when you're working with another person and one of you becomes anxious: stop or change what you're doing.
Josh connected Lefty's reaction back to our discussion at lunch. If we can learn to think about what someone else may be experiencing and empathize with them, that's som**hing we can carry into our relationships with people.
Allie talked about noticing Lefty's anxiety during the exercise.
Others talked about keeping an open mind, not assuming, realizing people can have very different perspectives and ideas, getting more information before forming an opinion, and maybe not taking every thought that enters our head quite so seriously.
And we had a guest with us yesterday.
Tami was visiting Stable Paths on behalf of one of our grantors, so she had the opportunity to see the program instead of just reading what we've written about it in an application.
Tami was amazed by how openly the kids talked. She said she had never seen anything like it. She watched the first person share som**hing personal and then saw the others begin to open up too.
She noticed the little cues and movements that made an impact.
She noticed the adults being vulnerable with the kids. She noticed how everyone helped one another during the exercise.
Mostly, though, she just kept coming back to the kids and how freely they talked.
I loved hearing that from someone seeing Stable Paths for the first time because sometimes, when you're in the middle of som**hing every day, you don't see what someone walking into it for the first time sees.
Yesterday started with Thoughts Are Not Facts.
By the end of the day, it had become som**hing bigger.
Don't assume you know the whole story. Get more information.
Remember that your first thought isn't necessarily a fact. Listen to understand instead of listening so you can respond. Pay attention to what someone else is actually communicating. And be willing to change what you're doing when what you're hearing tells you som**hing different.
Sometimes being heard is more important than finishing the exercise.
Lefty made sure we didn't forget that part. ❤️
