Stop Chasing the How

Discover you first then build your vision!

There seems to be a point many of us reach in equine-assisted work where we start searching for the next thing. Another training. Another certification. Another model. Another person who can tell us how to do it “right.” I know that feeling because I lived it. When I knew I wanted horses to be part of my professional work, I did what so many of us do. I started looking for the how. How do I become qualified? What certification do I need? Which model should I follow? What else do I need to learn before I can really do this?

So I learned. I trained, studied, gained experience, and became certified through PATH Intl. and EAGALA. I continued adding education, knowledge, and skills because I genuinely wanted to be good at this work. And I am grateful for that education. It helped shape me as a professional and gave me knowledge I still use today. But something interesting happened along the way. I could collect the credentials and still not feel completely clear. I could learn someone else's model and still wonder what my work was supposed to look like. I could become more qualified on paper and somehow still feel like there was something else I needed to find.

So naturally, I kept looking for the how. Maybe I needed another training. Maybe I needed another skill. Maybe someone else knew something I hadn't learned yet. Looking back now, I can see that the certifications were never the problem. I was asking them to answer questions they were never designed to answer. I was asking education to help me discover who I was.

What was I actually trying to gain from all of it? Was I looking for knowledge, or was I looking for confidence? Was I looking for a specific skill, or was I looking for permission to trust myself? Was I trying to learn a model, or was I hoping someone would hand me a roadmap and tell me, This is who you're supposed to be. This is what you're supposed to create.

That is incredibly easy to do in this field because we care about doing good work. We want to be ethical, honor our horses, serve people well, and stay within our scope. Education, training, and certification matter. But at some point, we also have to turn inward, because nobody else can certify you in your own purpose.

I sometimes wonder how different my journey might have been if I had spent as much time discovering myself as I did learning how to do the work. What if, before asking what certification I needed, I had asked: Who do I want to be in this work? Who do I want to serve? What matters to me? What kind of program and life do I actually want to create? And maybe most importantly, what would I create if I stopped worrying about what everyone else thought it should look like?

Those questions require a different kind of work—reflection, honesty, and discovering the person underneath the credentials and expectations. Eventually, I had to do that work myself. In many ways, I had to rebuild. I had the knowledge, experience, and credentials, but I still had to figure out what I wanted to do with them. I had to separate what I truly wanted from what I thought I was supposed to want and reconnect with my own strengths, passions, values, and voice.

That's when the question changed from What else do I need? to Where am I going, and what will actually help me get there?

Maybe that's where we sometimes have the order backwards. Imagine knowing your vision before choosing your next training. Imagine understanding who you want to serve before spending more time and money learning another model. Imagine being grounded enough in your own identity and values that you can walk into a training and recognize what fits your vision, what doesn't, what you want to take with you, and what you can leave behind.

Education becomes a resource for your vision rather than the creator of it. You aren't asking a certification to tell you who to become. You know who you're becoming, and now you're choosing the tools that will help you get there.

That doesn't mean we stop learning. It doesn't mean certifications or trainings aren't valuable. There may absolutely be education, competencies, supervision, mentorship, or specialized training that you need for the work you want to do. Go get it. But know why you're getting it. Know what you're trying to create. When we do the internal discovery work first, I believe we can actually get more from the education we choose because we're no longer hoping it will give us our identity, confidence, or purpose. We're choosing it intentionally because it supports where we're already headed.

And what if you don't know where you're headed yet? Maybe you don't need to rush into another answer. Maybe you need space to talk, reflect, question, dream, and explore ideas that aren't fully formed yet. Maybe you need to be around other equine professionals who understand the work and can say, I've wondered that too. Maybe you need permission to change your mind. Maybe you need to discover what you actually want before investing more time and money into learning how to create it.

That realization became a huge part of why I created Partnering for Purpose. I wanted to create something I wish I had during my own journey. Not another place telling equine professionals exactly who they need to become, but a place where we can discover it together. A place to explore identity, purpose, vision, values, boundaries, passion, and possibility. A place to collaborate, connect, ask questions, and find your herd.

It is also at the heart of The Purpose Within, because sometimes the next step in professional development isn't immediately adding something new. Sometimes it's discovering what is already there, your experiences, values, strengths, ideas, passion, voice, and vision, and then deciding what you want to build from them.

I can't go back and change the order of my own journey, and I don't think I would. Even the parts that felt confusing helped bring me here. But I can use what I learned to help other equine professionals avoid some of the years of feeling like they failed because they did everything they thought they were supposed to do and somehow still didn't feel clear, confident, or fulfilled.

So before asking yourself, “What certification do I need next?” maybe there are a few questions worth asking first: Who am I becoming? What am I trying to create? What matters to me? And why? Discover that. Find your herd. Let yourself be heard. Build the vision from there. Then go learn the how.

Because once you know where you're going, education doesn't have to give you your purpose. It gets to help you fulfill it.

Continuing to discover my passion alongside you,

-Bri