- Meet Ben.
Ben had very abusive parents who would often
neglect him and sometimes they would even beat him.
So at the young age of nine he was placed
into a foster home and the only thing
that Ben truly wanted in his life
was to get taken in by a real loving family.
In his mind this was the only way for him to be happy.
And if he couldn't do this he was destined to live
a life of unhappiness and depression.
Ben's foster home was in pretty bad shape
and he had to fight for his most basic needs
like having enough food to eat every single day
or having a nice bed to sleep in.
Even wearing nice comfortable clothes.
And this environment led Ben to become very emotional
and from a very early age Ben would experience
the full spectrum of emotions.
There would be moments when he would be
filled with rage when another kid was bullying him
and moments of pure joy and hope
when he thought a family would adopt him.
Followed by moments of deep sadness
when the adoption parents would chose somebody else.
His life was like a rollercoaster,
consisting of times a great highs and very low lows.
And this caused Ben to become very emotionally unstable.
There were some families who were interested
in adopting Ben, but the moment that he saw
one thing that he liked about a family
he would envision this amazing future with them
and he would get lost in this magical fantasy
of how happy he would be and how amazing
his life would turn out.
And the moment when he saw something
that he didn't like about a family
he would get lost in a fantasy of
how much he would hate them and how
he would be depressed and sad for his whole life.
He was not able to think logically or rationally
about the actual consequences of making a choice.
And of course, these extreme emotions
would put a lot of families off when they met him
and they wouldn't want to bring
such an emotional person into their family.
So little Ben went many years with no family
and he would watch all of his friends
get adopted, one by one, leaving him all alone.
After a few years Ben started to act out
and he started to get into fights
with the other foster kids or arguing
with the foster parents.
But it wasn't until one day when he got in trouble
with a police officer, Ben was simply
crossing the road when he shouldn't have
and the police officer came up to him and said,
"Hey, you know jaywalking is illegal, right?"
And instead of just apologizing to the officer
Ben started to argue with him
saying how he was being overly sensitive.
Saying how he wasn't even jaywalking
and how stupid the cop was being.
And within minutes the situation
was completely blown out of proportion
and Ben was verbally assaulting the officer
and the officer was about to arrest Ben
until he found out that he lived in a foster home.
Fortunately the officer had a soft spot for foster kids.
So he walked him back to his home
and told the foster parents,
"This young man is out of control.
"He broke the law, then proceeded to verbally
"assault me, please deal with him."
The foster parents sat Ben down and said,
"Listen Ben, you need to start acting right.
"No family wants to take in a child
"who is emotionally unstable and out of control.
"Do you understand?"
Ben said, "Yes" and then they left.
Ben's anger quickly turned into sadness.
To solve this the foster parents
just gave Ben some boxing gloves
and they told him to hit the punching bag
until he was tired and that's exactly what he did.
So one night Ben was hitting the boxing bags
and an older man who was a boxing trainer noticed him.
He was impressed by his passion and he saw potential.
So the trainer went up to Ben and asked,
"You're punching pretty hard kid,
"have you ever properly boxed before?"
"Nope, I just hit the bags until I'm tired," Ben replied.
"You want to try boxing someone
"for real," the trainer asked?
"Sure, whatever" Ben said defensively.
"Put on this headgear and hop in the ring.
"I'll grab my friend to come and box you."
And within minutes Ben was boxing a real life person
and when he was in the ring he was
completely consumed by his emotions.
He felt anger, fear, ego all rising up
and boiling inside of him.
And then all of a sudden, he found himself
running towards his opponent and he tried
punching him with all of his strength,
but his opponent dodged it and then Ben
was hit with a quick jab to his jaw
which knocked him clean on his feet and the fight was over.
The trainer came over and asked if he was okay.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Ben said defensively.
The trainer told him that it's good to have heart
but you can't just run at your opponent like that
you have to be calm and calculated in order to win a fight.
With tears and anger on his face Ben just ignored
the trainer and he packed up is bags to go and leave.
As Ben was leaving the trainer said,
"Few fighters have passion like yours,
"but that temper is going to get you into trouble.
"If you want to learn how to master your emotions
"and fight properly, let me know."
Ben stormed off and went home and when he got home
he saw a kid that had bullied him in the past
named Lucas and he was eating the dinner
that was supposed to be saved for him.
Ben said, "Why are you eating my dinner?"
"You were gone."
"So what, it was fridge I obviously was going to eat it."
"Shouldn't you be hitting some boxing bag
"or something or getting arrested?
"It seems like that's all you're good at these days."
Ben became enraged by this comment
so he hit the food off the table,
pushed the kid off the chair.
And before Ben could do anything else
a foster parent quickly grabbed him
and took him to his room and the foster parent said,
"If you ever assault another kid like that again
"I will turn you over to the police myself.
"Do you understand?"
Ben said, "Yes."
"If you can't learn how to control yourself
"I'm going to kick you out of this house.
"Do you understand?"
Ben said, "Yes."
And the foster parent stormed out of the room.
Ben laid in his room that night
and he wasn't sure what to do, what to feel
and he felt completely alone.
Ben had no idea how to control his emotions
and then he thought of the boxing trainer
who was the only person who had actually expressed
interest in helping him.
"I guess I have nothing to lose
"to see what he has to say," Ben thought to himself.
So the next day he went back to the gym and saw him.
Ben went up to the coach and said,
" Hey, I'm sorry for storming off like that.
"Do you still want to teach me how to fight?"
The coach smiled and said, "Well, that depends
"will you follow everything I say without question?"
"I guess."
"Great, the first and most important thing
"that I want you to do is to read a book
"called, The Laws of Human Nature
"and once you are done reading that
"I want you to tell me if you think
"you are more of a rider or a horse."
"A rider or a horse, what are you talking about,
"I thought you were gonna teach me how to fight?"
"And that's exactly what I'm going to do,
"but first you have to understand
"how to master your emotions.
"And don't bother coming back to me
"until you are ready to talk about what's in that book
"because it'll be really hard for you."
Ben rolled his eyes and said, "Okay fine,"
and then he went home.
And over the next few days he started to read the book
and then he finally got to the chapter called,
The Rider and The Horse.
As Ben was reading the chapter he started to feel weird
and that weird feeling quickly turned into anger
the more he read.
Ben thought to himself, "This stupid book
"is trying to tell me who I am.
"Telling me that I have all these flaws.
"It doesn't know what I've been through or who I am."
And he threw the book away and he went downstairs
to get some food and then he saw Lucas,
the boy who had bullied him many times in the past.
The boy who he had almost fought a couple of days ago.
And he saw him saying goodbye to the foster parents
because a family had decided to adopt him.
In this moment Ben was filled with
envy, jealousy and anger because Lucas
was getting the thing that he wanted most in his life.
In this moment Ben realized that
if he wanted to have a real loving family
he would have to change something.
He had to do something, but he didn't really know
how to do this and there was only one person
who actually wanted to help.
So, he decided to trust the boxing coach
and he read the book.
So the next day he went back to the gym to see the coach.
"So, did you finish the book," the coach said?
"Yes," Ben said.
"Great, so are you more of a horse or a rider?"
And Ben took a deep breath and said, "A horse."
"Very good, do you want me to teach
"you how to be more of a rider?"
"Yes," Ben said.
And it was in this moment when Ben started on the journey
to master his emotions, he learned
what his emotions meant, where they came from
and why he was feeling them.
And through the boxing coaches teachings
he learned how to control his rage,
his sadness, his passion through
learning about the mental side of boxing.
And in the next year Ben had actually achieved
what he wanted most in his life
which was to get taken in by a real family.
It turned out that the boxing coach
and his wife were talking about
adopting a kid for the past few years.
And the new and improved Ben seemed like an appropriate fit.
So, you were probably wondering
what the book said about the horse and the rider
and I'm going to explain it to you right now.
The ancient Greeks had a really profound metaphor
for how emotions work within all humans
and it is known as The Horse and The Rider.
The rider is our thinking self.
It's the part of us that plans and problem solves.
It will tell you, "Hey, I want to go that way."
But, it's the horse that represents
our emotional self and it provides
the power for our journey.
It's a wild animal that compels us to take action.
Without a rider it will move impulsively without thinking
and oftentimes it will get us into trouble.
Without the rider there is no directed movement or purpose
but, without the horse there is now energy or power.
The one without the other is useless.
In most people the horse dominates and the rider is weak.
And Ben was an extreme example of that.
But in some people the rider is too strong
and it holds the reins too tightly
and is afraid to let the animal go into a gallop.
The horse and the rider must work together
and this means that we consider our actions beforehand
and we bring as much thinking as possible
to a situation before we make a decision.
But once we decide on something
we loosen the reins and we enter action
with boldness and a spirit of adventure and power.
And it's often hard for us to admit
that we are the horse because,
in order to master our emotions
we need to understand why we feel the way we feel
which can often bring up incredibly painful things
from our past that we have buried deep
inside our subconscious and most people
go their whole lives without facing these demons.
So, my question for you is, do you think
you're more of a rider or a horse?
Check out my last video about the simple trick
that will motivate you for life and I'll see you there.