10 Winning Distinctions: What My Champion Racehorse Taught Me About Winning

Watching this year's Kentucky Derby winner, California Chrome, made me reflect on my own peak experience as an owner in a racehorse who also wasn't expected to become anything special amongst the 30,000+ racehorses that are born each year.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

2014-05-05-MamboMeisterforHuffPost.png

Horse racing is often used as a metaphor for accomplishments in life.
I never realized how germane a metaphor this is.

Watching this year's Kentucky Derby winner, California Chrome, made me reflect on my own peak experience as an owner in a racehorse who also wasn't expected to become anything special amongst the 30,000+ racehorses that are born each year. Our champion, Mambo Meister, didn't win the Derby -- however, he did win 11 races, nine of them stakes races, and ran a strong fifth in the Dirt Mile in the highest of equine echelons, the Breeders Cup. Thus, once again proving the power of intent in creating something to be the best, be it a magnificent thoroughbred or an inspired idea.

A "thoroughbred," also known as a purebred, is a horse bred and trained specifically to race and of course, to win. Can we also train and develop our ideas to be "thoroughbred ideas" -- bred and nurtured to be winners? Consider that if you desire sustained success of your idea, it is not only possible to relate to it as if it is as precious and rare as a thoroughbred -- it's essential.

As an owner of a champion racehorse I've learned that horse racing is not just about throwing a bunch of beautiful thoroughbreds onto a track and seeing which one makes it over the finish line first. Not at all. To the uninitiated, horse racing seems like a gamble, a game of chance. Though it involves risk as any venture does, for professionals seriously engaged in the "sport of kings," the idea of it as a gamble couldn't be further from the truth.

Thoroughbred horse racing is an intricate and highly refined and sophisticated sport and business requiring a great deal of thoughtful decisions and choices along the way to the purses and prizes and that coveted circle located at the finish line, reserved for winners only.


There's more to it than just getting your horse into the race.

You and I know that to have any chance at winning, you have to get your horse into the race. In the realm of Big Ideas this translates as getting your idea into action. Yet, there is a lot more to it than that.

As you continue reading this, apply the metaphor. Bring to mind your Big Idea. You know the One. The idea that excites you, lights you, stirs your passion, makes you happy just imagining it being expressed in the world. How do you treat an idea as important as this? Like a prized racehorse, you don't want it to be a gamble either, something you simply put "out there" and hope for the best. You don't just want to get it onto to the track; you want your idea to be a winner. Consider developing your idea beyond the ordinary -- as a thoroughbred.


There is much to think about.

As in developing a new idea, in developing a racehorse there is much to think about. What is the strategy for the race itself -- do you get out in front and stay there, keep behind the pace-setters, lay low and pounce later with a late run? Or do you stay behind and watch until you take your big strides to the finish à la the famously adored champion filly, Zenyatta?
You have to pick your spots, you have to know which racing conditions are the ideal ones for your particular horse. You have to know which race tracks, how the track is racing that particular day, what surfaces, dirt, turf (grass) or synthetic; what other horses are in the field and the quality of how they have been running lately.

You have to know your own horse. What are his/her racing styles, emotional states, responses to food and therapeutic treatments, relationship to workouts and exercise riders, grooms, trainers, jockeys and owners? You have to tune in.
What can you do that is innovative? Our small group of owners, called Quantum Racing Team #1, used some "quantum secrets" with our horse as well as traditional practices.

Okay, I know you get the picture. The variables are many. To have an equine athlete become a champion requires ongoing attention and awareness, analysis and intuition, conviction and strategy. What about the development of an idea? To have an idea become a stellar performing "thoroughbred idea" requires no less.

Develop your idea as a thoroughbred.

A thoroughbred idea could be said to be an idea you have that is unique to you,
a "purebred" idea that comes through you, that you and only you can vehicle onto the world scene, destined to develop as a champion.

If we want our ideas to succeed we must cultivate and nurture them, develop and train them, think for them and strategize, make discerning decisions and take consistent action. This may seem all too obvious as we say it here, yet how many of our ideas remain in our heads or in our conversations, and never even make it onto the track? How many of our ideas maintain the status of "sleeping money" because they are not developed fully or lack the structure and strategy to sustain their success?

From a QuantumThink(r) perspective ideas are not static, dry concepts. We relate to ideas as organic -- vital, dynamic living presences that shift and change and evolve according to our intent and the way we interact with them.

Whatever your Big Idea is, consider that when you develop it as a thoroughbred idea you enter a rarefied realm -- in what your idea means to you in your self expression, creatively, emotionally, and spiritually; in what it means to you in financial gains, stability, and security; and in what it means to you as your contribution to others and the world.

What does it take for your Big Idea to be a thoroughbred?

10 Distinctions of Thoroughbred Ideas Destined to Win

1.Thoroughbred ideas are treated as investments.
You hold your ideas as valuable from inception. You pay a lot of attention to them, making researched and carefully thought-through decisions. You leverage them. Thoroughbred ideas generate revenue and profit. You expect them to increase in value over time, and they do.

2.Thoroughbred ideas are treasured like gold.
You hold your ideas as precious and you look after them with protective care. You watch over them every step along their journey.

3.Thoroughbred ideas are held as champions.
You hold your ideas in the highest esteem with the unwavering intent that they already are champions, even before they perform or "prove" themselves.

4.Thoroughbred ideas are related to as intelligent.
You hold your ideas as having their own intelligence and you listen to the guidance and wisdom that comes from them. Ideas will "tell" their owners what they require for their highest achievement.

5.Thoroughbred ideas make necessary adjustments.
You remain aware and proactively look for adjustments needed along the path of development to maintain the fitness and stamina, endurance and strength of the ideas. Thoroughbred ideas sustain themselves this way.

6.Thoroughbred ideas have a clear strategy.
You look from the whole and plan from the big picture for the long term life span of the idea and create a clear strategy for generating a pattern of success.

7.Thoroughbred ideas create the right conditions for peak performance.
You consciously construct the proper conditions for the expression of your ideas in environments that naturally generate peak performance.

8.Thoroughbred ideas express clear purpose.
Purpose derives from the owner's passion and unique perspective and manifests as beneficial to others in their experience of your idea.

9.Thoroughbred ideas cultivate quality relationships.
You keep your ideas in the best company, a high quality resonant field of supporters, experts, associates and affiliates who nurture and inspire ever-greater and growing accomplishment.

10.Thoroughbred ideas evolve and expand.
You consciously evolve your ideas by opening to new thinking beyond your current vision. You welcome unexpected possibilities; awaken your own thinking beyond formulas and circumstances; you QuantumThink.

In horse racing to have your thoroughbred compete for a championship there are two steps you must take. First, you have to nominate your horse for that particular stakes race, that is, you have to enter the race. Secondly, you have to run. In horse racing it is spoken this way: you have to start. To reach the finish line, and to win -- you have to enter and you have to start.

Pictured is Multiple Graded Stakes Winner, Mambo Meister, here victorious at Calder Race Course.
Mambo Meister (2005-2012) was proudly owned and dearly loved by Quantum Racing Team #1
Trainer, Phil Gleaves; Jockey, Manoel Cruz. Photo credit: Jim Lisa Photos, Miami, Florida

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot