Consistency vs. Potential

Yael Magal
Dec 31
6 min read

“She’s Got Potential.”

When I was a kid, adults loved to say, “She’s got potential.”

It always landed wrong.

It sounded like praise, but it wasn’t. I knew that even back then.

At best, it was a breadcrumb. A way to keep hope alive without addressing the real issue. The gap between what could be and what actually is. At worst, It was a bad-news sandwich to avoid saying the harder thing out loud.

What they were picking up on was real. Ability shows itself sometimes. Talent flashes through. Enough to suggest that meeting the standard is possible. Maybe even surpassing it.

But possibility isn’t performance. And occasional proof doesn’t mean you live there.

And that’s the part people struggle to say, because it’s harder to communicate honestly without sounding cruel.

Meeting the standard once in a while is cute. Surpassing it at random looks impressive. Neither is sustainable.

That’s where potential becomes dangerous. When talent bails you out just often enough, it convinces you that consistency is optional.

Eventually, reality shows up and demands: do the work, or take a bow.

I took piano, flute, guitar, and French lessons for years. Took plenty of 101 classes. Started things I was genuinely curious about. I didn’t practice any of them consistently.

So no, I’m not the person everyone gathers around at the piano at a house party. I can’t run a clean 5k without negotiating with myself the entire time. And when we visit France, all I can offer is a confident “Je ne parle pas français.”

Nobody should be surprised by this -- That’s the most predictable outcome.

Aristotle Is Usually Right

Years ago, I read the famous line often attributed to Aristotle:

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

That sentence hit home.

We understand this everywhere else in life -- Going to the gym once doesn’t change your body. Training for a few weeks doesn’t undo years of habits. Even training for years doesn’t buy you permanent fitness if you stop.

Natural ability might make the beginning easier. It might cover gaps at times. What it won't do is replaces the work required to sustain results.

And yet, with horses, we somehow expect it to.

The Illusion of “They Can Do It” aka Where Potential Goes to Die

We catch glimpses. A great stop. A soft response. One ride where everything clicks.

Those moments are convincing. They feel like proof that what we’re doing is enough. Or worse, proof that we can skip structure, skip consistency, skip investment and still get the right answer.

“See? They can do it!”

And they can.

That’s not a lack of ability. That’s ability without consistency or stability behind it.

Horses aren’t machines. Neither are we. Hopefully, at some point in your horse’s life, someone built a solid foundation. But foundations don’t maintain themselves. Someone still has to show up every day to keep them intact.

Want improvement? That’s layering. And every layer depends on the ones beneath it. Ignore one, and the whole thing destabilizes.

Talent and a good base might get you through a few moments. They will not hold under pressure, change, or time.

That’s not a failure of talent. That’s simply where most potential gets lost. Not because the ability wasn’t there, but because it was leaned on instead of developed and maintained.

The Fairytale We Tell

We’re adults now, but many of us still see moments of brightness and treat them like magic instead of what they are: uncontained ability.

When those moments disappear, we act surprised.

They weren’t magic. They were incomplete.

I see this at every level. Hobby riders. Ambitious amateurs. Competitive riders. And if we’re honest, we do this in plenty of other areas of life too.

We often expect horses to hold a level, or even improve, without much change on our end. When things slip, we start stacking explanations: personality, bad days, age, stress, footing, timing. Some of those factors are real. But the moment we let them fully carry the blame for poor responses, loss of control, or a sour attitude, they stop being context and start becoming excuses. The more we lean on them, the easier it becomes to avoid looking at the simpler truth: structure changed, consistency faded, and the horse adapted accordingly.

It’s not a character flaw. It’s our own humanity that got in the way of facing reality.

Your time spent with your horse matters. But it’s not the same as a consistent, intentional program that keeps both mind and body sharp; Without a clear, repeated framework, even very good horses lose clarity; They don’t “misbehave.” They adapt to the environment they’re given.

Eventually, every rider faces the same choice: accept the level your horse drifts into, or change the structure around them.

And even then, some people see training like an auto shop; Drop the horse off, get them “fixed,” or "install an upgrade" and expect it to last from then on.

It won’t.

That’s not how living, breathing animals work.

Training Is a Language

The gym metaphor works because it’s obvious. No one expects their body to stay fit without regular work.

The mind is no different. And neither is a horse’s mental capacity.

Think of training like language.

If you learned a second language and stopped using it, you wouldn’t forget it overnight. But fluency fades. Words come slower. Nuance disappears. Under pressure, you hesitate. You guess. Confidence drops and frustration creeps in.

Nothing is wrong with you. You just stopped practicing.

Horses are the same. They don’t lose ability. They lose clarity. They lose the ease that comes from accurate, frequent, whole, and rich communication.

Light cues, soft responses, willingness — that’s fluency; That's that seamless ease you see and feel whenever you come across high standards in any profession/skill.

Without that consistent conversation, the horse starts guessing. Guessing turns into hesitation. Hesitation turns into uncertainty. Uncertainty turns into that same frustration (or fear) and leads to resistance or dullness.

It's not because the horse is difficult or bad. It's because the language isn't reinforced, or never even developed far enough for them (or you) to find or know the words.

Standards, Not Stories

Every field has standards, whether they’re written down or not. They can be obvious in some technical/measured ones at best, but anything involving emotion tends to get fuzzy fast.

You can argue there’s no “bad” art, but you still wouldn’t put a four-year-old’s stick figure and a Picasso under the same standard of mastery.

That doesn’t mean everyone has to be Picasso. It means you need to be honest about where you stand relative to the bar you’re referencing.

Riding horses isn’t most people’s profession. That’s fine. You have your own craft, and you’re almost certainly better at it than I am. But horses don’t adjust their needs based on your level of riding.

Comparing yourself to the rider next to you isn’t a standard measure. That's relativity. And relativity is a terrible substitute for clarity.

You and I don’t speak the language at the same fluency with the same vocabulary. That’s not a diss. One of us spent the time to get fluent. The other spent a summer abroad or got very committed to Duolingo. These are very different vocabularies. Different confidence. And much much difference understanding of the only one who speaks it as their native language; So stop expecting your horse to understand broken sentences and calling it good enough.

Consistency For The (Real) Win

Consistency isn’t exciting. Most of the time, it’s repetitive and moves up slowly. It’s doing the same mental and physical work when nothing dramatic happens. It’s laying bricks long after the foundation looks finished.

That’s the difference between a glimpse and a standard.

I can’t change anyone’s past. I can’t speed up time. What I know is this: potential only becomes useful when it shows up reliably. On ordinary days. Under average conditions. Without talent or luck having to save you.

You may or may not choose that level of consistency in your personal life. That’s your call.

But your horse deserves it.

They didn’t choose their environment, their workload, or their challenges. They thrive on structure. And when they get it, they don’t just perform better.

They live better. More relaxed. More confident. More cooperative. More willing.