The Resilient Mind - It’s Not Worth Losing Yourself - Dry Creek Dewayne

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

Dry Creek Dewayne is a seventh-generation Kentucky cowboy turned horsemanship teacher whose journey took him from working horses in Idaho and Mongolia to founding Dry Creek Wrangler School.With raw honesty, he shares how anger, ambition and betrayal of self nearly derailed him — and how he learned that integrity begins with showing up consistently, even in the small things. Through his work with horses, Dewayne teaches that the greatest battles aren’t with beasts, but with our own minds — that we must win the mind to calm the bodyTake action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalSpecial thanks to:Chris Williamson: @chriswillxDry Creek Dwayne: @drycreekwranglerschool Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to It's Not Worth Losing Yourself with Dry Creek Dwayne. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. If you turn around and look back with open eyes at your life, you see all the scars. The only way you cannot be humble in old age is when you refuse to look at the reality of your life up to the day. That's the only way. Because nobody skates and throw it perfectly.

But this is what drives my, it sounds ludicrous in my ears, but my business endeavors today. This is the core of what drives me. Okay. There is no business out there that I can take on. There is no monetary endeavor that I can take on that is worth the gamble. of me losing me. It took me years of a lot of grief and pain and work to get to be who I am today in spite of who I was. And I don't want to lose that. I don't want to lose myself in business. I don't want to lose myself in trying to earn a better living in trying to get a name and

trying to do this. It's like, I have turned down, I have turned down so much because I've looked at it and I've asked myself, who's this going to make me be? Who's just going to turn me into, even a little bit? And it's like, it's just not worth it. It's just not, it's not worth it. And so I'm right now trying to find the balance in undertaking something that's not going to alter me that I'm not going to lose myself and then not succeeding at something because I was too afraid to try it. I've never been afraid of failure before. But now I've got something I don't want to lose and that's myself that I actually like, a me that I actually like. The person that you have to spend the most time talking to in your life is yourself. Try not to lose that respect.

How have you learned to have a better relationship with yourself, the voice inside of your head to be kinder if things go badly? I like me. I like me. I would buy me a drink. I look at me now and I see all the warts. Okay, I see all the negatives more than anybody else does. I see the positives. And over the whole balance of stuff, I like me.

and I can give myself the same grace. If you and I were friends, I can give myself the same grace I can give you because I like me. I like me in spite of my understanding and the reality of my weaknesses and my warts and my scars and everything. But, you know, all in all, I'm a pretty good dude.

And, man, you got to get to that point. Arrogance is pride mixed with ignorance. That's the definition of arrogance. I'm not talking arrogance. I'm talking about, look, as a human being, I've failed at this, I've succeeded at that, I've wrecked this, but I've built that. And all in all, you know, I've tried, but I like me. So I'm going to give me some grace.

How many people can say that? How many people say I like me? They would give more grace, more care, more attention, more love to somebody else. else than themselves. There's a statistic around, I think, on average, the likelihood that you are going to complete a course of antibiotics yourself, it's about 50%. Right. The likelihood of your dog completing it is 95%. Yes. Yeah. So we're literally capable of caring for a pet. Right. Nearly double as well as we can for ourselves. Remembering that if you die, no one can look after the pet. Serving others from a cup which over

flows around your own is important. Tell me, how'd you like yourself? Find somebody that you like, that you genuinely like, and figure out what it is about them you like. I like that. That's something I like. That person is, uh, their understanding, they're gentle, they're hardworking, they're honest. This is what I like about that and incorporate that stuff into your own life. if that's the stuff you like, then incorporate that stuff into who you are. And then you like yourself. It's not rocket science.

But if we become the person that we like, I have come to the place in my life where when I meet somebody and they don't like me, and you can tell, I don't care, I like me. And it's enough. You know, this was a lesson that I realized, toward the end of my 20s

where I'd accumulated a lot of success and status in maybe the way that modern society tells a young man that he should with freedom and notoriety and women and stuff like that. And that was cool and to look back on fun. But it was beginning to get to the stage where I didn't like me all that much. Well, I hadn't done anything bad.

But I just felt like I was built for more. I was built for different, built for something else. Right. And I realized that I wasn't keeping promises to myself. Right. That if I said I was going to wake up at a certain time, the snooze button would be hit three times. Right.

But I said that I was going to stick to my diet or go to the gym or do this thing. Maybe it would happen, but it wouldn't happen quite the way that I'd meant it to. And there would be some negotiating and some, cajoling and some falling short, you know, how can you have faith that you're going to go and do all of the things that you want in life when you can't not hit the snooze button? Right. But you can't not cheat on your diet. You can't not do, you know, you are constructed by the tiny decisions that you make every

single day. Well, I'll just say I came to a place in life where I just didn't like me anymore. I wasn't a very nice person. and I was just very on edge, very angry. So I had to make some decisions. I can't continue to live like this. Angry, there's no benefit to it. You know, it doesn't fix anything.

You know, anger, it just turned out. I'm like, this is not profitable. And this is eating me up inside. And I'm making stupid decisions. And this has just got to end. So I had to make some decisions. What was making me like this? I need to get it out of my life.

And slowly over time, got a handle on stuff. And I kind of got some of my perspective back. So imagine that you had a friend, and every time that you invited this friend out for lunch, they showed up an hour late or they didn't show up at all. After a while, you'd stop trusting them and stop inviting them out at all. You are that friend to yourself. Yeah.

And I think this is such an important lesson for people who want to be liked, who want struggle socially and want to become better. People like people that make them feel good. Right. They don't care that much about how impressive the person is. So I was riding for an outfit in Alaska, guiding, and they brought in a mayor. And the best I could understand, she was a retired barrel racing horse from here in Texas. and so when I signed on, they assigned her to me because nobody else. We couldn't put guest on her, none of the other wranglers wanted to ride her.

Because her go-to was run. If something disturbed her, her head came up and it's run. Just run. That's my answer to escape to just run. And it wasn't something that I could physically fight and stop. And so that horse really made me step outside of the thought process of physically controlling something that has a mental, emotional issue. And getting in her head and figuring out what can I do if the problem is mentally or emotionally, what can I do to get into her head and get into her emotions and fix that for her. and so what I did, and it's so simple, it probably wouldn't even make sense to a lot of folks.

But while we were sitting there and while she was calm, sitting there at the ranch, waiting for others to get on the horses, I would just come in with the lightest little pressure and get her to tip her nose. Not pull her nose in, just give a signal, hey, tip your nose, so she'd tip her nose. And we'd just do that and just do that. And then when we get out on the trail and she started getting anxious about something and her head would come up, I would just default to that. And so she would find something that she was secure the signal, and she would calm down. And she would calm down.

And working with that mare for the summer, I made huge strides of myself in stepping outside of the norm of trying to physically control something that isn't ideal. Yeah, I mentioned that I had ridden a horse for the first time in Texas, and they gave me whatever the leader of the group is for the horse, whatever that's called. And I was right far at the back, and this horse was eating. And the lady that was guiding the group said, just give him a little pole, and he'll come along. I gave me a little poll, and he didn't move. I mean, it is absurd to explain how strong these things necks are. Yeah. And I'm like, so I don't think he doesn't want, doesn't want to come.

She's like, no, no, just a little bit more, a little bit more. I'm like, I'm a pretty strong guy. So I was like, right, okay, I'll give it a big pole. Didn't move. I'm like, and by this time, they're 100 yards away. Yeah. I'm like, still, he doesn't want to, doesn't seem like you want. She said, no, like a really big pull.

So I went mixed grip like you do on a deadlift. Yeah. Set my feet into the stirrups and like, like one rep maxed this horse's head up. and finally he got up. And that was absolutely not the most efficient way to get him to do that thing. There would have been a much better way than me. Right.

Now, what I teach folks is I don't want his body. Okay? I want his mind. Now, if I physically, like you just went through, if I physically get his body to do what I want, but I don't have his mind, as soon as he gets a chance, he's going to go back again. but if I ignore the body and I get the mind, if I have the mind, I have the body.

So in a situation like that, what I do is I don't pull his head up. Okay, I take the reins and I bounce that bit that's in its mouth. I bounce it pretty sharp. And he decides in his mind, I don't like that. I think I will pick my head up. I'm going to suggest to you that you decide it's in your best interest for you to pick your head up. And we go for the mind. And how much in life, you know, you've got all these folks working for you here.

And you have to, you can't physically browbeat and nag and threaten. You've tried, does it work? No, no, no, no. The belligerent, all of them. I've already heard stories. Yeah. It's just, yeah. But you want to make things so that they decide.

that if this is what Chris wants done, it's in my best interest. I want to go do that. And again, it's communication, you know, and again, it's getting in the horse's mind and working with a horse in that manner. I'll give you an illustration if I can, all right? One of the cardinal sins in my book

is when I go to get on a horse and the horse walks off, when I'm part way up. You know, I'm stepping up. I swinging my leg over and he's walking, he's leaving. Okay, that's a cardinal sin. So we have a difference of opinion here, me and the horse. It's like, I want you to plant your feet. And I want you to be still while I get on, and then I'll tell you when I want you to go.

He says, well, I want to go. So I'm not going to sit there and take pull back and say, whoa, and do that one-legged hop along, Cassidy down while I'm trying to get in the side. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to physically hold him back. I'm going to put my toe on the stirp, and I'm going to go to step up. and when he walks off, I'm going to step back out, and I'm going to make him keep walking in a circle around me, eight or ten times.

I'm like, I wanted you to stand still, but you want to walk. I'll tell you what, I'm a nice guy. I'm going to let you walk. I'm going to let you do what you want in a controlled manner. You pick the tune, and I'll pick the dance. And I'll make him walk around. He's like, I don't want to walk anymore, but you said that's what you wanted,

so I'm letting you do what you want. He's like, I don't want to walk anymore. stop, whoa, and won't you stand here while I get in the saddle? And he says, and it may take a couple of times, better while. He says, you know what? I think what I want to do is I want to stand here while he gets in the saddle, you know? So we communicate, and when I got his mind, when I changed his want to, I didn't have to fight with his body. And so that's just, that's how you approach it.

You understand and you communicate. What have you learned about humans from working with horses? Humans don't know how to communicate. Communication is our biggest weakness. That's not like the number, but that's something that lately, this has been just really hammered home to me, working with horses and working with humans. And communication is a must.

much more complex issue than, I think, many of us give it credit for. So you take a horse and a human, a relationship with a horse and human, right? For that to work, there has to be communication. Well, we have a couple of problems here. First off, the horse doesn't speak English, and we don't speak horse. All right. But as humans, we insist that the horse comes in there. world but we're too arrogant or too lazy or a combination of both to learn to speak horse and horse's

language is not verbal it's all movement it's all body language it's all this and so that is a problem but another problem is is us and the horse we are um we're predator animals right we are the human is we're predators all right we're designed to eat meat our eyes are side by side on the front of our face. We see one picture and we're designed to see what we want and go get it. The horse is a prey animal. They are the animal that everything that eats meat wants to eat. And so they have a complete different instinct. Their instinct is everything wants to eat me. We wake up of a morning and we say, you know, I want to be a trophy husband. You know, that's my go. I read it. Okay. What do I want to go get today? The horse wakes up and says, I don't want to get eaten today.

Two totally different instinct. All right? So to be able to build a communication with a horse, we have to move into the world and learn to speak, but learn to think how they think. Well, I mean, we can say men and women are the same thing. You know, the women are different from men. They have a different way of thinking.

And like I said, my wife, I've been married almost 34 years. And even today, there's things I say. and she absolutely what she heard is not what I said and vice versa you know so communication and you cannot have 34 years of relationship with one person if there's no communication um I don't like the trend in this circle men's motivation circle I don't like the hustle culture as is being brought out and taught today I don't agree with it because I think it's out of balance. I think young men need to know that, hey, it's okay for you to sit down and to chill and to think. Because I guarantee if you're in the weight room pumping out all these reps and running on the

machine and then you're going into the cubicle and you flip open a computer and you're not thinking. You're learning, you're taking in, but you're not meditating on stuff and you're not, you're not thinking but that can be taken so far that young men are made to feel guilty for just setting down and thinking and relaxing and i understand that there was a tendency in this country we had a lot of young men that were not raised with dads they weren't raised to work you know and so it's sitting on the couch playing the stupid x-box you know not growing up learning to work so that pendulum went too far this way so now you've got guys who in order to counteract that they swung the pendulum too far this way and a balanced man needs to be somewhere in the

middle he needs to be able to work to do what needs to be done to improve himself and he also needs to set around by the fire in the backyard and just stay balanced there needs to be I wrote an essay about that this week. Did you? Would you mind if I read it to you? Absolutely not. I think type A people have a type B problem and type B people have a type A problem. Insecure overachievers need to learn how to chill out and relax, and lazy people need to learn how to work harder and be disciplined.

Given that you subscribe to me, I'm going to guess you're probably type A. Some version of a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity, as Andrew Wilkinson says. Here's the thing you may have already realized. Type A people with a type B problem get very little sympathy, because a miserable but outwardly successful person always appears to be in a much more preferential position than the content being lazy but on the verge of being bankrupt person. The problems of opportunity will always get less sympathy than ones of scarcity.

One feels like a choice, the other like a limitation. I need someone to teach me how to be disciplined and work harder, feels noble and upward aiming and charitable. I need someone to teach me. teach me how to switch off and relax, feels dopaminergic and addicted and transactional and opulent. Every underdog movie ever has a training montage of someone working their life out by working harder. None included a guy learning how to log out of Slack at 6pm or finally enjoy a beach holiday. Type B problems are just as tough as type A ones, but they require a much less sexy

solution, peace, one that you can't achieve by just working harder. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.