Before 1972, women were not allowed to compete in U.S. Polo Assn. games. Sue Sally Hale didn’t go for that.

She played fearlessly and brilliantly for twenty years—disguised as a man. Sue Sally died in 2003 at age 65. Her obituary in the L.A. Times told how she “passed as a boy…”

… by tucking her ash-colored hair under a helmet, flattening her breasts with tape and wearing loose-fitting men’s shirts. She also wore a mustache, concocted with the help of makeup artists who were friends of her stepfather. She entered under the name A. Jones.

In her later years, Sue Sally taught riding and dressage at her Carmel Valley Polo Club in Northern California. 

Sue Sally instructed her jumping students, particularly when they found themselves in such scary moments as hurtling toward a six-foot fence at the full gallop:

“Sit chilly.”

The “sit” part was particularly important (I pass this on from my friend Daphne Raitt who trained for years with Sue Sally) because the horse reads everything from the rider’s “seat.” If the man or woman in the saddle is scared, the horse knows it just from the feel of the rider on its back. The animal may balk at the jump if it feels fear from its rider.

“Chilly” speaks for itself.

Sue Sally’s axiom applies to you and me as writers or artists or athletes or entrepreneurs.

Resistance, remember, is experienced by us as fear. We’re afraid to start, afraid to keep going, afraid to finish, afraid to excel, afraid to expose ourselves to judgment.

Even in our practice, we’re afraid.

So, Sue Sally would tell us, “Sit” … meaning don’t let the horse beneath us, i.e. ourselves, feel our fear. 

And “sit chilly,” that is, remain cool and composed, despite our fear.

And don’t forget to tuck our hair up under our helmet.