March 7, 2025 • 21 mins
This episode of the podcast is something new. Let’s call it an experiment. I’ll explain shortly, but first some context.
Since I published Dancing the Tightrope, What Falling Off a Horse Taught Me About Embracing Pressure, Fear and Uncertainty in 2022, many people have asked me for an audio book. While I’m aware of the huge trend towards audio books, I’m not an audio-book listener. I love to read, and I LOVE to listen to podcasts. However, listening to audio books has just never worked for me. I just zone out. So the thought of putting out a version of my book that zoned people out was very unappealing to me!
Also, the thought of reading my entire book out loud caused me to cringe. Now, if you have followed my work for a while, you might have noticed in that last sentence that I was “gulping”, trying to get to the end quickly, rather than considering taking it a step at a time.
Recently, one of my favorite podcasts, The Tim Ferriss show put out a chapter of his first book The Four Hour Workweek. Once I started listening to it, I almost changed to another podcast. It so happened that I didn’t have anything else in the hopper, so I kept listening. While I DID zone out, I also came away with a couple of good takeaways.
It got me to thinking - why don’t I do the same thing? All I have to do is read ONE chapter of my book.
So that’s what I am doing for this episode of the podcast. What you will hear in this podcast is Chapter One of Dancing the Tightrope.
Here’s where the experiment part comes in. Now that I’ve done one chapter, I’m willing to do more, but only if it makes a difference to others.
This is where you come in. Did you like listening to this chapter? Would you like to hear more? What feedback do you have for me as the reader? (Yes, really, I would like to be better and the only way is to hear your feedback.)
If I hear from enough people that this was something that worked well for them, I will audio publish the rest of the book, more than likely as I did here, as a series on the podcast. Eventually, I will then get it on Audible.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:02):
Lynn, Welcome to Creative spirits unleashed, where we talk
about the dilemmas of balancingwork and life and now here's
your host, Lynn Carnes,
Lynn (00:19):
welcome to the creative spirits unleashed Podcast. I'm
Lynn Carnes, your host. Thisepisode of the podcast is
something new. Let's call it anexperiment. I'll explain
shortly, but first, somecontext. Since I published
dancing the tightrope, fallingoff a horse, taught me about
embracing pressure, fear anduncertainty in 2022 many people
(00:41):
have asked me for an audio bookwhile I'm aware of the huge
trend towards audio books, I'mnot an audiobook listener. I
love to read and I lovelistening to podcasts. However,
listening to audiobooks has justnever worked for me. I just zone
out. So the thought of puttingout a version of my book that
zoned people out was veryunappealing to me. Also, the
(01:04):
thought of reading my entirebook out loud caused me to
cringe. Now, if you followed mywork for a while, you might have
just noticed in that lastsentence that I am gulping
trying to get to the endquickly, rather than considering
taking one step at a time, atheme that I often teach as a
critical tool. So recently, oneof my favorite podcasts, the Tim
(01:26):
Ferriss show, put out a chapterof his first book, The Four Hour
Work Week. Once I startedlistening to it, I almost
changed to another podcast,because here we are reading a
book. But it just so happenedthat I didn't have anything else
in the hopper, so I just keptlistening. Now I did zone out,
but I also came away with acouple of good takeaways. So it
(01:47):
got me to thinking, why don't Ido the same thing? I mean, all I
have to do is just read onechapter of my book. So that's
what I'm doing for this episodeof the podcast. Now what you're
going to hear is one chapter orchapter one of dancing the
tightrope. This is where theexperiment part comes in. Now
that I've done the one chapter,I'm willing to do more, but only
(02:10):
if it makes a difference toothers. And this is where you
come in. Did you like listeningto this chapter? Would you like
to hear more? What feedback doyou have for me as a reader?
Yes, I really would like to bebetter, and the only way is for
me to hear your feedback. So ifI hear from enough people that
this is something that workedwell for them, I will audio
(02:31):
publish the rest of the book,more than likely, as I did here,
as a series on the podcast, andthen eventually, more than
likely, I will get it onAudible. So if you are listening
to this and you do want to giveme feedback, you can email me
directly. Yes, I'm going to givemy email out into the internet
world. I doubt I'll get thatmany but if I do, I hope you
(02:51):
guys flood me and make me crazyfor having given my email away.
But if you do want to give meemail feedback, the email is
lynn@lynncarns.com I do lookforward to hearing from you. I
hope you enjoy this episode ofthe creative spirits unleashed
podcast. Chapter One, too muchpressure for me. Just a simple
(03:13):
trail ride through the woods asthe three of us set out on the
trail that day, I rememberhaving the thought steeped in
ignorance. This is sort ofboring. This was my second time
to ride with my friend Babs andher sister in law, Mary. I was
on Babs horse mocha. When shefirst asked me to come ride, I
told her I knew how to ridehorses, and she confidently put
(03:35):
us in the lead. I might as wellhave claimed I knew how to do
brain surgery, because Isuccessfully cleaned a fish once
my definition of knowing how toride horses was based on the
false confidence of having fiveminutes of riding lessons when I
was 12 years old, our familyowned a small farm about an hour
from our house. Since I was infourth grade. That was the year
(03:56):
my teacher read us WalterFarley's book, The Black
Stallion. In class, I wasenraptured with the idea of
having my own Black Stallion.
From the first minute we got thefarm, I begged my parents to buy
me a horse. After all, it lookedto me like all you needed to
successfully own a horse was afew acres and a fence our farm
had that. It even had some oldbarrels laying around. To my own
(04:18):
mind, the only thing missingfrom my dream of being a
champion barrel racer was ahorse. Eventually, I wore my
parents down and they bought ahorse. My dreams were shattered
quickly. We only had him acouple of months before we sold
him because I couldn't controlhim. This was one of two facts I
had conveniently forgotten totell Babs after my parents sold
(04:41):
the horse, I spent my lifetimeblaming my parents for taking
away my opportunity to be achampion. Now, 40 plus years
later, I was back on a horse andthere were no barrels in sight.
All we were going to do was walkon a trail in the woods. How
hard could it be? As with anydiscipline, what you see and
(05:01):
what is under the surface areworlds apart. Boring. It was as
if I had dared the universe toprove me wrong. As our ride
progressed, mocha walked meright through an occupied spider
web. My face took the full webspider and all this insult was
an offer into a new dimension ifI told chose to take it. But of
(05:23):
course, at the time, I knewnothing of a relationship where
the horse would offer his legsto me, where he would give me
his trust and true connection. Ihad no idea the magic that was
really happening on this boringride in the woods. I was too
busy being offended he continuedwalking as I flicked the spider
(05:43):
away, wiped my face andshuddered my thought, How dare
he walked me walk into that web.
Mocha did not walk me throughthe web direct deliberately. He
was merely taking the lead thatI had unknowingly left
unattended. I saw the webcoming. However, in this
dimension, I had not made anykind of connection or contact
(06:06):
with him. My lessons fromchildhood were long forgotten,
so I had few tools to move himright or left to avoid the web.
What few ideas I tried didn'twork? Hmm, to my way of
thinking, it was almost like Iwas riding a faulty motorbike.
If I just knew which buttons topush, he would do what I wanted.
(06:28):
Wrong. He was simply walkingdown the trail waiting for that
turn toward the barn, choosingevery step for himself. He knew
from the first moment I got onhim that he was the leader of
this ride. As we continued downthe trail, a part of me began to
realize what he had known fromthe very beginning. He had all
the power. I was the unfortunatepassenger on the back of an
(06:51):
animal that had survived 1000sof years by running away at the
first sign of danger. My lack ofawareness about the consequences
of the horse being in controlcreated a form of unbalanced
thinking. What I decided more inthe back of my mind than in the
forefront was that it would begood for the horse to like me
even as I write this, it'sembarrassing to admit my sense
(07:15):
of boredom had transformed intosomething more ominous. I felt
the need to correct the balanceof power. I said good boy to him
a couple of times, but not forthe right reasons. Yes, it's
good to praise a horse who haslearned something or has gotten
over a fear. This was definitelynot in response to him having
done anything like that. Nope,it was a verbalization of my
(07:38):
thought, I want him to light me,I would be on the ground, unable
to breathe. Within seconds, aswe turned down a steep hill, the
horse perked up, as he had doneseveral times before. Everything
in his body language told me wehad made a turn toward the barn,
even though I could not havefound the way home, he knew the
(07:59):
way, and he would gladly be ableto take me there. He picked up
his pace and clearly excited atthe thought of the pile of hay
waiting in his stall. Later, Iwould learn his lateral gait on
such a steep hill created arocking motion that feels like a
trot. On this day, I just wantedthe motion to stop. I pull back
on the reins to slow him down.
Unconsciously, I also leanedforward and gripped his sides
(08:22):
with my legs. I had never beenon such a steep hill in Texas
where I grew up, leaning forwardwas exactly the opposite of what
I should have done. I was sayingslow down and go fast at the
same time. By now, he knew theconfusing requests from the
woman on his back did notnecessarily mean anything, but
the barn was ahead, and gravityencouraged speed, so he obliged
(08:45):
with my questionable balance, Iquickly went from trying to slow
him down to just holding on.
That strategy lasted for onemore step, and then I was
flying. I landed with a hardsplat on my side. My friends
went into action to catch thehorse I had just left to his own
devices. When they came back tocheck on me, I could barely
(09:07):
move, and every half breath hurtlike hell. I could tell
something was very wrong. Myarms and legs seemed to be in
one piece. However, my middlewasn't working too well. Here we
were out in the woods wheregetting back on mocha to take me
home was not going to happen.
Walking out was not happeningeither. In fact, I tried to sit
up and failed miserably.
(09:30):
Luckily, we were in cell phonerange. Babs husband Bob, met us
with a four wheeler and aquestion, Should we call an
ambulance? After they loaded meinto the ambulance, I settled
back, closed my eyes, andmeditated. My meditation took me
back to a very differentambulance ride almost 20 years
before, one caused by me beingout of balance in my career
(09:53):
perspective, the first ambulanceride that started to wake me up.
I.
Everyone bustled around me,hooking up monitors and watching
my funky heartbeat bounce aroundlike a pinball as I lay there,
half dazed by the fluorescentlights, my irritation grew.
Where were their priorities? Didthey not understand that the
pressure I felt lettingimportant work fall through the
(10:15):
cracks far exceeded the worrythat I might die at that time of
my life, I felt like my careerwas just taking off. My Projects
mattered on a national scale. Myincentive package was anyone's
dream, and I knew most of thesenior executives of a mega
bank, and they knew me, whichseemed incredibly important to
(10:35):
me, at least back then, it nevercrossed my mind that if I died,
someone else would be doing mywork tomorrow. Fainting on my
bathroom floor that morningscared my husband enough to sew
in an ambulance. An erraticheartbeat scared my high school
aged daughter, enough to thinkshe might lose her mother. A
phone call from my husband toupdate, my parents sent their
(10:55):
worry meter off the chart me,the one lying in bed. I was
worried if I would be back atwork on Monday. If I wasn't, I
was sure all hell was going tobreak loose. Any prospect of
being in balance in my life wasso far out of reach. Even the
potential of dying of a heartattack blinded me to the
miserable state of my life. Formany years, my corporate life
(11:18):
had been marked by questions,how does one get ahead here? How
do I stay out of trouble, butalso get some of the limelight
that seems to get peoplepromoted? What do they really
want from me, and how do I domore of that? Getting answers to
those questions had startedpaying off. In the past few
years, I had been promoted andmoved to increasingly bigger
(11:41):
roles three times in less thansix years. Time after time, I
had proven my worth and had beenrewarded with longer work, days,
more pressure and the danglingcarrot of money that grew
exponentially the longer Istayed, the prison of my own
making was closing in, and Iwelcomed it with open arms. All
(12:03):
of this activity allowed me tojoin a select club of high
potentials, meaning people wholook like they might eventually
make it to the executive suite.
There were hundreds, if not1000s, of us all vying for a few
spots, and all certain that wehad the right stuff to get
there. The pressure to reachthat pinnacle was enormous. Life
was good. At least it was goodif I ignored the fact that my
(12:28):
soon to be drug addict daughterhad carried a bottle of pills to
school a few years before withevery intention of taking her
own life. It was good if Iignored my frayed relationships,
starting with my marriage, itwas good if you didn't ask my
team what kind of leader it had.
It was good if I ignored thesigns all around me that my
(12:50):
whole world was out of kilter.
Life was good if I ignored thefact that my health in my late
30s was clearly failing, even asI insisted they get me out of
this hospital so I could go backto work for me to be discharged,
they just had one condition, youhave to pass a stress test.
Cool. Passing stress test was inmy wheelhouse for a straight A
(13:13):
perfectionist like me, thiswould be a snap. As the
cardiologist strapped me to thestress test machine. He asked me
where I worked. When I told him,he said, seriously, you worked
there. You're the fifth personI've tested for stress related
heart problems this week, and Ihaven't worked that much.
Suddenly, my memory flashed tothe several instances of
(13:34):
ambulances leaving any one ofour corporate buildings in
downtown Charlotte. In fact, wehad sent two trainees from my
own credit training program tothe hospital via ambulance in
the past few weeks. Hisincredulity about us bankers
dropping like flies got throughto my numbed out brain. Here was
a guy who had endured the rigorsof medical school, had to be on
(13:55):
call at all hours, and wastesting me on a Saturday night,
calling me the one for being aworkaholic. It was a clue that
something might be off. While apart of me really wanted to
reject His judgment, I couldn'tescape it. There was something
terribly out of balance here,but it was still take more
(14:15):
reflection warning signals andfacing the suicide of a
colleague to wake me up andallow me to see the world with
new eyes. My diagnosis turnedout to be Barrett's esophagus, a
potentially cancer causingcondition brought about by
stress. I had to do something orI would likely get stomach
cancer and die an early andpainful death. For the next 20
(14:37):
years, I entered an intense,Rocky, personal journey of deep
self awareness. Without a doubt,I changed my relationship with
anger, stress and all the peoplein my life. My husband and I
stayed married. We moved to themountains, where I became an
athlete, artist and executivecoach. My spiritual life became
rich and fulfilled. Length, mydaughter entered recovery, and
(15:01):
today helps parents of adultaddicts navigate the rough
waters of reclaiming their livesas today's ambulance pulled into
the emergency room, I was somuch calmer than that first ride
some 20 years ago, I had trulycome a long way. I couldn't
possibly see it yet, but theceiling of possibility was about
(15:22):
to be blown off. This accidentwould be a gift. It would teach
me that mistakes are merelycalibrations, and the balance
point is always moving.
Uncertainty would become anopportunity to use my tools with
(15:44):
a capital T, and pressure wouldbe the force to build them, but
first I would have to accept thereality of what happened, lack
of knowledge or something else.
After getting an x ray in theemergency room, I looked at the
clock. If all went well, I wouldbe out of there in time to drive
the boat as promised for Austinable, the pro water skier who
(16:07):
runs a ski school on mysticwaters, our 162 acre former Girl
Scout camp. By now, I wasbreathing better and pretty sure
that the doctors would tell me Ihad a broken collar bone and
perhaps some broken ribs aswell. My daughter Jen had
followed the ambulance and waskeeping me company. We were
mostly bored and ready to leave.
(16:29):
The small emergency room wasrelatively busy for a Saturday
afternoon, giving us plenty ofopportunities to eavesdrop in
one room, someone had somethinggoing on with her foot, maybe a
broken ankle, sprained ankle. AsI strained to hear the details,
words like barn, horse and gaitlanded on my ears. Hmm, another
horse accident. No surprise, Iguess. I mean, we do live in
(16:52):
horse country, and this hospitalwas the closest to the try on
international equestrian centerwhere a show was going on that
very day, I turned my attentionto the other room behind the
curtain, soon it became clearthat yet another horse accident
had brought that man into theER. I couldn't decide if I
should feel vindicated orworried. After all, these other
two victims surely knew a lotmore about horses than I did, so
(17:17):
maybe I'm not so incompetent.
After all, was my first thought.
My second thought was, wow,horses can be really dangerous.
I didn't have time for the thirdbalancing thought, suddenly, two
emergency room doctors camerushing into the room and said,
We need to get your shirt off.
We see a problem on your X ray.
Given the extreme pain on myright side, it took a lot of
(17:37):
help to get me stripped,stripped down as they shoot my
now white faced daughter out ofthe room. My questions started
coming a mile a minute. What'son the X ray? Am I being
admitted? Why the hurry? Thenthe unspoken question, am I
going to die? Loomed large asthey asked me to turn onto my
left side. You have apneumothorax. We have to put in
(18:00):
a chest tube. First, I'm goingto dead in the area where we're
going to stick the needle. ThenI'm going to wait, what's a
pneuma? Whatchamacallit? I havea pneuma. I have pneumonia.
Finally, someone cleared it upby saying it's a collapsed lung.
They wasted no time before Icould ask any more questions.
They rolled me onto my left sideand started the procedure. As
(18:22):
soon as the tube entered thearea between my lungs and ribs,
I felt a release of pressure.
The doctor said I should bebreathing much better. Now the
pain in my side lessened and mybreath came more easily.
Ironically, my consistent oxygenlevels of 98% had kept any of
them from suspecting anythingseriously wrong with my lungs,
plus they noted that most peoplewith a collapsed lung don't
(18:43):
carry on a quiet conversation,as Jen and I had been doing
right before they came runningin. Evidently, meditating had
made a huge difference in bothmy calmness and in my
physiology. Over the next threedays, I was a guest of the
hospital as we waited for mylung to stay inflated without
mechanical assistance betweenthe many medical professionals
and visitors, I answered thequestion, what happened the same
(19:03):
way, I had a knowledge gap. Ididn't know how to stop a horse.
That story failed to tell thetruth on so many levels. At that
time, I had not let your learnedabout the idea of having a
pressure gap. I vaguelyunderstood the idea of mental
tools. I was intimately familiarwith the impact of pressure,
(19:24):
uncertainty and failure. Most ofmy responses to pressure
involved either building myskills or lowering the pressure.
One thing was sure, at thismoment in time, I would not be
getting back on a horse anytimesoon, if ever. Maybe I should
just walk away.
I was on a tight rope on oneside was common sense and logic
(19:48):
at the time of my fall, I was 59when the orthopedist came into
my hospital room to see about myinjuries. I told him to ignore
the age on the chart and ask himto treat me as he. Wood a 25
year old athlete. Right beforethe trail ride, I had been
cutting back and forth on mywater ski, and I was determined
to get back to it, his responsereinforced my concern. He had
(20:11):
experienced a similar injuryriding. Now that horseback
riding was proving to be muchmore dangerous than I had
realized, why would I riskanother serious injury or worse.
On the other side was my desireto overcome my newly discovered
fear, the proverbial adage toget back on the horse, called
out to me. Plus, I had friendswho wanted me to ride with them
(20:34):
in their visits to me in thehospital, I started realizing
that trail riding could be themost dangerous way for the
uninitiated to get on a horse.
Who knew, however, riding wouldalso be a wonderful way to spend
time with friends. I was facedwith questions and choices.
Would I be able to walk thetightrope of overcoming my fear
while not taking undue risk?
(20:57):
What would I need to learn if Idecided to address my fear. What
would I do with this lifedefining moment? My accident
gifted me with several months toconsider my options. Thank you
for listening to the creativespirits unleash podcast. I
started this podcast because Iwas having these great
(21:17):
conversations, and I wanted toshare them with others. I'm
always learning in theseconversations, and I wanted to
share that kind of learning withyou. Now, what I need to hear
from you is what you want moreof and what you want less of. I
really want these podcasts to beof value for the listeners.
Also, if you happen to knowsomeone who you think might love
them, please share the podcastand, of course, subscribe and
(21:39):
rate it on the different appsthat you're using, because
that's how others will find it.
Now I hope you go and dosomething very fun today. You.
Lynn, Welcome to Creative spirits unleashed, where we talk
about the dilemmas of balancingwork and life and now here's
your host, Lynn Carnes,
Lynn (00:19):
welcome to the creative spirits unleashed Podcast. I'm
Lynn Carnes, your host. Thisepisode of the podcast is
something new. Let's call it anexperiment. I'll explain
shortly, but first, somecontext. Since I published
dancing the tightrope, fallingoff a horse, taught me about
embracing pressure, fear anduncertainty in 2022 many people
(00:41):
have asked me for an audio bookwhile I'm aware of the huge
trend towards audio books, I'mnot an audiobook listener. I
love to read and I lovelistening to podcasts. However,
listening to audiobooks has justnever worked for me. I just zone
out. So the thought of puttingout a version of my book that
zoned people out was veryunappealing to me. Also, the
(01:04):
thought of reading my entirebook out loud caused me to
cringe. Now, if you followed mywork for a while, you might have
just noticed in that lastsentence that I am gulping
trying to get to the endquickly, rather than considering
taking one step at a time, atheme that I often teach as a
critical tool. So recently, oneof my favorite podcasts, the Tim
(01:26):
Ferriss show, put out a chapterof his first book, The Four Hour
Work Week. Once I startedlistening to it, I almost
changed to another podcast,because here we are reading a
book. But it just so happenedthat I didn't have anything else
in the hopper, so I just keptlistening. Now I did zone out,
but I also came away with acouple of good takeaways. So it
(01:47):
got me to thinking, why don't Ido the same thing? I mean, all I
have to do is just read onechapter of my book. So that's
what I'm doing for this episodeof the podcast. Now what you're
going to hear is one chapter orchapter one of dancing the
tightrope. This is where theexperiment part comes in. Now
that I've done the one chapter,I'm willing to do more, but only
(02:10):
if it makes a difference toothers. And this is where you
come in. Did you like listeningto this chapter? Would you like
to hear more? What feedback doyou have for me as a reader?
Yes, I really would like to bebetter, and the only way is for
me to hear your feedback. So ifI hear from enough people that
this is something that workedwell for them, I will audio
(02:31):
publish the rest of the book,more than likely, as I did here,
as a series on the podcast, andthen eventually, more than
likely, I will get it onAudible. So if you are listening
to this and you do want to giveme feedback, you can email me
directly. Yes, I'm going to givemy email out into the internet
world. I doubt I'll get thatmany but if I do, I hope you
(02:51):
guys flood me and make me crazyfor having given my email away.
But if you do want to give meemail feedback, the email is
lynn@lynncarns.com I do lookforward to hearing from you. I
hope you enjoy this episode ofthe creative spirits unleashed
podcast. Chapter One, too muchpressure for me. Just a simple
(03:13):
trail ride through the woods asthe three of us set out on the
trail that day, I rememberhaving the thought steeped in
ignorance. This is sort ofboring. This was my second time
to ride with my friend Babs andher sister in law, Mary. I was
on Babs horse mocha. When shefirst asked me to come ride, I
told her I knew how to ridehorses, and she confidently put
(03:35):
us in the lead. I might as wellhave claimed I knew how to do
brain surgery, because Isuccessfully cleaned a fish once
my definition of knowing how toride horses was based on the
false confidence of having fiveminutes of riding lessons when I
was 12 years old, our familyowned a small farm about an hour
from our house. Since I was infourth grade. That was the year
(03:56):
my teacher read us WalterFarley's book, The Black
Stallion. In class, I wasenraptured with the idea of
having my own Black Stallion.
From the first minute we got thefarm, I begged my parents to buy
me a horse. After all, it lookedto me like all you needed to
successfully own a horse was afew acres and a fence our farm
had that. It even had some oldbarrels laying around. To my own
(04:18):
mind, the only thing missingfrom my dream of being a
champion barrel racer was ahorse. Eventually, I wore my
parents down and they bought ahorse. My dreams were shattered
quickly. We only had him acouple of months before we sold
him because I couldn't controlhim. This was one of two facts I
had conveniently forgotten totell Babs after my parents sold
(04:41):
the horse, I spent my lifetimeblaming my parents for taking
away my opportunity to be achampion. Now, 40 plus years
later, I was back on a horse andthere were no barrels in sight.
All we were going to do was walkon a trail in the woods. How
hard could it be? As with anydiscipline, what you see and
(05:01):
what is under the surface areworlds apart. Boring. It was as
if I had dared the universe toprove me wrong. As our ride
progressed, mocha walked meright through an occupied spider
web. My face took the full webspider and all this insult was
an offer into a new dimension ifI told chose to take it. But of
(05:23):
course, at the time, I knewnothing of a relationship where
the horse would offer his legsto me, where he would give me
his trust and true connection. Ihad no idea the magic that was
really happening on this boringride in the woods. I was too
busy being offended he continuedwalking as I flicked the spider
(05:43):
away, wiped my face andshuddered my thought, How dare
he walked me walk into that web.
Mocha did not walk me throughthe web direct deliberately. He
was merely taking the lead thatI had unknowingly left
unattended. I saw the webcoming. However, in this
dimension, I had not made anykind of connection or contact
(06:06):
with him. My lessons fromchildhood were long forgotten,
so I had few tools to move himright or left to avoid the web.
What few ideas I tried didn'twork? Hmm, to my way of
thinking, it was almost like Iwas riding a faulty motorbike.
If I just knew which buttons topush, he would do what I wanted.
(06:28):
Wrong. He was simply walkingdown the trail waiting for that
turn toward the barn, choosingevery step for himself. He knew
from the first moment I got onhim that he was the leader of
this ride. As we continued downthe trail, a part of me began to
realize what he had known fromthe very beginning. He had all
the power. I was the unfortunatepassenger on the back of an
(06:51):
animal that had survived 1000sof years by running away at the
first sign of danger. My lack ofawareness about the consequences
of the horse being in controlcreated a form of unbalanced
thinking. What I decided more inthe back of my mind than in the
forefront was that it would begood for the horse to like me
even as I write this, it'sembarrassing to admit my sense
(07:15):
of boredom had transformed intosomething more ominous. I felt
the need to correct the balanceof power. I said good boy to him
a couple of times, but not forthe right reasons. Yes, it's
good to praise a horse who haslearned something or has gotten
over a fear. This was definitelynot in response to him having
done anything like that. Nope,it was a verbalization of my
(07:38):
thought, I want him to light me,I would be on the ground, unable
to breathe. Within seconds, aswe turned down a steep hill, the
horse perked up, as he had doneseveral times before. Everything
in his body language told me wehad made a turn toward the barn,
even though I could not havefound the way home, he knew the
(07:59):
way, and he would gladly be ableto take me there. He picked up
his pace and clearly excited atthe thought of the pile of hay
waiting in his stall. Later, Iwould learn his lateral gait on
such a steep hill created arocking motion that feels like a
trot. On this day, I just wantedthe motion to stop. I pull back
on the reins to slow him down.
Unconsciously, I also leanedforward and gripped his sides
(08:22):
with my legs. I had never beenon such a steep hill in Texas
where I grew up, leaning forwardwas exactly the opposite of what
I should have done. I was sayingslow down and go fast at the
same time. By now, he knew theconfusing requests from the
woman on his back did notnecessarily mean anything, but
the barn was ahead, and gravityencouraged speed, so he obliged
(08:45):
with my questionable balance, Iquickly went from trying to slow
him down to just holding on.
That strategy lasted for onemore step, and then I was
flying. I landed with a hardsplat on my side. My friends
went into action to catch thehorse I had just left to his own
devices. When they came back tocheck on me, I could barely
(09:07):
move, and every half breath hurtlike hell. I could tell
something was very wrong. Myarms and legs seemed to be in
one piece. However, my middlewasn't working too well. Here we
were out in the woods wheregetting back on mocha to take me
home was not going to happen.
Walking out was not happeningeither. In fact, I tried to sit
up and failed miserably.
(09:30):
Luckily, we were in cell phonerange. Babs husband Bob, met us
with a four wheeler and aquestion, Should we call an
ambulance? After they loaded meinto the ambulance, I settled
back, closed my eyes, andmeditated. My meditation took me
back to a very differentambulance ride almost 20 years
before, one caused by me beingout of balance in my career
(09:53):
perspective, the first ambulanceride that started to wake me up.
I.
Everyone bustled around me,hooking up monitors and watching
my funky heartbeat bounce aroundlike a pinball as I lay there,
half dazed by the fluorescentlights, my irritation grew.
Where were their priorities? Didthey not understand that the
pressure I felt lettingimportant work fall through the
(10:15):
cracks far exceeded the worrythat I might die at that time of
my life, I felt like my careerwas just taking off. My Projects
mattered on a national scale. Myincentive package was anyone's
dream, and I knew most of thesenior executives of a mega
bank, and they knew me, whichseemed incredibly important to
(10:35):
me, at least back then, it nevercrossed my mind that if I died,
someone else would be doing mywork tomorrow. Fainting on my
bathroom floor that morningscared my husband enough to sew
in an ambulance. An erraticheartbeat scared my high school
aged daughter, enough to thinkshe might lose her mother. A
phone call from my husband toupdate, my parents sent their
(10:55):
worry meter off the chart me,the one lying in bed. I was
worried if I would be back atwork on Monday. If I wasn't, I
was sure all hell was going tobreak loose. Any prospect of
being in balance in my life wasso far out of reach. Even the
potential of dying of a heartattack blinded me to the
miserable state of my life. Formany years, my corporate life
(11:18):
had been marked by questions,how does one get ahead here? How
do I stay out of trouble, butalso get some of the limelight
that seems to get peoplepromoted? What do they really
want from me, and how do I domore of that? Getting answers to
those questions had startedpaying off. In the past few
years, I had been promoted andmoved to increasingly bigger
(11:41):
roles three times in less thansix years. Time after time, I
had proven my worth and had beenrewarded with longer work, days,
more pressure and the danglingcarrot of money that grew
exponentially the longer Istayed, the prison of my own
making was closing in, and Iwelcomed it with open arms. All
(12:03):
of this activity allowed me tojoin a select club of high
potentials, meaning people wholook like they might eventually
make it to the executive suite.
There were hundreds, if not1000s, of us all vying for a few
spots, and all certain that wehad the right stuff to get
there. The pressure to reachthat pinnacle was enormous. Life
was good. At least it was goodif I ignored the fact that my
(12:28):
soon to be drug addict daughterhad carried a bottle of pills to
school a few years before withevery intention of taking her
own life. It was good if Iignored my frayed relationships,
starting with my marriage, itwas good if you didn't ask my
team what kind of leader it had.
It was good if I ignored thesigns all around me that my
(12:50):
whole world was out of kilter.
Life was good if I ignored thefact that my health in my late
30s was clearly failing, even asI insisted they get me out of
this hospital so I could go backto work for me to be discharged,
they just had one condition, youhave to pass a stress test.
Cool. Passing stress test was inmy wheelhouse for a straight A
(13:13):
perfectionist like me, thiswould be a snap. As the
cardiologist strapped me to thestress test machine. He asked me
where I worked. When I told him,he said, seriously, you worked
there. You're the fifth personI've tested for stress related
heart problems this week, and Ihaven't worked that much.
Suddenly, my memory flashed tothe several instances of
(13:34):
ambulances leaving any one ofour corporate buildings in
downtown Charlotte. In fact, wehad sent two trainees from my
own credit training program tothe hospital via ambulance in
the past few weeks. Hisincredulity about us bankers
dropping like flies got throughto my numbed out brain. Here was
a guy who had endured the rigorsof medical school, had to be on
(13:55):
call at all hours, and wastesting me on a Saturday night,
calling me the one for being aworkaholic. It was a clue that
something might be off. While apart of me really wanted to
reject His judgment, I couldn'tescape it. There was something
terribly out of balance here,but it was still take more
(14:15):
reflection warning signals andfacing the suicide of a
colleague to wake me up andallow me to see the world with
new eyes. My diagnosis turnedout to be Barrett's esophagus, a
potentially cancer causingcondition brought about by
stress. I had to do something orI would likely get stomach
cancer and die an early andpainful death. For the next 20
(14:37):
years, I entered an intense,Rocky, personal journey of deep
self awareness. Without a doubt,I changed my relationship with
anger, stress and all the peoplein my life. My husband and I
stayed married. We moved to themountains, where I became an
athlete, artist and executivecoach. My spiritual life became
rich and fulfilled. Length, mydaughter entered recovery, and
(15:01):
today helps parents of adultaddicts navigate the rough
waters of reclaiming their livesas today's ambulance pulled into
the emergency room, I was somuch calmer than that first ride
some 20 years ago, I had trulycome a long way. I couldn't
possibly see it yet, but theceiling of possibility was about
(15:22):
to be blown off. This accidentwould be a gift. It would teach
me that mistakes are merelycalibrations, and the balance
point is always moving.
Uncertainty would become anopportunity to use my tools with
(15:44):
a capital T, and pressure wouldbe the force to build them, but
first I would have to accept thereality of what happened, lack
of knowledge or something else.
After getting an x ray in theemergency room, I looked at the
clock. If all went well, I wouldbe out of there in time to drive
the boat as promised for Austinable, the pro water skier who
(16:07):
runs a ski school on mysticwaters, our 162 acre former Girl
Scout camp. By now, I wasbreathing better and pretty sure
that the doctors would tell me Ihad a broken collar bone and
perhaps some broken ribs aswell. My daughter Jen had
followed the ambulance and waskeeping me company. We were
mostly bored and ready to leave.
(16:29):
The small emergency room wasrelatively busy for a Saturday
afternoon, giving us plenty ofopportunities to eavesdrop in
one room, someone had somethinggoing on with her foot, maybe a
broken ankle, sprained ankle. AsI strained to hear the details,
words like barn, horse and gaitlanded on my ears. Hmm, another
horse accident. No surprise, Iguess. I mean, we do live in
(16:52):
horse country, and this hospitalwas the closest to the try on
international equestrian centerwhere a show was going on that
very day, I turned my attentionto the other room behind the
curtain, soon it became clearthat yet another horse accident
had brought that man into theER. I couldn't decide if I
should feel vindicated orworried. After all, these other
two victims surely knew a lotmore about horses than I did, so
(17:17):
maybe I'm not so incompetent.
After all, was my first thought.
My second thought was, wow,horses can be really dangerous.
I didn't have time for the thirdbalancing thought, suddenly, two
emergency room doctors camerushing into the room and said,
We need to get your shirt off.
We see a problem on your X ray.
Given the extreme pain on myright side, it took a lot of
(17:37):
help to get me stripped,stripped down as they shoot my
now white faced daughter out ofthe room. My questions started
coming a mile a minute. What'son the X ray? Am I being
admitted? Why the hurry? Thenthe unspoken question, am I
going to die? Loomed large asthey asked me to turn onto my
left side. You have apneumothorax. We have to put in
(18:00):
a chest tube. First, I'm goingto dead in the area where we're
going to stick the needle. ThenI'm going to wait, what's a
pneuma? Whatchamacallit? I havea pneuma. I have pneumonia.
Finally, someone cleared it upby saying it's a collapsed lung.
They wasted no time before Icould ask any more questions.
They rolled me onto my left sideand started the procedure. As
(18:22):
soon as the tube entered thearea between my lungs and ribs,
I felt a release of pressure.
The doctor said I should bebreathing much better. Now the
pain in my side lessened and mybreath came more easily.
Ironically, my consistent oxygenlevels of 98% had kept any of
them from suspecting anythingseriously wrong with my lungs,
plus they noted that most peoplewith a collapsed lung don't
(18:43):
carry on a quiet conversation,as Jen and I had been doing
right before they came runningin. Evidently, meditating had
made a huge difference in bothmy calmness and in my
physiology. Over the next threedays, I was a guest of the
hospital as we waited for mylung to stay inflated without
mechanical assistance betweenthe many medical professionals
and visitors, I answered thequestion, what happened the same
(19:03):
way, I had a knowledge gap. Ididn't know how to stop a horse.
That story failed to tell thetruth on so many levels. At that
time, I had not let your learnedabout the idea of having a
pressure gap. I vaguelyunderstood the idea of mental
tools. I was intimately familiarwith the impact of pressure,
(19:24):
uncertainty and failure. Most ofmy responses to pressure
involved either building myskills or lowering the pressure.
One thing was sure, at thismoment in time, I would not be
getting back on a horse anytimesoon, if ever. Maybe I should
just walk away.
I was on a tight rope on oneside was common sense and logic
(19:48):
at the time of my fall, I was 59when the orthopedist came into
my hospital room to see about myinjuries. I told him to ignore
the age on the chart and ask himto treat me as he. Wood a 25
year old athlete. Right beforethe trail ride, I had been
cutting back and forth on mywater ski, and I was determined
to get back to it, his responsereinforced my concern. He had
(20:11):
experienced a similar injuryriding. Now that horseback
riding was proving to be muchmore dangerous than I had
realized, why would I riskanother serious injury or worse.
On the other side was my desireto overcome my newly discovered
fear, the proverbial adage toget back on the horse, called
out to me. Plus, I had friendswho wanted me to ride with them
(20:34):
in their visits to me in thehospital, I started realizing
that trail riding could be themost dangerous way for the
uninitiated to get on a horse.
Who knew, however, riding wouldalso be a wonderful way to spend
time with friends. I was facedwith questions and choices.
Would I be able to walk thetightrope of overcoming my fear
while not taking undue risk?
(20:57):
What would I need to learn if Idecided to address my fear. What
would I do with this lifedefining moment? My accident
gifted me with several months toconsider my options. Thank you
for listening to the creativespirits unleash podcast. I
started this podcast because Iwas having these great
(21:17):
conversations, and I wanted toshare them with others. I'm
always learning in theseconversations, and I wanted to
share that kind of learning withyou. Now, what I need to hear
from you is what you want moreof and what you want less of. I
really want these podcasts to beof value for the listeners.
Also, if you happen to knowsomeone who you think might love
them, please share the podcastand, of course, subscribe and
(21:39):
rate it on the different appsthat you're using, because
that's how others will find it.
Now I hope you go and dosomething very fun today. You.
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