March 21, 2025 • 43 mins
In my last episode of the podcast, I started an experiment by reading the first chapter of my book Dancing the Tightrope. My promise was that if I heard from my readers and listeners that it was valuable, I would do more. Secretly, I did not expect anything to come of it. Of course, I was wrong!
You have spoken (at least some of you!) and I am listening. This episode of the podcast is Chapter Two of Dancing the Tightrope. It covers a lot of ground, both about my recovery from my accident and my waterskiing. More importantly, it sets the stage for many of the gold nuggets to come.
Something else happened when I read the book – especially this chapter – that I did not expect. I felt like a first-time reader in many ways. This chapter was written four years ago. Reading it now - out loud - is giving me new perspective. Something I dreaded doing is now becoming a useful practice. Who would have thought?
It’s reminding my WHY I wrote the book. Here’s a quote from Chapter 13: If pressure is a test to show others we are good enough, we are doomed to live at the mercy of those whose approval we seek. If pressure is a catalyst to unleash our true nature, we can truly live while we are alive.
The worst accident of my life showed me how to live while I’m alive. Imagine giving up the need to prove yourself. Imagine truly living. That’s why I wrote the book.
Stay tuned. More chapters to come.
And I’m still seeking feedback. (Thank you to those who’ve already shared your insights.) What do you like about hearing me read these chapters? What would make it easier for you to listen? What gold nuggets are you taking away?
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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, Unleash Podcast. I'm
Lynn Carnes, your host. In mylast episode of the podcast, I
started an experiment by readingthe first chapter of my book
dancing the tightrope. Mypromise was that if I heard from
my readers and listeners that itwas valuable, I would do more.
(00:40):
But secretly, I didn't expectanything to come out of it. Of
course, I was wrong. You havespoken, at least some of you
have, and I am listening. Thisepisode of the podcast is
chapter two of dancing thetightrope. It covers a lot of
ground, both about my recoveryfrom my accident and my recovery
(01:00):
back to water skiing. Moreimportantly, it sets the stage
for many of the gold nuggets tocome on my journey to get back
on the horse. Something elsehappened though, when I read the
book, especially this chapter,that I didn't expect. I felt
like a first time reader in manyways, after all, this chapter
(01:21):
was written four years ago,reading it now out loud is
giving me new perspective.
Something I dreaded doing is nowbecoming a useful practice. Who
would have thought it'sreminding me why I wrote this
book? There's a quote in thebook from chapter 13 that says
this, if pressure is a test toshow others we are good enough.
(01:41):
We are doomed to live at themercy of those whose approval we
seek. If pressure is a catalystto unleash our true nature, we
can truly live while we arealive. The worst accident of my
life showed me how to live whileI'm alive. Imagine giving up the
need to prove yourself. Imaginetruly living that's why I wrote
(02:03):
the book. So stay tuned. There'smore chapters to come, and I'm
still seeking feedback. Thankyou to those, by the way, who've
already shared your insights. Sotell me, what do you like about
hearing me read these chapters?
What would make it easier foryou to listen and what gold
(02:25):
nuggets are you taking away? Asalways, please share the podcast
with your friends, yourcolleagues, and give this a
rating and a review, if at allpossible. It does help get the
word out. And as you can see,that's why I'm doing this to get
the word out. Enjoy this.
Chapter Two from dancing thetightrope. Chapter Two growth in
(02:45):
recovery, give and take ofenergy. The first day home from
the hospital revealed just howchallenging this recovery would
be. While I had practicedrecovery on a micro scale for
many years, this injury wascalling on me to practice
recovery on a macro scale. Babsbrought me a book to read. It
(03:06):
was the undoing project afriendship that changed our
minds. By Michael Lewis, it'sthe kind of book that provokes a
hard look at the way we thinkabout things. The book planted
seeds and kept me enthralled forseveral days. Good thing. It was
going to take a really good bookto get me to sit still without
(03:27):
the use of my right arm andstill in pain on the whole side
of my body. That went splat. Iwas discovering just how many
things I could not do wash myhair only if I found a one
handed method deal with thefallout of wet hair. Blow drying
is a two handed affair. Imastered left hand brushing and
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air drying drive I couldn'treach the gear shift. As I moved
through my first few days athome, it became abundantly clear
that I live my life as aperpetual motion machine. Thanks
to reading the making of thecorporate athlete BY JIM LEHRER
And Tony Schwartz in 2001 I hadlearned the value of oscillation
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and its role in helping mobilizeenergy on demand. After years of
practice, I had learned toeffectively use stress and
recovery in short doses to beable to sustain high levels of
energy throughout the day. WhatI hadn't learned was how to
demobilize energy on demand. Notto worry my body was doing it
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for me. Two weeks into myrecovery, I wrote this blog the
give and take of leadership.
I've had recovery on my mind alot lately. Recently, I fell off
a horse, breaking my collarboneafter a couple of days in the
hospital. I also had a partiallycollapsed lung that required.
(04:50):
Chest tube, I spent my firstfull day out of the hospital
running light errands. Mydaughter and co worker did all
the driving, so it really wasmuch less effort than on a
normal day of work. By evening,though I was disproportionately
tired, my energy expenditures torun my day exceeded the energy
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needed to help me heal. Sinceanyone who knows me will tell
you, I typically have a lot ofenergy to spare, it was a good
reminder that I don't haveunlimited energy. Recovery is
necessary to gather enoughenergy to go about my daily
business. Usually a good night'ssleep, healthy eating and
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meditation are enough to keep megoing strong, but not when I my
body is injured and needs theenergy to heal. As I've been
more mindful of recovery, it'sreminded me of an insight I had
with skiing a few years ago. Oneof my coaches pointed out that I
was not creating enough energybehind the boat to get out to
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the buoy line before the boatpulled me back. Suddenly, I saw
the idea, I need to gatherenergy to deploy it. If I don't
cultivate enough energy, I willfall short on the result I need.
What a simple concept. Soon Icould see this idea in Action
Everywhere I looked the projectthat seemed stalled. No one was
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taking the reins and creatingenough energy to get the team
moving my lackluster garden, notenough soil preparation to
provide nutrients to growwonderful plants. The friendship
that seemed shaky, neither of uswas putting any energy or
attention into it. One of myclients told a story that
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illustrated this principlebeautifully. He was the
executive sponsor of a multiyear change project in his
company. The pressures weretremendous, and every second of
his day was scheduled at theclose of a team leader meeting,
one of his colleagues suggestedhe walked through the area where
(06:55):
many of the people were workingon the project. At first he
declined, and then thoughtbetter of it. He took an hour to
walk around, talking to people,thanking him for their work,
asking what they needed, andgenerally just showing that he
cared. Afterward, he said he hadno idea how much this visit
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would energize him. It remindedhim of what was happening at the
ground level of the project. Andmore importantly, he said, this
single visit re energized thewhole team, and to think I
almost didn't do it, this simpleprinciple, whether you call it
give and take, gather anddeploy, cultivate and harvest,
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or something else underlies allour endeavors. We simply cannot
harvest something that isn'tthere. We cannot run on an empty
tank without severeconsequences. Leaders truly are
managers of energy. Where do youneed to gather and recover
energy? What are theconsequences of trying to get
the proverbial blood out of theturnip? What can you do to
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energize yourself or others nexttime you notice something
missing, look first for what youmight be able to give it might
be the only resource that'sneeded. What I was starting to
see were layered principles thatwould emerge even more clearly
in the months and years to come,the magic was not in my ability
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to amp up, nor was it in myability to slow down. What
mattered was the adjustment.
Being able to calibrate myenergy to the needs of the
moment became pricelessattunement. So did learning to
deeply listen so that thecalibration aligned with the
needs of the moment. Once Islowed down, I realized there
was a real risk I would overdoit. After a few days of slowing
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down, I started wondering if Iwould ever want to get off the
couch again. This recovery wasproving to be more difficult
than I expected to quit or notto quit. For me, doing something
difficult involves going for it,getting into the swamp, hating
the way it feels, thinking Ican't possibly handle it, saying
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a bunch of cuss words, and theneither somehow making it through
or shutting down. Often in theshutting down part, I also quit.
That's exactly what happenedwhen I was co leading a major
change project at the bank whereI spent so much of my corporate
career. We were integrating amajor merger filled with
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animosity, and we wereintroducing a whole new process
to a system that was as old asthe ages. The people on the
receiving end of all this changehad to deal with a brash new set
of bosses telling them the waythey did business would have to
completely change, said orunsaid. The message was
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something like, you all aredoing it all wrong and should
have known better. We knowbetter, so we're here to fix
you. You.
So these messages did notexactly welcome the new team
members to the team with openarms as the project leads. It
was our responsibility todeliver the news and then get
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our colleagues to accept the newway of doing things. Here's what
I've learned in years of leadingcorporate change and going
through my own personal change,you can't make anyone do
anything. What was being askedof us was extremely difficult,
and the pressure was enormous.
By this time, I had alreadystarted some four ways into my
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self awareness. It was not goingwell. What I really wanted was
someone to give a test and thendeclare me self aware. Steve, my
co lead on the change project,and I were off site working with
some consultants who werehelping us on the both project
and self awareness fronteveryone and everything called
us up to a higher level offacilitation and leadership than
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I had ever experienced. It feltimpossible for me to do what
they were asking. The pressureof the situation was far greater
than my ability to rise to thechallenges facing us. More
importantly, I felt like acomplete failure and loser,
because it seemed I justcouldn't get it, and I was
getting tired of the criticismand feedback that my way wasn't
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good enough. What it was goingto take for me to change my
ways. Felt like climbing MountEverest. In the face of such
pressure, I quit. Usually when Iquit, it's an internal form of
shutting down, where I pretendto be engaged and just survive
long enough to get out of thesituation. In this case, the
pressure was too high for that.
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In the middle of one of one ofour meetings, I turned to Steve
and said, I can't do it. Whatyou're asking of me is too much.
The look of betrayal and hurt onhis face hit me in the gut. He
was gracious and said he wasdisappointed, but obviously
would honor my decision. Afterall, I mean, what choice did he
have in a perfect world, I wouldhave gotten in my car, Gone
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Home, since we were workinghalfway across the country and
traveling together, Ireluctantly stayed in the
meetings inside. I thought, Iwant to leave shit I can't
leave. There's no way out. Ourgroup had dinner together that
night, and all I can remember ofit was that it was surreal,
probably because the nextmorning's memories overwhelmed
almost every other memory I had.
We were deep in a workingsession when one of our team
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members got a call. Kevinstepped out, and although it was
rare for us to be interrupted,this was before the smartphone,
we quickly went back to what wewere doing while everyone else
was focused on the project. Iwas still wishing for my escape
when Kevin came back into theroom, he was a different man.
His face was ashen. He movedwith effort, and his eyes said
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it all. He had just gotten someterrible news. Diane, the
executive sponsor of ourproject, had committed suicide
the night before we were allflabbergasted. Diane was the
most put together, calm,Effective Executive you could
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imagine. We all felt bothhonored and protected to be
working on a project of thisscale and scope with her
generous and experiencedoversight. Note, by the way, I
am using aliases for this story.
This could not be happening, butit was our work stopped as we
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rode the roller coaster ofemotion and sought out more
information. As the day rolledon, we learned that she shot
herself in the head while herhusband and boss went into the
house to get drinks. This mayhave been an act of desperation,
but it was also an act ofdefiance. She went out
inflicting pain, and I knew justhow she felt. We spent the next
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several hours crying,processing, disbelieving and
theorizing what could make herthis desperate. Why did she do
it this way? Had she sent anywarning signals? What would make
her do this when things didn'tgo my way? I would often spout
about, spout off, about takingmy quitting to this extreme. Now
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why I would never considermyself genuinely suicidal. I
could identify with the idea,idea of saying, f you to the
people putting pressure on me,especially when I couldn't see a
way out of my misery. Somehow,as the day went on, I began to
realize that my self torment andhelplessness would only get
worse if I didn't face mydemons. My way of living was
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eating me up from the insideout. I was nowhere near
balancing, much less dancing thetightrope. My typical responses
to pressure had been to gohelpless, to hide, to pretend or
to be a child. When that didn'twork, I played the false
confidence game saying. And I'vegot this whether I knew what I
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was doing or not, when thatfailed, I went into the angry
parent mode, full of rage,judgment, resentment, trying to
gain power over people with mycondescension and strong
emotions over the course of thatunforgettable day, Diane's death
gave me a crystal ball into myfuture if something didn't
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change, the outlook was dismal.
If I were to play at this level,this bouncing back and forth
between being powerless andintimidating, would have to end.
It was time to grow up. When wereturned from a break, I looked
at Steve and said, I'm back inShe can't die in vain. Steve was
both shocked and relieved me. Iwasn't sure what I had just
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done, although I had quit,quitting for the moment, I still
had to wrestle with the desireto throw my hands up and walk
away. The roots of this patternwere complex, and they ran deep
birth of rules. In some ways, Icame by my urge to quit
Honestly, my begging for a horsefinally paid off. My parents
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relented and bought me a horse.
Just as suddenly, we quit andsold a horse without me ever
understanding why, until Irestarted my journey with
horses. That's when I learned wehad innocently done almost
everything wrong. My memories ofthe practicalities of getting
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the horse were vague. Lookingback, I wondered who hauled him
the 50 miles from our town tothe farm. How did we decide
which field to leave him in?
Were we at all worried about thebarbed wire fences hurting him?
Who checked on him when we weregone for a week or two at a
time, was buying a horse namedbuck a bad idea. And then this
question, what made me thinkthat catching a snake and then
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trying to catch the horse whileholding the snake was a good
idea. I was on my way out withthe halter and lead broke to a
very large field where we hadleft him the last time we were
there. Suddenly a garter snakedarted in front of me, growing
up outdoors and with a drainageditch near our house. I loved
playing with all kinds ofwildlife, including snakes with
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his vertical stripes. This onewas clearly not poisonous, so I
caught him. It's what I alwaysdid when encountering a snake
being the ignorant kid I was atthe time, I guess it I thought
it would be fun to introduce Mr.
Snake to my horse, Buck. Badidea. Horses and snakes don't
want to be friends. Buck showedme loud and clear as he ran far
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out of reach, I quickly droppedthe snake and started trying to
coax Buck back to me afterliving in the field all by
himself for a while, Buck didn'twant to be friends with me
either. I don't remember howlong it took me to catch him,
but I did learn, in no uncertainterms, that the only snaky
looking thing I better have inmy hand when approaching a horse
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would be a lead rope. My parentssilently marked striked one,
perhaps the same day or anotherday. I can't remember. We had
the bridal incident where Icould not, for the life of me,
get the bridle on the horse. Hekept raising his head, backing
away and showing me the whitesof his eyes. I kept chasing him
like a lunatic. Looking back, Ijust wish I could tell Buck how
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sorry I am for my ignorance. Wenever did get the bridle on him.
That day, my parents silentlymarked Strike two on the
deciding day I had managed toget the bridle and the saddle on
buck, my only goal was to get onand go fast, barrel racing fast.
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My mom was fishing, fishing inthe tank, holding in the water
on the other side of the hilltank, by the way, is Texas
language for a small lake orpond. I had no idea where my dad
or other siblings were. I was inmy own world of delight running
on Buck around in the open fieldjust west of the tank, Buck and
I suddenly exploded up the hilland stopped just short of our
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mom was peacefully casting forbass. Mom had just swung the rod
and reel back to her right,preparing to throw a cast. I was
smiling from ear to earfollowing the exhilarating run
up the short hill. She whirledaround in a way that I knew had
no right answer. Yelled, did youmean to do that? This was no
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time to be strategic. I had beenher daughter for 12 years. I
knew that tone of voice, and Ihad a very well developed rule
for the pattern we were suddenlyliving out in real time. It was
damned if you do and damned ifyou don't. If I said yes, I was
in trouble. If I said no, I wasin trouble, my rule told me to
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answer the question that was thepath of least trouble. Seemed
like a good idea to blame thehorse not realizing that his
very. Existence on our farm wasin question.
I can't say for sure when therule to avoid getting in trouble
was born, but I suspect it wasduring the windowsill incident.
When I was four years old, myparents bought a new house under
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construction. We would go byevery day checking on progress
as the studs became drywall andthe drywall became finished
walls. Day by day, theconstruction zone slowly morphed
into livable space. It was onone of these visits that my
don't get caught. Rule was born.
It had probably been formedbefore that. But I'm getting
ahead of myself, as my parentswere off in another room with my
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baby sister. They left me alonein the empty kitchen with the
big plate glass window facingthe backyard. At the bottom of
that window was a big, white,freshly painted window sill to
my young eyes, this was the mostbeautiful blank canvas I had
ever seen. All that white spaceseemed like a good place to
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write my name, something I wasjust learning to do. I can't
remember what sharp, sharpobject I used, probably a nail,
but I proceeded to write my nameon that lovely, somewhat soft
surface. I happily wrote theletter L, before my mistake hit
me. If I wrote my name, myparents would know who did this.
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Some part of my kid brain knewthat marring this brand new
windowsill might not be a greatidea. Such an act would
definitely get me in trouble. SoI did what any smart kid would
do. The next letter I wrote was,ew. That was a close one. I
finished out the rest of mysister's name Lee, aware that I
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had cleverly avoided being invery bad trouble. My sister's
name was now etched in both thepaint and the wood. Dealing with
this would be her problem. Myclever kid brain missed one
important detail. My sister wasnot yet two years old, and at
this moment, she was in the backbedroom with my parents. A few
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minutes later, my parents cameback in the kitchen, of course,
my mom saw the writing on thesill. My mom was a fiery person,
and we saw her flames in fullglory that day. I'm pretty sure
the neighbors were also gettingto know the new family who would
be moving in soon. My artisticact had gotten me in trouble.
That etching would stay on thewindow sill for the next 10
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years that we lived in thathouse, reminding me and my
parents just what a bad girl Iwas. Years later, here I was on
the top of the world sitting onmy dream horse busted by the
same fiery mother who had lookedat that marred window sill every
day. No one to blame but thehorse. I answered no feeling
rather proud that I would notget punished as badly as if my
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gallop up the hill was anintentional act. Blame it on the
horse. Strike three, my parentssold Buck after that, I was
heartbroken and convinced Ianswered her question the wrong
way in the months that followed,I wondered if I had chosen to
say yes, would the outcome havebeen different? Would I have
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been scolded and told never toscare my mom like that again?
Was there a path that would havelet me keep buck and become a
champion barrel racer. Why didwe have to quit? What would have
happened if we had chosen to thepath to learn more about the
care and upkeep of horses? Frommy 12 year old perspective, all
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I knew was we had quit for manyyears. I deeply struggled with
losing buck in my child's viewof the world, my dream was
stolen. Many of my rules wereborn and reinforced around this
story later, as I learned tobuild my tools, my adult eyes
showed me my life was savedthree buckets of rules. As my
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recovery progressed,conversations started taking on
a new tenor. All patterns andrules began rising to the
surface, showing me their forms,their benefits and their
limitations. While the bruiseswere fading and my bones healed,
there was a consistent questionexplored in most of my
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conversation, both with friendswho loved horses and friends who
feared horses. What happened? Itwas a loaded question defined by
many facets. What did you dowrong? Where did you make a
mistake? Were you ever rightagain? What would cause this to
happen again? How do you makesure a horse never runs away
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with you again. And the questionI asked myself, if I don't get
back on does it mean I'm afailure? These questions were
deep and starting to penetratemy very identity. I didn't like
it my various friends who hadhorses and knew very well the
ins and outs, as well as thedangers of trail riding in.
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Provided much neededperspective. One said there is a
skill to balancing yourself on ahorse moving downhill, the rider
has a responsibility tocoordinate with the horse so
that he can carry you moreeasily. Another said, gotta keep
those heels down. It keeps youlocked in the saddle. Yet.
Another said, when a horsestarts running out of control,
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you bring them around into acircle. It's like an emergency
stop my knowledge. Hungry brainate up the advice, starving for
a technique that I could deploy.
Should I ever choose to writeagain? Yet one conversation
pointed to something deeper,something in the fog that
occasionally showed itself inever morphing shapes and
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disappeared as soon as I lookedat it, you seemed so confident,
it never occurred to me that youwere anything but totally
proficient. So said Babs, as wediscuss what happened that day,
we'd only ridden together twice.
Confidence. It's something I hadcultivated since my first day in
the corporate world, andprobably even before that, I
built my adult form ofconfidence on the foundation of
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so many of my childhood rules.
Don't get caught, developedinto, I've got this translation.
Even though I'm faking it, I'mgood at faking it. So who will
ever know? Damned if you do,damned if you don't developed
into, I will beat myself up. Soyou don't have to translation. I
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don't have to change anythingbecause I've eaten the slimy
vegetables and paid my pendants.
Quitting is the way out.
Developed into. Look at thisother thing. I'm good at
translation. If it doesn't comeeasy, I don't want to have to
take the time to develop masterythis swiss cheese confidence was
destined to collapse underpressure. All the skills and
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knowledge in the world would notbreak those patterns in my
coaching work with leaders forthe several years prior, I had
begun breaking lifelong patternslike these into three buckets
with different origins anddifferent ways out. Number one,
survival mode. Number two, KidMode. Number three, history
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mode. There is a chart in thebook describing these three
modes, and it's available toanyone who emails me at
lynn@lynncarnes.com, in someways, all three modes played out
my experience falling off thehorse when mocha started down
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the pivotal Hill his big gatefelt like a trot to me. The
sensation of speed immediatelysent a shot of adrenaline into
my system. Survival Mode wastriggered in milliseconds.
Now I was in fight, flight orfreeze at this point because of
my lack of skills and, moreimportantly, my pressure gap, I
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had no choice but to try to hangon when pulling back on the
reins didn't work. We all havesurvival mode, and the chemistry
of it operates essentially thesame way in all of us. It's non
negotiable hardwiring granted tous at birth. Earlier in my ride,
Kid Mode had been triggered. KidMode is anytime we feel a power
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differential, and we do thingsto get our power back. This idea
started coming to me when I wasworking with Eric burns
transactional analysis in aleadership program I was
teaching while I did almost nodeep study on his method, what I
saw was easily applicable to thecorporate world in my kid mode
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view of the world, I pictured atightrope where, on the
tightrope itself, we walk In apower with approach to solving
problems and leading changes.
With such a narrow, wobbly pathto walk, we're bound to fall off
on one side or the other. On oneside, the child side, where we
fell into a power underapproach. Every time I walked
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into my boss's office and saidsomething to the effect of, I
tried everything. Nothing works.
It's everybody's fault, butmine. I was in the child itch.
It's tailor made for victims.
When it dawned on me that mochawas the one in power, after
walking me through the spiderweb, albeit unintentionally, I
tried making him, like me, aclassic power under strategy to
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even out the power differentialon the other side is the parent
side, where we fall into a powerover approach. Of course, more
than once I had walked into myboss's office trying to get away
with the you need to fix thisattitude, getting all grabby
with the reins and trying to beforceful instead of
communicating. Reallycommunicating were my feeble
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attempts to gain power overmocha on the way down the hill.
Can you see how these methodscause us to over and under
react, always swinging off thetight rope? In many ways, Kid
Mode is shared by all of us,much like survival mode, if we
were raised in any setting wherethere was a power. Differential.
We have strategies for dealingwith situations of power under
(30:03):
and power over. As I worked withclients and myself in
understanding the differentmindsets Byrne, called them ego
states. I needed a way toorganize them. You can look at
the centered mindset as being onthe tightrope. I can fall off
the tight rope by over or underreacting to the situation, much
like I did with Mocha. In thatcase, I bounced back and forth
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from trying to get him to likeme, to trying to have power over
him, and then going back tofeeling helpless, really
helpless. Right after myaccident, I started working with
a leadership team whose corerole in the organization was
like herding cats. There were alot of power dynamics in play.
They were executives in theirrole, but not always in their
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actions. The team lamented itsfrustration as we worked through
the give and take of its variousdecisions, in many ways, we
began to recognize that whatthey were seeking was the
ability to be present when indifficult conversations, while
delivering unwelcome news and inmaking strategic decisions. In
other words, they wantedexecutive presence. I created
(31:13):
the following tool for them tosee where they were at any given
time in their interactions.
Again, for the listener, thereis a chart that shows the
tightrope of power under, powerwith and power over. Available
to anyone who emails me atlynn@lynncarns.com, how we
(31:35):
bounce around the strategies wechoose is deeply colored by our
life experiences. Our lifeexperiences also create our
history mode, and each of us hasa completely different set of
life defining moments thatshapes who we are and how we
make sense of the world. Whilewe may share patterns of trauma,
(31:58):
quote, unquote, our reactions towhat happens in our lives, both
good and bad, are unique to eachof us. Our ways of dealing with
pressure start forming from thetime we are born. We learn from
watching our parents and otherfamily members, teachers, peers
and other authority figures. Welearn from our experiences and
(32:18):
how we handle what happens to usas we are growing up, we are
like little scientists studyingthe world and deciding who we
are and how we fit in it. Thisbecomes our conditioning. We
document those discoveries inour bodies and our ways of being
in the world. That conditioningbecomes our patterns for dealing
(32:38):
with the pressures of life,feeling betrayed. You've got a
pattern for that, not gettingwhat you want. You've got a
pattern for that. My own historymode. Patterns played a role
from the moment I accepted theinvitation to ride straight
through to the accident, therecovery and beyond. There's no
getting around it. Some of ourpatterns are super useful. That
(33:00):
instinct to hit the brakes whensomething rolls in front of our
car. Useful that instinct to hitsomeone who just took something
away we wanted? Not so great,especially in corporate life. My
pattern around showingconfidence, my pattern of I've
got this was very useful incorporate life, where there's
always more work to do than wecan possibly do. The insatiable
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work monster was kept fed andmostly quiet by people like me.
Our early years as littlescientists established a huge
repertoire of patterns thatoperates like an automatic
program. They run in thebackground without any conscious
thought or help from us, andthey take energy, much like an
app running in the background ona smartphone. You can think of
(33:45):
our patterns like the buttons wepush to start an app on the
phone, rather than having toopen the screen and find the
icon, our buttons get pushed bythe pressure of the situation.
Here are examples of the typesof things that happen that will
push our buttons and cause us tooperate from conditioning,
instead of from the actualsituation in front of us, not
(34:08):
getting what you want, feelingbetrayed, making a mistake,
watching Someone else be praisedfor something you did, getting
embarrassed, feeling treatedunfairly, getting quote unquote
(34:28):
screwed by a situation, wantingto please others, looking for
approval, wanting to be right,fearing failure, feeling
responsible for the fate ofothers, being told your work is
not good, our unconsciouspatterns run us just as surely
(34:53):
as if we were robots running onthe programming code of their
inventor, learning to operatecreatively. Unconsciously
requires much more than a simpledecision to change. Why? Because
emotions lock the originalprogramming into place until we
(35:13):
access those emotions and thenrewrite the program. We cannot
change the pattern while my bodywas running downhill on Mocha,
the robot was running my mind.
If I were ever to ride again, itseemed wise to do something
about the robot. In other words,it was not a skill problem, it
(35:35):
was a mindset problem, but atthis stage of my recovery, I
preferred to think it was awriting skill problem and one
that I might not ever have toaddress. What mattered more was
getting back on my water ski.
Losing the last six weeks of mywater ski season had been
heartbreaking. After years oftrying to shorten the rope, I
(35:58):
had almost given up. Truth betrotold I was afraid of skiing on
the 22 offline length when therope is that length behind the
boat, the Wake has a bump.
Crossing the wake at high speedsin a leaning position, and
hitting that bump sent shockwaves and adrenaline through me
every time after a few buoys,the adrenaline coursing through
(36:19):
my system typically rendered mymuscles useless. Two days before
the accident, I had finallycompleted a full ski pass on the
22 off rope length. It was abreakthrough a decade in the
making, and a simple trail ridein the woods ended my ski
season. Now I had two prioritiesover the fall and winter, rehab
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like a professional athlete, andprovide the corporate team
opportunities to take itsleadership and team to a new
level back on the water ski.
Several months into my recovery,it was time to see if I could
still ski. The doctor hadinsisted on three months off. I
waited five partly because itwas the dead of winter when I
(37:04):
could stand it no longer mydaughter Jen and I got in the
car and headed to Florida whilethe recovery aspect was new to
me. Skiing in Florida during thewinter months was totally
normal. So were a lot of my oldrules that made the trip with
me. Every skier I know feels thesame mix of dread and excitement
at the return from an OFFperiod. Slalom skiing is an
(37:26):
intense sport, even at thehighest level, skiers
acknowledge the first time backon the ski every season feels
incredibly fast andunmanageable, almost from the
first moment I got up on theski, it felt completely normal.
Clearly, I had developed a lotof muscle memory over the last
decade.
The familiar muscle soreness thenext day was a welcome reminder
(37:48):
of how much fitness this sportoffered. This time, not being
able to raise my arm to brush myhair filled me with happiness. I
was back, yet there were partsof me that were still shaken in
the way trauma can mark usforever in walking the tightrope
of confidence, my overconfidencehad swung to under confidence.
(38:09):
Questions were rumbling underthe surface. Where else in my
life was my I've got this rulewaiting to trip me up. Was I
really so good at bullshittingthat I was fooling myself? What
kind of mark would this traumaleave on me? The questions
sparked enough discomfort tostart getting through to my
defenses. My accident was ablessing with new insights.
(38:35):
Perhaps the trauma could be agift. In my blog, written after
the trip, I could see the formsof a new way of being starting
to show their safe shapes. Blogpost, move on or move deeper. I
love making progress. When I wasan avid tennis player, I wanted
to move from being rated a 3.5to a 4.0 in my various jobs, I
(38:59):
always wanted the next promotionof the big assignment on the
potter's wheel, I've pushed tocreate ever taller forms in
water skiing, I've been on amulti year quest to speed up the
boat and shorten the rope. In mymind, progress tends to involve
the next measurable milestonemuch more than cultivating deep
mastery. While I appreciatemastery as a concept or theory,
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actually, putting it intopractice has been something I've
avoided in order to achieve mybeloved progress. To me, mastery
is boring. Why? Because itinvolves the subtleties of doing
the same thing over and over,improving slowly and carefully
filling in the gaps that areeasily glossed over with my need
(39:43):
for speed. With this fall, I hadan experience that has awakened
me to a different need. Ratherthan move on, I need to move
deeper. It was revealed with theone two punch of falling off a
horse landing me in the hospitaland. Then having to take several
months off water skiing rightafter I had achieved a
(40:04):
previously unattainablemilestone, having to sit still
during my recovery gave me timeto reflect my extreme lack of
mastery contributed to the fallfrom the horse while I had many
important takeaways from thatexperience, perhaps the most
profound is this, knowing how tostop a horse in theory does not
(40:25):
translate to embodying theenergy mindset and physical
actions to stop a horse thatwould rather run when it came
time to put my theory intopractice, all the knowledge in
the world meant nothing withouthaving practiced and learned to
connect my knowledge to realskill in the moment of truth,
(40:45):
all I could do was hold on andhope for the best. In this case,
I was wearing a helmet and wentdown on relatively soft ground.
It could have been much, muchworse. As I healed, I had a good
part of the winter to reflect onthe differences between
knowledge, skill and mastery. Irealized that in many areas of
(41:06):
my life, I have substitutedknowledge for real skill, and
nowhere have i undertaken thejourney of mastery. As a result,
I end up holding on and hopingfor the best when my skills fall
short, the consequences are notusually so severe. I've gotten
away with it with consequences.
When it was time to get back onthe water ski, I started by
(41:27):
slowing the boat down a littlebit. Of course, this went
against everything I typicallydo, which is trying to make
progress, even though in waterskiing, my progress is usually
baby steps. A wonderful thinghappened. First, I could still
ski. This is an intense sport,and anytime you come back from a
long time off, there is thisquestion, can I still do it?
(41:48):
Second, I moved deeper. In thiscase, moving deeper meant that I
was able to feel things at theslower speed that I couldn't
before my coach said this. I'mnot trying to say that it was
good that you got injured, butit's giving you a chance to
build a better skiing foundationthan you had before. In that
moment, I realized it was timeto move deeper. So I am moving
(42:10):
deeper. That is, I'm slowingdown and trading progress for
depth, rather than claiming myprize of achieving the goal. I'm
deliberately practicing theactions that lead to the goal,
moment by moment, I'm movingdeeper. Thank you for listening
to the creative spirits unleashpodcast. I started this podcast
because I was having these greatconversations, and I wanted to
(42:34):
share them with others. I'malways learning in these
conversations, and I wanted toshare that kind of learning with
you. Now what I need to hearfrom you is what you want more
of and what you want less of. Ireally want these podcasts to be
of value for the listeners.
Also, if you happen to knowsomeone who you think might love
them, please share the podcastand, of course, subscribe and
(42:56):
rate it on the different appsthat you're using, because
that's how others will find itnow I hope you go and do
something 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, Unleash Podcast. I'm
Lynn Carnes, your host. In mylast episode of the podcast, I
started an experiment by readingthe first chapter of my book
dancing the tightrope. Mypromise was that if I heard from
my readers and listeners that itwas valuable, I would do more.
(00:40):
But secretly, I didn't expectanything to come out of it. Of
course, I was wrong. You havespoken, at least some of you
have, and I am listening. Thisepisode of the podcast is
chapter two of dancing thetightrope. It covers a lot of
ground, both about my recoveryfrom my accident and my recovery
(01:00):
back to water skiing. Moreimportantly, it sets the stage
for many of the gold nuggets tocome on my journey to get back
on the horse. Something elsehappened though, when I read the
book, especially this chapter,that I didn't expect. I felt
like a first time reader in manyways, after all, this chapter
(01:21):
was written four years ago,reading it now out loud is
giving me new perspective.
Something I dreaded doing is nowbecoming a useful practice. Who
would have thought it'sreminding me why I wrote this
book? There's a quote in thebook from chapter 13 that says
this, if pressure is a test toshow others we are good enough.
(01:41):
We are doomed to live at themercy of those whose approval we
seek. If pressure is a catalystto unleash our true nature, we
can truly live while we arealive. The worst accident of my
life showed me how to live whileI'm alive. Imagine giving up the
need to prove yourself. Imaginetruly living that's why I wrote
(02:03):
the book. So stay tuned. There'smore chapters to come, and I'm
still seeking feedback. Thankyou to those, by the way, who've
already shared your insights. Sotell me, what do you like about
hearing me read these chapters?
What would make it easier foryou to listen and what gold
(02:25):
nuggets are you taking away? Asalways, please share the podcast
with your friends, yourcolleagues, and give this a
rating and a review, if at allpossible. It does help get the
word out. And as you can see,that's why I'm doing this to get
the word out. Enjoy this.
Chapter Two from dancing thetightrope. Chapter Two growth in
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recovery, give and take ofenergy. The first day home from
the hospital revealed just howchallenging this recovery would
be. While I had practicedrecovery on a micro scale for
many years, this injury wascalling on me to practice
recovery on a macro scale. Babsbrought me a book to read. It
(03:06):
was the undoing project afriendship that changed our
minds. By Michael Lewis, it'sthe kind of book that provokes a
hard look at the way we thinkabout things. The book planted
seeds and kept me enthralled forseveral days. Good thing. It was
going to take a really good bookto get me to sit still without
(03:27):
the use of my right arm andstill in pain on the whole side
of my body. That went splat. Iwas discovering just how many
things I could not do wash myhair only if I found a one
handed method deal with thefallout of wet hair. Blow drying
is a two handed affair. Imastered left hand brushing and
(03:47):
air drying drive I couldn'treach the gear shift. As I moved
through my first few days athome, it became abundantly clear
that I live my life as aperpetual motion machine. Thanks
to reading the making of thecorporate athlete BY JIM LEHRER
And Tony Schwartz in 2001 I hadlearned the value of oscillation
(04:08):
and its role in helping mobilizeenergy on demand. After years of
practice, I had learned toeffectively use stress and
recovery in short doses to beable to sustain high levels of
energy throughout the day. WhatI hadn't learned was how to
demobilize energy on demand. Notto worry my body was doing it
(04:29):
for me. Two weeks into myrecovery, I wrote this blog the
give and take of leadership.
I've had recovery on my mind alot lately. Recently, I fell off
a horse, breaking my collarboneafter a couple of days in the
hospital. I also had a partiallycollapsed lung that required.
(04:50):
Chest tube, I spent my firstfull day out of the hospital
running light errands. Mydaughter and co worker did all
the driving, so it really wasmuch less effort than on a
normal day of work. By evening,though I was disproportionately
tired, my energy expenditures torun my day exceeded the energy
(05:11):
needed to help me heal. Sinceanyone who knows me will tell
you, I typically have a lot ofenergy to spare, it was a good
reminder that I don't haveunlimited energy. Recovery is
necessary to gather enoughenergy to go about my daily
business. Usually a good night'ssleep, healthy eating and
(05:31):
meditation are enough to keep megoing strong, but not when I my
body is injured and needs theenergy to heal. As I've been
more mindful of recovery, it'sreminded me of an insight I had
with skiing a few years ago. Oneof my coaches pointed out that I
was not creating enough energybehind the boat to get out to
(05:53):
the buoy line before the boatpulled me back. Suddenly, I saw
the idea, I need to gatherenergy to deploy it. If I don't
cultivate enough energy, I willfall short on the result I need.
What a simple concept. Soon Icould see this idea in Action
Everywhere I looked the projectthat seemed stalled. No one was
(06:14):
taking the reins and creatingenough energy to get the team
moving my lackluster garden, notenough soil preparation to
provide nutrients to growwonderful plants. The friendship
that seemed shaky, neither of uswas putting any energy or
attention into it. One of myclients told a story that
(06:34):
illustrated this principlebeautifully. He was the
executive sponsor of a multiyear change project in his
company. The pressures weretremendous, and every second of
his day was scheduled at theclose of a team leader meeting,
one of his colleagues suggestedhe walked through the area where
(06:55):
many of the people were workingon the project. At first he
declined, and then thoughtbetter of it. He took an hour to
walk around, talking to people,thanking him for their work,
asking what they needed, andgenerally just showing that he
cared. Afterward, he said he hadno idea how much this visit
(07:15):
would energize him. It remindedhim of what was happening at the
ground level of the project. Andmore importantly, he said, this
single visit re energized thewhole team, and to think I
almost didn't do it, this simpleprinciple, whether you call it
give and take, gather anddeploy, cultivate and harvest,
(07:37):
or something else underlies allour endeavors. We simply cannot
harvest something that isn'tthere. We cannot run on an empty
tank without severeconsequences. Leaders truly are
managers of energy. Where do youneed to gather and recover
energy? What are theconsequences of trying to get
the proverbial blood out of theturnip? What can you do to
(08:00):
energize yourself or others nexttime you notice something
missing, look first for what youmight be able to give it might
be the only resource that'sneeded. What I was starting to
see were layered principles thatwould emerge even more clearly
in the months and years to come,the magic was not in my ability
(08:22):
to amp up, nor was it in myability to slow down. What
mattered was the adjustment.
Being able to calibrate myenergy to the needs of the
moment became pricelessattunement. So did learning to
deeply listen so that thecalibration aligned with the
needs of the moment. Once Islowed down, I realized there
was a real risk I would overdoit. After a few days of slowing
(08:45):
down, I started wondering if Iwould ever want to get off the
couch again. This recovery wasproving to be more difficult
than I expected to quit or notto quit. For me, doing something
difficult involves going for it,getting into the swamp, hating
the way it feels, thinking Ican't possibly handle it, saying
(09:07):
a bunch of cuss words, and theneither somehow making it through
or shutting down. Often in theshutting down part, I also quit.
That's exactly what happenedwhen I was co leading a major
change project at the bank whereI spent so much of my corporate
career. We were integrating amajor merger filled with
(09:28):
animosity, and we wereintroducing a whole new process
to a system that was as old asthe ages. The people on the
receiving end of all this changehad to deal with a brash new set
of bosses telling them the waythey did business would have to
completely change, said orunsaid. The message was
(09:49):
something like, you all aredoing it all wrong and should
have known better. We knowbetter, so we're here to fix
you. You.
So these messages did notexactly welcome the new team
members to the team with openarms as the project leads. It
was our responsibility todeliver the news and then get
(10:11):
our colleagues to accept the newway of doing things. Here's what
I've learned in years of leadingcorporate change and going
through my own personal change,you can't make anyone do
anything. What was being askedof us was extremely difficult,
and the pressure was enormous.
By this time, I had alreadystarted some four ways into my
(10:32):
self awareness. It was not goingwell. What I really wanted was
someone to give a test and thendeclare me self aware. Steve, my
co lead on the change project,and I were off site working with
some consultants who werehelping us on the both project
and self awareness fronteveryone and everything called
us up to a higher level offacilitation and leadership than
(10:54):
I had ever experienced. It feltimpossible for me to do what
they were asking. The pressureof the situation was far greater
than my ability to rise to thechallenges facing us. More
importantly, I felt like acomplete failure and loser,
because it seemed I justcouldn't get it, and I was
getting tired of the criticismand feedback that my way wasn't
(11:16):
good enough. What it was goingto take for me to change my
ways. Felt like climbing MountEverest. In the face of such
pressure, I quit. Usually when Iquit, it's an internal form of
shutting down, where I pretendto be engaged and just survive
long enough to get out of thesituation. In this case, the
pressure was too high for that.
(11:38):
In the middle of one of one ofour meetings, I turned to Steve
and said, I can't do it. Whatyou're asking of me is too much.
The look of betrayal and hurt onhis face hit me in the gut. He
was gracious and said he wasdisappointed, but obviously
would honor my decision. Afterall, I mean, what choice did he
have in a perfect world, I wouldhave gotten in my car, Gone
(12:00):
Home, since we were workinghalfway across the country and
traveling together, Ireluctantly stayed in the
meetings inside. I thought, Iwant to leave shit I can't
leave. There's no way out. Ourgroup had dinner together that
night, and all I can remember ofit was that it was surreal,
probably because the nextmorning's memories overwhelmed
almost every other memory I had.
We were deep in a workingsession when one of our team
(12:25):
members got a call. Kevinstepped out, and although it was
rare for us to be interrupted,this was before the smartphone,
we quickly went back to what wewere doing while everyone else
was focused on the project. Iwas still wishing for my escape
when Kevin came back into theroom, he was a different man.
His face was ashen. He movedwith effort, and his eyes said
(12:47):
it all. He had just gotten someterrible news. Diane, the
executive sponsor of ourproject, had committed suicide
the night before we were allflabbergasted. Diane was the
most put together, calm,Effective Executive you could
(13:09):
imagine. We all felt bothhonored and protected to be
working on a project of thisscale and scope with her
generous and experiencedoversight. Note, by the way, I
am using aliases for this story.
This could not be happening, butit was our work stopped as we
(13:32):
rode the roller coaster ofemotion and sought out more
information. As the day rolledon, we learned that she shot
herself in the head while herhusband and boss went into the
house to get drinks. This mayhave been an act of desperation,
but it was also an act ofdefiance. She went out
inflicting pain, and I knew justhow she felt. We spent the next
(13:56):
several hours crying,processing, disbelieving and
theorizing what could make herthis desperate. Why did she do
it this way? Had she sent anywarning signals? What would make
her do this when things didn'tgo my way? I would often spout
about, spout off, about takingmy quitting to this extreme. Now
(14:20):
why I would never considermyself genuinely suicidal. I
could identify with the idea,idea of saying, f you to the
people putting pressure on me,especially when I couldn't see a
way out of my misery. Somehow,as the day went on, I began to
realize that my self torment andhelplessness would only get
worse if I didn't face mydemons. My way of living was
(14:42):
eating me up from the insideout. I was nowhere near
balancing, much less dancing thetightrope. My typical responses
to pressure had been to gohelpless, to hide, to pretend or
to be a child. When that didn'twork, I played the false
confidence game saying. And I'vegot this whether I knew what I
(15:02):
was doing or not, when thatfailed, I went into the angry
parent mode, full of rage,judgment, resentment, trying to
gain power over people with mycondescension and strong
emotions over the course of thatunforgettable day, Diane's death
gave me a crystal ball into myfuture if something didn't
(15:23):
change, the outlook was dismal.
If I were to play at this level,this bouncing back and forth
between being powerless andintimidating, would have to end.
It was time to grow up. When wereturned from a break, I looked
at Steve and said, I'm back inShe can't die in vain. Steve was
both shocked and relieved me. Iwasn't sure what I had just
(15:47):
done, although I had quit,quitting for the moment, I still
had to wrestle with the desireto throw my hands up and walk
away. The roots of this patternwere complex, and they ran deep
birth of rules. In some ways, Icame by my urge to quit
Honestly, my begging for a horsefinally paid off. My parents
(16:09):
relented and bought me a horse.
Just as suddenly, we quit andsold a horse without me ever
understanding why, until Irestarted my journey with
horses. That's when I learned wehad innocently done almost
everything wrong. My memories ofthe practicalities of getting
(16:31):
the horse were vague. Lookingback, I wondered who hauled him
the 50 miles from our town tothe farm. How did we decide
which field to leave him in?
Were we at all worried about thebarbed wire fences hurting him?
Who checked on him when we weregone for a week or two at a
time, was buying a horse namedbuck a bad idea. And then this
question, what made me thinkthat catching a snake and then
(16:55):
trying to catch the horse whileholding the snake was a good
idea. I was on my way out withthe halter and lead broke to a
very large field where we hadleft him the last time we were
there. Suddenly a garter snakedarted in front of me, growing
up outdoors and with a drainageditch near our house. I loved
playing with all kinds ofwildlife, including snakes with
(17:17):
his vertical stripes. This onewas clearly not poisonous, so I
caught him. It's what I alwaysdid when encountering a snake
being the ignorant kid I was atthe time, I guess it I thought
it would be fun to introduce Mr.
Snake to my horse, Buck. Badidea. Horses and snakes don't
want to be friends. Buck showedme loud and clear as he ran far
(17:41):
out of reach, I quickly droppedthe snake and started trying to
coax Buck back to me afterliving in the field all by
himself for a while, Buck didn'twant to be friends with me
either. I don't remember howlong it took me to catch him,
but I did learn, in no uncertainterms, that the only snaky
looking thing I better have inmy hand when approaching a horse
(18:02):
would be a lead rope. My parentssilently marked striked one,
perhaps the same day or anotherday. I can't remember. We had
the bridal incident where Icould not, for the life of me,
get the bridle on the horse. Hekept raising his head, backing
away and showing me the whitesof his eyes. I kept chasing him
like a lunatic. Looking back, Ijust wish I could tell Buck how
(18:24):
sorry I am for my ignorance. Wenever did get the bridle on him.
That day, my parents silentlymarked Strike two on the
deciding day I had managed toget the bridle and the saddle on
buck, my only goal was to get onand go fast, barrel racing fast.
(18:45):
My mom was fishing, fishing inthe tank, holding in the water
on the other side of the hilltank, by the way, is Texas
language for a small lake orpond. I had no idea where my dad
or other siblings were. I was inmy own world of delight running
on Buck around in the open fieldjust west of the tank, Buck and
I suddenly exploded up the hilland stopped just short of our
(19:06):
mom was peacefully casting forbass. Mom had just swung the rod
and reel back to her right,preparing to throw a cast. I was
smiling from ear to earfollowing the exhilarating run
up the short hill. She whirledaround in a way that I knew had
no right answer. Yelled, did youmean to do that? This was no
(19:27):
time to be strategic. I had beenher daughter for 12 years. I
knew that tone of voice, and Ihad a very well developed rule
for the pattern we were suddenlyliving out in real time. It was
damned if you do and damned ifyou don't. If I said yes, I was
in trouble. If I said no, I wasin trouble, my rule told me to
(19:53):
answer the question that was thepath of least trouble. Seemed
like a good idea to blame thehorse not realizing that his
very. Existence on our farm wasin question.
I can't say for sure when therule to avoid getting in trouble
was born, but I suspect it wasduring the windowsill incident.
When I was four years old, myparents bought a new house under
(20:14):
construction. We would go byevery day checking on progress
as the studs became drywall andthe drywall became finished
walls. Day by day, theconstruction zone slowly morphed
into livable space. It was onone of these visits that my
don't get caught. Rule was born.
It had probably been formedbefore that. But I'm getting
ahead of myself, as my parentswere off in another room with my
(20:37):
baby sister. They left me alonein the empty kitchen with the
big plate glass window facingthe backyard. At the bottom of
that window was a big, white,freshly painted window sill to
my young eyes, this was the mostbeautiful blank canvas I had
ever seen. All that white spaceseemed like a good place to
(20:58):
write my name, something I wasjust learning to do. I can't
remember what sharp, sharpobject I used, probably a nail,
but I proceeded to write my nameon that lovely, somewhat soft
surface. I happily wrote theletter L, before my mistake hit
me. If I wrote my name, myparents would know who did this.
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Some part of my kid brain knewthat marring this brand new
windowsill might not be a greatidea. Such an act would
definitely get me in trouble. SoI did what any smart kid would
do. The next letter I wrote was,ew. That was a close one. I
finished out the rest of mysister's name Lee, aware that I
(21:41):
had cleverly avoided being invery bad trouble. My sister's
name was now etched in both thepaint and the wood. Dealing with
this would be her problem. Myclever kid brain missed one
important detail. My sister wasnot yet two years old, and at
this moment, she was in the backbedroom with my parents. A few
(22:04):
minutes later, my parents cameback in the kitchen, of course,
my mom saw the writing on thesill. My mom was a fiery person,
and we saw her flames in fullglory that day. I'm pretty sure
the neighbors were also gettingto know the new family who would
be moving in soon. My artisticact had gotten me in trouble.
That etching would stay on thewindow sill for the next 10
(22:27):
years that we lived in thathouse, reminding me and my
parents just what a bad girl Iwas. Years later, here I was on
the top of the world sitting onmy dream horse busted by the
same fiery mother who had lookedat that marred window sill every
day. No one to blame but thehorse. I answered no feeling
rather proud that I would notget punished as badly as if my
(22:51):
gallop up the hill was anintentional act. Blame it on the
horse. Strike three, my parentssold Buck after that, I was
heartbroken and convinced Ianswered her question the wrong
way in the months that followed,I wondered if I had chosen to
say yes, would the outcome havebeen different? Would I have
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been scolded and told never toscare my mom like that again?
Was there a path that would havelet me keep buck and become a
champion barrel racer. Why didwe have to quit? What would have
happened if we had chosen to thepath to learn more about the
care and upkeep of horses? Frommy 12 year old perspective, all
(23:32):
I knew was we had quit for manyyears. I deeply struggled with
losing buck in my child's viewof the world, my dream was
stolen. Many of my rules wereborn and reinforced around this
story later, as I learned tobuild my tools, my adult eyes
showed me my life was savedthree buckets of rules. As my
(23:55):
recovery progressed,conversations started taking on
a new tenor. All patterns andrules began rising to the
surface, showing me their forms,their benefits and their
limitations. While the bruiseswere fading and my bones healed,
there was a consistent questionexplored in most of my
(24:15):
conversation, both with friendswho loved horses and friends who
feared horses. What happened? Itwas a loaded question defined by
many facets. What did you dowrong? Where did you make a
mistake? Were you ever rightagain? What would cause this to
happen again? How do you makesure a horse never runs away
(24:38):
with you again. And the questionI asked myself, if I don't get
back on does it mean I'm afailure? These questions were
deep and starting to penetratemy very identity. I didn't like
it my various friends who hadhorses and knew very well the
ins and outs, as well as thedangers of trail riding in.
(24:58):
Provided much neededperspective. One said there is a
skill to balancing yourself on ahorse moving downhill, the rider
has a responsibility tocoordinate with the horse so
that he can carry you moreeasily. Another said, gotta keep
those heels down. It keeps youlocked in the saddle. Yet.
Another said, when a horsestarts running out of control,
(25:18):
you bring them around into acircle. It's like an emergency
stop my knowledge. Hungry brainate up the advice, starving for
a technique that I could deploy.
Should I ever choose to writeagain? Yet one conversation
pointed to something deeper,something in the fog that
occasionally showed itself inever morphing shapes and
(25:40):
disappeared as soon as I lookedat it, you seemed so confident,
it never occurred to me that youwere anything but totally
proficient. So said Babs, as wediscuss what happened that day,
we'd only ridden together twice.
Confidence. It's something I hadcultivated since my first day in
the corporate world, andprobably even before that, I
built my adult form ofconfidence on the foundation of
(26:04):
so many of my childhood rules.
Don't get caught, developedinto, I've got this translation.
Even though I'm faking it, I'mgood at faking it. So who will
ever know? Damned if you do,damned if you don't developed
into, I will beat myself up. Soyou don't have to translation. I
(26:26):
don't have to change anythingbecause I've eaten the slimy
vegetables and paid my pendants.
Quitting is the way out.
Developed into. Look at thisother thing. I'm good at
translation. If it doesn't comeeasy, I don't want to have to
take the time to develop masterythis swiss cheese confidence was
destined to collapse underpressure. All the skills and
(26:48):
knowledge in the world would notbreak those patterns in my
coaching work with leaders forthe several years prior, I had
begun breaking lifelong patternslike these into three buckets
with different origins anddifferent ways out. Number one,
survival mode. Number two, KidMode. Number three, history
(27:10):
mode. There is a chart in thebook describing these three
modes, and it's available toanyone who emails me at
lynn@lynncarnes.com, in someways, all three modes played out
my experience falling off thehorse when mocha started down
(27:30):
the pivotal Hill his big gatefelt like a trot to me. The
sensation of speed immediatelysent a shot of adrenaline into
my system. Survival Mode wastriggered in milliseconds.
Now I was in fight, flight orfreeze at this point because of
my lack of skills and, moreimportantly, my pressure gap, I
(27:52):
had no choice but to try to hangon when pulling back on the
reins didn't work. We all havesurvival mode, and the chemistry
of it operates essentially thesame way in all of us. It's non
negotiable hardwiring granted tous at birth. Earlier in my ride,
Kid Mode had been triggered. KidMode is anytime we feel a power
(28:13):
differential, and we do thingsto get our power back. This idea
started coming to me when I wasworking with Eric burns
transactional analysis in aleadership program I was
teaching while I did almost nodeep study on his method, what I
saw was easily applicable to thecorporate world in my kid mode
(28:34):
view of the world, I pictured atightrope where, on the
tightrope itself, we walk In apower with approach to solving
problems and leading changes.
With such a narrow, wobbly pathto walk, we're bound to fall off
on one side or the other. On oneside, the child side, where we
fell into a power underapproach. Every time I walked
(28:55):
into my boss's office and saidsomething to the effect of, I
tried everything. Nothing works.
It's everybody's fault, butmine. I was in the child itch.
It's tailor made for victims.
When it dawned on me that mochawas the one in power, after
walking me through the spiderweb, albeit unintentionally, I
tried making him, like me, aclassic power under strategy to
(29:17):
even out the power differentialon the other side is the parent
side, where we fall into a powerover approach. Of course, more
than once I had walked into myboss's office trying to get away
with the you need to fix thisattitude, getting all grabby
with the reins and trying to beforceful instead of
communicating. Reallycommunicating were my feeble
(29:40):
attempts to gain power overmocha on the way down the hill.
Can you see how these methodscause us to over and under
react, always swinging off thetight rope? In many ways, Kid
Mode is shared by all of us,much like survival mode, if we
were raised in any setting wherethere was a power. Differential.
We have strategies for dealingwith situations of power under
(30:03):
and power over. As I worked withclients and myself in
understanding the differentmindsets Byrne, called them ego
states. I needed a way toorganize them. You can look at
the centered mindset as being onthe tightrope. I can fall off
the tight rope by over or underreacting to the situation, much
like I did with Mocha. In thatcase, I bounced back and forth
(30:26):
from trying to get him to likeme, to trying to have power over
him, and then going back tofeeling helpless, really
helpless. Right after myaccident, I started working with
a leadership team whose corerole in the organization was
like herding cats. There were alot of power dynamics in play.
They were executives in theirrole, but not always in their
(30:49):
actions. The team lamented itsfrustration as we worked through
the give and take of its variousdecisions, in many ways, we
began to recognize that whatthey were seeking was the
ability to be present when indifficult conversations, while
delivering unwelcome news and inmaking strategic decisions. In
other words, they wantedexecutive presence. I created
(31:13):
the following tool for them tosee where they were at any given
time in their interactions.
Again, for the listener, thereis a chart that shows the
tightrope of power under, powerwith and power over. Available
to anyone who emails me atlynn@lynncarns.com, how we
(31:35):
bounce around the strategies wechoose is deeply colored by our
life experiences. Our lifeexperiences also create our
history mode, and each of us hasa completely different set of
life defining moments thatshapes who we are and how we
make sense of the world. Whilewe may share patterns of trauma,
(31:58):
quote, unquote, our reactions towhat happens in our lives, both
good and bad, are unique to eachof us. Our ways of dealing with
pressure start forming from thetime we are born. We learn from
watching our parents and otherfamily members, teachers, peers
and other authority figures. Welearn from our experiences and
(32:18):
how we handle what happens to usas we are growing up, we are
like little scientists studyingthe world and deciding who we
are and how we fit in it. Thisbecomes our conditioning. We
document those discoveries inour bodies and our ways of being
in the world. That conditioningbecomes our patterns for dealing
(32:38):
with the pressures of life,feeling betrayed. You've got a
pattern for that, not gettingwhat you want. You've got a
pattern for that. My own historymode. Patterns played a role
from the moment I accepted theinvitation to ride straight
through to the accident, therecovery and beyond. There's no
getting around it. Some of ourpatterns are super useful. That
(33:00):
instinct to hit the brakes whensomething rolls in front of our
car. Useful that instinct to hitsomeone who just took something
away we wanted? Not so great,especially in corporate life. My
pattern around showingconfidence, my pattern of I've
got this was very useful incorporate life, where there's
always more work to do than wecan possibly do. The insatiable
(33:23):
work monster was kept fed andmostly quiet by people like me.
Our early years as littlescientists established a huge
repertoire of patterns thatoperates like an automatic
program. They run in thebackground without any conscious
thought or help from us, andthey take energy, much like an
app running in the background ona smartphone. You can think of
(33:45):
our patterns like the buttons wepush to start an app on the
phone, rather than having toopen the screen and find the
icon, our buttons get pushed bythe pressure of the situation.
Here are examples of the typesof things that happen that will
push our buttons and cause us tooperate from conditioning,
instead of from the actualsituation in front of us, not
(34:08):
getting what you want, feelingbetrayed, making a mistake,
watching Someone else be praisedfor something you did, getting
embarrassed, feeling treatedunfairly, getting quote unquote
(34:28):
screwed by a situation, wantingto please others, looking for
approval, wanting to be right,fearing failure, feeling
responsible for the fate ofothers, being told your work is
not good, our unconsciouspatterns run us just as surely
(34:53):
as if we were robots running onthe programming code of their
inventor, learning to operatecreatively. Unconsciously
requires much more than a simpledecision to change. Why? Because
emotions lock the originalprogramming into place until we
(35:13):
access those emotions and thenrewrite the program. We cannot
change the pattern while my bodywas running downhill on Mocha,
the robot was running my mind.
If I were ever to ride again, itseemed wise to do something
about the robot. In other words,it was not a skill problem, it
(35:35):
was a mindset problem, but atthis stage of my recovery, I
preferred to think it was awriting skill problem and one
that I might not ever have toaddress. What mattered more was
getting back on my water ski.
Losing the last six weeks of mywater ski season had been
heartbreaking. After years oftrying to shorten the rope, I
(35:58):
had almost given up. Truth betrotold I was afraid of skiing on
the 22 offline length when therope is that length behind the
boat, the Wake has a bump.
Crossing the wake at high speedsin a leaning position, and
hitting that bump sent shockwaves and adrenaline through me
every time after a few buoys,the adrenaline coursing through
(36:19):
my system typically rendered mymuscles useless. Two days before
the accident, I had finallycompleted a full ski pass on the
22 off rope length. It was abreakthrough a decade in the
making, and a simple trail ridein the woods ended my ski
season. Now I had two prioritiesover the fall and winter, rehab
(36:40):
like a professional athlete, andprovide the corporate team
opportunities to take itsleadership and team to a new
level back on the water ski.
Several months into my recovery,it was time to see if I could
still ski. The doctor hadinsisted on three months off. I
waited five partly because itwas the dead of winter when I
(37:04):
could stand it no longer mydaughter Jen and I got in the
car and headed to Florida whilethe recovery aspect was new to
me. Skiing in Florida during thewinter months was totally
normal. So were a lot of my oldrules that made the trip with
me. Every skier I know feels thesame mix of dread and excitement
at the return from an OFFperiod. Slalom skiing is an
(37:26):
intense sport, even at thehighest level, skiers
acknowledge the first time backon the ski every season feels
incredibly fast andunmanageable, almost from the
first moment I got up on theski, it felt completely normal.
Clearly, I had developed a lotof muscle memory over the last
decade.
The familiar muscle soreness thenext day was a welcome reminder
(37:48):
of how much fitness this sportoffered. This time, not being
able to raise my arm to brush myhair filled me with happiness. I
was back, yet there were partsof me that were still shaken in
the way trauma can mark usforever in walking the tightrope
of confidence, my overconfidencehad swung to under confidence.
(38:09):
Questions were rumbling underthe surface. Where else in my
life was my I've got this rulewaiting to trip me up. Was I
really so good at bullshittingthat I was fooling myself? What
kind of mark would this traumaleave on me? The questions
sparked enough discomfort tostart getting through to my
defenses. My accident was ablessing with new insights.
(38:35):
Perhaps the trauma could be agift. In my blog, written after
the trip, I could see the formsof a new way of being starting
to show their safe shapes. Blogpost, move on or move deeper. I
love making progress. When I wasan avid tennis player, I wanted
to move from being rated a 3.5to a 4.0 in my various jobs, I
(38:59):
always wanted the next promotionof the big assignment on the
potter's wheel, I've pushed tocreate ever taller forms in
water skiing, I've been on amulti year quest to speed up the
boat and shorten the rope. In mymind, progress tends to involve
the next measurable milestonemuch more than cultivating deep
mastery. While I appreciatemastery as a concept or theory,
(39:22):
actually, putting it intopractice has been something I've
avoided in order to achieve mybeloved progress. To me, mastery
is boring. Why? Because itinvolves the subtleties of doing
the same thing over and over,improving slowly and carefully
filling in the gaps that areeasily glossed over with my need
(39:43):
for speed. With this fall, I hadan experience that has awakened
me to a different need. Ratherthan move on, I need to move
deeper. It was revealed with theone two punch of falling off a
horse landing me in the hospitaland. Then having to take several
months off water skiing rightafter I had achieved a
(40:04):
previously unattainablemilestone, having to sit still
during my recovery gave me timeto reflect my extreme lack of
mastery contributed to the fallfrom the horse while I had many
important takeaways from thatexperience, perhaps the most
profound is this, knowing how tostop a horse in theory does not
(40:25):
translate to embodying theenergy mindset and physical
actions to stop a horse thatwould rather run when it came
time to put my theory intopractice, all the knowledge in
the world meant nothing withouthaving practiced and learned to
connect my knowledge to realskill in the moment of truth,
(40:45):
all I could do was hold on andhope for the best. In this case,
I was wearing a helmet and wentdown on relatively soft ground.
It could have been much, muchworse. As I healed, I had a good
part of the winter to reflect onthe differences between
knowledge, skill and mastery. Irealized that in many areas of
(41:06):
my life, I have substitutedknowledge for real skill, and
nowhere have i undertaken thejourney of mastery. As a result,
I end up holding on and hopingfor the best when my skills fall
short, the consequences are notusually so severe. I've gotten
away with it with consequences.
When it was time to get back onthe water ski, I started by
(41:27):
slowing the boat down a littlebit. Of course, this went
against everything I typicallydo, which is trying to make
progress, even though in waterskiing, my progress is usually
baby steps. A wonderful thinghappened. First, I could still
ski. This is an intense sport,and anytime you come back from a
long time off, there is thisquestion, can I still do it?
(41:48):
Second, I moved deeper. In thiscase, moving deeper meant that I
was able to feel things at theslower speed that I couldn't
before my coach said this. I'mnot trying to say that it was
good that you got injured, butit's giving you a chance to
build a better skiing foundationthan you had before. In that
moment, I realized it was timeto move deeper. So I am moving
(42:10):
deeper. That is, I'm slowingdown and trading progress for
depth, rather than claiming myprize of achieving the goal. I'm
deliberately practicing theactions that lead to the goal,
moment by moment, I'm movingdeeper. Thank you for listening
to the creative spirits unleashpodcast. I started this podcast
because I was having these greatconversations, and I wanted to
(42:34):
share them with others. I'malways learning in these
conversations, and I wanted toshare that kind of learning with
you. Now what I need to hearfrom you is what you want more
of and what you want less of. Ireally want these podcasts to be
of value for the listeners.
Also, if you happen to knowsomeone who you think might love
them, please share the podcastand, of course, subscribe and
(42:56):
rate it on the different appsthat you're using, because
that's how others will find itnow I hope you go and do
something very fun today. You.
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