March 28, 2025 • 46 mins
This week’s episode is – drumroll – Chapter 3 of Dancing the Tightrope. I’m just going to say it – you were right and I was wrong! I’m speaking to those who’ve been telling me for a long time that they would appreciate an audio version of my book.
Not only have I been getting great feedback and gratitude for providing the book in this form, but I have also surprisingly enjoyed reading it myself. After all, I wrote this over 4 years ago. It’s given me a fresh perspective on the themes and principles I began learning and refining after my fall from the horse – and it’s also shown me how far I’ve come. For example, if you had told the 2020 version of me that I would be riding with Stevie Delahunt at an endurance boot camp a mere five years later, I would have laughed in your face. But that’s where I was in early March when Chapter 2 of the book came out. It just goes to show you that you can teach an old – dare I say it – dog new tricks.
This chapter sets the stage for so much of what I’ve put into practice in the last five years. It chronicles my first visit to Camden to work with Bruce Anderson. To say that I was resistant is an understatement. So was Jen, as you will hear in this Chapter 3 of Dancing the Tightrope.
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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 Creative spirits unleash Podcast. I'm
Lynn Carnes. Your host. Thisweek's episode is Drum roll,
please, yes. Chapter Three ofdancing the tightrope. I'm just
gonna say it. You were right. Iwas wrong. Of course, I'm
speaking to those who've beentelling me for a long time that
they would appreciate an audioversion of my book. Not only
(00:43):
have I been getting greatfeedback and gratitude for
providing the book in this form,but I have also surprisingly
enjoyed reading it myself. Afterall, I wrote this over four
years ago, it's given me a freshperspective on the themes and
principles I began learning andrefining after my fall from the
horse, and it's also shown mehow far I've come. For example,
(01:03):
if you had told the 2020,version of me that I would be
riding with Stevie Delahunt atan endurance boot camp a mere
five years later, I would havelaughed in your face. But that's
where I was in early March whenchapter two of the book came
out, and it was actually mythird visit to ride with Stevie
in the last year. It just goesto show you that you can teach
an old dare I say it dog, newtricks. So this chapter sets the
(01:28):
stage for much of what I've putinto practice in the last five
years. It chronicles my firstvisit to Camden to work with
Bruce Anderson, where I firstbegan to hear the idea of
invisible tools. To say that Iwas resistant is an
understatement, and so was mydaughter, Jen, who went with me
that day, as you will hear inthis, Chapter Three of dancing
(01:51):
the tightrope. I hope you enjoychapter three, invisible tools
when the student is ready. Threeinner fault lines finally
provoked me enough to make thepivotal phone call. One had been
planted months before and laydormant, waiting for more energy
(02:11):
to widen the crack in aconversation during my recovery,
my friend Daryl mentioned herhorse trainer Bruce Anderson and
the work he did in the corporateleadership realm. Daryl and her
husband had recently moved tothe area, and we became fast
friends with a shared love ofthe outdoors, conservation and
water. She had several welltrained dressage horses, and one
(02:32):
she mainly used to ride on thetrail, named Scotty. Three
months before I got on Mocha,Daryl asked me over to ride
Scotty. We were hoping I couldbrush up my childhood horseback
riding skills so I could joinDaryl out on the trails on her
farm. We started in the arena. Iquickly discovered I was way
over my head on Scotty over myhead in the same way that any
(02:54):
typical driver might experiencein a finely tuned Ferrari
surging around the racetrack forthe first time. You can read the
whole story in the sidebar ofthis chapter. Interestingly, I
did not see what happened withScotty as a red flag to my
horseback riding aspirationsuntil at least a year after my
fall. Nor did I realize thatthis blog was a call out to the
(03:17):
universe to help me deal withpressure. Blog post, where is my
choice here? And yes, I got backon the horse. My theme for this
week seems to be adrenaline. Letme start by saying there is a
joke in our house about who isthe real adrenaline junkie
around here? I contend it's me,and I got a lot of adrenaline
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this week. It's left mepondering how to use this
involuntary pulse of fight,flight or freeze energy pulsing
through my veins. What wouldhappen if I actually channeled
it instead of running away orcurling up in a ball to make it
go away? What is the best choiceto make between that moment of
stimulus and response, and howdo I continue to build the inner
(04:02):
fortitude to tolerate discomfortand get comfortable with being
uncomfortable from the outside,looking in, almost no one would
see me as the daring one. So ifI'm the one who is such a
chicken, how can I be theadrenaline junkie? It's all a
matter of perspective. I'mmarried to a mountain dew man
who does everything from extremescuba diving to sky diving to
(04:24):
horse endurance racing to backflips off giant boat houses. By
all accounts, he looks like theadrenaline junkie in our
household. He has spent hiswhole life doing brave and
daring things, most activitiesdon't even touch his fear
system. So while he isconsidered an adrenaline junkie,
he has to work very hard to getahead of adrenaline me, on the
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other hand, I was raised in adon't go near the edge
household, and I didn't. As aresult, I was generally a
careful child who turned into afearful adult. I hate admitting
this my. Fear system gets jackedwith the slightest hint of
danger because my threshold isso low I get hits of adrenaline
all the time. That's why I sayI'm the true junkie in our
(05:10):
house. I'm the one gettingregular doses of it. So what
happened this week to fill mewith adrenaline? Oh, let me
count the ways. It started withthe spider on the boat platform.
No, I'm not scared of spiders. Iused to be, but that's another
story. When I saw him as I wasstepping onto the platform ski,
I moved my boot so as not tostep on him, and the boot
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suddenly slipped out from underme. Imagine the feeling of
hitting wet ice at a boat with ajagged edges to fall on, and you
will get the idea of the nextmove, I managed to sit back into
the boat without doing thesplits or crashing onto my
knees. Once I recovered mypoise, I realized that I had
taken one of the biggest hits ofadrenaline in me. Recent memory,
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my heart was racing, my stomachwas flipping, and I generally
felt incapacitated. I looked atJen, my daughter, and the one
who was driving, who knows mytendencies in me so well? And
said, I can't ski like this. Isat back in the boat and said,
Give me a minute. Of course,adrenaline takes a while to
drain from your system. And Isaid, as much she offered to ski
and let me get calmed down. Andthat was certainly an option.
(06:16):
Then it hit me, the perspective,not more adrenaline, my body had
just inadvertently createdtournament conditions. The
feeling I was having was nodifferent than the feeling I
have before skiing in atournament. Being able to
perform with that kind ofenergetic surge in the body is a
hugely valuable skill, and onethat I have not mastered. This
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was my chance to practice withthe inner feeling of true
tournament conditions. So Ilooked at Jen and said, Let's
see if I can use this. I'm goingto ski the first pass proved why
tournament conditions are sodifficult. I overshot every
buoy. Even though I hadanticipated being stronger than
normal, it was difficult tocorral all the energy surging
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through my body. Had I been in atournament, my performance would
have been short lived. It was onthe next few passes that I
started understanding how tochannel the energy in a
productive way when my mindcaught up with my body's
enhanced capabilities. I skiedmy best of the summer to that
point, by far. In fact, the nextday, I was missing that surge
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when I skied, I came to see theadrenaline as enhancing my
capabilities rather thandebilitating me. Over the past
few years, I've been rewiring mybrain to make it less sensitive
to those fear hits. For example,the first time I drove a boat
through a ski course, my heartwas pounding and the boat guide
seemed to scream past me at Machfour. Now I drive said, course,
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every day at faster speeds withadvanced short light skiers,
deliberate practice andfamiliarity have made the once
scary now the norm. But ofcourse, you know, my lessons on
managing fear and adrenalinewere not yet over. I'm sure you
have heard the old adage, if youfall off the horse, you gotta
get back on. I got to test thatone as well. A friend invited me
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over to ride her horse, whichwas one of my very favorite
things to do as a young woman.
Almost all of my riding had beenon the very calm nose to tail
riding horses typical of publicriding stables. Yes, I had been
on real horses, but not thatoften, and all of my riding has
been western riding. Thedifference between Western and
English are much more than adifferent saddle.
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We started with catching andgrooming my mount, which gave
the horse and me a chance to getto know each other and build
some trust. Smart move. Then wemounted up in the ring and I
started learning how to ride allover again, different saddle,
different reins, real horse, andunlike my ski, the horse could
feel my every emotion. Justknowing that made it a little
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harder for me to settle in. Atfirst. After a while, I did
begin to get comfortable, and westarted speeding up, just like
in snow skiing, it's importantto learn the basics of how to
slow down before you get toomuch momentum. In this case,
it's with a live animal whounderstand specific signals. The
first couple of times were okay,I was able to get him going and
(09:06):
stop him without too muchtrouble. Then, while the horse
was moving at a quick gate, Iinadvertently gave a go signal
when my deepest desire was tostop before I knew it, we were
running. This was certainly notwhat I had expected. You can
imagine what happened inside ofme. My body was now in full
flight or flight. I wasliterally in flight mode, and I
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would have loved to been able tofly off that horse and land on
my two feet. My friend wascalmly giving me instructions on
what to do. I'm not sure how shecould be so calm while I felt
like I was on a runaway train.
Damn. Why won't this horse stop?
Needless to say, when we gotstopped, my first instinct was,
get off that horse. She knewbetter, and I knew better. That
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horse would never respect meagain. First, we debriefed those
few minutes while I was stillastride him, we realized my
Western riding style conflictedwith his training. My. Signal
was confusing him, and myadrenaline, sense of flight came
through the as the strongersignal. So I went back to
walking for a few minutes toregain my composure and
(10:10):
reconnect with the horse. Mysystem was pulsing with the huge
hit of adrenaline. In this case,I intentionally channeled that
feeling into deep focus,connection and gratitude with
the horse, he did eventuallyslow down, and he was simply
doing his best to please me andI had managed to stay on through
the whole thing. Who now you maybe wondering what all this talk
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about adrenaline has to do withbusiness at work, we rarely talk
about it in these terms. Wedon't say, Wow, when you call my
idea stupid, I got a hit ofadrenaline. Or, dang, I get
super scared when I see you andyour boss talking, because half
the time it means I'm getting introuble for something I've done.
We are mature, powerful businesspeople, so we frame those
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adrenaline hits as just businessor we don't even realize that
we're in a reactive mode thatlack of awareness can cost us.
Here's the problem withadrenaline, we don't really have
a choice about when it hits it'sbased on our history, our
personal fears, our experienceswith parents, teachers or
bosses. When that stimulus hitsus, we start operating in fight
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or flight mode. When theconditions actually call for us
to be calm and reasonable, weare more likely to escalate a
conflict, to take somethingpersonally, to get hurt or
defensive or just to pick afight. All that energy surging
through our system tells us todo something, and we do. It's
just that then we do somethingthat is probably an overreach
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for the situation. You may bethinking, okay, I get it. I
don't want to overreact and Idon't want to damage
relationships, so I will quithaving adrenaline, huh? If it
were only so simple, our innernervous system decides when we
get the adrenaline. Ourconscious mind has little or
nothing to do with it. Unless wedo serious self awareness
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training, we will get hit whenwe get hit. So first we have to
learn to deal with theadrenaline hits we get start by
being aware. Recognize that whenyou have that pit in your
stomach or the leap in theheart, there is a chance you are
surging with more energy thanusual. That signal is designed
to keep you alive. When it hitsin a business environment, it
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drives behavior that does notmatch the situation. Learn when
your tendency is to fight, fleeor freeze. You may also want to
consider doing some inner workto rewire your system to
tolerate and normalize thosesituations that trigger you. You
can desensitize yourself if youdeliberately practice doing so.
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But I digress back to BruceAnderson. I had experienced
Equine Assisted Learning before,and I thought I had learned all
I needed to know. Now that I'djust been thrown off a horse,
the thought of working with themwas still up in the air for me,
and I did not want to literallybe up in the air like before
ever again. In the meantime, Iwas coaching a leadership team
(13:04):
that was operating under extremepressure. Every one of us needed
to take our game to anotherlevel. The idea of working
experientially with someone likeBruce who could potentially
accelerate our learningintrigued me from my earlier
work in a horse focusedLeadership Program. My big
takeaway was this, horses don'tact because of the title you
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hold or the words you say. Theyengage through clarity of
thought and energy, and theyshow you when your energy is
incongruent, the challenges theteam members faced were not
about positional power, ratherinfluence mattered. Influence
was their currency, and theyneeded more of it. Learning to
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influence a 1200 pound animalwould help these team members
influence leaders above, belowand around them in their
organizational hierarchy. Thosewere both logical reasons to
work with Bruce, but it wouldtake a third, unspoken longing
known only looking back on itwhen the pressure got high and I
went into the froth, in otherwords, the space outside my
(14:10):
comfort zone, but still in thelearning zone. I quit at this
point in time. I had not allowedthat awareness to move into my
conscious mind. It was mysubconscious longing to learn to
operate in the froth thatspurred me to make the call. It
was October, a month after myaccident, when Daryl first
mentioned the leadership workwith Bruce. At the time, I said
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I would think about it being thego getter that I am. I got right
on it and called him in March.
When I spoke with Bruce on thephone, he began to take me
through his method. He didn'ttalk about himself, his clients,
or how he worked. He juststarted doing his thing, which
involved asking me lots ofquestions, as if we were in a
coaching session. And that phonecall, I realized this was
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nothing like the experientialwork I had done with horses
before i. He didn't really talkabout the horses. He was mostly
talking about the mental cyclethat occurs when we are under
pressure and make a mistake. Healso said things like, we are
not meant to live in man'sworld. We were meant to live in
nature's world. As we relearnhow to dance with nature in the
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world we were made for, we canalso learn how to dance with
human nature. I didn't realizeyet just how different this work
would be. In fact, after we hungup from that first call, I
thought I fully understood hismethods and that Bruce would see
that when we worked together thefollowing week, my proving
mindset the very same patternthat told my friend I knew how
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to ride asserted its dominanceonce again, what I thought was
micromanaging. Before we hung upfrom that first call, I
mentioned to Bruce that mydaughter, Janet worked with me,
and he also invited her to theshow and tell session which we
would do at his farm in Camden,South Carolina. We picked a day
in the next week, and he warnedus to dress for anything,
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including mud. As Jen and Idrove the 165 miles from Lake
Lure to Camden. We were full ofanticipation about what to
expect going in. I had somepreconceived notions, given that
I had done one whole leadershipsession using horses, I expected
Bruce to do the same, or atleast something similar, plus, I
had read a bunch of books, so Iwas feeling rather confident
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on our drive, I described to Jensome of the activities I had
done in the one session, as wellas some of the exercises I had
read about in books. She hadbeen helping me with the
leadership team, so we mappedout how my preconceived notions
of the exercise Bruce wouldshare would help the team with
several of its challenges. Wealso talked about the big stuff,
like, how would we feed theteam? Where would they sit, and
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what if it rains? Would there bea bathroom? In other words,
corporate land showed up. Thehorses would see right through
me. When we got out of the car,a giant of a man greeted us. He
asked us if we would like to sitand visit on the porch. Before
we got started, I was prettysure there were no horses on the
porch, so I naively suggested weget right to it. Looking back,
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this makes me chuckle. I wouldcome to realize just how much my
past was interfering, notinforming. And even later, I
would come to think of my pastas interfering, spelled e n t, e
r, F, E, A, R, I N G. But thereI go, getting ahead of myself
again. Bruce handed me a ropeand a halter with these
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instructions, your picture is tochoose one of the two horses,
put the halter on the horse youchoose, and bring him or her to
the round pin. A round pen islike a corral seen in westerns.
Instead of being square, theround pin is round, well, almost
round. More on that later,however, I hadn't gotten to the
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not quite round, round pen, yetmy mind tripped up over the word
picture. What did he mean? Didhe mean goal instead of picture?
What an odd thing to say. Muchlater, I would come to realize
that horses think in pictures.
His word choice was not onlydeliberate, it was essential,
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but in my rush to show off, Imentally replaced the word
picture with goal and set off tocrush the goal. In my mind, this
would take five minutes, max. Itwould be less, but for the two
gates I would have to open andclose on my way out and my way
in to complete his assignment.
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Here's my embarrassing littlesecret. I only cared about one
thing at this point. I wantedBruce to ask me where I had
learned to catch and halter ahorse like that in the world.
According to Lynn, I was justone step shy of being a natural
horse. Woman, overconfidencestruck again. Secretly, there
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was also a part of me hoping hewould absolve me from any
responsibility for the horseaccident, not to mention I
wanted to see those coolactivities for the leadership
team. So much for my wishfulthinking and getting the horse
into the round pen in fiveminutes. Yes, I caught the horse
in short order. Then I had tofigure out the halter, which was
unlike any I had ever seen. Letthe halter tell you how to put
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it on the horse. Bruce said,talking halters were not part of
my preconceived expectations.
And best I could tell, this onelooked more like a rope than a
halter. And the last I checked,ropes, don't talk. Finally, I
got the halter on and startedwalking with the horse on the
way into the round pen. Brucestopped and asked me to feel my
negative, positive pole. Mywhat? There he goes, using funny
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words again, yes, I feelsomething. What I'm feeling is
pissed you are not letting meget this horse into the round
pen. Okay, where all the funwill start. Your negative
positive pole is like a carbattery. There's a little charge
of electricity inside of you.
See if you can feel it. As hespoke, he moved his hands up and
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down in front of his midsectionwith his thumbs up. When
something is off, that littlecharge of electricity will surge
through. You notice it and giveit a number. If I learned
nothing else for the rest of mylife, learning this lesson would
be the worth, worth the trip toBruce, but it would not get
through my numbed out brain fora long time. On this day, my
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number, on a scale of one to 10,was a 10 an hour and 50
questions later, the horse and Ifinally walked into the round
pen. Yay. I thought, now I getto do something with the horse.
Not so fast. First, he had metake off the halter I had worked
so hard to put on the horse.
Man, do I hate to do rework inthe intervening hour, my
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annoyance had been rising clickby click, I mostly stuffed it
and tried to assume positiveintent, but asking me to remove
the halter was almost a clicktoo far. However, my inner good
girl went out and I removed thehalter as ordered. I watched the
horse start grazing and turnedback to Bruce, still wondering,
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when would we get to do mypreconceived notions of working
with the horse. I hadconveniently forgotten that
Bruce calls this work naturalhumanship. For the next hour, we
talked and did an exercise withflags. Best I could tell that
was a complete waste of time.
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Our mission was to find themiddle of the round pen, and all
I could think was, if the middleis so damn important, why the
hell has he marked it before?
Now, when, oh, when will we dothe leadership lessons with the
horse? There was a lot of talkabout the negative positive
pole, but the noise in my headdrowned it out. The noise in my
head had been drowning out mygod given instincts my whole
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life. Someday I would learn thetransformative power of finding
the middle but on this day, Ijust wanted to get on with it.
Mistakes. Finally, Bruce handedme a tool that looked like it
might lead to doing somethingwith the horse a good old
fashioned cowboy, Lariat, theassignment was simple and clear.
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Take the rope from its currentunorganized state into a set of
equally sized coils with notension in the rope. Jen and I
were still standing in themiddle of the round pen, talking
to Bruce, who was sitting in achair just outside the fence.
When Bruce gave me the picture,there's that word again, I was
sure it would be easy and wecould start quickly working with
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Trinny, the horse I had workedso hard to catch and bring into
the round pen. She was stillpeacefully grazing behind us.
Laureates are stiff making theassignment a lot more
challenging than it appeared onthe surface. Lariats are sort of
like a garden hose that onlyloops when coiled just right in
just a matter of seconds. I wasin deep shit. I had made several
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coils, and they were not equallysized, and the loops looked like
my disorganized garden hose athome. I was failing and
desperate to cover it up. As myinternal tension rose, the nice,
calm horse I wanted so badly toplay with started walking in
circles around us, with myattention on coiling the rope, I
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barely noticed Bruce would saysomething, and I would feel the
heat rise in the back of myneck, sitting under his stair
raised the pressure even more.
Soon I started to notice thehorse. I couldn't help it. No
longer was she peacefullygrazing. She had started
trotting and then running, andnow was kicking up her heels
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Great. Between the horse, theLariat, and the guy heckling me
in the cheap seats, I felt nakedand exposed. Now I feared for my
life. Horses are big, and thisone was moving faster and faster
as I watched Trinity kick andbuck. It never dawned on me that
Jen might be getting concernedabout the chaos running around
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us, nor did I understand how orwhy my actions might have sent
the horse into such a state, itwas like I was looking at the
world through a rolled up tubeof paper. I did have a flash,
flashback to my accident.
Remembering being on the back ofa horse that had kicked me off
in similar fashion. Brucestopped me and said something
about me beating myself up. Ifully denied it and tried to
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keep convincing him and myselfthat I've got this. None of my
bullshit games worked. He sawme. He saw me. Now. All he had
to do was coax the real me tocome out from behind the
conditioning of my past whilecalling the Lariat I did not
conscious. Feel like I wasmaking a mistake, nor did I feel
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like I was beating myself up.
Yet, at some level, myphysiology was responding to my
lack of rope coiling skills as amistake. Once the mistake button
got pushed, the automatic cycletook me into my past, the
unconscious memories andemotions stored in my body came
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flooding to the surface. I wasno longer the grown up version
of me, but the eight year oldbeing scolded for getting
something wrong. And yes, I wasbeating myself up. That's no way
to learn anything. When Bruceinterrupted me in that moment,
he gave me a different path totake, rather than operating from
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the past, he took my focus intothe present moment as my tension
drained out through tears, thehorse calmed down and faced me.
Now we could work on thepicture. How does one learn how
to coil a rope without training?
The use of the word picturebegan to come into focus. Bruce
said, you are trying to doeverything at once. A moving
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picture is made of lots ofsmaller frames, right? What are
the frames still I stood frozen.
Break it into the smalleststeps. Try stuff. Where is the
twist in the coil coming from?
What move could you make torelease the tension? Would you
twist the rope to the right orto the left
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from my helpless Kid Mode, stateof being I ask for the answer,
which, why do I turn the rope?
He said, to try it and see whathappens. But what if I make it
worse? You might make it worse,and then what? I go the other
way. But what if that doesn'twork? Try something else, but
that might not work. You won'tknow until you try, but I might
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die. Okay, I didn't say the lastthing out loud, even though
that's what my mind had beenscreaming from the first
horrible coil of the rope. Imight die. It feels like I'm
dying here. It wasn't death, itwas a path to life. In that
moment, I could not appreciatewhat a profound lesson this
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would be. As he stayed with methrough the Messy emotions of
wanting to throw the rope on theground and leave the problem
altogether, I began to chart anew path out of my old ways. I
tried twirling the tension outby swinging the rope to the
right. It made it worse, andyet, somehow I was still alive.
Let the rope tell you which wayto turn it. He said. There he
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was with his talking ropesagain, but this time, something
inside opened just a little bitas I tried working with the
coils, I began to tune into therope, which meant I had made
space to tune out the innervoices telling me what an awful
rope Coiler I was. When myattention turned to the problem
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in front of me, it was as if Ihad a whole new set of resources
at my disposal. My mind quietedand I started working the
puzzle, first this way and thenthat way. Soon, my brain and my
hands made a connection, andbefore I knew it, the Lariat was
beautifully coiled. Tears beganto well up as I realized that I
(28:15):
was alive the shame andembarrassment of not being able
to do a simple task hadevaporated. I had experienced a
glimpse of who I was born to bewithout the internal noise and
drama. It was just me and therope patiently working out a
problem, listening to it tell mewhere to find the relaxed path.
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On this day, I was not yet clearon what I had just learned. It
had nothing to do with coiling arope. Bruce had provided a safe
space for me to solve a problemfor most of my life, I had not
been afforded that kind ofpsychological safety in most of
the cultures I had experienced,whether at school or in my
career, while he was providingthis space for me, my intensity
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and fear of getting it wrong didthe opposite for the horse
trainees. Bucha showed me thecost when safety is lacking. Her
response was pure without theusual human cover up. More
importantly, Bruce hadeliminated the key to my own
treasure chest of invisibletools. It was a magical key that
would turn only when I waspresent accidentally showing up.
(29:23):
The pressure of trying to figureout the rope took me out of the
moment. As I stood therestruggling with the rope, it
felt like I was on center courtin the finals of Wimbledon. I
wasn't fully in the game. A partof me was in the stands watching
myself fumble and stumble withthe task, with the audience of
1000s offering their critique,the imaginary critique created
(29:47):
by my mind leaving the momenthappens all the time. I jump
into the other person's head andstart imagining what they are
thinking. When I was a kidriding my bike down the street,
I used to. Uh, quote, unquote,here in my head, what each
neighbor must be thinking aboutme as I passed their house, this
little mind game continued forthe rest of my life, pretending
(30:08):
I knew what was going on insomeone else's head. The same
thing happened at work. Often, Ireacted based on what I thought
someone was thinking, ratherthan taking the time to ask,
listen and truly hear what theywere actually thinking. One of
the biggest promotions of mybanking career put me in both
the spotlight and theheadlights. My job was to take
(30:29):
the core training program forcommercial bankers from a one
year program to 10 weeks whiledelivering better bankers as
things often get done in thecorporate world, the decision to
reorganize around this ideahappened before there was any
proof at all that this ideacould work. The pressure to get
it right fell on me and my team.
(30:52):
The heads of many commercialbanking divisions were anxious
to see how we would solve theproblem. They look forward to
the benefits of a much lesscostly program, while at the
same time, feared thepossibility that they might be
stuck doing remedial trainingfor the newly minted bankers
they were counting on to beproficient very quickly, this
was a tall order. Learning toassess whether or not to give a
(31:15):
business a sizable loan is adifficult task. In one of the
early meetings presenting ourplans to this group of
executives, I experienced an outof body moment, watching myself
crumble from the stands and thensomehow brought myself back into
my body. Everyone had come tocorporate headquarters for a
planning session around the neworganizational structure, and I
was one of several team leadsslated to report on our plans.
(31:39):
This was the kind of workingsession that would be full of
probing questions, pushback,decisions and occasionally
condescension. Nothing can knockme off center like being talked
down to. The executive team.
Would either leave the meetingconfident that we were up to the
task, or would begin takingmeasures to make sure that
someone got the job done. Inother words, I had a real shot
(32:00):
at screwing things up here, aswe were gathering for the
meeting, you could cut thetension with a knife on the
surface, everything lookedfriendly and supportive. The
undercurrent told a differentstory, one that carried an
awareness of the tech of thestakes. Luckily for me, I was
not the first to speak, but Myluck was short lived, as I
(32:21):
watched others stumble andfumble under the examination of
senior leaders who had much togain and lose, my planned
presentation started lookingweaker and weaker. Doubt started
creeping in. I thought, wouldthey press me as hard on my
staffing plan as they did thepresenter before me? Would they
open doors for me to hire fromtheir teams, an essential part
(32:43):
of my strategy, or would theyinsist I somehow manage with a
less experienced cohort? What ifI made a mistake? What if I look
unprepared or even stupid? Isthis the end of my career? The
pressure started to rise as theconsequences of this moment
washed over me. My mind startedchattering ideas to help me out,
(33:03):
to get an idea of the self talk.
Picture a parent watching theirkids play a sport instead of
yelling for me to choke up onthe bat. It said things like,
come on. You know these people,they like you be sweet and cute
so you can get your way. Okay?
Maybe if they liked me enough,they would overlook the
potential holes in the plan. Butwait, they like the guy talking
(33:24):
right now. He's choking. Whatabout him? Then my competitive
side started saying things like,you could do better than him.
He's being too cautious. Showhim what you got. Even though we
were all on the same team, Ifound myself thinking I could do
better than the otherpresenters. I needed to do
better than the other presentersnow I wanted to win. None of my
(33:45):
mind chatter nonsense helped. Itcame my turn to speak. My body
tensed. A flood of sensationscoursed through my torso. I was
feeling like I had just been gutpunched. I looked down to open
my presentation. When I lookedup, I had that sort of tunnel
vision that was like seeing aroom through the peepholes in
(34:08):
the door. The expectant faces ofthese executives enter my brain,
looking like distorted figuresin a fun house mirror. The words
coming out of my mouth feltequally contorted about two
sentences in, I had enoughpresence of mind to be aware
that I was speaking gibberishwith a trembling voice that I
didn't recognize, with thesinking feeling my main mind
(34:30):
chatter told me I was going toget exactly what I had feared.
Here. I was a grown ass womanwith a big job, and yet a skill
I had learned as a toddler wassuddenly out of reach. I could
not talk. The pressure hadgotten to me. I was sinking. A
huge part of me wanted to runout of the room. In some ways it
(34:52):
already had leaving a shell ofme behind to face the music. I
needed to find my voice and.
Find it now, if I couldn'thandle the pressure of talking
about my plans, what would makethem think I could bring those
plans to life? Then I stumbledon an analogy that somehow got
me out of my head and back intomy body. I said these Young
(35:15):
Bankers are coming in believingthey are ready to run the ship,
even though they can't yet readfinancial statements. What we
have found is that we mustbalance helping them see the
reality of their lack of skillswith giving them a sense of
progress. It's like a rollercoaster. If they can feel the
click, click, click, as the carheads to the top, they will have
the patience to see the trainingprogram through in what seemed
(35:39):
like a magical moment at thetime, I could feel the room
change as my physical demeanorshifted, my voice came back. I
was fully present in the room. Iquit pitching and started
talking through our plans. Theireyes changed from hard and
skeptical to interested andexcited. We had an engaged
(35:59):
discussion where we jointlysolve problems, developed
strategies and made decisions.
By the end of my part of themeeting, the executives
expressed their full support ofour direction. I left the
meeting with confidence andclarity. Looking back on this
event, I've wondered, whatshifted that day? Did I suddenly
rise to the pressure? Did I finda level of inner strength. How
(36:20):
did I get myself back in thepresent moment?
Or did the people in the roomlower the pressure when their
eyes changed? Was it a way toencourage and support the
clearly faltering me? Were theytaking the role of audience
member who showers the performerwith positive vibes? What would
have happened if they'd goneharsh instead of friendly,
(36:43):
without a time machine, I willnever know for sure. However,
with an increasing knowledge ofthe pressure gap, I believe
their friendly faces andpositive vibes help lower the
pressure. The pressure gap.
Pressure has a way ofinterfering with our most basic
skills. We know how to talkuntil we are faced with a huge
(37:03):
audience or a make or breaksales presentation, we know how
to write and yet can't seem tohit send on an email that makes
a bold offer. Pressure can evenmake walking next to impossible,
especially for someone with afear of heights, like me. Here's
an illustration you can test inyour mind right now, find a 20
foot span where you can walkcomfortably on flat ground. Walk
(37:27):
for 20 feet in a straight line.
Now reverse direction and walkthe same span as if this were a
12 inch wide beam. You mighthave to put one foot in front of
the other. Did you fall? Did youeven feel wobbly? Probably not.
(37:47):
The pressure created by thefirst task was really low. You
handle that level of pressureall day long. The pressure
created by the second task wasalso low, although slightly
higher. Keeping your balancealong a 12 inch beam is slightly
more difficult than regularwalking. Now, for the next task,
it is best to use yourimagination. Unless you have a
(38:08):
balance beam handy, imagine thatyou're going to walk across said
balance beam, like the one thegymnast use in the Olympics,
chances are the pressure createdby the height of the beam will
test your mental tools if youreally do it personally, just
imagining it can create thesensation of falling in my body,
(38:28):
while I can easily walk a fourinch wide span across the floor.
I cannot do the same four feetoff the floor. I have a pressure
gap. Now for the final task, useyour imagination again. In this
case, imagine that you're goingto walk across a 12 inch wide
beam, three times wider than abalanced beam that is several
(38:49):
100 feet off the ground. We havealready established that you
have the skills to walk a 12inch beam without falling over.
So this is well within yourskills. Envision yourself
walking across that beam several100 feet above the Earth.
Everything on the ground isreally tiny. You wouldn't even
be able to recognize your ownmother from this distance. You
(39:13):
might be tempted to stare atyour feet, even though that's
not how you normally walk. Butremember, the beam is 12 inches
wide. You have the skills to dothis all day long. I'm going to
take a wild guess here and sayyou would love to have something
to hang on to while up there,or, better yet, that you would
like to be roped in. Or, ifyou're like me, you might say to
(39:33):
hell, or that never go in there.
The pressure gap is thedifference between the
combination of your skills andmental tools to handle a
situation and the pressurecreated by that situation, you
can close the gap by eitherreducing the pressure or
building your mental tools,which will raise your pressure
threshold. Once I understoodthis concept, all of Bruce's
(39:54):
micromanaging started makingsense. He was created. Getting
micro moments for me to choose anew way with my usual Hurry up
itis My goal was to get what hewas doing by noon the first day.
Huh? In my dreams, it would takea lot longer, a whole lot
longer, if I were to have thecourage to return. We can never
go back there again. Jen's turnwith the horses happened after
(40:18):
lunch, after coiling the Lariat,which felt like a lifetime, the
three of us went to a localrestaurant in a different
setting, this big, imposing manwas nothing like the guy who had
micromanaged my every move thatmorning. I was still trying to
put my finger on his methods,and I peppered him with
questions during lunch, what Iwas starting to learn was
unexpected. He was not certifiedin some course or method with
(40:40):
working with horses. He hadlearned what he was teaching the
hard way, the really, reallyhard way of trial and error. No
wonder the exercises I waslooking for were nowhere to be
found. He spoke sentences like,I'm here to help the horse to
help himself survive in theworld we have created, and I'm
teaching you to live in theworld you were made for instead
(41:03):
of the world we have made. Andit's not the horse, it's the
pressure created by the horse.
And forget the goal. Break itdown, frame by frame. And my
least favorite of all, I don'twant the horse to do the
picture. He had other confusingterminology, like alpha and
(41:26):
tyrant. These did not mean whatthe dictionary said, and he
spelled them with the capital ofletters at the beginning and
end. He used these words todescribe a mindset. Instead,
alpha meant that you wereletting the horse or situation
tell you what to do, when to doand how to do. Tyrant meant the
past was interfering, causing usto over or under react. The idea
(41:50):
of over and under reactingpiqued my attention because it
resonated with the change tightrope, a mental construct I had
been using for years. The visualof a tightrope started for me in
the context of leading changeand dealing with the balancing
acts of leadership, for example,in dealing with resistance to
change, the typical leadershipstrategies fell into two
(42:11):
buckets. The first was to be tooeasy on people which forced the
leader to personally take on toomuch as deadlines slipped. The
second was to be too hard onpeople, which drove resistance
underground, letting the leaderhave the illusion all was okay,
but causing conflict and chaosin the people who were upset and
didn't want to change. Bothsides of this equation slowed
(42:34):
change down. Walking thetightrope meant allowing people
to have their normal reactionsto change, while at the same
time requiring them to do goodwork. As our lunch wrapped up,
we headed back to his farm, myhead spinning. I had both loved
and hated my experience from themorning Bruce's methods for
(42:55):
leadership training seemed tohave some promise, but I wasn't
sure what it was, yet it didfeel like I had released
something in the round pensession that had nothing to do
with horses. It went withoutsaying, at least as far as I was
concerned, that Jen would get achance to play with the horses
after we finished eating, in mymind, she was excitedly looking
forward to it. Even though I hadbeen her mother for 36 years,
(43:17):
you would never have known him.
Boy, did I misread the situationwhen Bruce handed Jen the halter
and lead rope, the scene playedout very differently. He gave
her the same instructions he hadgiven me, but everything was
different. Jen had no experiencewith horses with halters or lead
ropes, and the halter wasn'ttalking to her any more than it
had talked to me. She slowlywalked out into the field and
(43:39):
greeted one horse, and then theother animals love her, and the
horses were very happy to haveher hang out with them. When it
was time to put the halter on,all she saw was a tangled mess.
After one attempt with puttingthe halter on, her solution to
deal with the pressure was tothrow the rope down and walk
away. At that moment, we all sawa very different Bruce. All this
(44:01):
happening while I was stillthinking she was having fun.
Instead of the micro managingquestioner, she got support.
Instead of telling her to listento the rope, he showed her how
to fit the horse's head. Insteadof asking her why she tied it
this way and not that way, hehelped her make the special
knot, step by step, frame byframe, he showed deep support
(44:24):
and kindness with both Jen andthe horse. Slowly but surely,
she and Bruce solved problemstogether, eventually bringing
the horse to the round pen.
Later, I would come to learnthat Bruce could see that Jen
was well over her pressurethreshold. He was letting her
tell him what to do, when to doand how to do. Ie being Alpha.
(44:47):
Rather than adding pressure byasking her tons of questions, he
reduced the pressure by offeringsupport. In other words, he
avoided pushing her buttonswhere he had pushed every button
I had to get a reaction out ofme even later, I. Would come to
learn the benefit of havingsomeone push my buttons. On this
day, I was thrilled and surethat Jen was loving the
experience. One of these days, Iwill remember that she can hide
(45:11):
what she's feeling better thananyone I've ever known while
they worked. I planned myexperience with the Lariat had
made me realize the potentialdepth of this work. Now I had to
figure out how to make it workfor the leadership team.
Clearly, it would be differentthan what I had anticipated.
Eventually, Jennifer's sessionwas over, and it was time for us
to go. We had a three hour drivehome in which to debrief, and I
(45:35):
was picturing a richconversation about possibilities
as we roll down the highway. Aswe left, Bruce had one request.
He wanted to speak with me thenext morning to review the
session. It seemed reallyimportant to him. I promised to
be available and got in the carbefore I could get the seat belt
on, Jen looked at me and said,We can never come here again,
(45:55):
and there is noway you should bring the
leadership team here. It wasgoing to be a long drive home.
Thank you for listening to thecreative spirits unleash
podcast. I started this podcastbecause I was having these great
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
(46:16):
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
rate it on the different appsthat you're using, because
that's how others will find it.
(46:36):
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 Creative spirits unleash Podcast. I'm
Lynn Carnes. Your host. Thisweek's episode is Drum roll,
please, yes. Chapter Three ofdancing the tightrope. I'm just
gonna say it. You were right. Iwas wrong. Of course, I'm
speaking to those who've beentelling me for a long time that
they would appreciate an audioversion of my book. Not only
(00:43):
have I been getting greatfeedback and gratitude for
providing the book in this form,but I have also surprisingly
enjoyed reading it myself. Afterall, I wrote this over four
years ago, it's given me a freshperspective on the themes and
principles I began learning andrefining after my fall from the
horse, and it's also shown mehow far I've come. For example,
(01:03):
if you had told the 2020,version of me that I would be
riding with Stevie Delahunt atan endurance boot camp a mere
five years later, I would havelaughed in your face. But that's
where I was in early March whenchapter two of the book came
out, and it was actually mythird visit to ride with Stevie
in the last year. It just goesto show you that you can teach
an old dare I say it dog, newtricks. So this chapter sets the
(01:28):
stage for much of what I've putinto practice in the last five
years. It chronicles my firstvisit to Camden to work with
Bruce Anderson, where I firstbegan to hear the idea of
invisible tools. To say that Iwas resistant is an
understatement, and so was mydaughter, Jen, who went with me
that day, as you will hear inthis, Chapter Three of dancing
(01:51):
the tightrope. I hope you enjoychapter three, invisible tools
when the student is ready. Threeinner fault lines finally
provoked me enough to make thepivotal phone call. One had been
planted months before and laydormant, waiting for more energy
(02:11):
to widen the crack in aconversation during my recovery,
my friend Daryl mentioned herhorse trainer Bruce Anderson and
the work he did in the corporateleadership realm. Daryl and her
husband had recently moved tothe area, and we became fast
friends with a shared love ofthe outdoors, conservation and
water. She had several welltrained dressage horses, and one
(02:32):
she mainly used to ride on thetrail, named Scotty. Three
months before I got on Mocha,Daryl asked me over to ride
Scotty. We were hoping I couldbrush up my childhood horseback
riding skills so I could joinDaryl out on the trails on her
farm. We started in the arena. Iquickly discovered I was way
over my head on Scotty over myhead in the same way that any
(02:54):
typical driver might experiencein a finely tuned Ferrari
surging around the racetrack forthe first time. You can read the
whole story in the sidebar ofthis chapter. Interestingly, I
did not see what happened withScotty as a red flag to my
horseback riding aspirationsuntil at least a year after my
fall. Nor did I realize thatthis blog was a call out to the
(03:17):
universe to help me deal withpressure. Blog post, where is my
choice here? And yes, I got backon the horse. My theme for this
week seems to be adrenaline. Letme start by saying there is a
joke in our house about who isthe real adrenaline junkie
around here? I contend it's me,and I got a lot of adrenaline
(03:38):
this week. It's left mepondering how to use this
involuntary pulse of fight,flight or freeze energy pulsing
through my veins. What wouldhappen if I actually channeled
it instead of running away orcurling up in a ball to make it
go away? What is the best choiceto make between that moment of
stimulus and response, and howdo I continue to build the inner
(04:02):
fortitude to tolerate discomfortand get comfortable with being
uncomfortable from the outside,looking in, almost no one would
see me as the daring one. So ifI'm the one who is such a
chicken, how can I be theadrenaline junkie? It's all a
matter of perspective. I'mmarried to a mountain dew man
who does everything from extremescuba diving to sky diving to
(04:24):
horse endurance racing to backflips off giant boat houses. By
all accounts, he looks like theadrenaline junkie in our
household. He has spent hiswhole life doing brave and
daring things, most activitiesdon't even touch his fear
system. So while he isconsidered an adrenaline junkie,
he has to work very hard to getahead of adrenaline me, on the
(04:47):
other hand, I was raised in adon't go near the edge
household, and I didn't. As aresult, I was generally a
careful child who turned into afearful adult. I hate admitting
this my. Fear system gets jackedwith the slightest hint of
danger because my threshold isso low I get hits of adrenaline
all the time. That's why I sayI'm the true junkie in our
(05:10):
house. I'm the one gettingregular doses of it. So what
happened this week to fill mewith adrenaline? Oh, let me
count the ways. It started withthe spider on the boat platform.
No, I'm not scared of spiders. Iused to be, but that's another
story. When I saw him as I wasstepping onto the platform ski,
I moved my boot so as not tostep on him, and the boot
(05:31):
suddenly slipped out from underme. Imagine the feeling of
hitting wet ice at a boat with ajagged edges to fall on, and you
will get the idea of the nextmove, I managed to sit back into
the boat without doing thesplits or crashing onto my
knees. Once I recovered mypoise, I realized that I had
taken one of the biggest hits ofadrenaline in me. Recent memory,
(05:52):
my heart was racing, my stomachwas flipping, and I generally
felt incapacitated. I looked atJen, my daughter, and the one
who was driving, who knows mytendencies in me so well? And
said, I can't ski like this. Isat back in the boat and said,
Give me a minute. Of course,adrenaline takes a while to
drain from your system. And Isaid, as much she offered to ski
and let me get calmed down. Andthat was certainly an option.
(06:16):
Then it hit me, the perspective,not more adrenaline, my body had
just inadvertently createdtournament conditions. The
feeling I was having was nodifferent than the feeling I
have before skiing in atournament. Being able to
perform with that kind ofenergetic surge in the body is a
hugely valuable skill, and onethat I have not mastered. This
(06:37):
was my chance to practice withthe inner feeling of true
tournament conditions. So Ilooked at Jen and said, Let's
see if I can use this. I'm goingto ski the first pass proved why
tournament conditions are sodifficult. I overshot every
buoy. Even though I hadanticipated being stronger than
normal, it was difficult tocorral all the energy surging
(06:57):
through my body. Had I been in atournament, my performance would
have been short lived. It was onthe next few passes that I
started understanding how tochannel the energy in a
productive way when my mindcaught up with my body's
enhanced capabilities. I skiedmy best of the summer to that
point, by far. In fact, the nextday, I was missing that surge
(07:18):
when I skied, I came to see theadrenaline as enhancing my
capabilities rather thandebilitating me. Over the past
few years, I've been rewiring mybrain to make it less sensitive
to those fear hits. For example,the first time I drove a boat
through a ski course, my heartwas pounding and the boat guide
seemed to scream past me at Machfour. Now I drive said, course,
(07:40):
every day at faster speeds withadvanced short light skiers,
deliberate practice andfamiliarity have made the once
scary now the norm. But ofcourse, you know, my lessons on
managing fear and adrenalinewere not yet over. I'm sure you
have heard the old adage, if youfall off the horse, you gotta
get back on. I got to test thatone as well. A friend invited me
(08:00):
over to ride her horse, whichwas one of my very favorite
things to do as a young woman.
Almost all of my riding had beenon the very calm nose to tail
riding horses typical of publicriding stables. Yes, I had been
on real horses, but not thatoften, and all of my riding has
been western riding. Thedifference between Western and
English are much more than adifferent saddle.
(08:23):
We started with catching andgrooming my mount, which gave
the horse and me a chance to getto know each other and build
some trust. Smart move. Then wemounted up in the ring and I
started learning how to ride allover again, different saddle,
different reins, real horse, andunlike my ski, the horse could
feel my every emotion. Justknowing that made it a little
(08:44):
harder for me to settle in. Atfirst. After a while, I did
begin to get comfortable, and westarted speeding up, just like
in snow skiing, it's importantto learn the basics of how to
slow down before you get toomuch momentum. In this case,
it's with a live animal whounderstand specific signals. The
first couple of times were okay,I was able to get him going and
(09:06):
stop him without too muchtrouble. Then, while the horse
was moving at a quick gate, Iinadvertently gave a go signal
when my deepest desire was tostop before I knew it, we were
running. This was certainly notwhat I had expected. You can
imagine what happened inside ofme. My body was now in full
flight or flight. I wasliterally in flight mode, and I
(09:27):
would have loved to been able tofly off that horse and land on
my two feet. My friend wascalmly giving me instructions on
what to do. I'm not sure how shecould be so calm while I felt
like I was on a runaway train.
Damn. Why won't this horse stop?
Needless to say, when we gotstopped, my first instinct was,
get off that horse. She knewbetter, and I knew better. That
(09:50):
horse would never respect meagain. First, we debriefed those
few minutes while I was stillastride him, we realized my
Western riding style conflictedwith his training. My. Signal
was confusing him, and myadrenaline, sense of flight came
through the as the strongersignal. So I went back to
walking for a few minutes toregain my composure and
(10:10):
reconnect with the horse. Mysystem was pulsing with the huge
hit of adrenaline. In this case,I intentionally channeled that
feeling into deep focus,connection and gratitude with
the horse, he did eventuallyslow down, and he was simply
doing his best to please me andI had managed to stay on through
the whole thing. Who now you maybe wondering what all this talk
(10:32):
about adrenaline has to do withbusiness at work, we rarely talk
about it in these terms. Wedon't say, Wow, when you call my
idea stupid, I got a hit ofadrenaline. Or, dang, I get
super scared when I see you andyour boss talking, because half
the time it means I'm getting introuble for something I've done.
We are mature, powerful businesspeople, so we frame those
(10:52):
adrenaline hits as just businessor we don't even realize that
we're in a reactive mode thatlack of awareness can cost us.
Here's the problem withadrenaline, we don't really have
a choice about when it hits it'sbased on our history, our
personal fears, our experienceswith parents, teachers or
bosses. When that stimulus hitsus, we start operating in fight
(11:14):
or flight mode. When theconditions actually call for us
to be calm and reasonable, weare more likely to escalate a
conflict, to take somethingpersonally, to get hurt or
defensive or just to pick afight. All that energy surging
through our system tells us todo something, and we do. It's
just that then we do somethingthat is probably an overreach
(11:35):
for the situation. You may bethinking, okay, I get it. I
don't want to overreact and Idon't want to damage
relationships, so I will quithaving adrenaline, huh? If it
were only so simple, our innernervous system decides when we
get the adrenaline. Ourconscious mind has little or
nothing to do with it. Unless wedo serious self awareness
(11:57):
training, we will get hit whenwe get hit. So first we have to
learn to deal with theadrenaline hits we get start by
being aware. Recognize that whenyou have that pit in your
stomach or the leap in theheart, there is a chance you are
surging with more energy thanusual. That signal is designed
to keep you alive. When it hitsin a business environment, it
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drives behavior that does notmatch the situation. Learn when
your tendency is to fight, fleeor freeze. You may also want to
consider doing some inner workto rewire your system to
tolerate and normalize thosesituations that trigger you. You
can desensitize yourself if youdeliberately practice doing so.
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But I digress back to BruceAnderson. I had experienced
Equine Assisted Learning before,and I thought I had learned all
I needed to know. Now that I'djust been thrown off a horse,
the thought of working with themwas still up in the air for me,
and I did not want to literallybe up in the air like before
ever again. In the meantime, Iwas coaching a leadership team
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that was operating under extremepressure. Every one of us needed
to take our game to anotherlevel. The idea of working
experientially with someone likeBruce who could potentially
accelerate our learningintrigued me from my earlier
work in a horse focusedLeadership Program. My big
takeaway was this, horses don'tact because of the title you
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hold or the words you say. Theyengage through clarity of
thought and energy, and theyshow you when your energy is
incongruent, the challenges theteam members faced were not
about positional power, ratherinfluence mattered. Influence
was their currency, and theyneeded more of it. Learning to
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influence a 1200 pound animalwould help these team members
influence leaders above, belowand around them in their
organizational hierarchy. Thosewere both logical reasons to
work with Bruce, but it wouldtake a third, unspoken longing
known only looking back on itwhen the pressure got high and I
went into the froth, in otherwords, the space outside my
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comfort zone, but still in thelearning zone. I quit at this
point in time. I had not allowedthat awareness to move into my
conscious mind. It was mysubconscious longing to learn to
operate in the froth thatspurred me to make the call. It
was October, a month after myaccident, when Daryl first
mentioned the leadership workwith Bruce. At the time, I said
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I would think about it being thego getter that I am. I got right
on it and called him in March.
When I spoke with Bruce on thephone, he began to take me
through his method. He didn'ttalk about himself, his clients,
or how he worked. He juststarted doing his thing, which
involved asking me lots ofquestions, as if we were in a
coaching session. And that phonecall, I realized this was
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nothing like the experientialwork I had done with horses
before i. He didn't really talkabout the horses. He was mostly
talking about the mental cyclethat occurs when we are under
pressure and make a mistake. Healso said things like, we are
not meant to live in man'sworld. We were meant to live in
nature's world. As we relearnhow to dance with nature in the
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world we were made for, we canalso learn how to dance with
human nature. I didn't realizeyet just how different this work
would be. In fact, after we hungup from that first call, I
thought I fully understood hismethods and that Bruce would see
that when we worked together thefollowing week, my proving
mindset the very same patternthat told my friend I knew how
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to ride asserted its dominanceonce again, what I thought was
micromanaging. Before we hung upfrom that first call, I
mentioned to Bruce that mydaughter, Janet worked with me,
and he also invited her to theshow and tell session which we
would do at his farm in Camden,South Carolina. We picked a day
in the next week, and he warnedus to dress for anything,
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including mud. As Jen and Idrove the 165 miles from Lake
Lure to Camden. We were full ofanticipation about what to
expect going in. I had somepreconceived notions, given that
I had done one whole leadershipsession using horses, I expected
Bruce to do the same, or atleast something similar, plus, I
had read a bunch of books, so Iwas feeling rather confident
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on our drive, I described to Jensome of the activities I had
done in the one session, as wellas some of the exercises I had
read about in books. She hadbeen helping me with the
leadership team, so we mappedout how my preconceived notions
of the exercise Bruce wouldshare would help the team with
several of its challenges. Wealso talked about the big stuff,
like, how would we feed theteam? Where would they sit, and
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what if it rains? Would there bea bathroom? In other words,
corporate land showed up. Thehorses would see right through
me. When we got out of the car,a giant of a man greeted us. He
asked us if we would like to sitand visit on the porch. Before
we got started, I was prettysure there were no horses on the
porch, so I naively suggested weget right to it. Looking back,
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this makes me chuckle. I wouldcome to realize just how much my
past was interfering, notinforming. And even later, I
would come to think of my pastas interfering, spelled e n t, e
r, F, E, A, R, I N G. But thereI go, getting ahead of myself
again. Bruce handed me a ropeand a halter with these
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instructions, your picture is tochoose one of the two horses,
put the halter on the horse youchoose, and bring him or her to
the round pin. A round pen islike a corral seen in westerns.
Instead of being square, theround pin is round, well, almost
round. More on that later,however, I hadn't gotten to the
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not quite round, round pen, yetmy mind tripped up over the word
picture. What did he mean? Didhe mean goal instead of picture?
What an odd thing to say. Muchlater, I would come to realize
that horses think in pictures.
His word choice was not onlydeliberate, it was essential,
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but in my rush to show off, Imentally replaced the word
picture with goal and set off tocrush the goal. In my mind, this
would take five minutes, max. Itwould be less, but for the two
gates I would have to open andclose on my way out and my way
in to complete his assignment.
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Here's my embarrassing littlesecret. I only cared about one
thing at this point. I wantedBruce to ask me where I had
learned to catch and halter ahorse like that in the world.
According to Lynn, I was justone step shy of being a natural
horse. Woman, overconfidencestruck again. Secretly, there
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was also a part of me hoping hewould absolve me from any
responsibility for the horseaccident, not to mention I
wanted to see those coolactivities for the leadership
team. So much for my wishfulthinking and getting the horse
into the round pen in fiveminutes. Yes, I caught the horse
in short order. Then I had tofigure out the halter, which was
unlike any I had ever seen. Letthe halter tell you how to put
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it on the horse. Bruce said,talking halters were not part of
my preconceived expectations.
And best I could tell, this onelooked more like a rope than a
halter. And the last I checked,ropes, don't talk. Finally, I
got the halter on and startedwalking with the horse on the
way into the round pen. Brucestopped and asked me to feel my
negative, positive pole. Mywhat? There he goes, using funny
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words again, yes, I feelsomething. What I'm feeling is
pissed you are not letting meget this horse into the round
pen. Okay, where all the funwill start. Your negative
positive pole is like a carbattery. There's a little charge
of electricity inside of you.
See if you can feel it. As hespoke, he moved his hands up and
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down in front of his midsectionwith his thumbs up. When
something is off, that littlecharge of electricity will surge
through. You notice it and giveit a number. If I learned
nothing else for the rest of mylife, learning this lesson would
be the worth, worth the trip toBruce, but it would not get
through my numbed out brain fora long time. On this day, my
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number, on a scale of one to 10,was a 10 an hour and 50
questions later, the horse and Ifinally walked into the round
pen. Yay. I thought, now I getto do something with the horse.
Not so fast. First, he had metake off the halter I had worked
so hard to put on the horse.
Man, do I hate to do rework inthe intervening hour, my
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annoyance had been rising clickby click, I mostly stuffed it
and tried to assume positiveintent, but asking me to remove
the halter was almost a clicktoo far. However, my inner good
girl went out and I removed thehalter as ordered. I watched the
horse start grazing and turnedback to Bruce, still wondering,
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when would we get to do mypreconceived notions of working
with the horse. I hadconveniently forgotten that
Bruce calls this work naturalhumanship. For the next hour, we
talked and did an exercise withflags. Best I could tell that
was a complete waste of time.
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Our mission was to find themiddle of the round pen, and all
I could think was, if the middleis so damn important, why the
hell has he marked it before?
Now, when, oh, when will we dothe leadership lessons with the
horse? There was a lot of talkabout the negative positive
pole, but the noise in my headdrowned it out. The noise in my
head had been drowning out mygod given instincts my whole
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life. Someday I would learn thetransformative power of finding
the middle but on this day, Ijust wanted to get on with it.
Mistakes. Finally, Bruce handedme a tool that looked like it
might lead to doing somethingwith the horse a good old
fashioned cowboy, Lariat, theassignment was simple and clear.
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Take the rope from its currentunorganized state into a set of
equally sized coils with notension in the rope. Jen and I
were still standing in themiddle of the round pen, talking
to Bruce, who was sitting in achair just outside the fence.
When Bruce gave me the picture,there's that word again, I was
sure it would be easy and wecould start quickly working with
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Trinny, the horse I had workedso hard to catch and bring into
the round pen. She was stillpeacefully grazing behind us.
Laureates are stiff making theassignment a lot more
challenging than it appeared onthe surface. Lariats are sort of
like a garden hose that onlyloops when coiled just right in
just a matter of seconds. I wasin deep shit. I had made several
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coils, and they were not equallysized, and the loops looked like
my disorganized garden hose athome. I was failing and
desperate to cover it up. As myinternal tension rose, the nice,
calm horse I wanted so badly toplay with started walking in
circles around us, with myattention on coiling the rope, I
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barely noticed Bruce would saysomething, and I would feel the
heat rise in the back of myneck, sitting under his stair
raised the pressure even more.
Soon I started to notice thehorse. I couldn't help it. No
longer was she peacefullygrazing. She had started
trotting and then running, andnow was kicking up her heels
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Great. Between the horse, theLariat, and the guy heckling me
in the cheap seats, I felt nakedand exposed. Now I feared for my
life. Horses are big, and thisone was moving faster and faster
as I watched Trinity kick andbuck. It never dawned on me that
Jen might be getting concernedabout the chaos running around
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us, nor did I understand how orwhy my actions might have sent
the horse into such a state, itwas like I was looking at the
world through a rolled up tubeof paper. I did have a flash,
flashback to my accident.
Remembering being on the back ofa horse that had kicked me off
in similar fashion. Brucestopped me and said something
about me beating myself up. Ifully denied it and tried to
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keep convincing him and myselfthat I've got this. None of my
bullshit games worked. He sawme. He saw me. Now. All he had
to do was coax the real me tocome out from behind the
conditioning of my past whilecalling the Lariat I did not
conscious. Feel like I wasmaking a mistake, nor did I feel
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like I was beating myself up.
Yet, at some level, myphysiology was responding to my
lack of rope coiling skills as amistake. Once the mistake button
got pushed, the automatic cycletook me into my past, the
unconscious memories andemotions stored in my body came
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flooding to the surface. I wasno longer the grown up version
of me, but the eight year oldbeing scolded for getting
something wrong. And yes, I wasbeating myself up. That's no way
to learn anything. When Bruceinterrupted me in that moment,
he gave me a different path totake, rather than operating from
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the past, he took my focus intothe present moment as my tension
drained out through tears, thehorse calmed down and faced me.
Now we could work on thepicture. How does one learn how
to coil a rope without training?
The use of the word picturebegan to come into focus. Bruce
said, you are trying to doeverything at once. A moving
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picture is made of lots ofsmaller frames, right? What are
the frames still I stood frozen.
Break it into the smalleststeps. Try stuff. Where is the
twist in the coil coming from?
What move could you make torelease the tension? Would you
twist the rope to the right orto the left
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from my helpless Kid Mode, stateof being I ask for the answer,
which, why do I turn the rope?
He said, to try it and see whathappens. But what if I make it
worse? You might make it worse,and then what? I go the other
way. But what if that doesn'twork? Try something else, but
that might not work. You won'tknow until you try, but I might
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die. Okay, I didn't say the lastthing out loud, even though
that's what my mind had beenscreaming from the first
horrible coil of the rope. Imight die. It feels like I'm
dying here. It wasn't death, itwas a path to life. In that
moment, I could not appreciatewhat a profound lesson this
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would be. As he stayed with methrough the Messy emotions of
wanting to throw the rope on theground and leave the problem
altogether, I began to chart anew path out of my old ways. I
tried twirling the tension outby swinging the rope to the
right. It made it worse, andyet, somehow I was still alive.
Let the rope tell you which wayto turn it. He said. There he
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was with his talking ropesagain, but this time, something
inside opened just a little bitas I tried working with the
coils, I began to tune into therope, which meant I had made
space to tune out the innervoices telling me what an awful
rope Coiler I was. When myattention turned to the problem
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in front of me, it was as if Ihad a whole new set of resources
at my disposal. My mind quietedand I started working the
puzzle, first this way and thenthat way. Soon, my brain and my
hands made a connection, andbefore I knew it, the Lariat was
beautifully coiled. Tears beganto well up as I realized that I
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was alive the shame andembarrassment of not being able
to do a simple task hadevaporated. I had experienced a
glimpse of who I was born to bewithout the internal noise and
drama. It was just me and therope patiently working out a
problem, listening to it tell mewhere to find the relaxed path.
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On this day, I was not yet clearon what I had just learned. It
had nothing to do with coiling arope. Bruce had provided a safe
space for me to solve a problemfor most of my life, I had not
been afforded that kind ofpsychological safety in most of
the cultures I had experienced,whether at school or in my
career, while he was providingthis space for me, my intensity
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and fear of getting it wrong didthe opposite for the horse
trainees. Bucha showed me thecost when safety is lacking. Her
response was pure without theusual human cover up. More
importantly, Bruce hadeliminated the key to my own
treasure chest of invisibletools. It was a magical key that
would turn only when I waspresent accidentally showing up.
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The pressure of trying to figureout the rope took me out of the
moment. As I stood therestruggling with the rope, it
felt like I was on center courtin the finals of Wimbledon. I
wasn't fully in the game. A partof me was in the stands watching
myself fumble and stumble withthe task, with the audience of
1000s offering their critique,the imaginary critique created
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by my mind leaving the momenthappens all the time. I jump
into the other person's head andstart imagining what they are
thinking. When I was a kidriding my bike down the street,
I used to. Uh, quote, unquote,here in my head, what each
neighbor must be thinking aboutme as I passed their house, this
little mind game continued forthe rest of my life, pretending
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I knew what was going on insomeone else's head. The same
thing happened at work. Often, Ireacted based on what I thought
someone was thinking, ratherthan taking the time to ask,
listen and truly hear what theywere actually thinking. One of
the biggest promotions of mybanking career put me in both
the spotlight and theheadlights. My job was to take
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the core training program forcommercial bankers from a one
year program to 10 weeks whiledelivering better bankers as
things often get done in thecorporate world, the decision to
reorganize around this ideahappened before there was any
proof at all that this ideacould work. The pressure to get
it right fell on me and my team.
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The heads of many commercialbanking divisions were anxious
to see how we would solve theproblem. They look forward to
the benefits of a much lesscostly program, while at the
same time, feared thepossibility that they might be
stuck doing remedial trainingfor the newly minted bankers
they were counting on to beproficient very quickly, this
was a tall order. Learning toassess whether or not to give a
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business a sizable loan is adifficult task. In one of the
early meetings presenting ourplans to this group of
executives, I experienced an outof body moment, watching myself
crumble from the stands and thensomehow brought myself back into
my body. Everyone had come tocorporate headquarters for a
planning session around the neworganizational structure, and I
was one of several team leadsslated to report on our plans.
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This was the kind of workingsession that would be full of
probing questions, pushback,decisions and occasionally
condescension. Nothing can knockme off center like being talked
down to. The executive team.
Would either leave the meetingconfident that we were up to the
task, or would begin takingmeasures to make sure that
someone got the job done. Inother words, I had a real shot
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at screwing things up here, aswe were gathering for the
meeting, you could cut thetension with a knife on the
surface, everything lookedfriendly and supportive. The
undercurrent told a differentstory, one that carried an
awareness of the tech of thestakes. Luckily for me, I was
not the first to speak, but Myluck was short lived, as I
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watched others stumble andfumble under the examination of
senior leaders who had much togain and lose, my planned
presentation started lookingweaker and weaker. Doubt started
creeping in. I thought, wouldthey press me as hard on my
staffing plan as they did thepresenter before me? Would they
open doors for me to hire fromtheir teams, an essential part
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of my strategy, or would theyinsist I somehow manage with a
less experienced cohort? What ifI made a mistake? What if I look
unprepared or even stupid? Isthis the end of my career? The
pressure started to rise as theconsequences of this moment
washed over me. My mind startedchattering ideas to help me out,
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to get an idea of the self talk.
Picture a parent watching theirkids play a sport instead of
yelling for me to choke up onthe bat. It said things like,
come on. You know these people,they like you be sweet and cute
so you can get your way. Okay?
Maybe if they liked me enough,they would overlook the
potential holes in the plan. Butwait, they like the guy talking
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right now. He's choking. Whatabout him? Then my competitive
side started saying things like,you could do better than him.
He's being too cautious. Showhim what you got. Even though we
were all on the same team, Ifound myself thinking I could do
better than the otherpresenters. I needed to do
better than the other presentersnow I wanted to win. None of my
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mind chatter nonsense helped. Itcame my turn to speak. My body
tensed. A flood of sensationscoursed through my torso. I was
feeling like I had just been gutpunched. I looked down to open
my presentation. When I lookedup, I had that sort of tunnel
vision that was like seeing aroom through the peepholes in
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the door. The expectant faces ofthese executives enter my brain,
looking like distorted figuresin a fun house mirror. The words
coming out of my mouth feltequally contorted about two
sentences in, I had enoughpresence of mind to be aware
that I was speaking gibberishwith a trembling voice that I
didn't recognize, with thesinking feeling my main mind
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chatter told me I was going toget exactly what I had feared.
Here. I was a grown ass womanwith a big job, and yet a skill
I had learned as a toddler wassuddenly out of reach. I could
not talk. The pressure hadgotten to me. I was sinking. A
huge part of me wanted to runout of the room. In some ways it
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already had leaving a shell ofme behind to face the music. I
needed to find my voice and.
Find it now, if I couldn'thandle the pressure of talking
about my plans, what would makethem think I could bring those
plans to life? Then I stumbledon an analogy that somehow got
me out of my head and back intomy body. I said these Young
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Bankers are coming in believingthey are ready to run the ship,
even though they can't yet readfinancial statements. What we
have found is that we mustbalance helping them see the
reality of their lack of skillswith giving them a sense of
progress. It's like a rollercoaster. If they can feel the
click, click, click, as the carheads to the top, they will have
the patience to see the trainingprogram through in what seemed
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like a magical moment at thetime, I could feel the room
change as my physical demeanorshifted, my voice came back. I
was fully present in the room. Iquit pitching and started
talking through our plans. Theireyes changed from hard and
skeptical to interested andexcited. We had an engaged
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discussion where we jointlysolve problems, developed
strategies and made decisions.
By the end of my part of themeeting, the executives
expressed their full support ofour direction. I left the
meeting with confidence andclarity. Looking back on this
event, I've wondered, whatshifted that day? Did I suddenly
rise to the pressure? Did I finda level of inner strength. How
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did I get myself back in thepresent moment?
Or did the people in the roomlower the pressure when their
eyes changed? Was it a way toencourage and support the
clearly faltering me? Were theytaking the role of audience
member who showers the performerwith positive vibes? What would
have happened if they'd goneharsh instead of friendly,
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without a time machine, I willnever know for sure. However,
with an increasing knowledge ofthe pressure gap, I believe
their friendly faces andpositive vibes help lower the
pressure. The pressure gap.
Pressure has a way ofinterfering with our most basic
skills. We know how to talkuntil we are faced with a huge
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audience or a make or breaksales presentation, we know how
to write and yet can't seem tohit send on an email that makes
a bold offer. Pressure can evenmake walking next to impossible,
especially for someone with afear of heights, like me. Here's
an illustration you can test inyour mind right now, find a 20
foot span where you can walkcomfortably on flat ground. Walk
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for 20 feet in a straight line.
Now reverse direction and walkthe same span as if this were a
12 inch wide beam. You mighthave to put one foot in front of
the other. Did you fall? Did youeven feel wobbly? Probably not.
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The pressure created by thefirst task was really low. You
handle that level of pressureall day long. The pressure
created by the second task wasalso low, although slightly
higher. Keeping your balancealong a 12 inch beam is slightly
more difficult than regularwalking. Now, for the next task,
it is best to use yourimagination. Unless you have a
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balance beam handy, imagine thatyou're going to walk across said
balance beam, like the one thegymnast use in the Olympics,
chances are the pressure createdby the height of the beam will
test your mental tools if youreally do it personally, just
imagining it can create thesensation of falling in my body,
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while I can easily walk a fourinch wide span across the floor.
I cannot do the same four feetoff the floor. I have a pressure
gap. Now for the final task, useyour imagination again. In this
case, imagine that you're goingto walk across a 12 inch wide
beam, three times wider than abalanced beam that is several
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100 feet off the ground. We havealready established that you
have the skills to walk a 12inch beam without falling over.
So this is well within yourskills. Envision yourself
walking across that beam several100 feet above the Earth.
Everything on the ground isreally tiny. You wouldn't even
be able to recognize your ownmother from this distance. You
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might be tempted to stare atyour feet, even though that's
not how you normally walk. Butremember, the beam is 12 inches
wide. You have the skills to dothis all day long. I'm going to
take a wild guess here and sayyou would love to have something
to hang on to while up there,or, better yet, that you would
like to be roped in. Or, ifyou're like me, you might say to
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hell, or that never go in there.
The pressure gap is thedifference between the
combination of your skills andmental tools to handle a
situation and the pressurecreated by that situation, you
can close the gap by eitherreducing the pressure or
building your mental tools,which will raise your pressure
threshold. Once I understoodthis concept, all of Bruce's
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micromanaging started makingsense. He was created. Getting
micro moments for me to choose anew way with my usual Hurry up
itis My goal was to get what hewas doing by noon the first day.
Huh? In my dreams, it would takea lot longer, a whole lot
longer, if I were to have thecourage to return. We can never
go back there again. Jen's turnwith the horses happened after
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lunch, after coiling the Lariat,which felt like a lifetime, the
three of us went to a localrestaurant in a different
setting, this big, imposing manwas nothing like the guy who had
micromanaged my every move thatmorning. I was still trying to
put my finger on his methods,and I peppered him with
questions during lunch, what Iwas starting to learn was
unexpected. He was not certifiedin some course or method with
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working with horses. He hadlearned what he was teaching the
hard way, the really, reallyhard way of trial and error. No
wonder the exercises I waslooking for were nowhere to be
found. He spoke sentences like,I'm here to help the horse to
help himself survive in theworld we have created, and I'm
teaching you to live in theworld you were made for instead
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of the world we have made. Andit's not the horse, it's the
pressure created by the horse.
And forget the goal. Break itdown, frame by frame. And my
least favorite of all, I don'twant the horse to do the
picture. He had other confusingterminology, like alpha and
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tyrant. These did not mean whatthe dictionary said, and he
spelled them with the capital ofletters at the beginning and
end. He used these words todescribe a mindset. Instead,
alpha meant that you wereletting the horse or situation
tell you what to do, when to doand how to do. Tyrant meant the
past was interfering, causing usto over or under react. The idea
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of over and under reactingpiqued my attention because it
resonated with the change tightrope, a mental construct I had
been using for years. The visualof a tightrope started for me in
the context of leading changeand dealing with the balancing
acts of leadership, for example,in dealing with resistance to
change, the typical leadershipstrategies fell into two
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buckets. The first was to be tooeasy on people which forced the
leader to personally take on toomuch as deadlines slipped. The
second was to be too hard onpeople, which drove resistance
underground, letting the leaderhave the illusion all was okay,
but causing conflict and chaosin the people who were upset and
didn't want to change. Bothsides of this equation slowed
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change down. Walking thetightrope meant allowing people
to have their normal reactionsto change, while at the same
time requiring them to do goodwork. As our lunch wrapped up,
we headed back to his farm, myhead spinning. I had both loved
and hated my experience from themorning Bruce's methods for
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leadership training seemed tohave some promise, but I wasn't
sure what it was, yet it didfeel like I had released
something in the round pensession that had nothing to do
with horses. It went withoutsaying, at least as far as I was
concerned, that Jen would get achance to play with the horses
after we finished eating, in mymind, she was excitedly looking
forward to it. Even though I hadbeen her mother for 36 years,
(43:17):
you would never have known him.
Boy, did I misread the situationwhen Bruce handed Jen the halter
and lead rope, the scene playedout very differently. He gave
her the same instructions he hadgiven me, but everything was
different. Jen had no experiencewith horses with halters or lead
ropes, and the halter wasn'ttalking to her any more than it
had talked to me. She slowlywalked out into the field and
(43:39):
greeted one horse, and then theother animals love her, and the
horses were very happy to haveher hang out with them. When it
was time to put the halter on,all she saw was a tangled mess.
After one attempt with puttingthe halter on, her solution to
deal with the pressure was tothrow the rope down and walk
away. At that moment, we all sawa very different Bruce. All this
(44:01):
happening while I was stillthinking she was having fun.
Instead of the micro managingquestioner, she got support.
Instead of telling her to listento the rope, he showed her how
to fit the horse's head. Insteadof asking her why she tied it
this way and not that way, hehelped her make the special
knot, step by step, frame byframe, he showed deep support
(44:24):
and kindness with both Jen andthe horse. Slowly but surely,
she and Bruce solved problemstogether, eventually bringing
the horse to the round pen.
Later, I would come to learnthat Bruce could see that Jen
was well over her pressurethreshold. He was letting her
tell him what to do, when to doand how to do. Ie being Alpha.
(44:47):
Rather than adding pressure byasking her tons of questions, he
reduced the pressure by offeringsupport. In other words, he
avoided pushing her buttonswhere he had pushed every button
I had to get a reaction out ofme even later, I. Would come to
learn the benefit of havingsomeone push my buttons. On this
day, I was thrilled and surethat Jen was loving the
experience. One of these days, Iwill remember that she can hide
(45:11):
what she's feeling better thananyone I've ever known while
they worked. I planned myexperience with the Lariat had
made me realize the potentialdepth of this work. Now I had to
figure out how to make it workfor the leadership team.
Clearly, it would be differentthan what I had anticipated.
Eventually, Jennifer's sessionwas over, and it was time for us
to go. We had a three hour drivehome in which to debrief, and I
(45:35):
was picturing a richconversation about possibilities
as we roll down the highway. Aswe left, Bruce had one request.
He wanted to speak with me thenext morning to review the
session. It seemed reallyimportant to him. I promised to
be available and got in the carbefore I could get the seat belt
on, Jen looked at me and said,We can never come here again,
(45:55):
and there is noway you should bring the
leadership team here. It wasgoing to be a long drive home.
Thank you for listening to thecreative spirits unleash
podcast. I started this podcastbecause I was having these great
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
(46:16):
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
rate it on the different appsthat you're using, because
that's how others will find it.
(46:36):
Now, I hope you go and dosomething very fun today. You.
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