March 7, 2025

#82: Dancing the Tightrope; Too Much Pressure for Me

Show Notes
Transcript

This episode of the podcast is something new. Let’s call it an experiment. I’ll explain shortly, but first some context.

Since I published Dancing the Tightrope, What Falling Off a Horse Taught Me About Embracing Pressure, Fear and Uncertainty in 2022, many people have asked me for an audio book. While I’m aware of the huge trend towards audio books, I’m not an audio-book listener. I love to read, and I LOVE to listen to podcasts. However, listening to audio books has just never worked for me. I just zone out. So the thought of putting out a version of my book that zoned people out was very unappealing to me!

Also, the thought of reading my entire book out loud caused me to cringe. Now, if you have followed my work for a while, you might have noticed in that last sentence that I was “gulping”, trying to get to the end quickly, rather than considering taking it a step at a time.

Recently, one of my favorite podcasts, The Tim Ferriss show put out a chapter of his first book The Four Hour Workweek. Once I started listening to it, I almost changed to another podcast. It so happened that I didn’t have anything else in the hopper, so I kept listening. While I DID zone out, I also came away with a couple of good takeaways.

It got me to thinking - why don’t I do the same thing? All I have to do is read ONE chapter of my book.

So that’s what I am doing for this episode of the podcast. What you will hear in this podcast is Chapter One of Dancing the Tightrope.

Here’s where the experiment part comes in. Now that I’ve done one chapter, I’m willing to do more, but only if it makes a difference to others.

This is where you come in. Did you like listening to this chapter? Would you like to hear more? What feedback do you have for me as the reader? (Yes, really, I would like to be better and the only way is to hear your feedback.)

If I hear from enough people that this was something that worked well for them, I will audio publish the rest of the book, more than likely as I did here, as a series on the podcast. Eventually, I will then get it on Audible.

Transcript

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Lynn, Welcome to Creative spirits unleashed, where we talk about the dilemmas of balancing work and life and now here's your host, Lynn Carnes,

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welcome to the creative spirits unleashed Podcast. I'm Lynn Carnes, your host. This episode of the podcast is something new. Let's call it an experiment. I'll explain shortly, but first, some context. Since I published dancing the tightrope, falling off a horse, taught me about embracing pressure, fear and uncertainty in 2022 many people have asked me for an audio book while I'm aware of the huge trend towards audio books, I'm not an audiobook listener. I love to read and I love listening to podcasts. However, listening to audiobooks has just never worked for me. I just zone out. So the thought of putting out a version of my book that zoned people out was very unappealing to me. Also, the thought of reading my entire book out loud caused me to cringe. Now, if you followed my work for a while, you might have just noticed in that last sentence that I am gulping trying to get to the end quickly, rather than considering taking one step at a time, a theme that I often teach as a critical tool. So recently, one of my favorite podcasts, the Tim Ferriss show, put out a chapter of his first book, The Four Hour Work Week. Once I started listening to it, I almost changed to another podcast, because here we are reading a book. But it just so happened that I didn't have anything else in the hopper, so I just kept listening. Now I did zone out, but I also came away with a couple of good takeaways. So it got me to thinking, why don't I do the same thing? I mean, all I have to do is just read one chapter of my book. So that's what I'm doing for this episode of the podcast. Now what you're going to hear is one chapter or chapter one of dancing the tightrope. This is where the experiment part comes in. Now that I've done the one chapter, I'm willing to do more, but only if it makes a difference to others. And this is where you come in. Did you like listening to this chapter? Would you like to hear more? What feedback do you have for me as a reader?

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Yes, I really would like to be better, and the only way is for me to hear your feedback. So if I hear from enough people that this is something that worked well for them, I will audio publish the rest of the book, more than likely, as I did here, as a series on the podcast, and then eventually, more than likely, I will get it on Audible. So if you are listening to this and you do want to give me feedback, you can email me directly. Yes, I'm going to give my email out into the internet world. I doubt I'll get that many but if I do, I hope you guys flood me and make me crazy for having given my email away.

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But if you do want to give me email feedback, the email is lynn@lynncarns.com I do look forward to hearing from you. I hope you enjoy this episode of the creative spirits unleashed podcast. Chapter One, too much pressure for me. Just a simple trail ride through the woods as the three of us set out on the trail that day, I remember having the thought steeped in ignorance. This is sort of boring. This was my second time to ride with my friend Babs and her sister in law, Mary. I was on Babs horse mocha. When she first asked me to come ride, I told her I knew how to ride horses, and she confidently put us in the lead. I might as well have claimed I knew how to do brain surgery, because I successfully cleaned a fish once my definition of knowing how to ride horses was based on the false confidence of having five minutes of riding lessons when I was 12 years old, our family owned a small farm about an hour from our house. Since I was in fourth grade. That was the year my teacher read us Walter Farley's book, The Black Stallion. In class, I was enraptured with the idea of having my own Black Stallion.

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From the first minute we got the farm, I begged my parents to buy me a horse. After all, it looked to me like all you needed to successfully own a horse was a few acres and a fence our farm had that. It even had some old barrels laying around. To my own mind, the only thing missing from my dream of being a champion barrel racer was a horse. Eventually, I wore my parents down and they bought a horse. My dreams were shattered quickly. We only had him a couple of months before we sold him because I couldn't control him. This was one of two facts I had conveniently forgotten to tell Babs after my parents sold the horse, I spent my lifetime blaming my parents for taking away my opportunity to be a champion. Now, 40 plus years later, I was back on a horse and there were no barrels in sight.

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All we were going to do was walk on a trail in the woods. How hard could it be? As with any discipline, what you see and what is under the surface are worlds apart. Boring. It was as if I had dared the universe to prove me wrong. As our ride progressed, mocha walked me right through an occupied spider web. My face took the full web spider and all this insult was an offer into a new dimension if I told chose to take it. But of course, at the time, I knew nothing of a relationship where the horse would offer his legs to me, where he would give me his trust and true connection. I had no idea the magic that was really happening on this boring ride in the woods. I was too busy being offended he continued walking as I flicked the spider away, wiped my face and shuddered my thought, How dare he walked me walk into that web.

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Mocha did not walk me through the web direct deliberately. He was merely taking the lead that I had unknowingly left unattended. I saw the web coming. However, in this dimension, I had not made any kind of connection or contact with him. My lessons from childhood were long forgotten, so I had few tools to move him right or left to avoid the web.

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What few ideas I tried didn't work? Hmm, to my way of thinking, it was almost like I was riding a faulty motorbike.

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If I just knew which buttons to push, he would do what I wanted.

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Wrong. He was simply walking down the trail waiting for that turn toward the barn, choosing every step for himself. He knew from the first moment I got on him that he was the leader of this ride. As we continued down the trail, a part of me began to realize what he had known from the very beginning. He had all the power. I was the unfortunate passenger on the back of an animal that had survived 1000s of years by running away at the first sign of danger. My lack of awareness about the consequences of the horse being in control created a form of unbalanced thinking. What I decided more in the back of my mind than in the forefront was that it would be good for the horse to like me even as I write this, it's embarrassing to admit my sense of boredom had transformed into something more ominous. I felt the need to correct the balance of power. I said good boy to him a couple of times, but not for the right reasons. Yes, it's good to praise a horse who has learned something or has gotten over a fear. This was definitely not in response to him having done anything like that. Nope, it was a verbalization of my thought, I want him to light me, I would be on the ground, unable to breathe. Within seconds, as we turned down a steep hill, the horse perked up, as he had done several times before. Everything in his body language told me we had made a turn toward the barn, even though I could not have found the way home, he knew the way, and he would gladly be able to take me there. He picked up his pace and clearly excited at the thought of the pile of hay waiting in his stall. Later, I would learn his lateral gait on such a steep hill created a rocking motion that feels like a trot. On this day, I just wanted the motion to stop. I pull back on the reins to slow him down.

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Unconsciously, I also leaned forward and gripped his sides with my legs. I had never been on such a steep hill in Texas where I grew up, leaning forward was exactly the opposite of what I should have done. I was saying slow down and go fast at the same time. By now, he knew the confusing requests from the woman on his back did not necessarily mean anything, but the barn was ahead, and gravity encouraged speed, so he obliged with my questionable balance, I quickly went from trying to slow him down to just holding on.

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That strategy lasted for one more step, and then I was flying. I landed with a hard splat on my side. My friends went into action to catch the horse I had just left to his own devices. When they came back to check on me, I could barely move, and every half breath hurt like hell. I could tell something was very wrong. My arms and legs seemed to be in one piece. However, my middle wasn't working too well. Here we were out in the woods where getting back on mocha to take me home was not going to happen.

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Walking out was not happening either. In fact, I tried to sit up and failed miserably.

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Luckily, we were in cell phone range. Babs husband Bob, met us with a four wheeler and a question, Should we call an ambulance? After they loaded me into the ambulance, I settled back, closed my eyes, and meditated. My meditation took me back to a very different ambulance ride almost 20 years before, one caused by me being out of balance in my career perspective, the first ambulance ride that started to wake me up.

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I.

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Everyone bustled around me, hooking up monitors and watching my funky heartbeat bounce around like a pinball as I lay there, half dazed by the fluorescent lights, my irritation grew.

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Where were their priorities? Did they not understand that the pressure I felt letting important work fall through the cracks far exceeded the worry that I might die at that time of my life, I felt like my career was just taking off. My Projects mattered on a national scale. My incentive package was anyone's dream, and I knew most of the senior executives of a mega bank, and they knew me, which seemed incredibly important to me, at least back then, it never crossed my mind that if I died, someone else would be doing my work tomorrow. Fainting on my bathroom floor that morning scared my husband enough to sew in an ambulance. An erratic heartbeat scared my high school aged daughter, enough to think she might lose her mother. A phone call from my husband to update, my parents sent their worry meter off the chart me, the one lying in bed. I was worried if I would be back at work on Monday. If I wasn't, I was sure all hell was going to break loose. Any prospect of being in balance in my life was so far out of reach. Even the potential of dying of a heart attack blinded me to the miserable state of my life. For many years, my corporate life had been marked by questions, how does one get ahead here? How do I stay out of trouble, but also get some of the limelight that seems to get people promoted? What do they really want from me, and how do I do more of that? Getting answers to those questions had started paying off. In the past few years, I had been promoted and moved to increasingly bigger roles three times in less than six years. Time after time, I had proven my worth and had been rewarded with longer work, days, more pressure and the dangling carrot of money that grew exponentially the longer I stayed, the prison of my own making was closing in, and I welcomed it with open arms. All of this activity allowed me to join a select club of high potentials, meaning people who look like they might eventually make it to the executive suite.

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There were hundreds, if not 1000s, of us all vying for a few spots, and all certain that we had the right stuff to get there. The pressure to reach that pinnacle was enormous. Life was good. At least it was good if I ignored the fact that my soon to be drug addict daughter had carried a bottle of pills to school a few years before with every intention of taking her own life. It was good if I ignored my frayed relationships, starting with my marriage, it was good if you didn't ask my team what kind of leader it had.

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It was good if I ignored the signs all around me that my whole world was out of kilter.

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Life was good if I ignored the fact that my health in my late 30s was clearly failing, even as I insisted they get me out of this hospital so I could go back to work for me to be discharged, they just had one condition, you have to pass a stress test.

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Cool. Passing stress test was in my wheelhouse for a straight A perfectionist like me, this would be a snap. As the cardiologist strapped me to the stress test machine. He asked me where I worked. When I told him, he said, seriously, you worked there. You're the fifth person I've tested for stress related heart problems this week, and I haven't worked that much.

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Suddenly, my memory flashed to the several instances of ambulances leaving any one of our corporate buildings in downtown Charlotte. In fact, we had sent two trainees from my own credit training program to the hospital via ambulance in the past few weeks. His incredulity about us bankers dropping like flies got through to my numbed out brain. Here was a guy who had endured the rigors of medical school, had to be on call at all hours, and was testing me on a Saturday night, calling me the one for being a workaholic. It was a clue that something might be off. While a part of me really wanted to reject His judgment, I couldn't escape it. There was something terribly out of balance here, but it was still take more reflection warning signals and facing the suicide of a colleague to wake me up and allow me to see the world with new eyes. My diagnosis turned out to be Barrett's esophagus, a potentially cancer causing condition brought about by stress. I had to do something or I would likely get stomach cancer and die an early and painful death. For the next 20 years, I entered an intense, Rocky, personal journey of deep self awareness. Without a doubt, I changed my relationship with anger, stress and all the people in my life. My husband and I stayed married. We moved to the mountains, where I became an athlete, artist and executive coach. My spiritual life became rich and fulfilled. Length, my daughter entered recovery, and today helps parents of adult addicts navigate the rough waters of reclaiming their lives as today's ambulance pulled into the emergency room, I was so much calmer than that first ride some 20 years ago, I had truly come a long way. I couldn't possibly see it yet, but the ceiling of possibility was about to be blown off. This accident would be a gift. It would teach me that mistakes are merely calibrations, and the balance point is always moving.

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Uncertainty would become an opportunity to use my tools with a capital T, and pressure would be the force to build them, but first I would have to accept the reality of what happened, lack of knowledge or something else.

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After getting an x ray in the emergency room, I looked at the clock. If all went well, I would be out of there in time to drive the boat as promised for Austin able, the pro water skier who runs a ski school on mystic waters, our 162 acre former Girl Scout camp. By now, I was breathing better and pretty sure that the doctors would tell me I had a broken collar bone and perhaps some broken ribs as well. My daughter Jen had followed the ambulance and was keeping me company. We were mostly bored and ready to leave.

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The small emergency room was relatively busy for a Saturday afternoon, giving us plenty of opportunities to eavesdrop in one room, someone had something going on with her foot, maybe a broken ankle, sprained ankle. As I strained to hear the details, words like barn, horse and gait landed on my ears. Hmm, another horse accident. No surprise, I guess. I mean, we do live in horse country, and this hospital was the closest to the try on international equestrian center where a show was going on that very day, I turned my attention to the other room behind the curtain, soon it became clear that yet another horse accident had brought that man into the ER. I couldn't decide if I should feel vindicated or worried. After all, these other two victims surely knew a lot more about horses than I did, so maybe I'm not so incompetent.

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After all, was my first thought.

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My second thought was, wow, horses can be really dangerous.

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I didn't have time for the third balancing thought, suddenly, two emergency room doctors came rushing into the room and said, We need to get your shirt off.

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We see a problem on your X ray.

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Given the extreme pain on my right side, it took a lot of help to get me stripped, stripped down as they shoot my now white faced daughter out of the room. My questions started coming a mile a minute. What's on the X ray? Am I being admitted? Why the hurry? Then the unspoken question, am I going to die? Loomed large as they asked me to turn onto my left side. You have a pneumothorax. We have to put in a chest tube. First, I'm going to dead in the area where we're going to stick the needle. Then I'm going to wait, what's a pneuma? Whatchamacallit? I have a pneuma. I have pneumonia.

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Finally, someone cleared it up by saying it's a collapsed lung.

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They wasted no time before I could ask any more questions.

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They rolled me onto my left side and started the procedure. As soon as the tube entered the area between my lungs and ribs, I felt a release of pressure.

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The doctor said I should be breathing much better. Now the pain in my side lessened and my breath came more easily.

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Ironically, my consistent oxygen levels of 98% had kept any of them from suspecting anything seriously wrong with my lungs, plus they noted that most people with a collapsed lung don't carry on a quiet conversation, as Jen and I had been doing right before they came running in. Evidently, meditating had made a huge difference in both my calmness and in my physiology. Over the next three days, I was a guest of the hospital as we waited for my lung to stay inflated without mechanical assistance between the many medical professionals and visitors, I answered the question, what happened the same way, I had a knowledge gap. I didn't know how to stop a horse.

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That story failed to tell the truth on so many levels. At that time, I had not let your learned about the idea of having a pressure gap. I vaguely understood the idea of mental tools. I was intimately familiar with the impact of pressure, uncertainty and failure. Most of my responses to pressure involved either building my skills or lowering the pressure.

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One thing was sure, at this moment in time, I would not be getting back on a horse anytime soon, if ever. Maybe I should just walk away.

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I was on a tight rope on one side was common sense and logic at the time of my fall, I was 59 when the orthopedist came into my hospital room to see about my injuries. I told him to ignore the age on the chart and ask him to treat me as he. Wood a 25 year old athlete. Right before the trail ride, I had been cutting back and forth on my water ski, and I was determined to get back to it, his response reinforced my concern. He had experienced a similar injury riding. Now that horseback riding was proving to be much more dangerous than I had realized, why would I risk another serious injury or worse.

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On the other side was my desire to overcome my newly discovered fear, the proverbial adage to get back on the horse, called out to me. Plus, I had friends who wanted me to ride with them in their visits to me in the hospital, I started realizing that trail riding could be the most dangerous way for the uninitiated to get on a horse.

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Who knew, however, riding would also be a wonderful way to spend time with friends. I was faced with questions and choices.

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Would I be able to walk the tightrope of overcoming my fear while not taking undue risk?

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What would I need to learn if I decided to address my fear. What would I do with this life defining moment? My accident gifted me with several months to consider my options. Thank you for listening to the creative spirits unleash podcast. I started this podcast because I was having these great conversations, and I wanted to share them with others. I'm always learning in these conversations, and I wanted to share that kind of learning with you. Now, what I need to hear from you is what you want more of and what you want less of. I really want these podcasts to be of value for the listeners.

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Also, if you happen to know someone who you think might love them, please share the podcast and, of course, subscribe and rate it on the different apps that you're using, because that's how others will find it.

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Now I hope you go and do something very fun today. You.

#82: Dancing the Tightrope; Too Much Pressure for Me

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