March 21, 2025

#83 Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 2; Growth in Recovery

#83 Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 2; Growth in Recovery
Apple Podcasts podcast player badge
Spotify podcast player badge
Castro podcast player badge
RSS Feed podcast player badge
Apple Podcasts podcast player icon Spotify podcast player icon Castro podcast player icon RSS Feed podcast player icon

In my last episode of the podcast, I started an experiment by reading the first chapter of my book Dancing the Tightrope. My promise was that if I heard from my readers and listeners that it was valuable, I would do more. Secretly, I did not expect anything to come of it. Of course, I was wrong!

 

You have spoken (at least some of you!) and I am listening. This episode of the podcast is Chapter Two of Dancing the Tightrope. It covers a lot of ground, both about my recovery from my accident and my waterskiing. More importantly, it sets the stage for many of the gold nuggets to come.

 

Something else happened when I read the book – especially this chapter – that I did not expect. I felt like a first-time reader in many ways. This chapter was written four years ago. Reading it now - out loud - is giving me new perspective. Something I dreaded doing is now becoming a useful practice. Who would have thought? 

 

It’s reminding my WHY I wrote the book. Here’s a quote from Chapter 13: If pressure is a test to show others we are good enough, we are doomed to live at the mercy of those whose approval we seek. If pressure is a catalyst to unleash our true nature, we can truly live while we are alive.

 

The worst accident of my life showed me how to live while I’m alive. Imagine giving up the need to prove yourself. Imagine truly living. That’s why I wrote the book. 

 

Stay tuned. More chapters to come. 

 

And I’m still seeking feedback. (Thank you to those who’ve already shared your insights.) What do you like about hearing me read these chapters? What would make it easier for you to listen? What gold nuggets are you taking away?

Transcript
WEBVTT

00:00:02.879 --> 00:00:14.400
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,

00:00:19.500 --> 00:00:40.087
Welcome to the Creative Spirits, Unleash Podcast. I'm Lynn Carnes, your host. In my last episode of the podcast, I started an experiment by reading the first chapter of my book dancing the tightrope. My promise was that if I heard from my readers and listeners that it was valuable, I would do more.

00:00:40.155 --> 00:01:29.594
But secretly, I didn't expect anything to come out of it. Of course, I was wrong. You have spoken, at least some of you have, and I am listening. This episode of the podcast is chapter two of dancing the tightrope. It covers a lot of ground, both about my recovery from my accident and my recovery back to water skiing. More importantly, it sets the stage for many of the gold nuggets to come on my journey to get back on the horse. Something else happened though, when I read the book, especially this chapter, that I didn't expect. I felt like a first time reader in many ways, after all, this chapter was written four years ago, reading it now out loud is giving me new perspective.

00:01:25.533 --> 00:01:45.983
Something I dreaded doing is now becoming a useful practice. Who would have thought it's reminding me why I wrote this book? There's a quote in the book from chapter 13 that says this, if pressure is a test to show others we are good enough.

00:01:41.850 --> 00:02:21.098
We are doomed to live at the mercy of those whose approval we seek. If pressure is a catalyst to unleash our true nature, we can truly live while we are alive. The worst accident of my life showed me how to live while I'm alive. Imagine giving up the need to prove yourself. Imagine truly living that's why I wrote the book. So stay tuned. There's more chapters to come, and I'm still seeking feedback. Thank you to those, by the way, who've already shared your insights. So tell me, what do you like about hearing me read these chapters?

00:02:21.168 --> 00:02:45.543
What would make it easier for you to listen and what gold nuggets are you taking away? As always, please share the podcast with your friends, your colleagues, and give this a rating and a review, if at all possible. It does help get the word out. And as you can see, that's why I'm doing this to get the word out. Enjoy this.

00:02:41.824 --> 00:04:37.778
Chapter Two from dancing the tightrope. Chapter Two growth in recovery, give and take of energy. The first day home from the hospital revealed just how challenging this recovery would be. While I had practiced recovery on a micro scale for many years, this injury was calling on me to practice recovery on a macro scale. Babs brought me a book to read. It was the undoing project a friendship that changed our minds. By Michael Lewis, it's the kind of book that provokes a hard look at the way we think about things. The book planted seeds and kept me enthralled for several days. Good thing. It was going to take a really good book to get me to sit still without the use of my right arm and still in pain on the whole side of my body. That went splat. I was discovering just how many things I could not do wash my hair only if I found a one handed method deal with the fallout of wet hair. Blow drying is a two handed affair. I mastered left hand brushing and air drying drive I couldn't reach the gear shift. As I moved through my first few days at home, it became abundantly clear that I live my life as a perpetual motion machine. Thanks to reading the making of the corporate athlete BY JIM LEHRER And Tony Schwartz in 2001 I had learned the value of oscillation and its role in helping mobilize energy on demand. After years of practice, I had learned to effectively use stress and recovery in short doses to be able to sustain high levels of energy throughout the day. What I hadn't learned was how to demobilize energy on demand. Not to worry my body was doing it for me. Two weeks into my recovery, I wrote this blog the give and take of leadership.

00:04:37.848 --> 00:04:50.793
I've had recovery on my mind a lot lately. Recently, I fell off a horse, breaking my collarbone after a couple of days in the hospital. I also had a partially collapsed lung that required.

00:04:50.862 --> 00:06:06.052
Chest tube, I spent my first full day out of the hospital running light errands. My daughter and co worker did all the driving, so it really was much less effort than on a normal day of work. By evening, though I was disproportionately tired, my energy expenditures to run my day exceeded the energy needed to help me heal. Since anyone who knows me will tell you, I typically have a lot of energy to spare, it was a good reminder that I don't have unlimited energy. Recovery is necessary to gather enough energy to go about my daily business. Usually a good night's sleep, healthy eating and meditation are enough to keep me going strong, but not when I my body is injured and needs the energy to heal. As I've been more mindful of recovery, it's reminded me of an insight I had with skiing a few years ago. One of my coaches pointed out that I was not creating enough energy behind the boat to get out to the buoy line before the boat pulled me back. Suddenly, I saw the idea, I need to gather energy to deploy it. If I don't cultivate enough energy, I will fall short on the result I need.

00:06:06.120 --> 00:08:29.961
What a simple concept. Soon I could see this idea in Action Everywhere I looked the project that seemed stalled. No one was taking the reins and creating enough energy to get the team moving my lackluster garden, not enough soil preparation to provide nutrients to grow wonderful plants. The friendship that seemed shaky, neither of us was putting any energy or attention into it. One of my clients told a story that illustrated this principle beautifully. He was the executive sponsor of a multi year change project in his company. The pressures were tremendous, and every second of his day was scheduled at the close of a team leader meeting, one of his colleagues suggested he walked through the area where many of the people were working on the project. At first he declined, and then thought better of it. He took an hour to walk around, talking to people, thanking him for their work, asking what they needed, and generally just showing that he cared. Afterward, he said he had no idea how much this visit would energize him. It reminded him of what was happening at the ground level of the project. And more importantly, he said, this single visit re energized the whole team, and to think I almost didn't do it, this simple principle, whether you call it give and take, gather and deploy, cultivate and harvest, or something else underlies all our endeavors. We simply cannot harvest something that isn't there. We cannot run on an empty tank without severe consequences. Leaders truly are managers of energy. Where do you need to gather and recover energy? What are the consequences of trying to get the proverbial blood out of the turnip? What can you do to energize yourself or others next time you notice something missing, look first for what you might be able to give it might be the only resource that's needed. What I was starting to see were layered principles that would emerge even more clearly in the months and years to come, the magic was not in my ability to amp up, nor was it in my ability to slow down. What mattered was the adjustment.

00:08:26.175 --> 00:09:20.089
Being able to calibrate my energy to the needs of the moment became priceless attunement. So did learning to deeply listen so that the calibration aligned with the needs of the moment. Once I slowed down, I realized there was a real risk I would overdo it. After a few days of slowing down, I started wondering if I would ever want to get off the couch again. This recovery was proving to be more difficult than I expected to quit or not to quit. For me, doing something difficult involves going for it, getting into the swamp, hating the way it feels, thinking I can't possibly handle it, saying a bunch of cuss words, and then either somehow making it through or shutting down. Often in the shutting down part, I also quit.

00:09:15.889 --> 00:09:59.200
That's exactly what happened when I was co leading a major change project at the bank where I spent so much of my corporate career. We were integrating a major merger filled with animosity, and we were introducing a whole new process to a system that was as old as the ages. The people on the receiving end of all this change had to deal with a brash new set of bosses telling them the way they did business would have to completely change, said or unsaid. The message was something like, you all are doing it all wrong and should have known better. We know better, so we're here to fix you. You.

00:10:00.480 --> 00:10:32.299
So these messages did not exactly welcome the new team members to the team with open arms as the project leads. It was our responsibility to deliver the news and then get our colleagues to accept the new way of doing things. Here's what I've learned in years of leading corporate change and going through my own personal change, you can't make anyone do anything. What was being asked of us was extremely difficult, and the pressure was enormous.

00:10:28.100 --> 00:11:38.720
By this time, I had already started some four ways into my self awareness. It was not going well. What I really wanted was someone to give a test and then declare me self aware. Steve, my co lead on the change project, and I were off site working with some consultants who were helping us on the both project and self awareness front everyone and everything called us up to a higher level of facilitation and leadership than I had ever experienced. It felt impossible for me to do what they were asking. The pressure of the situation was far greater than my ability to rise to the challenges facing us. More importantly, I felt like a complete failure and loser, because it seemed I just couldn't get it, and I was getting tired of the criticism and feedback that my way wasn't good enough. What it was going to take for me to change my ways. Felt like climbing Mount Everest. In the face of such pressure, I quit. Usually when I quit, it's an internal form of shutting down, where I pretend to be engaged and just survive long enough to get out of the situation. In this case, the pressure was too high for that.

00:11:38.720 --> 00:11:45.100
In the middle of one of one of our meetings, I turned to Steve and said, I can't do it. What you're asking of me is too much.

00:11:46.360 --> 00:12:25.279
The look of betrayal and hurt on his face hit me in the gut. He was gracious and said he was disappointed, but obviously would honor my decision. After all, I mean, what choice did he have in a perfect world, I would have gotten in my car, Gone Home, since we were working halfway across the country and traveling together, I reluctantly stayed in the meetings inside. I thought, I want to leave shit I can't leave. There's no way out. Our group had dinner together that night, and all I can remember of it was that it was surreal, probably because the next morning's memories overwhelmed almost every other memory I had.

00:12:20.480 --> 00:12:47.799
We were deep in a working session when one of our team members got a call. Kevin stepped out, and although it was rare for us to be interrupted, this was before the smartphone, we quickly went back to what we were doing while everyone else was focused on the project. I was still wishing for my escape when Kevin came back into the room, he was a different man.

00:12:43.059 --> 00:13:25.220
His face was ashen. He moved with effort, and his eyes said it all. He had just gotten some terrible news. Diane, the executive sponsor of our project, had committed suicide the night before we were all flabbergasted. Diane was the most put together, calm, Effective Executive you could imagine. We all felt both honored and protected to be working on a project of this scale and scope with her generous and experienced oversight. Note, by the way, I am using aliases for this story.

00:13:26.840 --> 00:15:29.179
This could not be happening, but it was our work stopped as we rode the roller coaster of emotion and sought out more information. As the day rolled on, we learned that she shot herself in the head while her husband and boss went into the house to get drinks. This may have been an act of desperation, but it was also an act of defiance. She went out inflicting pain, and I knew just how she felt. We spent the next several hours crying, processing, disbelieving and theorizing what could make her this desperate. Why did she do it this way? Had she sent any warning signals? What would make her do this when things didn't go my way? I would often spout about, spout off, about taking my quitting to this extreme. Now why I would never consider myself genuinely suicidal. I could identify with the idea, idea of saying, f you to the people putting pressure on me, especially when I couldn't see a way out of my misery. Somehow, as the day went on, I began to realize that my self torment and helplessness would only get worse if I didn't face my demons. My way of living was eating me up from the inside out. I was nowhere near balancing, much less dancing the tightrope. My typical responses to pressure had been to go helpless, to hide, to pretend or to be a child. When that didn't work, I played the false confidence game saying. And I've got this whether I knew what I was doing or not, when that failed, I went into the angry parent mode, full of rage, judgment, resentment, trying to gain power over people with my condescension and strong emotions over the course of that unforgettable day, Diane's death gave me a crystal ball into my future if something didn't change, the outlook was dismal.

00:15:23.299 --> 00:15:37.879
If I were to play at this level, this bouncing back and forth between being powerless and intimidating, would have to end.

00:15:32.240 --> 00:16:13.980
It was time to grow up. When we returned from a break, I looked at Steve and said, I'm back in She can't die in vain. Steve was both shocked and relieved me. I wasn't sure what I had just done, although I had quit, quitting for the moment, I still had to wrestle with the desire to throw my hands up and walk away. The roots of this pattern were complex, and they ran deep birth of rules. In some ways, I came by my urge to quit Honestly, my begging for a horse finally paid off. My parents relented and bought me a horse.

00:16:14.519 --> 00:16:42.039
Just as suddenly, we quit and sold a horse without me ever understanding why, until I restarted my journey with horses. That's when I learned we had innocently done almost everything wrong. My memories of the practicalities of getting the horse were vague. Looking back, I wondered who hauled him the 50 miles from our town to the farm. How did we decide which field to leave him in?

00:16:38.539 --> 00:16:46.120
Were we at all worried about the barbed wire fences hurting him?

00:16:42.039 --> 00:17:31.579
Who checked on him when we were gone for a week or two at a time, was buying a horse named buck a bad idea. And then this question, what made me think that catching a snake and then trying to catch the horse while holding the snake was a good idea. I was on my way out with the halter and lead broke to a very large field where we had left him the last time we were there. Suddenly a garter snake darted in front of me, growing up outdoors and with a drainage ditch near our house. I loved playing with all kinds of wildlife, including snakes with his vertical stripes. This one was clearly not poisonous, so I caught him. It's what I always did when encountering a snake being the ignorant kid I was at the time, I guess it I thought it would be fun to introduce Mr.

00:17:31.579 --> 00:18:29.180
Snake to my horse, Buck. Bad idea. Horses and snakes don't want to be friends. Buck showed me loud and clear as he ran far out of reach, I quickly dropped the snake and started trying to coax Buck back to me after living in the field all by himself for a while, Buck didn't want to be friends with me either. I don't remember how long it took me to catch him, but I did learn, in no uncertain terms, that the only snaky looking thing I better have in my hand when approaching a horse would be a lead rope. My parents silently marked striked one, perhaps the same day or another day. I can't remember. We had the bridal incident where I could not, for the life of me, get the bridle on the horse. He kept raising his head, backing away and showing me the whites of his eyes. I kept chasing him like a lunatic. Looking back, I just wish I could tell Buck how sorry I am for my ignorance. We never did get the bridle on him.

00:18:29.180 --> 00:18:44.380
That day, my parents silently marked Strike two on the deciding day I had managed to get the bridle and the saddle on buck, my only goal was to get on and go fast, barrel racing fast.

00:18:45.160 --> 00:20:01.920
My mom was fishing, fishing in the tank, holding in the water on the other side of the hill tank, by the way, is Texas language for a small lake or pond. I had no idea where my dad or other siblings were. I was in my own world of delight running on Buck around in the open field just west of the tank, Buck and I suddenly exploded up the hill and stopped just short of our mom was peacefully casting for bass. Mom had just swung the rod and reel back to her right, preparing to throw a cast. I was smiling from ear to ear following the exhilarating run up the short hill. She whirled around in a way that I knew had no right answer. Yelled, did you mean to do that? This was no time to be strategic. I had been her daughter for 12 years. I knew that tone of voice, and I had a very well developed rule for the pattern we were suddenly living out in real time. It was damned if you do and damned if you don't. If I said yes, I was in trouble. If I said no, I was in trouble, my rule told me to answer the question that was the path of least trouble. Seemed like a good idea to blame the horse not realizing that his very. Existence on our farm was in question.

00:20:03.180 --> 00:20:10.440
I can't say for sure when the rule to avoid getting in trouble was born, but I suspect it was during the windowsill incident.

00:20:11.400 --> 00:20:33.140
When I was four years old, my parents bought a new house under construction. We would go by every day checking on progress as the studs became drywall and the drywall became finished walls. Day by day, the construction zone slowly morphed into livable space. It was on one of these visits that my don't get caught. Rule was born.

00:20:29.299 --> 00:21:25.519
It had probably been formed before that. But I'm getting ahead of myself, as my parents were off in another room with my baby sister. They left me alone in the empty kitchen with the big plate glass window facing the backyard. At the bottom of that window was a big, white, freshly painted window sill to my young eyes, this was the most beautiful blank canvas I had ever seen. All that white space seemed like a good place to write my name, something I was just learning to do. I can't remember what sharp, sharp object I used, probably a nail, but I proceeded to write my name on that lovely, somewhat soft surface. I happily wrote the letter L, before my mistake hit me. If I wrote my name, my parents would know who did this.

00:21:21.319 --> 00:22:27.319
Some part of my kid brain knew that marring this brand new windowsill might not be a great idea. Such an act would definitely get me in trouble. So I did what any smart kid would do. The next letter I wrote was, ew. That was a close one. I finished out the rest of my sister's name Lee, aware that I had cleverly avoided being in very bad trouble. My sister's name was now etched in both the paint and the wood. Dealing with this would be her problem. My clever kid brain missed one important detail. My sister was not yet two years old, and at this moment, she was in the back bedroom with my parents. A few minutes later, my parents came back in the kitchen, of course, my mom saw the writing on the sill. My mom was a fiery person, and we saw her flames in full glory that day. I'm pretty sure the neighbors were also getting to know the new family who would be moving in soon. My artistic act had gotten me in trouble.

00:22:24.559 --> 00:23:19.559
That etching would stay on the window sill for the next 10 years that we lived in that house, reminding me and my parents just what a bad girl I was. Years later, here I was on the top of the world sitting on my dream horse busted by the same fiery mother who had looked at that marred window sill every day. No one to blame but the horse. I answered no feeling rather proud that I would not get punished as badly as if my gallop up the hill was an intentional act. Blame it on the horse. Strike three, my parents sold Buck after that, I was heartbroken and convinced I answered her question the wrong way in the months that followed, I wondered if I had chosen to say yes, would the outcome have been different? Would I have been scolded and told never to scare my mom like that again?

00:23:15.720 --> 00:25:01.380
Was there a path that would have let me keep buck and become a champion barrel racer. Why did we have to quit? What would have happened if we had chosen to the path to learn more about the care and upkeep of horses? From my 12 year old perspective, all I knew was we had quit for many years. I deeply struggled with losing buck in my child's view of the world, my dream was stolen. Many of my rules were born and reinforced around this story later, as I learned to build my tools, my adult eyes showed me my life was saved three buckets of rules. As my recovery progressed, conversations started taking on a new tenor. All patterns and rules began rising to the surface, showing me their forms, their benefits and their limitations. While the bruises were fading and my bones healed, there was a consistent question explored in most of my conversation, both with friends who loved horses and friends who feared horses. What happened? It was a loaded question defined by many facets. What did you do wrong? Where did you make a mistake? Were you ever right again? What would cause this to happen again? How do you make sure a horse never runs away with you again. And the question I asked myself, if I don't get back on does it mean I'm a failure? These questions were deep and starting to penetrate my very identity. I didn't like it my various friends who had horses and knew very well the ins and outs, as well as the dangers of trail riding in.

00:24:58.299 --> 00:25:18.960
Provided much needed perspective. One said there is a skill to balancing yourself on a horse moving downhill, the rider has a responsibility to coordinate with the horse so that he can carry you more easily. Another said, gotta keep those heels down. It keeps you locked in the saddle. Yet.

00:25:15.660 --> 00:25:29.359
Another said, when a horse starts running out of control, you bring them around into a circle. It's like an emergency stop my knowledge. Hungry brain ate up the advice, starving for a technique that I could deploy.

00:25:29.960 --> 00:25:56.799
Should I ever choose to write again? Yet one conversation pointed to something deeper, something in the fog that occasionally showed itself in ever morphing shapes and disappeared as soon as I looked at it, you seemed so confident, it never occurred to me that you were anything but totally proficient. So said Babs, as we discuss what happened that day, we'd only ridden together twice.

00:25:52.299 --> 00:26:08.339
Confidence. It's something I had cultivated since my first day in the corporate world, and probably even before that, I built my adult form of confidence on the foundation of so many of my childhood rules.

00:26:08.819 --> 00:26:13.559
Don't get caught, developed into, I've got this translation.

00:26:14.099 --> 00:26:32.299
Even though I'm faking it, I'm good at faking it. So who will ever know? Damned if you do, damned if you don't developed into, I will beat myself up. So you don't have to translation. I don't have to change anything because I've eaten the slimy vegetables and paid my pendants.

00:26:29.000 --> 00:26:32.299
Quitting is the way out.

00:26:32.299 --> 00:27:42.880
Developed into. Look at this other thing. I'm good at translation. If it doesn't come easy, I don't want to have to take the time to develop mastery this swiss cheese confidence was destined to collapse under pressure. All the skills and knowledge in the world would not break those patterns in my coaching work with leaders for the several years prior, I had begun breaking lifelong patterns like these into three buckets with different origins and different ways out. Number one, survival mode. Number two, Kid Mode. Number three, history mode. There is a chart in the book describing these three modes, and it's available to anyone who emails me at lynn@lynncarnes.com, in some ways, all three modes played out my experience falling off the horse when mocha started down the pivotal Hill his big gate felt like a trot to me. The sensation of speed immediately sent a shot of adrenaline into my system. Survival Mode was triggered in milliseconds.

00:27:44.140 --> 00:28:46.779
Now I was in fight, flight or freeze at this point because of my lack of skills and, more importantly, my pressure gap, I had no choice but to try to hang on when pulling back on the reins didn't work. We all have survival mode, and the chemistry of it operates essentially the same way in all of us. It's non negotiable hardwiring granted to us at birth. Earlier in my ride, Kid Mode had been triggered. Kid Mode is anytime we feel a power differential, and we do things to get our power back. This idea started coming to me when I was working with Eric burns transactional analysis in a leadership program I was teaching while I did almost no deep study on his method, what I saw was easily applicable to the corporate world in my kid mode view of the world, I pictured a tightrope where, on the tightrope itself, we walk In a power with approach to solving problems and leading changes.

00:28:42.220 --> 00:29:02.039
With such a narrow, wobbly path to walk, we're bound to fall off on one side or the other. On one side, the child side, where we fell into a power under approach. Every time I walked into my boss's office and said something to the effect of, I tried everything. Nothing works.

00:29:02.039 --> 00:29:05.640
It's everybody's fault, but mine. I was in the child itch.

00:29:05.759 --> 00:29:10.380
It's tailor made for victims.

00:29:05.759 --> 00:29:48.339
When it dawned on me that mocha was the one in power, after walking me through the spider web, albeit unintentionally, I tried making him, like me, a classic power under strategy to even out the power differential on the other side is the parent side, where we fall into a power over approach. Of course, more than once I had walked into my boss's office trying to get away with the you need to fix this attitude, getting all grabby with the reins and trying to be forceful instead of communicating. Really communicating were my feeble attempts to gain power over mocha on the way down the hill.

00:29:44.380 --> 00:30:03.000
Can you see how these methods cause us to over and under react, always swinging off the tight rope? In many ways, Kid Mode is shared by all of us, much like survival mode, if we were raised in any setting where there was a power. Differential.

00:29:59.259 --> 00:30:49.000
We have strategies for dealing with situations of power under and power over. As I worked with clients and myself in understanding the different mindsets Byrne, called them ego states. I needed a way to organize them. You can look at the centered mindset as being on the tightrope. I can fall off the tight rope by over or under reacting to the situation, much like I did with Mocha. In that case, I bounced back and forth from trying to get him to like me, to trying to have power over him, and then going back to feeling helpless, really helpless. Right after my accident, I started working with a leadership team whose core role in the organization was like herding cats. There were a lot of power dynamics in play.

00:30:44.680 --> 00:31:20.640
They were executives in their role, but not always in their actions. The team lamented its frustration as we worked through the give and take of its various decisions, in many ways, we began to recognize that what they were seeking was the ability to be present when in difficult conversations, while delivering unwelcome news and in making strategic decisions. In other words, they wanted executive presence. I created the following tool for them to see where they were at any given time in their interactions.

00:31:21.119 --> 00:33:27.319
Again, for the listener, there is a chart that shows the tightrope of power under, power with and power over. Available to anyone who emails me at lynn@lynncarns.com, how we bounce around the strategies we choose is deeply colored by our life experiences. Our life experiences also create our history mode, and each of us has a completely different set of life defining moments that shapes who we are and how we make sense of the world. While we may share patterns of trauma, quote, unquote, our reactions to what happens in our lives, both good and bad, are unique to each of us. Our ways of dealing with pressure start forming from the time we are born. We learn from watching our parents and other family members, teachers, peers and other authority figures. We learn from our experiences and how we handle what happens to us as we are growing up, we are like little scientists studying the world and deciding who we are and how we fit in it. This becomes our conditioning. We document those discoveries in our bodies and our ways of being in the world. That conditioning becomes our patterns for dealing with the pressures of life, feeling betrayed. You've got a pattern for that, not getting what you want. You've got a pattern for that. My own history mode. Patterns played a role from the moment I accepted the invitation to ride straight through to the accident, the recovery and beyond. There's no getting around it. Some of our patterns are super useful. That instinct to hit the brakes when something rolls in front of our car. Useful that instinct to hit someone who just took something away we wanted? Not so great, especially in corporate life. My pattern around showing confidence, my pattern of I've got this was very useful in corporate life, where there's always more work to do than we can possibly do. The insatiable work monster was kept fed and mostly quiet by people like me.

00:33:28.400 --> 00:33:56.079
Our early years as little scientists established a huge repertoire of patterns that operates like an automatic program. They run in the background without any conscious thought or help from us, and they take energy, much like an app running in the background on a smartphone. You can think of our patterns like the buttons we push to start an app on the phone, rather than having to open the screen and find the icon, our buttons get pushed by the pressure of the situation.

00:33:56.859 --> 00:35:30.260
Here are examples of the types of things that happen that will push our buttons and cause us to operate from conditioning, instead of from the actual situation in front of us, not getting what you want, feeling betrayed, making a mistake, watching Someone else be praised for something you did, getting embarrassed, feeling treated unfairly, getting quote unquote screwed by a situation, wanting to please others, looking for approval, wanting to be right, fearing failure, feeling responsible for the fate of others, being told your work is not good, our unconscious patterns run us just as surely as if we were robots running on the programming code of their inventor, learning to operate creatively. Unconsciously requires much more than a simple decision to change. Why? Because emotions lock the original programming into place until we access those emotions and then rewrite the program. We cannot change the pattern while my body was running downhill on Mocha, the robot was running my mind.

00:35:24.800 --> 00:35:50.199
If I were ever to ride again, it seemed wise to do something about the robot. In other words, it was not a skill problem, it was a mindset problem, but at this stage of my recovery, I preferred to think it was a writing skill problem and one that I might not ever have to address. What mattered more was getting back on my water ski.

00:35:51.159 --> 00:36:10.380
Losing the last six weeks of my water ski season had been heartbreaking. After years of trying to shorten the rope, I had almost given up. Truth betro told I was afraid of skiing on the 22 offline length when the rope is that length behind the boat, the Wake has a bump.

00:36:06.900 --> 00:36:51.880
Crossing the wake at high speeds in a leaning position, and hitting that bump sent shock waves and adrenaline through me every time after a few buoys, the adrenaline coursing through my system typically rendered my muscles useless. Two days before the accident, I had finally completed a full ski pass on the 22 off rope length. It was a breakthrough a decade in the making, and a simple trail ride in the woods ended my ski season. Now I had two priorities over the fall and winter, rehab like a professional athlete, and provide the corporate team opportunities to take its leadership and team to a new level back on the water ski.

00:36:52.780 --> 00:37:40.219
Several months into my recovery, it was time to see if I could still ski. The doctor had insisted on three months off. I waited five partly because it was the dead of winter when I could stand it no longer my daughter Jen and I got in the car and headed to Florida while the recovery aspect was new to me. Skiing in Florida during the winter months was totally normal. So were a lot of my old rules that made the trip with me. Every skier I know feels the same mix of dread and excitement at the return from an OFF period. Slalom skiing is an intense sport, even at the highest level, skiers acknowledge the first time back on the ski every season feels incredibly fast and unmanageable, almost from the first moment I got up on the ski, it felt completely normal.

00:37:40.820 --> 00:37:44.260
Clearly, I had developed a lot of muscle memory over the last decade.

00:37:45.940 --> 00:38:08.579
The familiar muscle soreness the next day was a welcome reminder of how much fitness this sport offered. This time, not being able to raise my arm to brush my hair filled me with happiness. I was back, yet there were parts of me that were still shaken in the way trauma can mark us forever in walking the tightrope of confidence, my overconfidence had swung to under confidence.

00:38:09.300 --> 00:38:35.119
Questions were rumbling under the surface. Where else in my life was my I've got this rule waiting to trip me up. Was I really so good at bullshitting that I was fooling myself? What kind of mark would this trauma leave on me? The questions sparked enough discomfort to start getting through to my defenses. My accident was a blessing with new insights.

00:38:35.119 --> 00:40:53.739
Perhaps the trauma could be a gift. In my blog, written after the trip, I could see the forms of a new way of being starting to show their safe shapes. Blog post, move on or move deeper. I love making progress. When I was an avid tennis player, I wanted to move from being rated a 3.5 to a 4.0 in my various jobs, I always wanted the next promotion of the big assignment on the potter's wheel, I've pushed to create ever taller forms in water skiing, I've been on a multi year quest to speed up the boat and shorten the rope. In my mind, progress tends to involve the next measurable milestone much more than cultivating deep mastery. While I appreciate mastery as a concept or theory, actually, putting it into practice has been something I've avoided in order to achieve my beloved progress. To me, mastery is boring. Why? Because it involves the subtleties of doing the same thing over and over, improving slowly and carefully filling in the gaps that are easily glossed over with my need for speed. With this fall, I had an experience that has awakened me to a different need. Rather than move on, I need to move deeper. It was revealed with the one two punch of falling off a horse landing me in the hospital and. Then having to take several months off water skiing right after I had achieved a previously unattainable milestone, having to sit still during my recovery gave me time to reflect my extreme lack of mastery contributed to the fall from the horse while I had many important takeaways from that experience, perhaps the most profound is this, knowing how to stop a horse in theory does not translate to embodying the energy mindset and physical actions to stop a horse that would rather run when it came time to put my theory into practice, all the knowledge in the world meant nothing without having practiced and learned to connect my knowledge to real skill in the moment of truth, all I could do was hold on and hope for the best. In this case, I was wearing a helmet and went down on relatively soft ground.

00:40:53.920 --> 00:41:27.980
It could have been much, much worse. As I healed, I had a good part of the winter to reflect on the differences between knowledge, skill and mastery. I realized that in many areas of my life, I have substituted knowledge for real skill, and nowhere have i undertaken the journey of mastery. As a result, I end up holding on and hoping for the best when my skills fall short, the consequences are not usually so severe. I've gotten away with it with consequences.

00:41:23.840 --> 00:41:53.260
When it was time to get back on the water ski, I started by slowing the boat down a little bit. Of course, this went against everything I typically do, which is trying to make progress, even though in water skiing, my progress is usually baby steps. A wonderful thing happened. First, I could still ski. This is an intense sport, and anytime you come back from a long time off, there is this question, can I still do it?

00:41:48.159 --> 00:42:49.960
Second, I moved deeper. In this case, moving deeper meant that I was able to feel things at the slower speed that I couldn't before my coach said this. I'm not trying to say that it was good that you got injured, but it's giving you a chance to build a better skiing foundation than you had before. In that moment, I realized it was time to move deeper. So I am moving deeper. That is, I'm slowing down and trading progress for depth, rather than claiming my prize of achieving the goal. I'm deliberately practicing the actions that lead to the goal, moment by moment, I'm moving deeper. 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.

00:42:50.679 --> 00:43:05.039
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 now I hope you go and do something very fun today. You.