April 4, 2025

#85 Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 4 & 5; Failure Is Not Failure at All Plus Assessing Risk

#85 Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 4 & 5; Failure Is Not Failure at All Plus Assessing Risk
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

This episode of the podcast features chapters 4 and 5 of Dancing the Tightrope. If you haven’t listened to the first 3 chapters, I suggest listening to those first. It will help make sense of what’s coming in these next few chapters.

 

When I listened back to Chapter 3, where I read the sidebar blog “Where’s My Choice Here?”, it was somewhat stunning to me that many of the threads that I pulled together for Dancing the Tightrope started well before the accident that lays the foundation for the book. I was already onto the themes of dealing with fear, adrenaline, pressure and uncertainty. In some ways, I had been bumping up against the glass ceiling of my beliefs; the pivotal fall from the horse offer me a way to shatter those beliefs if I chose to open myself up to seeing things in a new way.

 

What’s standing out for me in this process of creating an audio version of the book are the pivotal moments, where a seemingly innocuous choice created huge change. The small choice to go trail riding could have just as easily been the choice to give up horseback riding for good. The small choice to call Bruce could have just as easily been something I never got around to doing. 

 

The choice to go back for a second visit to Bruce was both a mystery and a big damn deal. In the world of the way I had done things up to this point, that second visit would not have happened. Yet it did -  in this new world I was discovering.

 

Chapter 4 talks about our second visit to Camden to understand what this somewhat strange approach to life, horses and learning to live in nature’s world was all about. Chapter 5 shows you where I began to use what I was learning – somewhat naively at the time. In fact, reading it back now sometimes feels like I’m reading someone else’s story.

 

In Chapter 5, I’m still deciding if I should ever get back on a horse – something that’s difficult to grasp, given that I’m riding all the time these days. Think about a decision you’ve made that now seems so obvious – or a decision you are grappling with that may someday become obvious. Maybe these chapters will help you sort through the risks and rewards with an improving mindset.

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,

00:00:19.739 --> 00:01:17.069
Welcome to the Creative Spirits Unleash Podcast. I'm Lynn Carnes, your host. This episode of the podcast features chapters four and five of dancing the tightrope. If you haven't listened to the first three chapters, I suggest listening to those first it will help make sense of what's coming in these next few chapters. Now, when I listened back to chapter three, where I read the sidebar blog, where's my choice here, it was somewhat stunning to me that many of the threads that I pulled together for dancing the tightrope started well before the accident that lays the foundation for the book. I was already onto the themes of dealing with fear, adrenaline, pressure and uncertainty. In some ways, I had been bumping up against a glass ceiling of my beliefs. That pivotal fall from that horse offered me a new way to shatter those beliefs if I chose to open myself up to seeing things in a new way.

00:01:17.132 --> 00:04:09.313
What's standing out for me in this process of creating an audio version of the book. Are the pivotal moments where a seemingly innocuous choice created huge change. The small choice to go trail riding could have just as easily been the choice to give up horseback riding for good. The small choice to call Bruce could have just as easily been something I never got around to doing. The choice to go back for a second visit to Bruce was both a mystery and a big damn deal in the world of the way I had done things up to this point, that second visit would not have happened, yet it did somehow in this new world that I was discovering, Chapter Four talks about our second visit to Camden To understand what this somewhat strange approach to life, horses and learning to live in nature's world was all about. Chapter five shows you where I began to take what I was learning, somewhat naively at the time, and turn it into what became the book. In fact, reading it back now sometimes feels like I'm reading someone else's story. In Chapter Five, I'm still deciding if I should ever get back on a horse, something that's difficult to grasp, given that, if you know me, I'm riding all the time these days, think about a decision that you've made that now seems so obvious in hindsight, or maybe a decision you're grappling with now that you hope to feel obvious in hindsight. I'm hoping these chapters help you sort through the risks and rewards with an improving mindset rather than an improving mindset. And as always, if you are enjoying this, please share it with your friends. LIKE IT on the podcast platform, even give me a comment or two, this helps so much in getting the word out, and I am enjoying getting this word out, so I hope you will pass it on and enjoy this episode of chapters four and five, of dancing the tightrope. Chapter Four, failure is not failure at all. A pony opens the door A month later, Jen was skipping along with a new pony in the round pen, saying, It makes me so happy. Jen had come to the farm, still carrying the skepticism from our first session. In the ensuing month, we had many conversations about our experience, and Jen had thought enough to come for the next session. What had bothered her the most in the first session was watching Bruce micromanage and pepper me with questions. When she learned that I was not nearly as bothered, but more curious, she let go of some, but not all of her resistance. This time, I had asked a close friend, Gail from the corporate world, to come be a quote, unquote guinea pig for a session with Bruce Gail was like a second mom to Jen. We both agreed it would be good for Jen and me, for her to be there.

00:04:05.747 --> 00:04:43.649
In some ways, Jen and I represented two opposite ends of the spectrum. I was keen to learn more, and Jen was in the No way, no how camp. Having a third person might help calibrate whether there was anything to this work or not, and we could approach anything that came up from different perspectives. As soon as we pulled into Bruce's farm, Jen spotted the new pony. He was truly a small horse, more like the size of a Great Dane. Jen is good at hiding negative feelings when something as cute as a pony is around her, her delight practically drips off her skin.

00:04:43.711 --> 00:05:17.855
The session with Gail went for a few hours, and I noticed that Bruce was repeating himself from the last couple of conversations. He was saying the same phrases over and over again, like it's not the horse, it's the pressure created by the horse, and when your mental tools are not easy. Are greater than the pressure of the situation, then you over or under react or it's not the thing you are doing. It's the mindset while you are doing the thing that matters. It's not a mistake, it's an opportunity.

00:05:13.906 --> 00:06:50.283
It's not the work with the horse that matters. It's in doing the hard work with the horse. You are recalibrating your mental tools and becoming more of the you. The round pen is a metaphor for your life and the dreaded I don't want the horse to do the picture. Every time he said that, I remembered myself lying on the ground, unable to breathe, wondering what had caused the horse to throw me into the dirt at moments like this, I thought, Bruce, I most certainly do want the horse to do the picture, and my picture is to stay on the horse. What kind of horse trainer? People leader trainer or doesn't want to get the job done? My first inkling of an answer to that question came the day after our first session. Bruce and I spoke as promised. I didn't share Jen's reservations what she had listed in exhaustive detail over the drive home. I did mention one small moment when we pulled off the highway and found ourselves behind a line of cars at the exit. I made some comment like, wish I had my James Bond car with a weapon that would move all these cars aside, something made me tell Bruce about this exchange with Jen, and he said, matter of factly, good opportunity to work on patience. This seemingly small moment in an otherwise eventful day was like a little miracle, one that I would understand only much, much later. Hmm, one of the things I had often experienced after leaving countless meditation retreats was that my good feelings seemed to evaporate on the drive home.

00:06:50.348 --> 00:07:37.103
A truck would cut me off, a wreck would backup traffic, or any number of other everyday occurrences would take me from cool headed meditator to road rage, mad woman in the blink of an eye. It had never occurred to me to use these things to make myself better. Instead, I would just beat myself up for being so bad at staying grounded. Perhaps the horse not doing the picture offered a good opportunity to work on myself. Nothing changed in that moment, but a seed was planted. Resistance melts during the day as Bruce worked with Gail, Jen had her eye on that pony. When Gail and Bruce finished, Gail left, and we decided the three of us would debrief in what I would later come to call a porch session.

00:07:33.281 --> 00:07:44.939
The porch overlooked the round pen and the pasture where the horses grazed. It was a gorgeous spring day, and everything was just starting to turn green.

00:07:45.002 --> 00:08:19.973
Chickens were running around, a peacock occasionally spread his magnificent tail, and hummingbirds started in and out of the feeder. I made note of a Lariat, or was it a noose hanging in the nearby tree, but we didn't have the courage to ask about it until many porch sessions later, we took our seats and began discussing the events of the day. Before I knew it, Bruce had asked Jen if she wanted to give it another try. I thought, Wait, give one another try. Jen's not heading for the car. She's carrying a halter.

00:08:16.024 --> 00:08:19.973
She's heading for the round pen.

00:08:20.036 --> 00:08:35.452
Oh, of course, not the round pen she's heading for the pony, even though our intention in the debrief was to focus on the session we had just completed, the conversation had somehow come around to the prior month.

00:08:31.630 --> 00:09:12.419
In what seemed like a flash, Bruce said something, and Jen was ready to try again, looking back on it, that pony catalyzed another miracle moment. He was only going to be there for a short time while Bruce, quote, unquote, babysat him for a friend. His cuteness factor was high enough to override Jen's wall of resistance. Had we come another time, the pony wouldn't have been there, and I might not have ever gone back as Jen skipped around in the round pen, the pony opened her heart. She was having fun and was putting herself in danger in ways she did not recognize.

00:09:08.580 --> 00:09:24.379
Quickly, Bruce saw that Jen was not respecting the pony the same way she would have a full sized horse. He would give her a task, a picture, and she would try to use force to move him around.

00:09:20.960 --> 00:10:20.299
Though small, this pony still weighed well over 200 pounds. At one point, he said, What makes you think this pony can't hurt you? He's got teeth, he's got hooves. He pointed out that she was under reacting to the pressure of the pony, a sure sign that she was in tyrant mindset. Bruce's tyrant mindset was still somewhat of a mystery to me. He mentioned the past interfering, as happened before, I recognized that he and I were often talking about the same or similar ideas with different language. In my language, what I was seeing was both Kid Mode and history mode in action on the kid mode. Tightrope. Jen was falling off both sides child and parent from the child power underside. I saw Jen wanted the pony to like her. She was naive to the danger in front of her from the parent oversight. I saw Jen letting the pony get away with doing whatever it wanted.

00:10:16.799 --> 00:11:03.240
She was overly helpful when she decided it was time for the pony to do the picture, attempting to use force when being helpful didn't work. Rather than the give and take of adult power with she was following a common pattern, feel powerless, then try to grab power, overshoot the mark, try to make up for the pushy moves and then continually porpoise back and forth without ever really finding the balance on the tightrope again. I was reminded that this pattern played out the day of my accident. First I wanted the horse to like me, then I started to recognize the danger, so I tried to find a way to get power. Then he started to run. I completely overreacted, and the consequence was a big splat.

00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:10.860
Seeing my own pattern play out in my daughter right in front of my eyes evoked a strong recognition of history mode.

00:11:11.820 --> 00:11:52.419
Where else would she have learned such a pattern, other than to watch her mother do it hundreds of times over her lifetime, in all my years of working on myself through journaling, reflections, meditations, grounding, and every other method I tied tried to break my long standing patterns I had never found a way out that stood the test of pressure. Something told me I was about to learn something big. So I grabbed my phone and started the video. The round pen as a metaphor for life. The 15 minutes that followed were pure magic. I was no longer an outsider trying to see if this fellow Bruce had something that would work for clients.

00:11:52.659 --> 00:12:32.480
Suddenly, I was a mom filming as Jennifer reached point after point of trying and failing and learning repeatedly, instead of resistance in covering up, as I had shown the month before, she was open hearted and smiling even when she was making mistakes. Perhaps the most powerful exchange occurred when Bruce asked her, were you doing tyrant mindset? Yeah, I think so. Bruce says definitely, because you weren't applying the pressure the pony was telling you to, because you were so engrossed in the excitement of working with the pony. Yes, Jen said, smiling from ear to ear.

00:12:28.460 --> 00:12:48.519
And you were like, Bruce f you I don't care what your picture is, because I'm just having too much fun. And Jen says, because I just love the pony, giddiness exuding from her pores. But where else in the job place are you doing that? Can you do that?

00:12:44.860 --> 00:14:36.200
You understand you can't be doing that shit in the job place. You can't let the past interfere. Oh yeah, Jen, had a light bulb moment. Just that exchange busted so many assumptions. Tyrant mindset does not necessarily feel bad. It can be exciting. Laughing doesn't make everything okay. The sensation of excitement can be misinterpreted, just as the sensation of anxiety can be misinterpreted back to the exchange on the video. So what I'm showing you here, the nice thing about the pony was, did you ever feel in danger? Jen says, No, but by him being so small, were you having a hard time getting your picture done laughing? Jen says, yes. Then Bruce said, at the same time, you think he's small. And Jen says, I wasn't being as cautious and as demanding, because you assume because he was small. Jen jumps down. I thought I had more control than I really did. Yeah, but who was the one lacking control? You are the pony. Dead silence. Jen had not really thought of herself as lacking control, neither had I. She had been dancing around, laughing, having fun, trying to move the pony, even though the pony was not going where she was directing, it all seemed like fun and games. Bruce pointed out that her desire to help was actually putting her in danger, and she was not aware of exactly how painful a kick or bite could be. He pointed out that having the pony run wild was not beneficial to him. There he was using that terminology again, his words echoed back to me. I'm here to help the horse, to help himself to live in the world we have created. The modern world is the world we have created.

00:14:36.620 --> 00:16:03.539
Horses are of the natural world, but a horse who is allowed to succumb fully to his wild nature would be way too dangerous for humans to work with, day in and day out. Bruce was saying out loud what Jen was learning, believing that she could control the pony was a faulty assumption, without me knowing it at the time, Bruce had just revealed a core point, perhaps the core point in his method, in. Jen had lost her power by believing she had power where she didn't. It would take me many years and even more horses to begin to grasp the depth of this lesson. She could choose to work with the horse by using domination and force or form a relationship of trust and connection in the dominance game, it's all about power over and power under. This was the game I had played my whole corporate life. Kid Mode reigned supreme. Bruce was showing another way to dance the tightrope. Instead of using force, fear and intimidation, the hallmarks of dominance, he was showing Jen how to dance between applying too much and too little pressure with the intention to push the horse's negative pole up, doing so allows the horse to choose how to balance his negative positive pole. Using dominance, can get things done, but with a cost. It creates compliance out of fear a horse might freeze or run away.

00:15:58.960 --> 00:16:49.960
People do the same thing, but the horse could also fight. As Bruce pointed out, the horse has teeth and it has hooves, a kick or a bite can be devastating and even fatal. However, Bruce's main focus was not on what Jen was doing. Instead, it was on where it came from. Bruce said, Yes, but notice your emotion, how the past was interfering, and how you were trying to fill a void you understand. And therefore, by doing that, you're actually saying to the pony, it's okay to do what it's doing when it's not okay, you understand what I'm saying. Bam, there it was. Jen was caught in a pattern. She was feeling emotion, lots of emotion, in order to address the feeling.

00:16:45.519 --> 00:17:35.900
Jen was filling a void. She was allowing the cuteness of the pony to override her own insecurities. We all have insecurities, and we have strategies for filling the void they create. Jen was operating on invisible rules. She might as well have been a robot, albeit a happy one. Bruce was here to show her her way out of the rules that much I could see this very type of rule breaking had been at the root of my coaching work for years, but something was different here. Now I had seen Bruce debrief different situations in the round pen, and in every case, there was a parallel with life. When he said the round pen is a metaphor for your life, he was able to back it up with lessons like this one. Let the situation tell you how much pressure to apply.

00:17:36.740 --> 00:18:18.720
After Bruce revealed what was really going on, Jen got very clear on her picture with some coaching on reaching for her tools, like listening, hearing, patience, problem solving, Jen helped the pony to help himself move with ease around the perimeter of the round pen several times. Bruce pointed out that Jen had found her Alpha mindset, meaning she was letting the pony tell her what to do and how much pressure to apply. The pony didn't talk any more than the rope had. However, the pony did show her what worked and what didn't. Bruce's approach interrupted some of my big assumptions and looked very different than what I expected.

00:18:14.640 --> 00:18:34.220
I thought, Where were the instructions for how to move a pony or a horse around. How does one apply pressure if you can't touch the animal? Why does Bruce keep handing us a Lariat without telling us how to use it? Surely we missed a training session in horse school about everything one needs to know.

00:18:36.200 --> 00:18:56.380
Instead, Bruce kept saying things like, pay attention to what the horse is telling you use your mental tools, listening, hearing, patience, timing, feel problem solving, discipline, outside of maintaining safety. He was giving us no rules, just tools.

00:18:52.059 --> 00:19:01.140
It was an empowering message, both for Jen and for the pony.

00:18:56.380 --> 00:19:08.519
Remember he said the pony will tell you how much pressure to apply. Let him tell you what to do, when to do, how to do.

00:19:04.140 --> 00:20:01.500
Eventually, those words would come to mean freedom. In context far beyond the horses. In this moment, they were still creating dissonance in my head. I'm looking for Bruce to give some answers. Share his rule book, educate us on the ways of horses. I'm also sensing that if I could just get out of my own way, and the incessant desire to be perfect, there is something to this idea of letting the situation tell me what to do, the two thoughts felt like a major contradiction, yet they also seem to go together like two rhyming words in a poem seeking a way to resolve the dissonance, I remembered using that principle outside of training with horses. Just the week before I had a conversation with Scott, a client who had been trying to avoid firing one of his most trusted team members, Bob, his company was growing at an astronaut.

00:19:58.779 --> 00:20:05.339
Economical rate, and Bob had been struggling to keep pace.

00:20:01.500 --> 00:20:34.339
Instead, he had been missing deadlines and showing up late for work. Scott had been very clear on his expectations, yet Bob was only making matters worse. Finally, Scott realized he had to fire him and call me in hopes that I would offer another alternative. I asked Scott what was making him so concerned. He simply said, he's been great until the last few months. I just don't want to fire him. And I said, What makes you think you are the one firing him? Does he not know what you expect? You've been very clear.

00:20:34.339 --> 00:20:53.440
He's firing himself. Bob had told Scott How much pressure to apply. If Scott had not listened, Bob would have caused even more damage than he already had, rather than creating dissonance for Scott, the idea that Bob was firing himself gave Scott some peace of mind.

00:20:50.079 --> 00:21:53.500
Letting him go was the exactly right move for both the company and for Bob. Later, Scott rehired him because Bob needed that level of pressure as a wake up call and was able to get back to where he needed to be. I was starting to see that what Bruce was teaching went far beyond the round pen. My perceptions were coming from standing outside the fence for the whole day. Being outside was my safe vantage point. But not for long, Bruce invited me to join Jen in the round pen. Our task was to contain the pony in a six foot square with nothing but our energy. I really would have loved to have had that halter and wrote back I wanted more control. More than once, Bruce had to remind us that we couldn't touch him. Otherwise he gave no other specific steps to take. Rather, he kept talking about letting the pony tell us what to do, when to do, how to do. This was incredibly frustrating, to say the least.

00:21:49.900 --> 00:22:40.839
The pony was doing whatever he pleased while we ran around trying to contain him. Not only did we look like the Keystone Cops, but it also felt like mistake, piled upon mistake, piled upon more mistakes. Try one thing and it's too much. Try another thing and it's too little, back and forth, never quite getting the hang of it. We were feeling the frustration build the thoughts behind. My thoughts started to make me feel like a failure. My direct thoughts were things like, why isn't Bruce helping us? Where is that pony going? Now? What should I do next? My indirect thoughts didn't have words. They had energy, and the energy weighed me down. It was that energy that the pony was responding to. If they did have words, it would be things such as, I'm going to get in trouble.

00:22:37.160 --> 00:23:16.500
Why can't I get this? What's wrong with me? How bad do I look? I wanted to get the picture right. My very identity was resting on this. Bruce wanted us to use the pressure created by the pony to build our mental tools. I wanted perfection. Bruce was showing a path to progress. It went something like this, the pressure wasn't there to crush me. I could choose to allow it to elevate me. The uncertainty and not knowing what to do are an essential part of creativity.

00:23:11.099 --> 00:23:16.500
Failure is not failure at all.

00:23:17.640 --> 00:23:53.319
In this path, I was learning no relearning a principle that would serve me deeply. Let the situation tell me the best response my past can inform, but be mindful when it interferes or interferes, e n t, e R F, E, A R S, when we stopped feeling like we were making mistakes and started listening to the pony, it became easy to contain him in the six foot square. The answers were not in the scene thing.

00:23:49.359 --> 00:26:05.160
They were in the invisible part of the equation. I didn't know it yet, but this work would eventually teach me that most of my assumptions about balance, pressure, uncertainty and failure were upside down or backwards. My assumptions about trail riding were just as inverted. Chapter Five, assessing risk horses and survival mode. After my first two sessions with Bruce, I began taking a variety of individual clients, not the leadership team, to work with him. Over the next several months, I wasn't even remotely ready to consider getting back on a horse again, but I was still hanging out with my friends who had horses also Tammy Tappan, owner of equestrian artist at Tryon international Equestrian Center had asked me to include my pottery in her gallery. Her horse paintings had stopped me in my tracks the first time I saw them. Every time I walked into her gallery, I could feel the familiar tug of wanting to be with horses. Trips to the gallery offered me more excuses for going to the center more than once. Tammy offered to take me on a trail ride with her horses, and more than once, I told her I was not ready. The more I was exposed to the horse world, the more I heard from lifetime horsemen and women about life with horses. Perhaps the most common phrase I heard in this phase of my recovery was this, I've been injured more times than I can count, while feeling somewhat vindicated about my own accident, this dawning awareness did little to build my confidence about ever riding again. Instead, I started learning more about horses, trail rides, and the risk I inadvertently took to take the lead on a trail ride. My inverted assumptions about trail riding, albeit innocent, started with ignorance around the mind of a horse and ended with naivety about the complications of taking a fight, flight freeze animal out for a stroll through the woods. It's never just a stroll for the horse. Riding horses has been done by humans for 1000s of years, yet when you stop to think about it, riding horses should not be possible.

00:26:01.680 --> 00:27:35.778
We are getting on the back of a huge animal and asking it to give its body over to our direction in the pecking order of life, horses are prey. Humans are predators. So the prey animal is allowing a predator to get on its back, usually after throwing a saddle up there, which is made of a dead animal, an animal we have already killed, yet somehow, mankind has learned to work with these magnificent animals over the centuries. Seeing the world through the eyes of a horse has helped me understand the survival instincts of life while humans are predators in the big picture pecking order, we are both prey and predator in our own lives. Anyone who has ever felt the hair on their neck prickle while walking in a big city or felt the glare of an angry boss knows the feeling of being prey. Learning to develop trust with a horse has helped me understand myself so much better, and it's transformed my understanding of the human survival brain because of who they are. Horses are profound teachers, if we are willing to give ourselves over to learn to vent from them, as Dr Alan J Hamilton, MD, says, In Zen Mind, send horse the science of spirituality and working with horses, the reason the horse can become such a gifted teacher for us is because he does not need an inner voice. He doesn't think in words at all. He feels he experiences the simple energy of his emotional state of being.

00:27:31.999 --> 00:28:30.499
More than 30 million years of evolutionary pressure have turned the horse into the quintessential prey animal, rather than using words or vocalization to communicate sounds that help the predator, predator pinpoint his prey, horses learn instead how not to talk, to make sounds and how to make sense of being not thinking, horses infuse emotional meaning into body movement. They pour this vital emotional energy, chi into every gesture and glance, lending them the nuances of tone, accent and value by sensitizing themselves to Qi, horses can not only convey the meaning of what they want to share with other members of the herd, but can also feel the palpably sharp energy emitting from A stalking predators eyes locked intently on its prey. Evolution has driven equids to the farthest limits of non verbal right sided brain function out on the trail.

00:28:30.618 --> 00:31:47.919
These sensitive sensitivities are amplified. Now you have a prey animal carrying a predator into the wilderness. The lead horse has the most responsibility its large eyes and huge nostrils are always on guard for danger out in front and from the sides. The horse in the back tunes in for threats from the rear, the horses in the middle just focus on what the lead and trailing horses communicate the pressure is high, especially for the flight animal. Should an event happen, and events often happen. It's entirely possible for both human and horse to be scared, unexpected gunfire, a snake slithering, or a pack of dogs challenging the path might or might not send chills down a human spine. However, the horse will always have his survival instincts on high alert. The horse might take off running, he might rear up, he might decide to suddenly roll back, the other way, he might buck. He might just jump to the side. He might stand still. It's best if he stands still. Yet even when he's standing still, a fearful horse radiates with energy. A rider can feel that Moreover, any sudden dancing or prancing of a nervous horse can elevate the unprepared riders fear to extreme levels. Now, the horse has to contend with whatever is happening out there and what is happening up there on its back, the place where a cougar might drop in an ambush. Here's the one thing a horse will never conclude. That he's the cause of the fear on the in the predator on his back. It's our job as his rider and leader to be the responsible one and manage not hide and not pretend away our fear. Horses are masters at reading incongruity, hiding feelings of any sort, telegraphs nothing but trouble for an animal who stays alive by reading intent? Remember my story of coiling the Lariat the horse began running and then kicking and then bucking because I was trying to look calm, cool and collected while my inner turmoil escalated, the horse felt the mismatch. She stopped her antics when I quit pretending, when I started working through the problem, step by step, moment by moment, my inner turmoil melted away, and the horse turned and calmly watched me coil the rope when I decided to go out on the trail in the lead on a horse I had ridden only once. My starting assumption was that trail riding was nothing compared to getting a horse to perform something far more advanced. My other assumption was that getting on the horse mattered more than anything else more on that later, growing up going to the rodeo, I watched horses do all kinds of specialized activities, such as exploding out of a gate to catch a calf or running around the barrels. The 2018 World Equestrian Games were hell near where I live, and I watched people with their horses do all kinds of advanced skills, such as jumping over six foot fences, dressage, which looks like horse dancing to me, and racing with carts. It all looked dangerous and thrilling at the same time, I was both impressed and keenly aware that I knew nothing about how to get a horse to do any of those things, however, trail riding that I could do, or so I thought, on the surface, it looks like anyone can do it.

00:31:48.278 --> 00:32:49.838
However, any true horse person will tell you nothing could be further from the truth. Unlike working in an arena where there's a defined space and a clear job for the horse to do, the trail offers pressure and uncertainty whether the unexpected will be unmanageable or not is yet to be seen. In fact, in many ways, trail riding is the most dangerous of horse activities, especially if the horse and human are not prepared. Remember, anything can happen out there, deer crashing through the trees, pigs rolling in the mud, snakes crossing the path, bicycles and motorcycles sharing the trail, crossing streams, uncertain footing, loggers cutting down trees, going out on the trail can either be a house of horrors or a series of opportunities to learn and grow. Later, I would come to realize what Bruce was saying. At this point, I just wanted to avoid the House of Horrors. Many people who own horses share the same belief I did about the difference between performance riding and trail riding. They say it's just trail riding, followed by the deadly thought, how hard can it be?

00:32:50.858 --> 00:33:30.679
Warwick Schiller, professional horse trainer, compared trail riding to having the right tools to fix a blown tire on the horse trailer in this Facebook post, it's fixing the bone tire, quite a simple process, provided that you, before you left home, you had the right size socket breaker bar, a jiffy jack and a fully inflated spare. I often get asked, What would you do when out riding on a narrow trail and your horse gets upset and there's no place to circle him to get under control? My answer is, usually just put a little bend in his body. And if all of the training I have done at home is solid, he will come back down and relax. Most times.

00:33:26.838 --> 00:34:08.938
The reply I get after that is that wouldn't work with my horse. He won't even relax when I do that at home. About this time, I usually suggest they talk to the guy with the gun, the guy with the gun, they ask, yes, the guy with the gun pointed at you Who forced you to take an unprepared horse out on a narrow trail, usually about this time they start to figure out that maybe that wasn't the best situation to put their horse in. I've sometimes felt bad for pointing out that maybe their horse isn't ready for trail riding. There's a buck brendam quote that gets around social media that goes something along the lines of some trail riders say they don't need that fancy arena stuff. They just want to trail ride. They just want to die out among the trees.

00:34:09.838 --> 00:34:28.278
Trail riding is like going out on a freeway with your car. It may be okay to drive around the pasture or panic at home in a car that's not safe. Maybe the brakes are iffy or the steering is not so good, but when you get out where you may have to take some evasive action to circumvent situations that are out of control, it's a really good idea to be prepared.

00:34:28.998 --> 00:35:11.278
Clearly, trail riding is no walk in the park. Both humans and horses must prepare themselves for the pressure and uncertainty they will face. Yet, with all this survival instinct in play, horses do learn to be safe on the trail. The folks who offer public trail rides prepare their horses with the mental tools to handle the unexpected while the unexpected can happen and it does, they've developed the tools to handle the pressures, uncertainty and fear. They don't just put any rider on any horse in the leaf. We have. Survival mode too. So it was here in the lead where I discovered that I was the one lacking mental tools. Survival Mode took over.

00:35:06.239 --> 00:35:52.418
Fear flooded my system. I was now the predator on the back of a horse. It never dawned on the horse that he was the source of my fear. As with any endeavor, horseback riding has two tracks, the skills of the activity, and the ability to bring those skills to bear under pressure, I was completely unaware of the gap between my skills and the situation I had gotten myself into. I was also unconsciously operating on two false sets of beliefs, one about the safety of trail riding, and the other about the nature of horses. The modern world, with all its progress, has divested us from nature and the nature of horses.

00:35:48.219 --> 00:36:06.958
It's taken us away from our own nature. For most of human history, horses were our primary mode of transportation. Knowing how to care for them, communicate with them and work with them was an essential part of life. With the advent of the car, horses hadn't gone away.

00:36:07.438 --> 00:36:18.719
However, for most people today, it's possible to live a full life without ever encountering a horse. Today, we interact more with machines than we do nature.

00:36:15.179 --> 00:36:29.539
Machines are logical. They have rules and procedures that ensure they work as we want them, we push a button and get an immediate response. Not so with nature and not so with horses.

00:36:25.579 --> 00:36:37.518
When I pulled back on the reins that day, I expected it to be like hitting the brake on my car or my bicycle. He should stop.

00:36:32.418 --> 00:36:49.838
He went faster when he did the opposite of what my rule said he should do. I had no other way to meet the moment I lost my balance, both literally and internally. As I shared my story with many people, my basic premise for the accident was I didn't know how to stop a horse.

00:36:50.559 --> 00:37:00.898
Most riders agreed, and they all had a method to stop a horse, do this, that or the other thing, with the reins and with your legs and the horse will stop.

00:36:57.099 --> 00:37:17.099
There is a skill to stopping a horse, especially one that is running faster than the rider wants. Bruce's diagnosis was different in his way of thinking. The pressure of the situation was greater than my mental tools.

00:37:12.719 --> 00:37:22.219
The question was not whether I had the skill to stop the horse.

00:37:17.099 --> 00:38:46.898
The question was whether I could use the skill under pressure. Of course, as he shared this theory, I kept thinking, but seriously, how do you stop a horse? My controlling mindset was sure the answer was in the reins. What I did not know yet was that you can stop a horse with nothing more than a clear mental picture and energy finding the heat, growing up, we cooked hot dogs and s'mores over the campfire almost every weekend. Getting too close to the fire taught me about getting burned. There was a just right place to stand where I could cook a hot dog or marshmallow without cooking myself. Get too far away, and nothing got cooked. Get too close, and it was me that got cooked, depending on the wind, that just right place could change and move. Finding the safe zone was a constant balancing act that required my attention. Getting burned can be a metaphor for more than touching a hot stove or getting too close to a real fire. We humans have well developed systems to keep us away from things that hurt. In my year of recovery after my horse fall, I tried to find the just right place to stand. My mind provided both the fire and the solace. Sometimes it fed me sensible thoughts. More often it fired noisy thoughts like bullets from a gun. You were overconfident, you will never get it. It was a freak accident that will never happen again.

00:38:47.079 --> 00:38:51.159
You just need better skills. You would be crazy to write again.

00:38:52.838 --> 00:38:55.838
Notice how those thoughts careened between both extremes.

00:38:56.918 --> 00:41:16.259
They either pulled me into the fire or kept me outside of the fire. Productive learning and growth could not happen when there was no heat or too much heat. None of these thoughts chose the path of productive discomfort. Nowhere did I ask, How can I use the heat to gain traction? Instead, my thoughts kept me spinning my wheels rushing to land on an answer that would stop the heat and take away my discomfort. What was most unsettling was the gap between what I believed I could do and what my accident revealed. Like a dog with a bone, my mind gnawed at the gap, wondering what moves I should have made with my hands, my seat, my legs, to completely mix my metaphors, I was barking up the wrong tree. The problem was not in my skills, although my skills needed improvement. The problem was in my relationship with pressure. What I've been uncovering is the pressure gap, much richer and scarier territory, the tangible territory of the skill gap is so alluring Sports. Offers excellent illustrations of the skill gap in basketball, a player might hit a certain percentage of shots in scrimmage games and not even come close to the same rate in a big game. A swimmer might get a certain time every day in practice and fall short under the pressure of the meet. A tennis player might be able to ace every serve in practice and yet end up double faulting in the tournament in every case, they have the skills to perform in the low level situations, increase the pressure and they can't perform at the same level. In other words, they are not bringing their level of skills to bear when it counts. For me, it's as if my skills go offline when I need the most in the heat of the fire, there's no time to read the rule book. The only thing that matters is the mental tools I bring to the situation. Those tools are the gateway to effectively managing my skills and embracing the discomfort of pressure. If my tools are not up to the task, my skills lie behind a wall of fear considering my choices, the groundwork with the horses introduced a novel perspective on what was needed to get back on the horse. With this new vantage point, it wasn't just a matter of getting back on or not, there were three options.

00:41:17.338 --> 00:41:56.378
Number one, I could choose to never ride again, a logical choice, as I was now 60 and I didn't want to risk another injury. Number two, I could take writing lessons, the mainstream choice, which would educate me on the rules and skills of acquitation. And number three, I could work on my mental tools, the messy choice guaranteed to be full of pressure, uncertainty and failure. Choices one and two offer two sides of the risk tight rope when assessing risk, one side is risk avoidant. The other side is risk dismissive.

00:41:52.298 --> 00:41:59.619
In my credit training program, we had to teach aspiring bankers to see the full picture of risk.

00:42:00.458 --> 00:42:53.498
Those with risk avoidant tendency had a difficult time making lending decisions. They felt much safer leaving the bank's money in the bank, and they may very well have had some of their own money stuffed in mattresses like their grandparents had. Those with a risk dismissive tendency minimized the genuine risks in the deal. Every deal looked good to them because they only saw the money making potential while being blind to the many ways the loan could go sour. And these same trainees seemed to consistently have the story of the one that got away. We wanted our bankers to walk the tightrope, which meant training them to see and mitigate risk while recognizing when that risk was too much for the bank to take, to walk away would put me in the risk avoidant camp, for which there were plenty of good reasons. However, I knew myself well enough to know I would feel like I let my fears win.

00:42:54.759 --> 00:44:39.079
Choosing to take riding lessons that focused strictly on riding skills seemed to minimize the genuine danger I was beginning to see in horseback riding, while I would become a more skilled rider, what good would my skills have been if I could not access them under pressure of a horse that was choosing to act like a horse rather than like a machine? I couldn't decide while working with horses on the ground was slightly intriguing. I still carried the belief that getting on was the only interesting part the day of my accident, I remember going through the motions of brushing the horse, putting on the saddle and putting on the bridle, focusing almost strictly on the goal of riding the horse. In fact, I was so excited about being on a horse again, I stopped and took a picture looking down on his head. That was about 15 minutes before my faithful thought this is sort of boring. In my two sessions with Bruce, I was shown the messy alternative to truly change. I would have to feel the pressure and go deep to my core. A part of me knew it would be like shaking up my internal snow globe. There was no telling where things would land. What I wanted instead was a set of rules and steps. Bruce kept talking about my tools, listening, hearing, patience, timing, feel, problem solving and other actions in the unseen territory. My beliefs were acting like a heat shield, keeping his methods at bay. I was speaking one set of beliefs while showing a contradictory set of beliefs. Went under pressure while I espoused giving up perfection. I was totally seeking perfection while I coach people and myself that beating ourselves up avoids change.

00:44:34.998 --> 00:45:22.099
Under pressure of getting it right with the horses, I beat myself up while I wrote eloquent articles about the value of mistakes, I still cringed when I made a mistake, these old beliefs were not living in my head. They were living in my bones. They were like computer code, the rules running my every action at. Extricating myself from them was not merely a matter of changing my mind, only the heat of pressure would burn them out of my cells, I had little or no ability to apply my knowledge under pressure, while my head was attempting to apply its knowledge, the beliefs in my bones were directing my actions.

00:45:17.099 --> 00:45:36.199
Yet in that first year, I kept coming back to Bruce with clients, me on the outside, them in the fire, looking back on it, I believe it was to help them learn what I thought I already knew. Yes, I had knowledge of the concepts Bruce was sharing.

00:45:32.838 --> 00:45:47.079
I had been teaching many of them for years. Plus, I was thrilled with the experiential aspect of working with live animals in a somewhat unpredictable environment, but my old belief still helped me in their prison.

00:45:47.918 --> 00:45:57.759
I was still thinking of the work as a finite set of lessons rather than infinite possibilities. Remember the example with the pressure gap.

00:45:53.918 --> 00:47:00.719
Just because we can walk on a 12 inch beam on the ground doesn't mean we can walk the same path when the beam is elevated, even four or five feet off the ground, just because we can talk doesn't mean we can be coherent when we are in front of people whose opinions matter to us and the stakes are high, the consequences are higher. I had been walking on a 12 inch beam on the ground. It was safe distance. My pressure threshold was about 12 inches high. At this distance, I could throw logs on the fire of knowledge without ever truly feeling the heat. I spent a little more than a year skipping along my safe 12 inch beam away from danger, but no closer to deciding whether to get back on a horse. 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.

00:46:57.159 --> 00:47:09.958
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.

00:47:10.498 --> 00:47:13.739
Now, I hope you go and do something very fun today. You.