May 2, 2025
#89 Dancing the Tightrope: Ch 12 & 13: The Froth is My Friend and The Art of Living
This episode includes Dancing the Tightrope Chapters Twelve The Froth is My Friend and Thirteen The Art of Living. These chapters mark a turning point in my journey of making friends with pressure. To this day, I still find it difficult to explain how different this approach to pressure – and to life – is from the typical approach espoused in high performance coaching elsewhere. Rereading these two chapters several years later, I’m still pleased with how well these two chapters explain the “pressure as a catalyst” approach. However, it’s dang near impossible to understand it if you haven’t experienced it.
The best analogy I’ve come up with is what I call the “fish story.” Fish don’t know they live in water. Water is all they know. On the other hand, dolphins are aware of world of water and of course they are aware of air, since they must surface to breathe. Learning about the unseen forces that impacted the way I dealt with pressure was a little like being a fish who discovered there was a whole different world. In order to break the surface and breathe the air of life., I had to ask myself some tough questions along the way.
These two chapters break down the distinction between pressure and the thing causing the pressure, and also those tough questions, which I believe apply to anyone seeking the signal of a genuine life amidst the noise of the modern world.
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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 Unleash Podcast. I'm Lynn Carnes, your host, and in this series, I am your reader.
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This episode includes dancing the tightrope. Chapters 12, the froth is my friend, and 13, The Art of Living. These chapters mark a turning point in my journey of making friends with pressure. To this day, I still find it difficult to explain how different this approach to pressure and to life is from the typical approach espoused in High Performance Coaching elsewhere, rereading these two chapters several years later, I'm still pleased with how well these two chapters explain the pressure as a catalyst approach.
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However, it is dang near impossible to understand if you haven't experienced it. The best analogy I've come up with is what I call the fish story. Fish don't know they live in water.
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Water is all they know. On the other hand, dolphins are aware of the world of water, and of course, they are also aware of air, since they must surface to breathe, learning about the unseen forces that impacted the way I dealt with pressure was a little like being a fish who discovered there was a whole different world in order to break the surface and breathe the air of life, I had to ask myself some tough questions along The way. These two chapters break down the distinction between pressure and the thing causing the pressure, and also those tough questions I mentioned before, which I believe apply to anyone seeking the signal of a genuine life admits the noise of the modern world. I hope you enjoy these two chapters of dancing the tightrope, and as always, please share this with your friends or colleagues that you think might find it interesting or informative for them, rate it on the podcast platform and so forth, so that we can get the word out. I really appreciate you listening to these chapters.
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Chapter 12, the froth is my friend, the healing nature of the heat through these different moments of truth, I became aware that the tiny shifts I had been making for the past two and a half years were definitely changing my response to pressure. It's not as if I suddenly was a totally new person. I didn't always reach for my tools. I still had plenty of moments where I set my energy to the flywheel of my rules, seeking to avoid the mistake and prove myself. However, more of me was shining through, especially in moments of pressure. People's world felt like it had less of a hold on my soul. Mistakes did not trigger me as often or as deeply when I felt my negative positive pole fire up, I tuned into the heat, welcoming it as of transformational force. Fire burns and it also cooks. Fire destroys and it also liberates.
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Fire transforms wood to ash and ash to soil and soil to plants, and plants to food. Fire is death. Fire is life. Fire became my metaphor for pressure. We humans have a complex relationship with fire. One of the first survival skills, one living off the land, must have is the ability to build a fire, the flames and heat not only offer warmth and a means by which to cook a meal in the wilderness, fire offers protection from visitors in the night who might mean us harm. On the other hand, fire unleashed decimates everything in its path we've seen out of control.
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Forest fires raged through 1000s of acres and through towns and neighborhoods. Even then, fire offers a fresh start. In the early years of the national park system, fire was deemed universally bad, and fire suppression became official policy. Both man made and fires caused naturally by lightning were put out with the assumption that fire caused only harm. Over the years, the National Park Service began to realize that fire was actually a natural event, and it had a role in clearing underbrush and dead vegetation, opening certain types of seeds, creating a fresh start for many plants and wildlife, and otherwise cultivating a healthy forest.
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Our human reaction to help actually interfered with nature's way. Changing the understanding of the role of fire in a healthy forest and planet. Changed the response to fire. Official policy changed to account for the need for fire to burn in order for a forest to remain healthy. Now I was a year into writing lessons and two and a half. Half years past my accident, the horses, with the guidance of Bruce and Lynn, were showing me more distinctions about balance, much like the National Park Service, understanding that man's interference created an imbalance that damaged nature, I was discovering that many of the imbalances within me and around me could be changed. I had more choices than I had seen before.
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Ironically, I had an exchange with someone I barely knew, somewhere in this time frame, she had heard about my accident and knew I was relearning how to ride. We got around to talking about our work and hobbies and her love of horses, and at some point she looked at me and said, Wow, you do a lot? How can you get good at any of those things?
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Her question took me back at first. After all, I'm the coach who tells people that focus is critical, then something crucial hit me and I said, I'm not really doing a bunch of things.
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I'm not rowing or throwing pottery or coaching or skiing or writing or painting, I'm doing one thing. I'm working on myself under pressure. What I didn't say was as important as what I said I didn't say. I'm learning to stop a horse, or I'm learning how to ride without mistakes, or even I'm learning to deal with my fears. Looking back on it, this exchange fell into the adage, be careful what you wish for. You just may get it. I didn't know it yet, but I would come to believe the accident was one of the best things that ever happened to me. The past two and a half years prepared me for the heat of 2020 as it invited me to a roaring bonfire with the potential to burn off the underbrush of my old rules, beliefs and assumptions. The invitation was not engraved, nope. This invitation came in the form of pressure from every direction, with lots of opportunities to make mistakes, to fail, to beat myself up and to otherwise perpetuate my rules or I could reach for my tools.
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The next six to eight months, I faced pressure on every front, just as the world was about to be shut down with the COVID 19 pandemic, my dad left this earth for his eternal journey, while I continued to work with horses and challenges arose in every domain, from family to my coaching practice, to my water skiing and my art. Every type of pressure brought the potential to either crush or elevate me.
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One core insight gave me the freedom to welcome the heat.
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Pressure is a catalyst, not a test. All the complexity of the past two and a half years boiled down to turning one huge assumption on its head, and like wood blocks in a game of Jenga, a whole cascade of old assumptions and beliefs came tumbling down after. Pressure is not a test. Pressure is a catalyst. Pressure is the leverage that brings me closer to my true nature. My old way took me out of the heat as a way to prepare for the heat, whether in my home or at a retreat, I meditated, journaled, reflected and worked on my skills. All of these methods are excellent ways to prepare for pressure.
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However, I've learned something essential on this pressure journey, nothing substitutes for the choices I make while under pressure. My new way was to turn into the pressure as the way I would learn, reach for my tools and keep recalibrating. In other words, the heat of pressure offers the opportunity to burn off the armor of my old patterns, beliefs, assumptions and discover new possibilities.
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It's not a test to ace. Pressure is the catalyst for learning, growing and becoming. Pressure elevates me if I stay present and choose to welcome it.
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However, pressure creates discomfort, a quote usually attributed to Victor Frankel says, between stimulants and response, there is a space, and that space is our power to choose our response, and our response lies our growth and our freedom the world of choice happens in that discomforting space, a tiny little moment in time when I can reach for my tools or revert to the flywheel of my mistake cycle, the moment I feel pressure, whether it's a one or 10 on a scale of one to 10, I'm in the froth. The level of discomfort doesn't matter. My automatic, robotic response is to make the discomfort go away.
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It's not necessary for me to consciously think mistake for the robot to run me. It takes effort to take controls from the robot. No longer did I have to think of things happening to me with this insight. I could see pressure and things not going my way as happening for me. Then the Jenga block started falling away. I. The first block to fall was my story about the physical sensation of pressure. When Bruce said on the very first day, it's not the horse, it's the pressure created by the horse, I was confused. I thought, of course, it's the horse. Can't you see? He's right there, either doing or not doing what I've asked him to do. He can kick me, he can bite me, and he can do nothing when I want him to do something. Bruce said the same about every kind of pressure. It's not the boss, it's the pressure created by the boss. It's not the problem, it's the pressure created by the problem. It's not the traffic jam, it's the pressure created by the traffic jam. Now I saw it. No, I felt it differently.
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It's not the horse. It's the feeling I get inside when the horse doesn't do what I ask him to do. It's not the boss. It's the feeling I get inside when the boss says, We need to talk about your performance. It's not the problem, it's the feeling I get inside when the problem interferes with things going smoothly. It's not the traffic jam, it's the feeling I get inside when the traffic jam makes me late. The pressures are endless, and so are the stories I tell about them. Pressure evokes the emotions that act like glue holding the past in place. When the old emotions rise to the surface, I can either do the same thing I have always done, or I can choose a new story, a new action, a different way of being. In other words, pressure is a solvent that loosens the glue of the emotions. It's like pressure opens a portal to my personal change. Pressure creates the opportunity to tell a new story.
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The story I had been telling about the feeling was the thing that was off. The feeling was not a test. It was a signal.
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When I label the feeling as anxiety, avoidance appeared to be my only option. When I labeled the feeling as a signal, it opened my curiosity to listen, discover and reach for my tools and ask the pivotal question, what's next? Perhaps I was coming someone who could run into the fire. Firefighters run into the blaze, and they can do so because they have the tools to fight the fire. The firefighters have blankets that shield them from the heat, especially if the fire overtakes them. However, they only deploy the blanket when the heat of the fire is greater than their tools to extinguish the fire. My rules are like my own personal firefighter blanket, shielding me from the heat, but if I deploy that armor all the time, I lose the benefit of the heat, its ability to transform me. I could let my rules become the last resort, not the first resort. The rest of the blocks were simply a shift in my story.
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New Story pressure is the catalyst. Old story. Pressure is a test. New Story. The feeling means I have something to learn.
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Old story, the feeling means I'm making a mistake. New Story.
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When something happens that looks like a problem or a challenge, I welcome it because the heat will allow me to rewrite the past, old story.
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When something happens that looks like a problem or a challenge, I want it to go away.
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Rush through steps to get to the end. New Story, I keep the portal open by assuming positive intent. Whatever is happening is happening for me, not to me. Old story, I close the portal when I want to prove myself to make whatever is happening to me stop. New Story, the source of the pressure can tell me what to do, when to do, and how to do in the present moment. Old story, I have the answers for what to do in the present moment. New Story, play the game of warmer, colder, to rebalance my negative positive pole, old story, over and under, react to get to the end new story. Build trust and connection through listening and give and take. Seek power with not power over and under. Old story, command and control. Seek either power over or power under. New Story, break the picture down to smaller and smaller frames, so that in doing the work, I'm unleashing my tools. Old story rush to get to the end so I could feel good about myself. New Story. The point of all of this is to build more inner capacity. Old story the point of all of this is to allow the end product to define me. New story problems are a gift designed to unleash the true me. Old story problems are to be avoided because they reveal the less than perfect parts about me. I. New Story pressure elevates me. Old story pressure crushes me. Perception may be one of our most powerful tools. The story I tell about what I observe, matters as much, if not more, than the facts in front of me. Nothing is personal. Proving myself only builds more armor. If I'm building more inner capacity, I need to give up the need for certainty, control and answers.
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Rules are automatic, tools are fluid. My opportunity to raise my pressure threshold only happened when things didn't go as planned. Now I see mistakes as a key to open a doorway to another room. I can choose to enter the doorway if I want. I can also choose to stay right where I am. Michelangelo said Beauty is the purgation of superfluities. Every block of stone has a statue inside of it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. So it is with tools. They are unleashed. They are sculpted.
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They appear when the rules get in the way. The new dimension offers discomfort, upheaval and pokes holes in my understanding of the world. It reveals what I thought to be true might not be true, the new dimension chips away the imposed rules of my conditioning to unleashed my tools. Perhaps an even better analogy is how diamonds are formed with the heat and pressure the tools are unleashed with heat and pressure. For some reason, I've always thought of the problems at work as balls.
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Perhaps it's because cliches like the balls in your court, or keep your eye on the ball, or it's a whole different ball game. Or my least favorite, you dropped the ball when driving home after my first ride with Marley, I realized I was in a whole different ball game. This was so different, it was like another room or doorway to another dimension. Bruce loved adding pressure and throwing problems at me, because it was in solving those problems under pressure that I would become. I had always thought that becoming happened in practice and performing under pressure proved it. He turned that idea on its head. Life is the canvas on which we become through the problems we face. In keeping with my ball analogy, this new dimension is like living in a world with two different kinds of ball machines. Just for the sake of this illustration picture, a ball throwing machine sending tennis balls, baseballs and softballs at you. The machine doesn't have many settings, so the balls will come in three sizes and in three speeds, always from the same direction as the machine. With a little bit of time and practice, you will get very good at catching those balls. When the machine is set on low and a softball shoots out of the machine, you would have an easy time catching it. When the machine is really cranked up and about to send a baseball your way, you might grab a glove to catch it. Over time, you will know every signal those balls send. The sound of a tennis ball versus a baseball will land on your skilled ears. Your fingers will close differently on a softball versus a baseball. With enough practice, you will be so good at catching those balls that you will be able to do it subconsciously. You've come to know the pattern, and have developed your own pattern for success. Catching those balls will become an automatic skill.
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You will know how to catch them each and every time, because you have learned a rule for that, for the balls that slip by, you've developed a thick skin, sort of like an armor, the balls you don't catch never touch you.
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You have 1000s, if not millions, of rules that tell you how to automatically deal with the situations that push your buttons. By now, those rules are unconscious. You just do them whether they work or not.
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Now, imagine a world of infinite balls coming at you. Instead of three variations, the types of balls are limitless. Imagine everything from a giant blow up beach ball to a tiny ball as thin as a bubble machine might make. It's a world of millions of balls and millions of possibilities and combinations.
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In this new world, not only are the types of balls endless, but so are the speeds. They could be coming blindingly fast, or they may float just out of reach.
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They may change speed in the middle of the path. In fact, they could even change their path. The balls in this second world can come from anywhere at any time, because you never know where they are coming from, or when they are coming, or how fast they are coming, or even whether they will pop if you grab them too hard or hurt if you don't have a glove, you will respond to the balls in this world in a totally new way.
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Rather than using your unconscious rules, you will need to be much more aware. You will have to tune in and pay attention. Question so you can catch the balls you want to catch and allow the others to drop by the wayside. In this new world, tools help you much more than rules. You will always be learning. You will drop balls, make mistakes and face rejection. As you shed your rules, you will fail, and your mistakes and failures will build your tools and expand your repertoire, the options are unlimited, as long as you keep learning. Rules are automatic, tools are fluid. When we face pressure, our first choice is whether to react, ie rules or respond. Tools. Rules allow us to react, and sometimes that is exactly what is needed. Tools allow us to respond in the present moment to precisely what is needed in that moment.
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Reaching for our tools opens up our repertoire and gives us something better to do than build more armor. When unexpected things get thrown at us and uncertainty bills and things are not going according to plan, and people are not behaving in beneficial ways.
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Rules tend to miss the mark because they were designed for a different time and different circumstance. That's when we need our tools to solve the problem. Tools allow you to solve problems you've never seen before and create new solutions for old problems where our rules have failed us. Chapter 13, the art of living, pulling it together, working with Bruce's system over the past couple of years offered a maddening paradox. I had answers, while at the same time, I had no answers.
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From the minute he started describing his system in the first phone call, I could track with what he described. He was a practical scientist sharing what he had discovered empirically over the years. So when we went through the pieces, they lined up with my experience and that of the brain science dealing with the survival mode of mammals, yet my insight that pressure is the catalyst, not a test, did not line up with the experience of the clients. I brought to work with Bruce. Time after time, I brought them to Camden for a day long session outdoors with the horses, excited for them to experience, working on fear, being better under pressure, and learning to develop trust and connection.
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Time after time. I left the session hearing Bruce say the same things over and over again.
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I thought, When will he ever say something new? Time after time, the clients tell me some version of the same thing. It felt like I was in a test. I can tell there's a system there, and if I could just figure out the system, then I would be able to give him the right answers they wanted definitions such as picture, brain, negative, positive, pole, mental tools and conduit. They wanted instructions on how to tie a halter and work with a lead rope and understand the inner workings of a Lariat. Initially, I explained away their frustration is part of Bruce's method. I believed it was a one off, nothing to worry about.
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However, I recalled a lesson from many years before the teacher and one of my facilitator training sessions gave some guidance to those of us who were struggling to decipher which feedback we should ignore and which to accept. He said, Look, if one person calls you a horse's ass.
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It's probably about them. If six people call you a horse's ass, it's time to saddle up. Given that we were up to six clients struggling with the same belief about the pressure test, I realized it was time for me to saddle up, not withstanding the fact that Bruce would not let me saddle up for the longest time.
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One day with a client having his first session. We started, as always, with a porch session. I had brought my iPad and pencil to take notes. Bruce went through the same spiel he had done many times before. Instead of internally bemoaning the repetition, I listened with the ears of a beginner. Soon, my pen started moving as a picture began to emerge on the tablet.
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Over the next hour or so, the following drawing came together.
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Now for the listener, I'm going to describe this drawing, but I'm also going to offer that I can send this and the final drawing to you if you send me an email at lan@landcarnes.com it's also published in my book. But for those listening, imagine a picture with a triangle on the bottom and an upside down, upside down triangle above it in the middle, at the point where those two triangles come together, is the idea of learning in the froth below that I could take the path that makes me stronger. On the bottom so things like Bruce talked about with tools, balancing your poles, learning to live instead of exist, on the top of it at the choice point, which that middle section represents. The choice point is the idea of, I can think I'm making a mistake.
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I can be. Myself up. I can let my past interfere. I can let the pressure crush me. And the on this side, I'm existing. So the big message on the bottom half of the pyramid, I can live, or on the top half of the pyramid, I can exist. And there's a lot of detail around this thing as it came together, but it really showed me what Bruce was trying to teach in this picture. Back to the book. Finally, I had the beginnings of a picture of what I had been experiencing in this work, the quest to be perfect.
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Diagrammed at the top, the point of choice in the middle, offering a moment of truth to exist or live. The bottom depicting me living from my true center, Bruce's method put us through the bottom over and over again. Seeing it on paper made me welcome the agitation all the more. What really stood out on this drawing were three things, the art of living, exist or live. There it was drawn by my own hand. The reason I kept coming back, even though Bruce had been so slow to put me on the horse, I was chasing the option to live, to be fully alive while I was alive, the tools are as natural as the air we breathe. Curiosity, feel, timing, patience, discipline, observation, listening, hearing.
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I can imagine one of my ancestors living in the pre modern age. Perhaps he knew how to set a trap to catch dinner or gather fur for a coat, living off the land. He didn't have Google to tell him where to find the animals. He watched, he waited, he discovered. He learned he felt when his negative pull went up. It might have been because he realized that the trap had failed, or he had chosen the wrong place, or he was being watched. He followed his instincts with a well developed sense of the subtle cues of nature, he knew how to play the game of warmer colder until he got it right.
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The same was true for those growing and gathering food.
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Where did the plants grow the best? When was the right time to plant? What kind of soil was needed? Knowledge of the land and the seasons was passed from one generation to the next, and that knowledge was amplified in each generation until the dawn of the modern age. I'm old enough to remember our milk being delivered in glass bottles and our diapers being cloth held together with safety pins when we left the house in our old cars, our parents usually had no way to contact us until we came back home. We got our news once or twice a day and then went out to play until dark. Now Dang, I'm starting to sound like an old timer. Remember the good old days? No, I'm not going to say we want miles and miles to school and deep drifts of snow, but the modern age that was supposed to make our lives simpler and easier has taken us away from our nature. We've outsourced almost every aspect of daily living that our ancestors did with their own hands. Grocery stores have replaced our gardens, and cars have replaced our horses for the past several 1000 years, until about 100 years ago, horses were the primary form of transportation. A family without a horse suffered huge disadvantages in living, much less surviving in daily life.
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Living in the natural world offers pressures that are often more consequential than the pressures of modern living.
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Nature's world demands that we respect it. The ocean, forest and plains don't care if we are not up to the pressures of the waves, weather and wind. In nature's world, we reach for our tools or die. Man's world perverts our natural resources to its own end. Survival Mode gets triggered in work settings, and our brains at the deepest level don't know the difference between the threat of death and the threat of not getting the next promotion. We do what we must to show others we deserve to be there and quell the homeless sequence, which goes something like this, I need this job. If something happens that threatens this job, I need to do everything in my power to keep this job, because if I lose it, I won't be able to pay my rent or buy my food. If I can't pay my rent, I will end up homeless, and then they will find me dead on the street in a dark, sad alley. We feel the pressure and take it the wrong way. 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.
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If pressure is a catalyst to unleash our true nature, we can truly live while we are alive.
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The chicken scratch drawing eventually evolved into this and again, for the listener, this is a finished, more graphically designed version of what I drew on my iPad that day, glad to send it to you if you send me an email. Lynn@lencarnes.com over the next couple of years, I began using this drawing with clients, both before and after.
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They worked with Bruce, the simple choice point in the middle offered a clear picture of the challenge they faced when the pressure got high. More important. Certainly the bottom half showed a path to becoming mentally stronger, rather than mentally scolded, quote, unquote, on the path of the mistake cycle. Research on breaking habits has taught us that stopping a behavior doesn't work. What Works is starting a new behavior. I can attest to this practice when I quit smoking many years ago, yes, I smoked. I began building a model airplane and needle pointing to give my antsy hands something better to do than reach for a cigarette. The mistake cycle may have bigger consequences than smoking. It consumes the mind with all the ways we are no good, permeating our very being.
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The what's next cycle offers an alternative. We don't have to fix the mistake cycle. We simply have to tune in to the agitation of pressure to propel our energy into the what's next flywheel.
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Again, in the book, there is a chart. It's called the growth type rope, and it shows the difference between these two cycles. And I'll send this to anyone who asks at Lynn atlancarnes.com, back to the book the five C's navigating the summer of 2020. Gave me many chances to turn into the heat.
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Having the picture of his method down on paper made a huge difference in being able to reach for my tools when the pressure was high. The diagram became a central piece in my coaching with clients, I learned more about using pressure as a catalyst as I began bringing these insights to my clients. In doing so, I recognized yet one more missing piece, or should I say, missing pieces, in some ways, the journey had come full circle, just because we could clearly see and understand the difference between reaching for rules versus tools did not mean we could do it consistently in that moment of choice, something else was at play, that something else was tipping the scales in favor of doing things the old way the rules still ruled.
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Something in my rules weighted the balance in choosing between tools and rules, especially when the pressure became greater than my mental tools. But how? Why?
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The key question when I'm in the froth, what resources do I need in order to reach for my tools?
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The answer was a paradox. I had to be aware of the choice.
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Indeed, self awareness anchored every choice. Yet under pressure, awareness was elusive.
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There was a direct correlation between my level of self awareness and my ability to reach for my tools under pressure. How deep was I willing to dig it's one thing to change the story in my conscious mind, and quite another to put that story into action when the pressure is intense, remember the rules are automatic. They live in the subconscious survival brain, the flywheel of the mistake cycle, spends with a lifetime of stored energy making the difficult choice in the heat of the moment requires a higher standard of awareness from me, or, should I say, a deeper standard. If I were to gain more internal fitness and capacity, I had to acknowledge what the horses were showing me about myself. Just because I was committed to change did not mean anything would truly change.
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Nope. Commitment may energize me to sign up for the gym after my New Year's resolution, but I need much more to stay after it.
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Commitment is just the first level. From the moment I first recognized that I needed more self awareness and in all the Wake Up Calls I had over the years. I mean, remember my first ambulance ride where I thought no one else could do my job. The question had always been, how deep Am I willing to go to find the truth of who I am, parsing what is true about me versus what is part of my armor feels scarier than it really is. The rules are born from fear, and they use fear like a perpetual motion machine. The armor of my rules is all about protection, and I would argue that some rules are necessary. Many years ago, when I took flying lessons, the rules of flying kept me safe. There was a checklist for everything from the pre flight to the starting the plane to how to recover from a stall. All of those rules or the product of other pilots, learning what works and doesn't when operating a vehicle that can fall from the sky. However, just following the rules doesn't make anyone a good pilot. Good judgment plays a critical role. The overconfident pilot who takes a plane up when the conditions are sketchy might discover the adage, it's a whole lot better to be on the ground wishing you were up there, then it is to be up there wishing you were on the ground. On the other hand, the under confident pilot who stays on the ground because of last lack of trust in him or herself to handle the inevitable surprises of flight is no pilot at all, unless we challenge.
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Change the hidden fears in the rules, we will use those fears to fix the fears without being aware that we are stuffing those fears in the basement of our inner world. Releasing my armor involves developing self awareness, no more fear hoarding self awareness involves a constant cycle of going ever deeper to clear the basement.
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Oh, musty fears that are no longer serving here's where the paradox comes in. Trying to develop self awareness alone is like standing in a bucket and trying to lift it up. The weight in the bucket and the strength of the person in the bucket offset each other and hold the bucket in place. The protective inner self will offset the seeking self, maintaining a sense of equilibrium, which of course, perpetuates the same old pattern. We need an outside mirror to help us see the truth of ourselves if we expect to bring our best to the journey.
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While I cannot be my own mirror, I can bring a willingness to learn about myself. Dancing the tightrope involves developing a fair bit of self awareness through five stages of self awareness. The five stages are commitment. I want the truth.
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How willing Am I to understand more about my inner self and my impact on others? We'll cover that in chapter 14. Curiosity.
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Seek the truth, what's in there, what's out there. CHAPTER 15, courage, face the truth. What will it take for me to face what's in there and what's out there? We'll cover that in chapter 16, congruence, show my truth. What will it take for me to own what's in there and what's out there? That will cover that in chapter 17, and clarity. Live my truth. How can I begin to unleash what's true about me, and how can I create the space for others to be true to themselves, we cover that in chapter 18, we can only allow others as much freedom as we allow ourselves. Armor locks us down. If we are locked down, we will lock down others, whether we mean to or not. We owe it to ourselves and our horses and others to open up to a dance where we each have a voice, where we give and take in a rich exchange of trust and connection. In my story about Diane, I went through all of these levels in short order.
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Initially, I had committed to that project because it was my job. That kind of commitment is actually compliance, by the way.
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When it became clear that I would have to look at myself, I bailed out until Diane committed suicide. The shock of her act, whether it was defiance or premature perfection, energized me to my core when I told Steve I was back in. It wasn't a small commitment. I was in with a capital I suddenly I wanted to know why.
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Curiosity. I was determined to walk through fire to learn what was driving me. Courage. I dropped some of my pretenses acknowledging what I didn't know, congruence. My inner eyes pierced through the opaqueness of my armor to know that Diane's fate would not be my own clarity. The many steps in a self awareness journey takes us through these levels over and over again, we can often recognize where we are by simply asking, Where am I not?
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Committed, curious, courageous, congruent and clear these five C's, or my steps into my basement took me across the summer of 2020 as I dove deeper into getting over my fear of having another accident like the one that set all of this in motion. 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.
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