#91: Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 16, 17 & 18; Courage; Congruence, and Clarity

Intro  00:02

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,

Lynn  00:19

welcome to the creative spirits unleashed Podcast. I'm Lynn Carnes, your host. This episode of the podcast is chapter 1617, and 18, dancing the tightrope, which is the last of the self awareness chapters, or as I call them, the C chapters. In these chapters, we cover courage, congruence and clarity, over and over again, I come back to these chapters to find what's missing when I find myself stuck. My favorite quote from the courage chapter is this one, the beautiful thing about welcoming pressure as a catalyst is that we no longer allow the end goal to define us. Winning the game is nice, but it's not the point. The point is the opportunity to cultivate our courage, or perhaps a better word, is to unleash our courage. End of quote I've even come to call the process of raising the pressure threshold courage in because we are building our courage. So I made it a verb from chapter 17 on congruence. I like this quote like a tangled ball of roots. Rules wind their way into our guidance system, blocking the pathways to our personal truth. The interference makes it very difficult to find our voice. And here's the strangest part of all this, we are not aware that our rules are interfering, because all of these rules have been with us for so long. They feel like they are a part of us as they direct us out of our awareness, our rules feel as if they are us. End of quote. This quote sums up chapter 18 pretty well. Clarity starts with removing that which does not belong, whether creating a simple picture for how my day is going, or a picture for the horse on a trail or a vision for my life, the art of subtraction makes room for what is real and true. I can only afford to remove my protective armor when I've come to own my true inner strength and acknowledged my true nature. End of quote. Now we are in nearing the end of the book. Next week, I'll share the last two chapters of dancing the tightrope. And because I tackle this project frame by frame, step by step, it's actually been fun. Hard to believe I dreaded it as always. I hope you enjoy this episode and please share it with your friends. Write it on the podcast, apps, make comments, etc. I really appreciate you helping me get the word out. Enjoy this episode of creative spirits. Unleash podcast chapter 16, Courage. Courage fuels confidence. When we see pressure as a test, we use it to build our confidence. When we see pressure as a catalyst, we cultivate courage. And courage is actually the primary nutrient for confidence. We need courage in order to try something that might or might not work, whether it's facing up to a difficult boss, making a critical presentation or trying out a new idea, we can't really be confident until we are willing to make a move with an uncertain outcome. I once heard someone say courage is commitment plus doubt makes sense, because if you knew without a shadow of a doubt that you could do something, it would not take courage to do it. Courage is the antidote to our self doubt and self criticism. Beating ourselves up may well be the most well intentioned, useless strategy for self improvement on the planet. The inner voice that loves to beat us up for not being enough has a way of undermining our shaky confidence with all the ways we haven't measured up before. Courage is the energy that says it's worth a try. I would rather make a mistake than regret not trying. Courage sees us through the moments of the froth, keeping us focused on this moment as we navigate through pressure filled situations after we have exercised our courage, we earn a different kind of confidence with practice, our courage expands an inner fueled awareness that we can handle whatever comes our way. Much of my journey with the horses has helped me see that I was cultivating my courage three ways to prepare both horse and human, have to be prepared to go into circumstances where anything can happen, and with horses, anything can happen. My desire for control was turned to the outside world. My journey had been preparing me, much like horse trainers prepare their horses. Let's go back to where war. Schiller talks about taking unprepared horses out on the trail. He describes it this way, trial riding is like going out on the freeway with your car. It may be okay to drive around the pasture or paddock at home in a car that's not safe. Maybe the brakes are iffy, or the steering wheel 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. Back to the book. There's a tight rope for helping a horse deal with uncertainty, especially while carrying us on its back. My travels had taken me through many different barns, horse shows and other settings for horses and humans interact as I gained awareness about horse training, I saw three different ways people prepare their horses for the unpredictable control, desensitizing and encouraging. Control and desensitizing fall on either side of the tightrope, encouraging walks the tightrope on the control side. I've seen people shrink their world rather than helping the horse deal with the scary things of the world. They do their best to control the scary things. They never ride on windy days. They create rules about what can happen around them when they are riding. No tractors or weed eaters are allowed. They make sure no plastic bags are floating along anywhere nearby. They don't take the horse out of the arena. The human parallel to this is the person who doesn't start that business for fear of failing, or the employee who doesn't speak up because of the fearful consequences on the other side, people take their horse through a process called desensitizing. They keep after the horse with the scary things until the horse no longer reacts to those things. I liken this method to what my parents used to say when we kids were upset, you better stop crying, or I will give you something to cry about. We learned quickly to swallow whatever was making us upset, which in effect caused us to shut down and put up an emotional wall of protection in the corporate world, the equivalent is the boss, who doesn't listen to the employee, but instead says, Just do your job. If you were to write out all the words that can be inferred from such a statement, it goes something like this, I don't want to hear it. I don't care what you think, just shut up and do your job, or you will not have a job. This is the human version of desensitizing on the surface. This bravado sort of looks like it works. Things have the appearance of being calm, cool and collected. The simmering underneath the surface isn't revealed until the pot boils over. Then we wonder what went wrong. Warrick Schiller tells a story of a woman who asked him to help her with her quote, unquote Crazy Horse. She went on to say they would go out on a trail ride, and her horse would see a rabbit hopping out of the woods. He might notice it, but not do anything farther along. Another rabbit might run past, and again, only a slight reaction from the horse. This would go on throughout the ride. As she said, we can go past 12 rabbits with no problem, and then on the 13th rabbit, he just goes crazy and becomes unmanageable. Shiller answered by saying, your horse can only hold 12 rabbits worth of worry. In other words, your horse passes the first rabbit and holds on to that worry inside of himself. With each rabbit, he adds a little more worry because he hasn't had a chance to release the worry of the previous rabbits. Shiller called this trigger stacking, a term that applies to horse training as well as dog training, and it also applies to humans. Trigger stacking happens when one thing builds upon another, that builds upon another, to take us over our pressure threshold. I remember when I was a single mom raising gin the morning would start with the coffee, not right. Then we would get into our horrible traffic on the way to work, something always seemed to make the school drop off more complex than it should be, and then I struggled to find a place to park. As soon as I got into the office, my phone started ringing and a stack of messages beckoned me away from the project I was supposed to finish that morning. All the traffic and complexity repeated on the way home, and the crazy woman who picked up her daughter after school care was far beyond her 12 rabbits worth of worry. With horses, we are often asking them to go against their nature. It's not natural for them to leave the comfort of the herd have a predator put a saddle made of another dead animal on their backs and a piece of metal in their mouths. Then we put them in a setting where someone might be mowing in a pasture, or a new horse is coming in as we walk them down the trail into the woods, the same place where they watch various wildlife moving around all day long, one thing after another, we pile on the triggers without even thinking about it, from the eyes of a horse.

Lynn  09:44

With time I began thinking of Warwick, Lynn and Bruce's method for dealing with scary things as encouraging, instead of shrinking, faking or stuffing, preparing the horse this way builds genuine tools, skills and capable. Fauci both in the horse and in the human. COURAGING raises our pressure threshold and it raises the horse's pressure threshold. Instead of stacking the triggers. Using the tools gives both the horse and human a way to release tension, instead of holding on to it until it boils over. It takes courage to reach for our tools instead of the self protective rules that have proven to work for us, at least in some circumstances, giving up control takes courage. Becoming the conduit takes courage using the tools of curiosity, listening, hearing, problem solving, patience, timing, feel, discipline, work ethic and more starts with having the courage to trust myself to wield them effectively under pressure. Shaw meets the lawn mower. One day, when I showed up at lens barn for a lesson on Shaw, she asked me to help remove the lawn mower up to the bass back pasture before I started my lesson. After we moved the mower, we went through all the usual steps down at the barn, reading Shaw as I groomed him and saddled him. By this stage of my journey, I often rode Shaw up to the arena if both Lynn and I assessed that he was feeling relaxed and connected to me. It was never a given that I would ride him from the barn, the path from the barn to the arena goes up a hill, through a small forest, past two guest cabins near another pasture, sometimes housing horses and around a bend, even though it's a short ride, we had seen all kinds of things happen to offer a chance for encouraging sometimes we met families walking on the road more than once. We encountered dogs along the way, and there were always those pesky turkeys just waiting to fly up as we passed by. On this day, Lynn asked me if I were going to riding or walking to the arena. I checked in with my negative positive poll. My number was about a three, which isn't that high. I wasn't able to read why it was anything other than a zero. However, by this time, I had learned to trust this as a signal. Nope, I'm going to walk him up. I think it will do both of us good to keep connecting on the way up, I said, As we walked into the arena, I got to see what some part of me knew all along. We were about to have an opportunity for encouraging as evidenced by what I witnessed in Shaw, Arabian horse fear in its full glory before we got two steps past the gate. Shaw stopped, braced and raised his head up high, nostrils flaring and eyes wide. The back pasture abuts the arena, and there on the other side sat the lawn mower that Lynn and I had just moved for Shaw. It wasn't the lawn mower he had seen 1000s of times. It was a black and yellow dragon rising up from the earth waiting to devour him in his jaws. We had choices. We could have decided to work somewhere else besides the arena. We could have moved the lawnmower. We could have continued on, hoping for the best and scalding Shaw for being worried. I've seen people use all those strategies and more when faced with the thing the horse deems dangerous and we humans see as no big deal. In this case, we used it as an opportunity to show Shaw he could handle it. We listened to what he was telling us. Lynn had me walk him closer and then retreat. As he relaxed, we cycled back and forth, approaching and retreating, releasing pressure as he gained confidence that the mower wasn't coming for him. Rather than force fear and intimidation to get him through it, we showed him he could handle the scary thing. Soon, Shaw became a curious and willing partner, fueled my trust and connection, rather than fear and force. When Shaw showed me he was relaxed, having released his 12 rabbits worth of worry, I got on him. We rode all through the arena with no concern for the lawn mower out in the field. When we rode out of the arena, Shaw was as calm and relaxed as he could be, it was the pressure of a lawnmower that opened the doorway for both Shaw and me to develop our tools at the moment of maximum pressure, the doorway of learning opens. We had a choice. Would we walk through the doorway and be present in this moment or go back to our old ways? Would we choose Tools or rules? Would we use the situation for encouraging or would we grasp for control? The first move for both of us was to spook standing next to a horse with white eyes flaring nostrils and the threat of lashing hooves is scary. My first thought about the lawn mower, tinged with a bit of anger was we made a mistake to put it next to the arena with Len's support. My second thought was, okay, you can do this. This is an opportunity. Let's work through this. As a result, both Shaw and I raised our pressure threshold another notch for the sake of contrast. Here's another reminder of what this was not. Right, leading by fear, intimidation and force doesn't lead to real change, commitment or buy in. Instead, it creates a form of compliance that has the appearance of success, except it's merely an illusion tested under pressure and it collapses like a pile of cotton candy in a rainstorm. Shaw and I developed courage under pressure as I helped him with the lawn mower, he gave himself over to my direction, offering his full commitment to go where I ask. We moved as one, his legs becoming my legs. Our spirits intertwined as we walked out on the trail. Shaw was not prey. I was not predator. We were partners. Who we are as humans impacts the horse, whether we want it to or not, who and how we are as humans decides the truth of our leadership. Over these past couple of years, Bruce and Lynn had frequently reminded me of my responsibility to be the horse's leader, not his slave master. When we were returning on Marley after his first ride, Bruce subtly reminded me of what he said, what he said, Marley did check in with you. He's asking if you're worthy. I came back with worthy of what Bruce replied, worthy of being his leader. In that moment, Marley wanted to know if I heard him. Shaw wanted to know the same. In the moment of facing the lawn mower, they are reading my energy. If they could talk in human words, it's as if they are asking, Are we good? Can I trust you? I've learned that they can only trust my reassurances if I first show them that I am aware of what they are facing. This applies to true leadership. When we lead with safety and presence, we produce a rich exchange of give and take that builds trust and connection, putting the tools to practice, coaching client, Maria worked in a volatile industry, and she was at the forefront of leading change. Her business had many problems to solve if it was to survive as an important player in the industry, she frequently found herself in the froth, and she had asked me to help her operate with a clear head, rather than getting caught up in her fear. I asked her an important question, what might it look like if you were able to tell a different story about the electrical charge you feel inside when you're feeling fear, problems she had never seen before came at her like fastballs out of a pitching machine, as is often the case. The industry was growing out from under her company. However, most of the people in her company were deeply invested in continuing to do things the way they had always done them. She had been charged with bringing in a new, more consolidated approach that would create a single point of contact with her company's customers. On the surface, it looked like she was responsible for a new product. Instead, she was actually responsible for comprehensive change management. She needed a lot of cultural buy in to deliver on the strategy. She had an opportunity to create that buy in at the next quarterly review with the CEO, she asked me to help her prepare both the messaging and her mindset. We set aside a whole coaching session to prepare her for this critical presentation, one of her first at this level of the organization. During our meeting, Maria said the guy in the sister division is painting a very rosy picture of all the good things and ignoring the bad things. Do you think I would be better off stripping some of the bad news out of my presentation? The dilemma she faced was bigger than just a decision about how to tell a balanced story about what was really happening in her division. Under that question was this one, what if I end up looking bad in comparison to him? What if I look bad compared to all the other presenters? Worrying about looking bad is one step removed from the survival question of, What if they kick me out of the tribe

Lynn  18:55

in the dilemma with Maria, both sides of the tightrope lead to undesirable outcomes. Paint too Rosie a picture, and the resources she needs end up diverted to a different area. Paint too dire a picture, and the questions arise about her deployment of the resources she's been managing thus far, she needed to walk that fine line that both highlighted the problem and inspired confidence in her ability to be part of the solution. To complicate matters, the presentation would be over video conference, a screen full of talking heads. Time blocks were granted with each minute handed out like gold coins. Most presenters would read their bullets on the screen, ignoring the fact that everyone else had already read them. The safe path boring do what everyone else is doing. Stick to the script. Take no chances. This session was a moment of truth. After years of navigating the minefield of the organization, on this day, Maria would finally have the year of the CEO. Playing it safe, felt like a capitulation, so that was off the table. People or so she thought. She also did not want to be reckless or come off as powerless. Maria would need a plan and her tools. In addition to the coaching we'd done together, she had also worked with both Bruce and Lynn in leadership sessions. We would draw from many relevant experiences with the horses in our preparation, we decided it was okay to have a script, just not the one on the PowerPoint. Her journey in the division had been a master course in resilience. The whole division was formed when one of the executives asked the question, what if we could make our clients lives easier by creating one point of contact? Her preparation had three tracks, first, do the research and build compelling slides. Second, develop a storyline about what the slides were showing. This would be her script. Third, reinforce her tools so that she could deliver the story with courage and confidence. The first half of the meeting unfolded as predicted. Everyone read their slides and check their watches. The meeting proceeded in an orderly fashion, no feathers ruffled. When it came to Maria's turn, she felt the froth of the old and the new. She thought, Should I do it the way I always have? I've never presented using a story before? What if I bomb reading slides is working for everyone else? Wouldn't that be safer? And then this thought, how will I feel tomorrow if I don't take the chance? She took the courageous path. After the meeting, she called me. She was ecstatic at the end of her presentation, it was the CEO who went off script instead of marching on Maria's story prompted the CEO to turn the conversation into a strategy session on how to solve the problems Maria had so clearly laid out. Staying on the tightrope had paid off. Maria was beginning to understand that it is in solving the problems that she grows wishing for no problems is an ineffective defense against the dangers of the world. The pressure of the meeting gave her a chance to get just a little bit more in touch with her true nature. This is encouraging. The beautiful thing about welcoming pressure as a catalyst is that we no longer allow the end goal to define us. Winning the game is nice, but it's not the point. The point of the opportunity is to cultivate our courage, or perhaps a better word, is to unleash our courage. Bruce would often say, it's not about the horses. It's in working with the horses that we become the true self. CHAPTER 17, congruence, the antidote to perfectionism. Congruence is the antidote to perfectionism. The more we believe we can achieve perfection, the more we have to hide our imperfections and mistakes. We sometimes go so far as hiding our mistakes from ourselves. At the congruence level of self awareness, we show our truth. What will it take for me to own what's in there, what's out there? As we begin to own our mistakes, flaws and weaknesses, we lessen the power they have over us. This is not a popular idea in our modern culture, and especially in the corporate world. In many cultures, mistakes are not well tolerated, setting off a chain of events that causes people to hide them, deny them, and blame others for what's going wrong. Soon, teams are nothing more than working groups that are on guard against being the one caught making a mistake. Congruence means to own how we feel about something without letting our emotions drive our behavior in unhealthy ways. For example, I once worked with a company whose CEO was known to throw things when he was angry over poor performance, the bearers of bad news had learned to either duck or lie. However, the problem wasn't his anger, a perfectly natural human emotion. The problem was the book throwing. If we haven't learned to feel our emotions and allow them to pass through, we do all kinds of things to avoid them, we stuff them, deny them, or act out on them in harmful ways. Yet feeling is exactly what we are meant to do, we were born with this fabulous system for tuning in to what serves us and what doesn't. If the horses showed me anything, it's that sensitivity to the energies around us is the most natural thing in the world. It is the way of nature. And if we are to be true to ourselves, we must cultivate our feelings, not stuff them. Part of our authenticity comes from honoring our inner knowing and feeling. Being congruent means to feel what we feel and own it, and that way we create harmony between how we feel and act. Opportunities. Is weaknesses and doorways. Somewhere during my tenure at the bank, they quit using the word weaknesses in context of doing performance evaluations. Suddenly the word opportunities became all the rage. There was just one problem with the semantics. They meant the same thing, trying to make it sound somehow more palatable by using the word opportunities felt a bit like a cover up to me, incongruity drains safety and trust. During that time, I had no words or context to describe the icky feeling I got when faced with someone saying one thing and meaning another. My internal guidance system simply said to me, watch out. Something's not right here. Often I misread the feeling as a signal the person was trying to give me negative feedback or otherwise eliminate my weaknesses, having them wrap it up in a peanut butter ball of opportunity did not help me feel safe. In fact, it did the opposite. These days, the term psychological safety has entered the corporate lexicon, largely thanks to Google's research on teams in 2012 Google conducted a study called Project Aristotle to understand what made effective teams tick. They were surprised to find that psychological safety ranked number one on factors that led to teams that outperformed. The key question in psychological safety is whether or not team members feel safe enough to be vulnerable in front of their teammates. Whether admitting mistakes or looking ignorant or foolish,

Lynn  26:33

the need for safety is non negotiable in his famous 1943 paper, a theory of human motivation, Abraham Maslow proposed that if certain physiological safety and belonging needs are not met, the human will feel anxious and tense. Corporate life has a way of wringing all three of those levels out of the equation. The homeless sequence makes us feel like we will not eat if we don't have this job, the pressure to fit in, go along and not rock the boat, are all rooted in our core human needs. Much of my corporate life involved me being triggered into survival mode, and I wasn't alone. I remember sitting in my boss's office one day as we commiserated on the latest edict from above. We didn't agree with the decision, and knew that the powers that be had not considered many factors when making the call. We saw many potential failure points. We also knew that if we were to push back, we would be faced with force, fear and intimidation to get us to fall in line. As we talked it through, it was clear that we would go along and reluctantly do our best to make it work. He looked at me and said, Lynn, this is why you need go to hell money back then, I was surprised. He took me into his confidence that way, from my inside out way of looking at things, it appeared to me that I was the only one struggling with navigating corporate politics, the gamesmanship required to survive seemed like a game. Everyone but me had figured out. It took a long time for me to realize that others struggled as much as I did. Looking back on it, I see so many assumptions never challenged. Perhaps the most flawed was the homeless sequence. Did I really believe that if I didn't have this job, I would never have any other job. I also never saw things through the eyes of those who were asking us to get things done on their behalf. They needed our commitment more than our compliance. Did. I really believe that if we shared our perspective on better ways to get things done, we would instantly be fired. Most importantly, I didn't take a step back to look at my own capabilities. Did I really not trust myself to handle whatever came my way? Was my fear running me that much my survival mode eclipsed such logic. Incongruence may drain safety and trust, but it also felt like the only way to survive. Horses showed me something different. They have a mammalian survival brain, much like ours. They do not have a prefrontal cortex that plots and plans revenge. Bruce often said, horses don't have problems. Humans are the problem. I often found myself saying things like he's trying to get away with something, or he doesn't seem to like me, or he's an awful horse. My kid mode. Perceptions vacillated between feeling like I had no power to doing my best to forcibly assert my power. Bruce and Lynn were both trying to help me see that horses don't judge humans. They show humans. They reveal their needs through their actions. They tell us when they are hungry, which seems to be all the time. They show us their preference for being among the herd. They reveal their inner state, as well as our interstate in their responses to us with shut down horses, it is only evident to a knowing eye when a horse doesn't feel safe, even though they are. Light animals, they are masters at freezing, which may look like they relaxed or uninterested. They can hide their true feelings, much like the bunny rabbits I walk up on out in nature, the rabbit sits there looking like a dog waiting to be petted until you make that last move and they bounce off into the woods. Horses can go into a state of waiting for the other shoe to drop. They stand there quietly, but if you look closely, they are not relaxed. Instead, they are cautious and have likely shut down their natural reactions when someone walks up to them. They may lean their head the other way. They may have their feet set in a position like a sprinter just waiting for the gun to go off. They may be barely breathing, too tense to take a deep breath. They are afraid, and yet they don't always show it in obvious ways. The clues are mostly happening in the unseen realm where energy makes all the difference. What to do with all my fear became quite the conundrum for me. No doubt, my adrenaline hits were sending out fearful energy. I couldn't control it, so I fell back on my old corporate rules of pretending. I've got this I was creating the same kind of incongruence, an unseen force of energy that made me feel unsafe, congruence versus hiding fear. My daughter, Jen and I got a master class in reading the unseen when we went to ride with Lynn one day, we went to catch the horses and bring them into the barn. Lynn had a couple of guest horses in the stalls next to where we would brush and saddle the horses. Jen had ridden a couple of times with Lynn, but was still quite nervous on the ground with the big animals, especially in the Close Quarters of the barn. Of course, being the ever observant mother, I was oblivious to her anxiousness. Phoenix was not Lynn went to speak with someone doing work on the farm. As Jen and I entered the barn, both Shaw and Phoenix were more nervous than usual, clearly aware of the new horses in the stalls. Shaw calmed down nicely as I used everything I remembered from my early days of training with Lynn and Phoenix, I continued grooming Shaw, assuming that Jen was fine. When Lynn entered the barn, she noticed that Jen had stepped out briefly and was looking at her phone. She said, be sure to focus on your horse, not your phone. Jen came back in, and Lynn started giving her guidance on how to handle Phoenix, who was having a hard time keeping his feet still. Suddenly, Jen walked out of the barn, apparently in tears. Lynn and I looked at each other and said, What the hell Lynn asked me, what was going on. I shrugged and said, maybe your comment about the phone hit a mommy button. I assure you, I planted a lot of them. I honestly don't know. We let Jen be, and in a few minutes, she came back in. She had somewhat gathered herself, but was still clearly very emotional as I stood there trying not to say the wrong thing. Lynn asked some gentle questions. She asked Jen to go stand by Phoenix. To our surprise, Jen told us that she was scared to death. Early in life, she had been admonished at summer camp to stay away from the kicking hooves of horses. As Phoenix moved around the pivot point of his tie up, she became increasingly fearful that he or Shaw would deliver a sudden blow she couldn't dodge. Lynn asked her if she was willing to try and promised that she would be safe, especially if she stood near his head. Lynn did not ask Jen to cover up her fear, nor did she ask her not to be fearful. In fact, the more Jen owned up to how she was really feeling, the more Phoenix relaxed and let down, the more he relaxed, the more Jen opened up as she stood there, allowing the tears to fall, Phoenix melted. Lynn explained that it was the cover up that was causing the problem, while the new horses in the barn set off the stream of events. Jen's reaction perpetuated Phoenix's anxiety. Suddenly, I remembered that my daughter is a master of hiding her feelings, at least from humans. She should be a poker player, but horses read energy and the subtle gestures of body language when Jen's inner experience and outer expression of her feelings matched Phoenix relaxed. It wasn't her fear that was the problem. It was the mixed message. It was the saying one thing and meaning another. It was the incongruence. Once Jen owned her fear, Phoenix relaxed and her fear dissipated, we ended up having a lovely ride. It makes sense on so many levels, energy is the horse's main form of communication with them. We don't get the luxury of saying one thing and meaning another. That kind of incongruence is the energy they detect from a deadly predator right before the sneaky attack. Congruence disappears when we are not willing to feel or to reveal Jen was not wrong to fear the horse's ability to hurt her. That's the big balancing act with. Horses, we must walk that tight rope of meeting their needs without allowing them to run over us. Jen's experience with Phoenix reinforced the benefits of creating trust and connection with a horse. Trust and connection with people in the corporate world were beginning to seem more possible culture and human needs. It has happened many times in my life. I found myself doing something that felt like everything I had done to that point prepared me for the moment at hand. So it was the summer of 2020, 20, when COVID was still new and I was part of the culture project. I was writing often, but getting back on mocha still felt like a leap too far. The culture project afforded me a chance to work on my tools, both with a client, a hospital, and with Bruce, who happened to live a few miles down the road from the hospital. The culture project was unlike any I had done before, yet it called on many things I had done before. Surprisingly, it called deeply on two aspects of the work with horses, building trust and connection and raising my pressure threshold. I was looking forward to bringing the new lens my accident had given me.

Lynn  36:15

I had worked with this hospital for 10 years. In that time frame, I had coached several executives, individually facilitated many team working sessions and supported the executive team through a CEO transition when the scope of work exceeded what I could do on my own. I brought in colleague, Susan Robertson, one of the best coaches and facilitators of self awareness that I know. Susan Robertson is a leadership rock star. She created the pioneering leadership program called the high impact leadership seminar, a program that gave high achieving corporate leaders such as me a window into the possibilities of living a whole hearted life while being successful. I had been a facilitator in the high impact leadership seminar as well. For the past several years, we could see that we were making an enormous difference, one leader at a time, and that was fine by me. Not so was Susan. She believed it possible to impact people's lives on a much larger scale, so she started a new company, lencis conscious business, and published her book, real leadership. Waken to wisdom. Wisdom, Susan's real leadership method formed the backbone of the culture project, along with a cultural fitness survey rooted in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In the culture project, we were surveying every single employee in this mid sized hospital to get a read on how well the culture met the core human needs of the people working there. The statements measured by the survey are like the kinds of questions many bosses hope will never get asked, like my direct supervisors do not play favorites, and our work environment is free from retaliation. The questions uncovered the culture down to the root ball of human needs. Before my accident, I didn't really consider human needs, or horses needs. For that matter, working with horses the way Lynn and Bruce for teaching me involved meeting the horses needs and creating a partnership of give and take. In many ways, this was radically different than most horse trainers, where horses were expected to be compliant and obedient. Interesting. I had worked in human cultures that preferred compliant and obedient over trust and connection. The rules of man superseded or attempted to supersede the rules of nature, much like horses were not made for the modern world, neither are humans. We really aren't meant to work in these large organizations where we're expected to blindly trust measuring culture through a survey was an enormous commitment, which mirrored the commitment for this hospital to generate a great culture, the leaders were aware that their rapid growth had set the conditions for people to feel disconnected from the mission and each other. Little did they know all the pressures that would come their way as they began the process of first understanding and then improving their culture. The COVID 19 pandemic hit a month after we had completed the survey for several months the culture project was on hold as the hospital handled the surge in patients and navigated the uncertainties of what the pandemic would bring. We were not entirely certain that they would continue with the project. The pandemic offered very good reasons for them to double down on just doing the work. No one would blame them for choosing to let a project in its infancy drop. However, the same level of commitment that prompted the leaders to start the project in the first place made them realize that walking away would sow seeds of doubt and mistrust among their people. They stayed the course. They desired a culture that could heal and offer the best possible place to work and to do so in a timely and profitable way. In many cultures, efficiency and profits rule today. In others, relationship and employee satisfaction matter more to the detriment of the tangible metrics. This team knew having both was possible, and that's why they were interested in measuring. Quality of their culture. It was clear to me that this team would be interested in finding a way to walk the tightrope between the hard stuff and the soft stuff. We also needed to find ways to re sensitize people rather than desensitize them. We needed their best thinking, their creativity, their deep care for their job. All too often we settle for compliance over commitment. It seems more peaceful that way. However, the opportunity cost is huge. People who are shut down and putting one foot in front of the other are usually operating in survival mode. Decisions made from an internal state of self preservation are often not good. Many a plane crash or workplace accident has occurred because someone was too afraid to rock the boat and speak up. We are leaving what matters on the table when we shut down, albeit for good reasons, we block our own light like a tangled ball of roots. Rules wind their way into our guidance system, blocking the pathways to our personal truth. The interference makes it very difficult to find our voice. And here's the strangest part of all of this, we are not aware that our rules are interfering. Because all of these rules have been with us for so long. They feel like they are a part of us as they direct us out of our awareness, our rules feel like they are us. We work together over the next two years as the pandemic oscillated between huge spikes and momentary declines, while the members of this team were tired at times, they were never dispirited. Their mantra of taking care of people is what we do, carried them through being congruent is about showing who we are to ourselves, as much as it is to showing it to others. Much of our early conditioning teaches us to conform to the people who are caring for us. Since we need each other to survive, it's pretty difficult to do anything else. Chapter 18, clarity, impeccable picture. Clarity takes us to a whole new level of depth. Becoming clear on who we really are takes a lifetime of self awareness, exploration. As we learn to live our truth, we ask, How can I begin to unleash what's true about me. How can I create the space for others to be true to themselves? This pressure journey refined my idea of what the word vision really means. Companies create a vision statement and share it widely in posters, advertisements and town hall style meetings, athletes visualize their performance, often seen closing their eyes before they begin their game. Individual leaders describe their vision for their department, yet sometimes these visions fall short. In my own experience of visualizing my slalom ski runs, I learned that it was critical that I visualize in real time before this insight, it would usually take me over a minute to visualize a 22nd ski pass through the course. Then I would wonder why everything felt so fast when I was doing the real thing. The answer was lack of clarity. My mental preparation was more about making me feel comfortable, rather than preparing me for the pressure of the speed I would experience when I was on the water. Subconsciously, my desire to be safe interfered with the point of visualization. When I began to understand the term impeccable picture, I also began to prefer it as a way to envision a good outcome in working with a horse who thinks in pictures, an impeccable picture transmits from my brain to his at first, the idea of horses being able to understand what I was thinking from simply an image in my mind seemed completely implausible. Mind reading was a step too far for my logical mind. However, time after time, I experienced my thoughts impacting the horse, whether I was on his back or on the ground. In my podcast with Warwick Schiller, I asked him directly, can horses read our minds? His answer was a resounding yes, and he's not alone. In her book, Thinking in pictures, my life with autism, Temple Grandin describes how her thoughts are not verbal, but are instead visualizations, and this is how she has communicated the animal viewpoint in many settings, our mental pictures are often muddled with conflicting desires. We confuse the desire for comfort with the desire to achieve our goals. In the Name of playing it safe, we create fuzzy pictures. The difference is much like that of an old black and white TV from the 1950s with static and blurred edges, versus the high definition color TVs of today. While we may wish for a life with less pressure, fear and uncertainty, choosing to see ourselves and the world as it really is affords us the ability. Ability to shed our armor and operate from the deeper source within what do you want? My first time to have a coach happened through the back door. The company did not offer it. In this case, I had found her through a series of serendipitous events since I was hiring her, my interest in hers were completely aligned. Her job was to make me truly better, not to help me become a better cog in the corporate wheel. In our first meeting, I filled her in on all my challenges, the many ways the world was causing me problems, all the ways I was feeling screwed by the system and how little control I really had. After hearing my whole sob story, she asked, What do you want to have happen? The question stopped me in my tracks. I stumbled over my words as many thoughts ricocheted around my head. What do you mean? What do I want you are supposed to help me figure out how to deal with these bastards. I want you to tell me what they want me to do? If you could help me figure out how to get them to get what they want so I can get promoted, that would be great. What do I have to do to fit in here? So many questions, but no answer to the simple query, what do you want?

Lynn  46:17

I didn't dare tap into what really mattered to me without the word survival ever being involved. I knew at my core that my survival was at stake, at least that's how it appeared at the time. 30 years later, I've asked that same question of hundreds of clients and participants in my programs, most have the exactly same frantic internal response with their own personal set of what do you mean questions, with some gentle probing and with me holding up a metaphorical mirror, they begin to untangle the confusion we review the operating rules of their life and the biography of those rules. They begin to see the moments they gave away their heart's desire in order to be responsible or safe, Jack quit playing music as soon as he got married, he knew that the life of a musician would probably not support his wife and kids. Jenna put down the paint brush and took a job in marketing, hoping it would fill her creative Well, she soon learned that marketing is a game of numbers more than it is of colors. Richard became a doctor so he didn't have to go into the family business. He hated medicine as much as the family business, but he had a wife and two kids by the time he graduated and it was time to start his practice. Carrie became an engineer at the encouragement of both parents and landed a coveted job at a global technology firm. She was proud of her skills, and yet, in her late 20s, was already counting the days to retirement, when she would be able to enjoy her life rather than have her every decision rev revolve around her job. As we dove deeper, the balancing act between attachment and self expression usually emerged. The attachment side of the tightrope involves being responsible by taking care of self and family, keeping food on the table, a roof overhead, making sure everyone fits in, and having enough. All those rules mattered because they prescribed how to win at the game called life. Having enough trumped being enough. In my case, after responsibility came the shackles. Instead of using the newfound freedom that goes with having earning power to get more of what I really wanted, I loaded up my life with more responsibility. Gaining more money became more important than empowering my purpose. Money is such a concrete measure, it quickly gained precedence over more meaningful yet intangible marks of living a good life. I traded peace of mind for the chase for more more money, more accolades, more approval, more prestige, and that bigger bonus that would allow me to finally have enough money in the bank to have peace of mind economic servitude. Money is one of the inventions of the modern age that we can't live without. Just try losing your wallet on a road trip and see how far you get. In some ways we also can't live with it as money has a perverse way of taking us away from ourselves. After one of my sessions in a multi day leadership program, one of the men in the room pulled me aside and asked me about a dilemma he was facing. Everything in his body language said he was facing a crisis of his conscience. As James story unfolded, it became clear that he had been living with the awareness for some time that he had been accepting otherwise unacceptable behavior. He had been making trade offs to please his bosses that he knew in his heart were wrong. He had been compromising his personal values, and it was eating him alive from the inside out, furthermore, he knew the right thing to do. He had known it for a long time, maybe even years. So I. Come the obvious question, why haven't you done it the right thing? Yet his body slumped, and he let out a sigh. He cast his eyes downward. He said, almost shamefully, I can't they pay me so much money? In that moment, I knew he had forgotten his worth. He had forgotten who he really was. His fear was palpable. All he could see was what he had to lose. Here was a guy who had made it James was the first in his family to go to college. Never, in his wildest dreams did he think he would be a senior vice president in a prestigious fortune 500 company, and yet, here he was attending the most senior leaders round table. People in the room cared about what he thought. He had a seat at the table. He and his wife had a beautiful home in the suburbs. His kids attended one of the prestigious schools in that community. They took the kind of vacations that showed they had made it. They had the right cars, you know, the ones right along with his glorious salary, he had a long list of payments and obligations to feed the insatiable beast of his lifestyle. He had appearances to keep up, along with his seat at the table, he had started to understand the unseen, yet very real deal that he and his co workers had made, the culture went something like this. In this company, we want you to tell us what you think, as long as it agrees with us. We want alignment. That means staying between the lines. You get that right. The only bad news we want to hear is about your kid losing the soccer match this weekend. Your job is to make your numbers. If you help us keep making money, you will keep making money. We will help you feed the insatiable beast. Now I have to pause here and say this does not make this or any other company bad. In order to get a bunch of people to work together in far larger groups than we have done over the centuries. It's necessary to do all kinds of artificial things, like getting people aligned. Money is such a compelling motivator. Of course, they're going to use it. The point of this story is to remind you that it's not all about the money. Now back to the story about James, when he said, but they pay me so much money, his internal fear said so much more. The fear said, If I do the right thing, they will hate me. I will be ostracized and shunned. They will find someone to tell them what they want to hear. They might decide I'm not worth having around if I cause too much trouble. I cannot imagine anyone else paying me this kind of money. If I lose this job, I can't keep up with all my payments and obligations, I will lose the house. I will lose the cars. I will have to put my kids in public school. I will lose my status. I might even be homeless. Now, he said none of this out loud, but I've heard this sequence of doomsday thoughts 1000 times I've been in this sequence myself. I've made these compromises. I've had to feed the insatiable beast. I have felt the shackles of keeping my money and my status. He didn't love it when my answer to his money comment was, what does that say about what you will do for money. It was a sincere question. I wanted him to see, hear and feel the consequences of his mindset. I wanted it to hurt just a little bit. He looked down and then back at me, I saw the pain in his eyes. All I had done was voice the same question he had been asking himself for years, what am I doing for money? What does it make me when I compromise who I am to get a paycheck? How have I let them gain so much power over me? And most importantly, how do I get out of this dilemma? When we make money, our God money will happily make us its slave. Recognizing the difference between our human needs and in the modern world, money helps us survive and our transcendent needs provides much deeper clarity into what drives our choices and how we feel about ourselves. Scott very Kaufman's book transcend the new science of self actualization provides a lovely picture of the dichotomy of attachment and self expression. His picture is a sailboat. Side note for the readers or listeners, I have this. This picture available on a PDF. If you email me at Lynn, at Lynn carnes.com I'll be happy to send it to you now. I will describe it for the listeners. Imagine a sailboat with the bottom being the boat, and it's divided into three sections. The top is a little triangular sail. On the bottom the boat. Represents security, and it's divided into safety, connection and self esteem. The top represents growth, and it's divided into exploration, love and purpose. So that drawing is adapted from Scott Barry Kaufman, transcend the new science of self actualization, published in 2020

Lynn  55:24

back to Lynn and the book, the boat is like the attachment side of Gabor mates needs framework. Kaufman calls that side security. Just like letting the water into a boat will cause it to sink, letting the wrong things into our personal boat, or under our skin, can cause us to sink. We need to keep the boat in good working order. On the other hand, a boat with no wind in its sails is in the doldrums. We need the sail to propel us forward. The Sail represents self expression, as in Gabor mates needs framework Kaufman calls this side growth. The sailboat metaphor more closely represents my experience and understanding my own human needs, the survival stuff, including psychological safety, plus the fact that we humans are wired for relationship and connection make up the boat. If the boat is not solid, free of holes, and is in poor working order, it will not sail. We need to keep our boat in good order. We also want to go somewhere when the conditions are right, we can unfurl our sails and catch the wind when we feel secure. We have the internal freedom to love unconditionally. We have the innate sense of security to remain present in the moment. How we sail our own boat is unique to each of us. The simplicity of the sailboat metaphor gave me an easy way to orient myself when I am working with a horse, I can quickly assess, does he feel safe and secure? How is his health? Has he had enough water, food, rest. All these questions come from the idea of checking in on his quote, unquote boat. I can also quickly assess the other side of the balancing act. Am I giving the horse choices? Is he being challenged? How much am I allowing him to own his part of this ride? In other words, does the horse get a chance to sail? Funny picture right the boat and the sail, each represent the side of a tightrope. Are the two core needs of attachment, security, survival and self expression, growth in balance. Which side of the tightrope do I need to work on right now? What is off and which way do I move to make a correction towards the balance point, security, survival always comes first. Just like the sails are useless without a sound boat, no horse or human will do its best work with a leaky boat. And we often have a leaky boat. Bruce would often say the horse is here to help you build value. I loved the idea, but couldn't quite get it at first. Eventually I realized that our sessions in the round pen were helping me repair my leaky boat. Back to Nature. The modern world may need money, but real humans are far from nature's world, except the modern world has a way of making us afraid of our nature. While I grew up spending most of my time in nature, my adult life had brought me decidedly indoors. By the time I was 45 my body was growing soft and matronly, and my mind was growing ever more fearful of the great outdoors. This version of land was very different than the lean, muscular, athletic body with an attitude that welcomed adventure of my youth. I was not consciously aware of this change until I was in a leadership program that focused on deep self awareness. We were in rural Florida at a Catholic Retreat Center. Our class of mostly non religious business folks ate meals in the same dining hall as the priests on the last evening, we met after dinner for what I expected to be a short session, after which I would return to my Spartan room with the tiny towels, skinny twin mattress and anything but luxurious bathroom. They didn't even provide a hair dryer. I was already looking forward to escaping this hell hole of simple living that had no cell phone service. When Barry, one of the retreat leaders, announced that we would all be going outside for an evening meditation, we had done many group meditations during the week, and I was over it, but that's not what freaked me out. What caused me to flip my lid was the next instruction Barry said you are going to do an individual meditation. Over in that corner of the room are portable chairs and flashlights. Pick out a chair and flashlight and then go find a place along the trail that speaks to you, set up your chair, turn off your flashlight and sit in your meditation. I'm sure Barry. Made more specific instructions on the point of the meditation and how we were to do it, but I couldn't tell you what he said to save my life. His voice couldn't reach my ears through the buzzing fear, my mind started racing. It's pitch dark out there. There's no way they are asking us to do this. What a terrible idea. I'm not doing it. I spoke up and tried to sound very logical and corporate. Isn't that kind of dangerous? I ask. Barry asked, how so well, if I'm out there all alone, can't somebody or some animal come kill me? I retorted. Barry said, Well, I guess they could, but it's not likely. It's not like there are people hiding in the woods waiting for you all to go out there and get caught, and there will be other people in the area meditating as well. I was so disappointed that Barry could be in denial like this. He seems smart and all, but I felt like I was addressing a real problem, and he was simply not willing to see the truth of the matter. I tried one more time to help him see the error of his ways. Look, you guys run this program every few months. Anyone that wants to can find out when the program happens, and those same people can quickly figure out that you send out unwitting people into the darkness to be sitting ducks. It's always on Thursday night. They're probably out there right now, lying in wait as we speak. Barry and his wife, coach, facilitator Susan, both chimed in with as much encouragement as they needed to get me moving. It took a lot. Eventually I did make my way out to the trail angry and shaking with fear all the way looking back on it, I laugh at my perfectly logical fear. As Aristotle said, the things you see you are when all I saw was danger. Survival Mode was my primary state of being. Self expression is impossible when we are locked in fear. Nature has a beautiful way of providing clarity, we both stand in awe and see our powerlessness at the same time, the Four Seasons mirror our own existence, when we stop and notice almost all answers come from watching how nature does things, from how airplanes are designed to how to dress for the cold On the other side of the tightrope, the modern world has a way of interfering with the truth of our existence. The horses showed me many of the flaws of the modern world, our obsession with time and deadlines, our need to succeed at any cost, our mixed messages, our striving for perfection, our fear of being out of control, our disconnection from the earth that feeds us and the spirit that fortifies us. Now, Bruce's words made so much more sense. I'm helping the horse to help himself survive in the world we have created. Bruce was showing me how to let the horse be a horse in people's world, and the horses were reconnecting me to nature's world. They were showing me my nature. On one side of my tightrope was people's world. On the other side was nature's world. Clarity starts with removing that which does not belong, whether creating a simple picture for how my day is going to go, or a picture for a horse on a trail or a vision for my life, the art of subtraction makes room for what is real and true. I can only afford to remove my protective armor when I've come to own my true inner strength and acknowledged my true nature. We really live in two worlds. First, the world we have made, that is the modern world, and second, more importantly, we live in the world for which we are made. We are made for the pressure of being in harmony with the forces of nature. When this insight clicked, I was ready to complete the circle. 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. 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.