This past weekend, I was in California for the Equus Film and Arts Festival. (And my book Dancing the Tightrope and podcast Creative Spirits Unleashed each won Winnie Awards!) On the last morning, Bruce Anderson and I were scheduled to do a presentation in the hotel, after doing daily demonstrations in the round pen the […]
We have more to be grateful for than we can imagine. Let’s start with running water. Watch a movie set 200 years ago and you will be reminded that every bedroom was equipped with a bowl and a pitcher. Why? Because that’s how one took care of water needs in the old days. I’m a […]
I know how much money I have. (Well, sort of, given market swings!) I don’t know how much time I have. Looking at time as my most valuable resource is not a new idea to me. However, it popped up somewhere in my social media feed in the last week, just as I was having […]
Learning to fly has brought me a new appreciation of the role of discipline as a critical mental (or invisible) tool. For the last twenty years, I’ve been working to unleash my creativity. Frankly, I have enjoyed leaving behind the rules and parameters of the accounting and banking worlds that formed my early career. Suddenly […]
I was reminded again today of the power of changing my perspective. As my flight instructor and I were preparing to get in the airplane for multiple touch and go landings, she asked me about my seat height. Suddenly, I was taken back to our very first flight, when she suggested cranking it as high […]
This week, the progression of my flying lessons began with more advanced maneuvers. The first one in this phase was “steep turns”. As we took off from the Asheville Airport and headed for the practice area just west of Lake Lure, I was feeling moderately confident that steep turns would be no big deal. However, […]
Originally Posted October 2022 Our thoughts can run away with us. They pop in our head, like the uninvited dinner guest. Before you know it, those runaway thoughts sit down, strap on a bib and start helping themselves to heaping piles of the dinner we have prepared. Meanwhile, we look on helplessly wondering those thoughts came from and if there are enough mashed […]
A few days ago, in one of those moments where I knew it would happen before it happened, I dropped my phone in the lake. All alone in the boathouse at Mystic Waters, I held the lever to raise the boat on the lift. With my other hand, I held my phone. Or should I […]
Recently I caught myself second guessing a text I had sent. When I really looked at the process of “second guessing”, I realized that something else all-together was happening. I was explaining myself to myself in my head. But it wasn’t really me I was explaining myself to. What the heck did I just say? […]
Note: Today I’m sharing an excerpt from Chapter 2 of my new book, Dancing the Tightrope, What Falling Off a Horse Taught Me About Embracing Pressure, Fear and Uncertainty. In the following excerpt, we pick up the story soon after I fell off the horse. In this segment, I’m beginning to understand the accident through […]