What have I invited into my life? That was the second question I had at the beginning of the initial ride on my trip to Oregon for Endurance Bootcamp with Stevie Delahunt. The FIRST question was “Am I ok? Anything broken?” “What now?” Ok, I realized that is a set of questions, but in moments of stress, the thoughts tend to come flooding in.
We’ll get those questions out of the way, and then, move on to the second question, which is something I’m finding more interesting these days.
The five of us started out Friday morning by loading our limited gear, food for the weekend and all the stuff we would need at the campsite at Timothy Lake on the Pacific Crest Trail. Last thing to be loaded were the horses, and I was thrilled to get to ride Hero again. In March, I went to Oregon for Stevie’s “Galloping Camp” and Hero and I had clicked.
We got the horses tacked and the other riders started mounting. I liked the look of the log that Eric had used as a mounting block and brought Hero over to it. Stevie planned to hold Hero while I got on. With their endurance experience, her horses expect to move when you get on, and on the first ride, we thought it would be better for me to get a minute to settle in.
I didn’t quite make it that far.
No sooner had I thrown my leg over than I was on the ground. It felt like I was under Hero, so I kept my head down, waiting for something to hurt. A few seconds later, I stood up, checked everything and realized that I was ok. My tailbone felt compressed, but otherwise, no broken bones, no strained ligaments – just some dust on my pants.
It was at this moment that I watched Stevie “Dance the Tightrope.” She had brought the four of us out to this location for a weekend bootcamp – to prepare the other three riders for some of the most difficult horse races in the world. With my fall, there was a chance for the weekend to be over before it began. On top of that, she was very aware of my history of falling off a horse a few years ago. She had to assess her options, taking into consideration the very wide range of riders, along with her five horses.
She could have gone the super safe route and decided to call off the ride. She could have done the opposite (for the sake of alliteration, let’s call that the “stupid” route) and insisted that I get back on Hero, whether he liked it or not. Instead, she looked at Jessie and said “I think it’s better if you ride Hero and Lynn to ride Chuck.” For me, it was a bit of a gulp, because I had seen Stevie ride Chuck in March. He’s a lot of horse. So “dancing the tightrope” offered the spicy route. (There’s that alliteration again.)
In the time it took to adjust the stirrups on Chuck’s saddle for my long legs, we were all mounted and headed out for what would be the longest ride of my life until that point.
Now it was my turn to dance the tightrope. I could spend the ride beating myself up over doing something wrong in mounting Hero. I could blame Stevie for my predicament. Or I could be here now with Chuck, aware that it’s no small feat to ride in harmony on the back of a huge animal.
It wasn’t until we were back at the camp – after a 10-mile ride, the longest to date I had ever ridden – that I realized that for the most part, I had indeed danced the tightrope with Chuck. In fact, the ride was joyful for me – even the trotting, which was very uncomfortable with a sore tailbone, gave me a strange sort of happy discomfort.
The next day brought a different sort of challenge. In the middle of June, the rainy, cold weather was more like a day in late Fall. We were all grateful that Stevie’s packing list including rain gear, a puffy jacket and other gear for temps as low as 30 degrees. On this day, we rode close to 15 miles and spent over 6 hours in the saddle. Again, it was joyful! Not because it was easy, but because it was challenging. Some would call it stressful. And that leads us to the second question.
What have I invited into my life?
Again, I’ll answer the question right up front. I’m inviting stress and pressure into my life. To be more specific, I’m welcoming the stress and pressure that already exists, and choosing to see it as beneficial. There was a time when I treated both as something to be resisted, guarded against and seen as a problem.
Most of the clients I have worked with over the years have treated stress and pressure the same way as I did. It’s something to be managed, resisted, avoided, and eliminated. And if all else fails, numb yourself.
When I was still in banking, I joined a choir called the Pride Unity Choir. It was an interracial gospel choir pulled together by one of my co-workers at the bank where I worked. We came together to prepare for a huge concert to be held at the Blumenthal Center in uptown Charlotte. At the time, I had been taking voice lessons, so I decided to try out for a solo. I got it. It was great in theory – but I had never even sung a solo in front of small groups, and now my first solo would be in Charlotte’s premier auditorium? The pressure was enormous What was I thinking? I shared my concern with a different co-worker, who brushed it off as no big deal. Why? She said she could offer me some pills that would take the edge off. In other words, “don’t worry about the pressure. Just numb yourself and you’ll be fine.” I passed. (And I’m grateful there are no recordings of this event, because I’m pretty sure my performance came nowhere near matching my tryout.)
Of course, pills aren’t the only way to numb ourselves. We cope with stress and pressure with any number of things, like busy-ness, food, alcohol and on-line shopping.
However, we don’t simply have to “cope” with stress and pressure.
How we choose to SEE stress and pressure dramatically impacts how we deal with stress and pressure.
A researcher named Alia Crum had a theory about a better way to help people deal with stress and develop a growth mindset. She was a student of Carol Dweck, who wrote the book Mindset, The New Psychology of Success. Dr. Crum ran a test where she gave half her research subjects the “stress is debilitating” lesson - the idea that stress raises cortisol, causes illness, etc. She gave the other half the “stress is enhancing” lesson – where resistance training creates strong muscles, stress helps us focus, etc. The results were undeniable. The group that received the information that stress is enhancing were 40% more likely to seek feedback on how to do better on the task than the other group.
Of course, feedback is essential to learning and growing. For me, how I treat feedback is a clear signal of whether I’m in a learning state or if I’m in a triggered – or reactive – state. When I’m reactive, my repertoire of possible actions is much smaller, yet my commitment to being right (i.e. not making mistakes) is much larger. I’ve come to think of being committed to NOT making mistakes as being infected with the “mistake virus.” It’s not the mistakes – it’s how I FEEL about the mistake that is the problem. And how I feel creates a story and the story informs my behavior.
The cycle seems to go like this:
PRESSURE -> AGITATION (THE FROTH) -> CHOICE: OPERATE FROM 1) MY STORY OR 2) WHAT I AM SENSING
From here, things get complicated. It is SO difficult to distinguish between a story and raw data. As a human, it’s almost impossible to work with the raw data. We immediately add meaning to what we are sensing and then we treat the story as the truth. For example, I recently had a client tell me that someone he worked with was arrogant. It sounds like raw data on the surface, right? But when I asked him to describe what he was seeing, hearing, reading, etc. that took him to that conclusion, his story fell apart. We both agreed that he could have just as easily called the behavior confident, rather than arrogant.
When that feeling of agitation triggers thoughts of anxiousness, my strategy will more than likely be one of coping. The point of coping is to lower the pressure and minimize the feeling of the agitation or froth. The problem with coping is the hidden – and unrealistic – assumption that goes something like this: “If I can just get through this one bad thing, then everything will be ok.”
When I remember that the feeling of agitation could also mean that I’m in a state of learning – or the brain’s wiring is available – then my strategy can be one of “couraging.” The point of couraging is to USE the pressure to make a choice that balances the two sides of the tightrope. Not too safe and not too risky.
Stress and pressure are a fact of life. These days, it seems I’m inviting more stress and pressure into my life, because I’ve chosen to see pressure as the catalyst to my growth. There was a time when I saw every “bad” thing that happened to me as something I never wanted to face again. Now, I realize that the pressure is what helps me build my pressure threshold if I’m consciously aware of it.
The first time I fell of a horse, in 2017, it took me almost 18 months before I got back on. (Partially due to injury, but mostly due to fear.) When I fell off on my trip out to Oregon, I was back on the horse in less that 18 minutes. Fortunately, I wasn’t hurt, but what mattered most was the fact that in the last few years, I’ve deliberately been working on building my pressure threshold. Could there have been enough pressure that I would not have gotten back on the horse? Absolutely! I did not take it lightly – but I did do it mindfully. And it turned out to be one of my most fun weekends ever.
What are your favorite strategies for coping with pressure? In what ways do you lower the pressure in order to cope with the stress? In what ways have you used pressure to make you stronger and more courageous?