This episode of the podcast is Chapters 16, 17, and 18 of Dancing the Tightrope, 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.” I’ve even come to call the process of raising the pressure threshold “couraging” because we are building our courage.

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 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 a part of us. As they direct us out of our awareness, our Rules feel as if they ARE us.”

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 to go 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.”

We are nearing the end of the book! Next week, I’ll share the last two chapters of Dancing the Tightrope. Because I tackled this project Frame by Frame, step by step, it’s actually been fun. Hard to believe I dreaded it!