Shows
Creative Spirits Unleashed#95: Hannah Betts: Facing Fear; Lessons from a StuntwomanMy guest for this episode is Hannah Betts, Hollywood Stuntwoman, Professional Skydiver and more. If you watched the Superbowl this year, you saw Hannah land in a cruise ship swimming pool after jumping out of a helicopter. She shares some of the behind-the-scenes magic from that commercial, as well as some of the scarier stunts she’s done for other shows and movies. She’s had a number of scary things happen in her career – and the way she embraces things not going right is inspiring. In our conversation, we deeply explored the topic of fear fro...
2025-06-271h 37
Creative Spirits Unleashed#94 Julia Carpenter: The Two Step WayMy guest for this episode of the podcast is Julia Carpenter. This episode started unlike any other I’ve done. Julia read a passage from a non-published book she calls the Prologue to the Unwritten Memoir. The passage was a launching point for touching on many, many themes. Perhaps the most important was the theme of finding our true nature and purpose in this world. Julia also happens to be the wife of my last podcast guest, Bernie Harberts, and in this conversation, we touched on some of the same stories as Bernie’s podcast, but fr...
2025-06-131h 48
Creative Spirits Unleashed#93: Traveling with Bernie HarbertsMy guest for this episode is Bernie Harberts. We covered so much ground in this podcast, much like Bernie has done for much of his life. When I say covering ground, that’s for real. Bernie has taken several cross country trips with his mules over the years, covering over 10,000 miles and 1,000 nights. In our conversation, he offers his hard-earned wisdom on approaching life on the road, life with horses and mules, and living a full and meaningful life in general. One of the themes that has helped him take to the r...
2025-05-301h 57
Creative Spirits Unleashed#92 Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 19 & 20: Back on THE Horse and ConclusionThis episode of the podcast is the last two chapters of Dancing the Tightrope. We have reached the end of the book! You might hear me be a little choked up at the end of this reading. There are so many layers to unpack as to why. First, when I started reading this book, I didn’t expect to get much further than Chapter 1. Just reading twenty whole chapters felt like a huge accomplishment. For those of you who encouraged me to read another (and then another), I appreciate you more than you can know. Sec...
2025-05-2346 min
Creative Spirits Unleashed#91: Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 16, 17 & 18; Courage; Congruence, and ClarityThis 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. T...
2025-05-161h 04
Creative Spirits Unleashed#90 Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 14 & 15; Commitment and Curiosity; A Super ToolThis episode includes Dancing the Tightrope Chapters Fourteen Commitment and Fifteen Curiosity. These are the first two of five chapters in the book outlining the building blocks of self-awareness. If you have listened this far, you have certainly heard me talk about the value of these inner “tools.” I decided to highlight the five building blocks of self-awareness at this stage of my story, because I found myself not always showing up in pressure situations the way I would have liked to. It was clear to me that sometimes I could reach...
2025-05-0929 min
Creative Spirits Unleashed#89 Dancing the Tightrope: Ch 12 & 13: The Froth is My Friend and The Art of LivingThis 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 ha...
2025-05-0239 min
Creative Spirits Unleashed# 88: Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 10 & 11; The Mistake Cycle: The What’s Next CycleIn this episode, I’m reading Chapters 10 and 11 of Dancing the Tightrope. If there is a theme in these two chapters of my journey, I have to call it “stuff happens.” I’m going along, expecting things to go as planned, and instead, something unexpected turns everything on its head. Of course something unexpected happened. That’s how the world works. Why would I think it should go any other way? As I say earlier in the book, this journey showed me that many of my assumptions about pressure, balance and how to develop mental fitness were upside or backwards...
2025-04-251h 27
Creative Spirits Unleashed#87 Dancing the Tightrope Ch. 8 & 9 My No-Riding Riding Lesson: Filling in the HolesIn this episode of the podcast, I am reading chapters 8 and 9 of Dancing the Tightrope. I'm starting to put things together, as you will hear when you listen. At the very beginning of chapter eight, I had a wild experience going out and learning the negative-positive poll in a completely new or deeper way. Let me tell you something that's interesting about that particular super tool as I call it. It is eight years later, and I am still BEGINNING to understand just how powerful this mechanism inside of us is if we learn to us...
2025-04-1853 min
Creative Spirits Unleashed#86: Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 6 & 7; The Decision-Sort of: Imbalance is a Good ThingIn this episode of the podcast, I’m reading Chapters 6 and 7, The Decision – Sort of, and Imbalance is a Good Thing. As you will hear, at this stage of the journey, I’m somewhat flailing. Looking back on it, I’m still surprised that I took the path I did. Some part of me saw the promise of taking the more difficult path – something that was typically not my norm. It has been fascinating for me to go back and read these chapters several years later. I typically can’t remember what I wrote last week, much le...
2025-04-1150 min
Creative Spirits Unleashed#85 Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 4 & 5; Failure Is Not Failure at All Plus Assessing RiskThis episode of the podcast features chapters 4 and 5 of Dancing the Tightrope. If you haven’t listened to the first 3 chapters, I suggest listening to those first. It will help make sense of what’s coming in these next few chapters. When I listened back to Chapter 3, where I read the sidebar blog “Where’s My Choice Here?”, it was somewhat stunning to me that many of the threads that I pulled together for Dancing the Tightrope started well before the accident that lays the foundation for the book. I was already onto the themes of dealing...
2025-04-0447 min
Creative Spirits Unleashed#84 Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 3; Invisible ToolsThis week’s episode is – drumroll – Chapter 3 of Dancing the Tightrope. I’m just going to say it – you were right and I was wrong! I’m speaking to those who’ve been telling me for a long time that they would appreciate an audio version of my book. Not only have I been getting great feedback and gratitude for providing the book in this form, but I have also surprisingly enjoyed reading it myself. After all, I wrote this over 4 years ago. It’s given me a fresh perspective on the themes and principles I began learning a...
2025-03-2846 min
Creative Spirits Unleashed#83 Dancing the Tightrope: Chapter 2; Growth in RecoveryIn my last episode of the podcast, I started an experiment by reading the first chapter of my book Dancing the Tightrope. My promise was that if I heard from my readers and listeners that it was valuable, I would do more. Secretly, I did not expect anything to come of it. Of course, I was wrong! You have spoken (at least some of you!) and I am listening. This episode of the podcast is Chapter Two of Dancing the Tightrope. It covers a lot of ground, both about my recovery from my accident and m...
2025-03-2143 min
Creative Spirits Unleashed#82: Dancing the Tightrope; Too Much Pressure for MeThis episode of the podcast is something new. Let’s call it an experiment. I’ll explain shortly, but first some context. Since I published Dancing the Tightrope, What Falling Off a Horse Taught Me About Embracing Pressure, Fear and Uncertainty in 2022, many people have asked me for an audio book. While I’m aware of the huge trend towards audio books, I’m not an audio-book listener. I love to read, and I LOVE to listen to podcasts. However, listening to audio books has just never worked for me. I just zone out. So the though...
2025-03-0721 min
Creative Spirits Unleashed#81 Chris Heron: The Path to Balance and Well-BeingMy guest for this episode of the podcast is Chris Heron, who is the Director and Head Coach of Waterski and Wakeboard Scotland. Not only is he a coach, he is also the 3 time Scottish National Waterski Champion. This podcast happened because I just happened to open an email that came in through my contact form on my website. Nine times out of ten, those emails are junk solicitations. In this case, it was members of Chris’s waterski team reaching out to say that they were fans of the podcast and thought he would be a...
2025-02-071h 54
Creative Spirits Unleashed#80 Chantel Prat: The Neuroscience of YouMy guest for this episode is Chantel Prat. If her name is not already familiar to you, she is the author of the book The Neuroscience of You. What got me really excited about having her on the podcast was her willingness to play with ideas about learning from two sides of the coin: the science of it in her academic world and the experience of it in my world as a lay person. We met in 2023 at the Journey on Podcast Summit where we were fellow presenters. In the last year, I’ve been putt...
2025-01-241h 45
Creative Spirits Unleashed#79 Nancy Zintsmaster: The Power of Presence and AuthenticityMy guest for this episode is Nancy Zintsmaster, who is co-founder and master trainer in The Carolyn Resnick Method Liberty Horsemanship. I’m going to start this introduction with a question: What would your life – and leadership - look like if you were able to partner with others using connection and harmony rather than control, force or fear? That is the core question Nan and I explored in this conversation. We got into the deep corners of what it looks like to create connection in a disconnected world, both with humans and with horses. In this co...
2024-12-201h 47
Creative Spirits Unleashed#78 Corey Vaughn: Adapting to Challenging ConditionsAfter a brief hiatus, the podcast is back with guest water skier Corey Vaughn. You may remember that we spoke in the Spring, where Corey described his 1000-day plan to see how far he could take his water ski goals if he chose to really go for it. In that conversation, he laid out some specific goals for the season, and promised to return in the Fall to review the season, regardless of the outcome. In this conversation, we review Corey’s season, diving into some of the high and low points. I won’t spoil the outco...
2024-12-061h 54
Creative Spirits Unleashed#77 Jessie Dowling: A Journey of Passion and ResilienceMy guest for the episode is Jessie Dowling. She is an endurance rider who just completed the Tevis Cup last month and the Mongol Derby last year. Both of these events are some of the toughest horse races in the world. Given that, you might expect that Jessie has been at this for a very long time. However, this is a relatively new endeavor for her, as you will hear in this podcast. She basically says “I’m just a girl who loves horses.” What I found really interesting in speaking with Jessie was how she made...
2024-08-231h 37
Creative Spirits Unleashed#76 Stevie Delahunt: A Teacher of Grit on Her Tevis Cup ExperienceFor this episode, I have a returning guest in Stevie Delahunt. You may remember that she was on my podcast last November. We had just met at the Journey On Podcast Summit and realized that we were two kindred spirits. I simply had to have her back after she just completed the Tevis Cup, a 100-mile endurance ride on the Western States Trail in California. This ride is legendary, with only 50% of the entrants completing the full race. This year, only 40% of the riders made it “under the banner”. Stevie was one of those riders, along with 3 other riders comp...
2024-08-092h 11
Creative Spirits Unleashed#75 Chris Dolman: How Can I serve?My guest for this episode is Chris Dolman. He is the Producing Artistic Director for the Lake Lure Music Festival, an eclectic music festival producing world class music in multiple genres with renowned musicians and bands. Based in Western North Carolina, the Festival's supports the Lake Lure Classical Academy and Hickory Nut Gorge Outreach and their respective missions. Chris started his career working in radio before becoming a professional actor and director based in New York City. Chris and his wife, Cathi now live full time in Lake Lure, North Carolina.This conversation took many interesting turns...
2024-07-261h 50
Creative Spirits Unleashed#74 Kerri Lake: Generation of HarmonyMy guest for this episode is Kerri Lake, founder of Generation of Harmony. When I share these introductions, it’s usually so that you, my listeners, can relate to the guest and find some common ground. In Kerri’s case, her title makes common ground quite simple: Human. That title really does describe the way Kerri shows up in the world. She seeks to contribute something of value to every interaction, as I discovered in this conversation. So while it may seem difficult to pin down “who is Kerri and what does she do?”, it becomes clear in a conversa...
2024-05-101h 54
Creative Spirits Unleashed#73 Corey Vaughn: Balancing Acts: A Conversation with Professional Water SkierMy guest for this episode of the podcast is Corey Vaughn. He’s a professional water skier who I’ve known for more than 15 years, through many of the ups and downs of our respective water ski journeys. It’s the beginning of water ski season here in the States and the end of the water ski season on the other side of the world. Corey just came back from Australia, where he finished 4th at the Moomba Masters, which was his best performance there yet. Given the timing, we debated about when to have this conversation. Should we have i...
2024-04-261h 55
Creative Spirits Unleashed#72 Laurie Kaplan: Journey Through the Gaucho DerbyMy guest for this episode of the Creative Spirits Unleashed podcast is Laurie Kaplan. I reached out to Laurie to be on the podcast after hearing her talk about her experience of the Gaucho Derby on the Greg and Dan Show in Peoria Illinois. The Gaucho Derby is a 500 km adventure race through Patagonia, and it’s billed as the world’s toughest horse race. That’s an understatement. Three of my former podcast guests were involved in the Derby, Kansas Carradine, Stevie Delahunt and Warwick Schiller, so I was paying attention to their adventures as well. In this podcas...
2024-04-051h 44
Creative Spirits Unleashed#71 Jane Pike: Embracing Discomfort and Letting Go of ControlMy guest for this episode is Jane Pike. I first heard Jane’s name in context of the World Equestrian Games in 2018. She was the mindset coach for Warwick and Robyn Schiller, who competed in reining, and scored their best scores during an extremely high-pressure event. Prior to those games, I had never heard of reining; however, it was the discipline that captivated me then and has ever since. Back to Jane. I was very intrigued by Jane’s approach to mindset training. Not only does she align with my experience of what really works, she aligns very much with...
2024-02-231h 54
Creative Spirits Unleashed#70 Mary Connaughty-Sullivan: Nudges from the Other SideMy guest for this episode is Mary Connaughty-Sullivan. This was an incredibly special episode unlike any I've done before. Mary is the author of "Nudges from the Other Side." It is the story that she shares from her journal entries, along with a lot of poetry and her thoughts of losing her son, Aaron, at the age of 20. It's not only a heartbreaking story but also an uplifting one. You'll understand that as you listen to this podcast. Here is what she has to say about herself:When asked to provide biographical info, Mary’s fir...
2024-02-091h 43
Creative Spirits Unleashed#69 Julie Ripley: Self-Connection, Boundaries, and Getting UnstuckMy guest for this episode is Julie Ripley, who specializes in helping people regain their connection with self. She was also the Chief Financial Officer of a company in her mid-30’s when she realized that she was burned out. Given my own experience of near-burnout in my mid 30’s, you can imagine, we had a lot to talk about. If I had to characterize this conversation, I would say it’s about distinctions. For example, the distinction between power and force. Also the distinction between sleep and rest. The distinction between the embodiment of wisdom versus just knowing inform...
2024-01-261h 57