When I was in midst of editing Dancing the Tightrope, someone told me to hang on to the many stories that were landing on the cutting room floor. "Just because it didn't belong in the book doesn't mean it's not a story worth telling," they said. The following story is one of those that didn't make the cut. We pick up the action when I have been talking about the distinction between obsessing over mistakes in search of perfection versus using the process of recovery to bring me back to balance.

Searching through my blogs last week for a post on resistance, I ran across one I wrote 18 months prior to the horseback riding accident that set me on a journey of a whole new understanding about operating effectively under pressure. Reading this piece was almost eerie. It was a little bit like entering another dimension of time and space. Why? It was as if my future self was giving my past self the advice I would need in 18 months. Without remembering this exact list, I needed all three of these key actions then - and I need them now more than ever. The accident is so far past that it seems ridiculous to even keep mentioning it. However, the gift of the accident is present in every day of my life.

"Don't shrink. Don't puff up. Stand your sacred ground." Brené Brown One of the most common requests I get as an executive coach is this: How do I develop "executive presence?" It's one of the most elusive traits we can choose to develop. The distinctions are subtle. What one person calls gravitas, another might call arrogance. The difference is notable and yet not always easy to see. Furthermore, executive presence - at least as I define it - is exhibited as often by people in the sports or performance worlds, as it is in the corporate world. If you watched Tiger Woods win the Masters in 2019, you saw him move in a state of relaxed readiness, one of the key distinctions of executive presence.