“Your edge is the experiential zone where your deepest, most relevant growth happens. It’s also where meaning may be unraveled and rewoven, where your world may undergo foundational changes, where unsuspected imperatives may catalyze new directions for you. Whatever your edge may be, it is rich with life-giving risk, calling forth the very best from you. It is a marvelous honor of your warrior spirit, a deep testing ground awaiting your full-blooded participation.

If it’s easy, it’s not your edge.”

-Robert Augustus Masters

I ran across this quote the other day and was instantly mesmerized by it. I have spent my life living on the edge. My edge that is. My edge probably looks very different from your edge. Early on my edge was about pushing the limits of my physical body. I was a white water kayaker and canoeist and rock climber way back when there weren’t many women doing that sort of thing. Talk about pushing the edges. What goes through your head and heart when you sit at the top of a rapid and can’t really see the bottom is an internal dialogue something like this:

Me: Ok. I’m going to do this now.

Fear: Hell No! This shit is scary! The water is freezing! Why are you doing this! You could die!

Me: No, I’m not going to die. I’ve looked at the rapid from the bank. It’s not so bad. I can do this. Look, just follow that line there and everything will be alright.

Fear: No! Why! Why! Why! You could get hurt!

Me: I’m going to do this whether you like it or not, so here we go!

Fear: Noooooooo. Hmph!

Silence

Then Thrill’s voice appears: Wheeeeeee!

My friends said that the harder the rapid, the bigger my smile would get, so they took to calling me Smiley. I did eventually hit a limit as to how far I would go with whitewater. However I just moved on to different types of challenges. Challenges like ten days backpacking in the remote wilderness of Wyoming and sixteen days rafting down the Grand Canyon to name a few. Why did I do those things? I knew that the voice of Thrill was way more fun than the voice of Fear.

When I had kids, the personal challenges changed to include how to make it fun for my kids and still fun for me. Every parent knows that getting a kid to ride in a car for 10 hours pushes everyones edges. I of course upped the ante and took my kids on month long driving trips. They now love long car trips by the way, so something must have worked out ok. I even upped the ante from there by taking them on multi day wilderness trips. I found that if you give a kid the lead to their own personal llama, they will joyfully hike distances you never thought possible.

Eventually my body started telling me Enough already! I had to figure out how to stay at my edge in a different way. That’s when my real journey began. My journey inwards to visit all those dark neglected painful places within. I did not exactly choose this journey, not on a conscious level anyway, but events in my life conspired to offer me opportunities to live life at my own internal edge. As this inner world unraveled and unwound, as I fell screaming into my own darkness, stumbling through dark room after dark room, as I shattered into a million pieces afraid I would never be whole again, so too did my outer world. I was living with nearly constant physical back pain, I felt overwhelmed with life, I lost beloved pets and beloved family members, I definitely wasn’t happy, and my marriage crumbled. I felt alone, unseen, unheard and in a lot of pain.

So, I called on my inner strength and courage and all those skills I had honed from meeting those physical challenges earlier in my life and I began to reweave myself and my life back together, starting from rock bottom. This time I tried to go with the flow more and control less. I called in support from many areas of my life. I had faith. I trusted. I’m different now and better I think. My life is also different now and I know it’s better.

The weaving, unraveling and reweaving continues though as it will for the rest of my life. Life on the edge is just that way. I can tell you though with great confidence that living life on the edge is worth every bit of energy it takes to stay there. The voice of Fear is still there to keep me checking in and redirecting my steps – in a good way. The voice of Thrill gets to be heard too sometimes. But there is a new voice, the voice of Unbounded Joy who gets to sing ever so often and she is a beautiful voice to hear.

5 Keys to Staying on Your Edge

Courage and Strength – You have both the courage and the strength to meet whatever challenges you face in your life. You can do this. If you are having difficulties believing this, keep reminding yourself multiple times a day – I can do this. I am Strong. I am Courageous. Post these statements around your house, your office, in your car, wherever you will see them often. Also, surround yourself with people who believe in you too.

Go With The Flow – Let Go – I know. This is harder than it seems. Too often we try to keep in control. However, once you let go and just go with the flow of your life without trying to hold onto things, people, experiences that are no longer serving you, the better your life will be. Believe me, struggling and trying to control your life doesn’t work. It actually makes it harder. It doesn’t mean you won’t have any bumps and bruises when you get to the calm waters again, but it’s better than getting seriously hurt or drowning along the way.

Trust – Big One. When you have so many experiences in your life that teach you not to trust, it’s hard to bring this back into your life. Faith in something bigger than me has been extremely helpful for me to begin to trust again. Another big piece of trust is getting deeply connected with your own inner wisdom. We often have a hard time trusting our inner wisdom, yet it always steers us in the right direction. Practice connecting in to this wisdom every day. Ask your inner guidance little things that don’t really matter if it’s right or wrong like should you turn right or left. Another practice would be to send out a simple desire and let go of how it comes to you. I practice this with parking spaces and 9 times out of 10 I get a really good parking space and on that 10th one I enjoy the gift of a walk I’ve been given. The universe is there to support you and manifest your deepest desires if you can only trust.

Persevere – If you keep getting close to your edge and backing away, keep trying. If you fall down, get back up and try again. Try, try, and try again. If you can step up to your edge and just stay there, eventually your fear will subside. So, take it in baby steps. Step up to your edge in a small way, stay there for a bit and back away. Next time, stay a little longer. One of my anxieties is around being late, so time becomes very stressful for me. I practiced facing this fear in small steps by being a little late to things that didn’t really matter, and then over time, upping the ante by coming in late to something that mattered a little more. I practiced the mantra: I’m always in perfect time. Eventually, being on time had less and less hold over me and now I can choose to be on time or not. Persevering is not about trying to make something happen the way you think it should. It’s about facing your fear over and over again until you know it is not bigger than you and it can’t control you anymore.

Call in Support – I could not have done any of this alone. Most of the deep internal struggles that we have as humans are relational in nature. That means that facing them and healing them cannot be done alone. It must be done in relationship. The right people in your life will consistently show you how great you are and how lovable you are just the way you are without judgement. There is nothing you need to do differently and nothing you need to change. Just having one or two people in your life like this can be hugely healing in itself. These people come in all forms: professional, friends, loved ones, even strangers. What you must learn to do is reach out your hand and ask for what you need.

I would love to hear back from you on how you are doing. How are you living at your edge? How do you keeping putting one foot in front of the other when things get tough? What kind of support network do you have?

And as always, if you need support with any of this, I am open for private consultations. Just schedule a phone call with me here, and we can discuss your options.

Aloha,