The Tightrope and The Echo

Some mornings I wake up certain. Not perfect, not invincible, but anchored.

I know my work has weight. I can feel the years behind me, a steady hand on my back. I think of the people who have trusted me, the rooms I've walked into where the air shifted because I named something no one else could, the leaders who left standing a little taller because of what we built together.

On those mornings, confidence doesn't feel like a wire. It feels like the steadiest ground. Wide. Solid. Permanent.

And I believe it. This is the time it will stay.

This is the stretch where I have finally crossed over to the other side of self-doubt. Where the hole won't find me again.

I walk into a room and hold my voice without flinching. I make the joke that lands, and instead of replaying it later, I let myself laugh. I take up space without calculating whether it's too much.

For hours, sometimes days, I live inside the lie that confidence is permanent. And it feels like relief.

Until it doesn't.

You know that feeling, don't you? When presence settles so deeply in your bones that you stop rehearsing your words, stop scanning the room, stop bracing for the drop. When confidence feels natural, easy, even permanent.

Almost smug. Maybe this time you cracked the code. Until life reminds you: nope, still human.

The Lie of Forever Absence

The shift is never dramatic. It isn't betrayal in the form of disaster. It's a pause that lingers one beat too long. An email that lands sharper than it was meant. A meeting where the silence stretches past comfort into doubt. A delayed response that suddenly feels like judgment. A terse, "Come see me when you have a chance." A Facebook photo of the gathering you weren't invited to.

And suddenly, the rope shakes beneath me. The ground I trusted evaporates. I am in the hole again, rehearsing the other lie: this time it won't come back.

And I believe that too. Absolutely.

This is adjacency. Confidence and collapse pressed so close together you think you might need to call HR.

Presence living right beside absence, each one convincing you it is the only truth.

The cruelty of adjacency is that in presence, you believe it will never leave. In absence, you believe it will never return.

Both feel final. Both are lies.

I've been there. You've been there. Your team has been there. The high performer you admire... has been there. A meeting where your voice caught in your throat. A silence you filled in with your own worst fears. A stretch of days where absence felt like it had moved in for good.

You know the soundtrack: "Welcome back to the cavern of inadequacy, population: you."

The Performance and the Ache

From the outside, it looks steady. People see the track record. The credibility. The voice that can hold a room. They see the stretches of confidence and think that must be the whole story.

From the inside, it's messier. Adjacency is not contradiction. Contradiction demands a winner, one truth canceling the other.

Adjacency is proximity. Two truths sharpening the other simply by being so near.

And the loneliness isn't in the fall itself. It's in the forgetting. Every time I tumble, I forget the rope has always returned. Every time I stand steady, I forget how easily the rope can sway.

That forgetting isolates. It convinces me I'm the only one who lives inside this rhythm.

The Irony of Guideship

Here's the irony. I know how to pull others out.

I've sat with clients in their holes, convinced they had broken something beyond repair. I've heard the certainty in their voices: I can't do this. I've failed. It's gone for good.

And I've held the mirror until they could see what I already knew:

You're not failing. You're practicing. The rope is still here, even if you can't feel it.

That's what coaching is. Not answers. Not rescue. Presence. A hand on the rope when someone else can't grip it. The reminder that absence isn't final, even when it feels absolute.

But when it's me, who steadies me?

Sometimes it's a friend who notices before I say anything. Sometimes it's a colleague who throws my own words back at me, softened but recognizable.

Sometimes, there isn't a soul there. It's just me, sitting in the hole, waiting. Waiting until the nervous system loosens. Waiting until the memories of success crack through the silence. Waiting until I can see the rope again.

And still, in both directions, I swear it's different this time. I swear I'll never fall again. I swear I'll never climb out again.

Both promises are false. Both promises feel true.

If you're wondering, yes, it is exhausting to argue with myself this much. It's like living with an unhelpful sports commentator who only shows up to announce the mistakes.

Of course I'm compelled to write about it. That's what happens when you're running with a herd of feral guides. I believe in writing that is by and for. So here we are.

What Collapse Teaches

Here's what I've learned, slowly, and only by repetition.

The collapse is not an interruption of confidence. It is what makes confidence resonate.

If I had never lost my footing, never felt the sharp ache of absence, then presence would be flat. Performative. Hollow. The rope would be just an act of balance, not an act of trust.

But because I have known both states, the days of certainty and the days of silence, the return vibrates. Presence carries an echo. It hums because of the absence that came before.

Confidence isn't broken by collapse. It's deepened by it.

Confidence without collapse is costume. Confidence with collapse is lived-in.

That is the gift of adjacency. Both sides deepen the other. Both lies, the one that says presence is permanent and the one that says absence is forever, teach me something true when I climb back.

Think back to your own returns. The moments when confidence came rushing back, not as bravado but as something hard-earned. Didn't it feel different then, deeper, steadier, more alive?

The Invitation

And maybe that's the invitation. Not to pretend the rope never sways. Not to chase permanence in either direction. But to let both stretches be part of the rhythm. To see them as practice.

To trust that every time we lose the rope, we are rehearsing for the next time we step steady upon it.

The Dao reminds us that balance only exists because of the extremes. To know steadiness, we have to taste both sides: the dizzying high of confidence that feels permanent, and the heavy drop of collapse that feels final. Somewhere between those poles is the real play, where confidence has texture, where feedback doesn't shatter us, where steadiness has teeth.

And yes, I'd love to say I live there all the time, sipping tea in my enlightened balance. But the truth is, I visit it like a friend across town. Sometimes often, sometimes not nearly enough. Which, I suspect, is the point.

So linger in the hole if you need to. Feel the loneliness. Let yourself name the sharp edges of not enough. And then, when the rope comes back into view, take it. Step again. Let yourself feel the steadiness in your bones, richer now because of where you've been.

Guideship is not measured by how rarely you fall. It is measured by how fully you inhabit presence after absence. And by how willing you are to build spaces where others don't have to climb alone.

Points of Balance

When you're riding the high: Anchor your mind. Share three reminders of your worth that aren't tied to today's wins. For example: "I'm trusted by my team. I've come through challenges before. I'm someone who listens well."

When you're in the hole: Don't climb alone. Call a colleague, a friend, or a mentor and ask them to reflect back what they see. Even a simple, "Remind me of what I bring when I forget it myself" can pull you closer to the rope.

When you forget the rhythm: Pause and name one recent moment when you felt steady. Write it down or tell someone you trust. For example: "Last week I led that conversation with calm." That memory becomes proof the rope always returns.

The rope will always sway. That's the nature of it.

But maybe that's the gift, because when it steadies again beneath your feet, you know, without doubt, that you are alive upon it.

💭 If we were sitting together right now, I'd ask you this: When you lose the rope, what helps you trust it will steady again? And when it does, how do you carry that echo back into your presence?