Last week I ran into actor Kathi Carlson, a friend of a friend, at a local café and sat down to chat for a bit. After she shared some of what she is up to, I decided to check out her Web site and saw she had done a stand-up comedy gig at Caroline’s in New York. Intrigued, I emailed her, asking what the experience was like. Her answer led to a lesson in how taking one step can change your life.

“Basically over the past couple of years I had these two thoughts or ideas that kept nagging at me,” Carlson wrote. “One was to sky dive and the other was to do stand up. Both were sheer lunacy in my mind, kind of like a moth flying into a flame, so I ignored them for a long time.”

But then, three years ago, when her husband asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday, Carlson replied “a tandem skydive.” What made this particularly strange for her was that she had “an intense, paralyzing fear of heights, or more specifically, edges: cliffs, drop-offs, steps with no railings, that sort of thing.”

And so she took the very literal plunge, eventually relaxing into the scenery -- the Hudson River in the distance, the Wallkill River right below, and the Shawangunk and Catskill Mountains as stunning backdrop.

“No fear -- not ever -- not even for a single instant,” Carlson recalled. “It still astonishes me to this day that this is how it was.”

It bears mentioning that this is a now 55-year-old woman who five years ago made the switch from living a suburban life in Ithaca, N.Y., to urban life in Hoboken, N.J. Now an empty-nester whose two children are pursuing careers in law and engineering, she was a stay-at-home mother, president of the PTA, Cub Scout den mother -- what she calls a “typical” suburban mother. Carlson worked in the insurance industry for a while and was a broker up until a few years ago when her youngest graduated college.

Meanwhile, as part of her new lifestyle in Hoboken, Carlson had begun working with a personal trainer.

“I was worried I might be patronized because I was older and a woman, but quite the opposite proved to be the case,” Carlson said. “Roger [Ansanelli] would often declare ‘you’re strong -- you’re a woman’ and he challenged me to do things I never thought I could do. Because he believed in me, I believed in me. I far exceeded the goals I’d set for myself, much to my surprise and utter delight. Something else happened which I hadn’t anticipated. As I gained strength physically, I also grew stronger mentally and emotionally.”

It is that newfound confidence that led Carlson to the skydive and, since she had been actively embracing her inner performer and had become immersed in fine-tuning her acting craft, it was natural that “lunacy” idea No. 2 would come up again.

“Stand-up comedy for me was a whole lot scarier than jumping out of a plane,” Carlson said.

But she took it on. The day before she was supposed to do a timed routine for her final class at the Manhattan Comedy School, she was “having a complete breakdown.” Her husband suggested she quit, which she was not prone to do, but she also realized that she had done what she set out to do -- explore stand-up comedy. She let it go and felt peaceful, but the next day as she went through her normal routine, she realized she was writing comedy material in her head. It caught her by surprise, but she went with it and started bullet-pointing the things that were coming to her.

Carlson went to class that night, delivered the routine and a week later she was doing it at Caroline’s. A month later, she was invited back for New Talent Night.

“I had a blast,” Carlson said. “Do I think I had the best material of the evening? No. Was I the most comfortable, at-ease person of the evening? Oh yeah.”

While Carlson gained immense respect for stand-up comics, the one-time experience was enough for her know it’s not a profession for her. What was important was she had conquered her two biggest fears.

“I have come to realize it was my empowering experience in the gym that helped me find the confidence and courage that was already within me so that when that crazy idea to sky dive came into my head, this time I didn’t dismiss it,” Carlson said. “At that moment I knew that I could do anything ... I can do anything.”

Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.