Jim and I were as enthralled as the rest of Canada with the winning game seven of the Toronto Raptors last weekend.  The final shot was breath-stealing!  Later that evening, the CBC National news showed an interview conducted by Rosemary Barton with the President of the NBA, Adam Silver.  In it, she broached the topic of politics and sport, specifically noting that the NBA, as an organization, has avoided prescribing what its athletes can say and what political topics the players can voice opinions about.  This is in stark contrast to other organizations, the NFL for instance, which has taken a fairly firm stance on players like Colin Kaepernick who chose to bring the Black Lives Matter movement into the spotlight when he ‘took a knee’ during the playing of the American National Anthem.

The entire interview was interesting, partly because Adam Silver very rarely gives public interviews, but mostly because he seems like such a very smart person; one who is grounded in common sense.   The thing that stood out for me was his description of the philosophy of the NBA around these issues.  He explained that the NBA organization has a set of clear values they operate by.  They include things like tolerance, inclusion and respect.

Only three months into his term, he banned the LA Clippers owner, Donald Stirling, from the league for life because of racist comments he made.  This swift, clear, firm action by Silver set the tone.  Clearly, the values the league ascribed to, were in fact going to be the values the league lived by.

This spoke to me.  It aligns perfectly with one of the most basic teachings in coaching; that being that organizations and individuals, both create the best opportunity for a rich, successful and satisfying life when we identify our values, and align our actions with them.

A value is something of worth.   It is something we cherish.  It is something we would fight to keep in our lives.  It is something we are willing to make sacrifices for.  A value, what we value, tells the world what we believe is important in life.

Often when I work with an organization, a group or an individual, I ask them to identify their values.  Using the case of individuals (although the process is the same for organizations), I have them list as many of their values as they can.  Given a few prompting questions, most people can easily come up with 25 – 50 values.

Once the list is established, I have them identify their top three values.  Any number can be used but three gives enough of the experience that most people are able to generalize it to the other important values they may have.  With the three values, I ask them the following, ‘How fully are you honouring these values in your life right now?’

This is usually the silence-maker.

All of us have values we can identify.  All of us like to believe we model our values every day.  All of us believe our values are worth fighting for.  What I love to think about is this:  If other people saw each of our values as a coin, when they picked up each coin, would they find it to be pure gold or gold-plated?

I, of course, love to imagine that my values are pure gold.  And if this is truly the case, I know that sometimes I do not give them the treatment they deserve.

So often, we claim to value a particular thing.  We insist this is our top value. We would fight for this value.  And yet, many, many times, we push our values aside on our road to something else.  I have listened to the silence of hundreds of people as they think about their top value and realize that although they claim it to be their value, at times it is as if it is a gold-plated coin.  You wouldn’t have to scratch very deeply to find it wasn’t pure gold.

On the surface, we can do a pretty good job of shining up the gold-plating.  At a quick glance, no one would notice.  People could be tricked into believing we really do deeply live our values.  But when day after day, week after week and eventually year after year, we give more talk than action about our values, the coins quickly lose their gold-plating.  If our time and attention are evidence of what we truly value, when the coating comes off the coin, the truth is what remains.

It is very hard to consistently honour our values.  It’s easy to be distracted, to think we have lots of time, to put them to the side, just for now, to show them off when it is convenient but to turn our backs on them when they cause us some discomfort.  How often do we turn on a device instead of having a conversation, pretend to listen instead of giving our full attention, and settle for good-enough instead of for our best?

It’s far too easy to be gold-plated instead of pure gold, and yet the pure gold moments are the ones we will cherish. 

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Are these real gold?’

Elizabeth is a certified, professional Life and Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership and personal coaching for individuals and teams.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to identify your gold values.

Sunday evening, I had agreed to partake in my first dance performance since being sidelined last September.  We were performing in a one-hour, Cinco de Mayo celebration at one of the more modern senior complexes in our city.

To provide some context, our group is made up of approximately 125 dancers.  Each week of the year, Reba J, our instructor, organizes smaller groups from this large group to perform at seniors’ facilities around the city and surrounding area.  It is colourful, lively entertainment for the seniors.  For the dancers, Reba J has cleverly created these performing events so we will be comfortable for our big performances during the Calgary Stampede, and at other key events in the city.  Each small performance, while low stakes in terms of crowd critics, is actually made much more challenging for the dancers in two ways; we dress in new, different themed outfits each time and, as if that wasn’t enough of a distraction for us, Reba J replaces our familiar tunes with music to match the theme.  The steps are the same, but the music is completely different.  It’s enough to force even a seasoned dancer to have to concentrate.

For a sideliner like me, I thought it might be career ending.

In fairness to myself, I handled some of the songs like an old pro, smiling and engaging with the audience.  But at other times, long, slow, painful, slow-motion times, it seemed as though when I was toe-heeling right, everyone else was heel-toeing left.  Many times, I proudly twirled around only to find myself face to face with the rest of the girls who clearly were not following me in my self-assigned solo.

I recovered from most of my mis-steps and while I eventually found my feet, it was often only a few seconds before the song ended.  Luckily, the music and the other dancers were entertaining enough to lessen the spectacle I was creating.  When we finished our set, as per our usual routine, everyone kindly and enthusiastically complimented each other, including letting me know I had done fine.  But I, and my Inner Critic, knew better.

I, who know all about Inner Critics, had opened the door for mine, and she had waltzed right through it like a long-lost friend.  She had no trouble keeping up with me and my mis-steps.  As I would find myself face to face with the other dancers she would whisper, ‘I knew you weren’t ready.’

On the drive home she rode shotgun and continued her commentary, ‘You have less than eight weeks until it’s really show time.  You cannot possibly learn all the new dances.’  By the time I drove into our garage she dealt her final blow:

‘You need to quit.  Just for this year.  You are not quite ready…. yet.’

My Inner Critic, like that of everyone else’s on this planet is a clever one.  If she had said, ‘You’re a loser.  You can’t dance.’, I would never have believed her. I have good solid proof to the contrary.

But she didn’t say that.  Instead she used the clever little phrase that has stopped many a strong woman from taking brave steps. ‘You’re not quite ready… yet’. 

You see, this we can believe.  The ‘yet’ word causes us to think she is really on our side, cheering us on, and gosh, darn, she would never, ever want to see us fail so she just suggests we wait… a bit.  It sounds so logical.  It sounds truthful, even kind.  She didn’t say I couldn’t perform.  Just not yet.  The trouble is, she will always think ‘You’re not quite ready…. yet’.  She detests it when we get out of our comfort zone.

The more I listened to her, the more she tried to convince me I should talk to Reba J about the upcoming performing season.  Luckily, hers is not the only voice in my head.  I recalled a phrase told to me by Tara Mohr, founder, coach and author of Playing Big:

‘That is too big a solution for your problem.’

In Tara’s story, a little boy was worried about an upcoming swim meet, knowing he had to swim a full length of the pool without stopping.  He came up with every possible reason to not go the meet, believing skipping the entire swim meet was the only solution.  When he finally revealed his true reason for not wanting to go, his mom wisely responded with, ‘Sweetie, that is too big a solution for your problem.’  This wonderful little story has stuck with me.

The sorrow I had been feeling about thinking I might not be able to perform this season began to lift.  This solution of ‘I’m not ready to dance…  yet… not this year’, was too big for my problem.  My problem is, in fact, that I have only been back to dance class for a few weeks and there is a lot to learn.  This happens to be a manageable problem for which there are reasonable solutions.  There are extra classes I can attend, I have classmates who will help me and there are PDF instructions I can use at home.

All of us face challenges and setbacks.  Each of us can think of a time when we created a solution that was far too big for our problem.  When we do this, we take ourselves right out of the game.  We do this when we speak up at a meeting, get criticized, and decide never to offer our opinion again.  We do this when we are driving and have a mishap, or get lost, and decide we can’t drive on busy roads any more.  We do this when we plan a special event that doesn’t go according to plan so we determine never to put ourselves out there again.  We do this when we are told we aren’t good at something when we are in grade one and we never try to do it again.  These are all solutions far too big for their problems.

I plan to perform this season.  I plan to know the steps.  I plan to add to the positive image of the group.  I’ll likely make a mistake or two.  Or three.  So will the other dancers.  Even the really good ones.  But the performing mistakes I make will be far, far less damaging than the mistake I would make if I let myself believe I cannot dance. 

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What is a right size solution for this problem?’

Elizabeth is a certified, professional Life and Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is also the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership and personal coaching for individuals and teams.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She dances with the Chinook Country Dancers.  Contact Elizabeth and allow her to help you right-size your solutions.
 
  

This week, we celebrated two birthdays in our family; our daughter, Kaitlyn’s, and our son-in-law, Matt’s.  Each year when the beginning of May gets close, I think back to the year Kaitlyn was born.  I suppose it feels even more poignant these days, now that she is the Mom of a little one, just like I was all those years ago. One of the traditions I chose when Kaitlyn was born, was to write her a letter on her birthday each year.  When Greg was added to our family, I did the same for him.

In the letters I told them about the milestones they had reached in the previous year, I wrote about the things they liked to do, about their dreams and worries, about my dreams and worries and most importantly of all, I told them how much I loved them and that I was proud of them.

They of course, had no idea I had this tradition. I can see myself sitting at our kitchen table after they had gone to bed, sometimes on the very day of their birthday, when their friends had gone home, and the candles on the cake had been blown out, hand-writing my letter to them.  When I finished the letter, I would ask Jim to add his thoughts at the end, put it in an envelope, put their name and the date on it and add it to the little shoe box in my closet.  I hadn’t decided when I should give the letters to the kids, but I always assumed I would know when it was the right time.

These of course were love letters.

I have a long tradition of letter writing.  When I was a little girl, living in Ontario, both sets of our grandparents lived on the East Coast, in New Brunswick, and we wrote letters to them.  I kept up this tradition long after I was married and had moved to Alberta.  By then I added my own parents, Jim’s parents, my godparents and often one or more of my siblings to the roster too.  This is how we kept in touch, long before we could text and before we could afford to call long-distance. 

When Jim and I were engaged, he spent four months on the remote north shore of Quebec, near Sept-Iles, performing research at a salmon-spawning station.  There was no electricity in the cabin where he stayed and there certainly was no phone.  Each week, we wrote letters to each other.

These too, were love letters.

As Kaitlyn’s birthday came and went this week, I found myself thinking about love letters.  While most of us no longer write letters of any kind, I’ve been thinking about how more modern love letters look. 

I read a little news story this week, out of Comox, B.C.  The story was about an 86-year-old woman, Tinney Davidson, who, for the past eleven years has sat in her living room, by her window, each morning and waved to the students as they headed off to Highland Secondary School.  Each morning the students walking past would glance to their left, see Tinney waving, and wave back.  The students began to count on this, as one would count on noticing the seasons change; it was spectacularly beautiful, and completely ordinary.  Tinney’s small wave, and genuine smile, became something the students counted on.

This was her love letter to them.

This week, when the students heard that Tinney was moving, one of the teachers helped them organize themselves to go to say goodbye.  They walked together to her home, 400 strong, homemade signs and heart shaped placards in hand.  They gathered quietly, stuck the signs on her lawn and in the gardens on the edges, and when the teacher brought her out on to her porch, together they all blew her a kiss and wished her well.

This was their love letter to her.

Modern love letters may not be hand-written on paper much anymore, but I notice people still finding ways to send them.  My friend Sandy, says she now has a schedule of her friends who are wanting to help her by driving her to her daily radiation and periodic chemotherapy treatments.

These are love letters.

In my house, I always baked chocolate chip cookies to put in the kid’s lunches when they were in school.  I later began to make them for my students on the days when they wrote their Math exam, and I brought them to my colleagues when we had a late meeting.  Now, I make sure to have them on hand when the kids come for a visit. I noticed Greg made them when we went to visit him.  And Kaitlyn bakes them for her staff.

These too, are love letters.

My dance instructor Reba J, sends us two love letters each week. One is delivered in person, when we show up in class and her face lights up with joy as she greets each of us.  The other is the email she sends to all the Chinook Country Dancers the next day to tell us how well we are doing and how proud she is of us.

These too, are love letters.

We may not write many of the old-fashioned love letters anymore but there are thousands of ways we can send the newer version.  I finally gave each of our kids their letters one Christmas when they came home from University.  It was the perfect timing and I know I’ve never purchased a gift more precious. 

This past year, I wrote my first letter to Benjamin and I’ve put it in a binder.  As he gets older, I think I’ll incorporate the twist to this tradition my friend Sheryl spun.  She loved the idea of my birthday letters, and when her grandchildren came along she decided to write letters for each of them.  She interviews them before the big day, and then writes the letter.  They keep them in a binder in their rooms and can be found reading them over and over.  What a gift. 

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What love letter can I send?’
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Elizabeth is a certified, professional Life and Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership and personal coaching for individuals and teams.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to customize your own brand of love letter.

I had the wonderful fortune this week to meet an incredibly integrous group of leaders.  They are the Executive Team of the Alberta Cancer Foundation.  It’s interesting how life happens.  This had nothing to do with me signing up for the Ride to Conquer Cancer a couple of weeks ago.  It had nothing to do with learning of the cancer diagnoses of my very good friend.  It simply came about because one member of this team was in an earlier workshop of mine, and she told her team and she told… you know how it goes. It seemed like all of a sudden, I was headed to Edmonton, workshop created and ready to present.

One of the things that impressed me about this group was the ability of these very busy leaders to be fully present in this experience.  I know they left desks filled with unfinished jobs, lists of things to do, line ups of team members waiting to see them, and yet, they arrived prepared to be present.

Between the Edmonton trip and another huge coaching opportunity that has come my way, my days have been full and I surprised myself when I looked at my calendar a couple of days ago and realized that we will turn the mythical page of our outdated paper calendars over this coming week and welcome May.  Yikes!  I mean this in the best way possible, of course.

In our family, May is filled with opportunities to celebrate.  In my family of origin, there are three birthdays.  In our little Critchley family, we celebrate not only our daughter’s birthday, but also that of our son-in-law.  Add in three or four mothers celebrating Mother’s Day and that’s a lot of presents.

This idea of present, and presents and presence has been occupying some space in my mind. 

The easiest part of this is the presents part; presents that we wrap up and give.  Once I have my idea for a gift, I’m off to the races in terms of buying, wrapping and giving.  I try to only give presents I am happy with; ones I think will be meaningful to the recipient. This is kind of like the ‘doing’ part of presents.  Doing is easy; the presence part is more challenging.

We’ve all been in situations where someone is present in body but is far away in their mind.  This may because they really never wanted to be there in the first place.  They could have something else on their mind.  They could simply be distracted by their phone or some other external device.  No matter the reason, it doesn’t feel good to try to have a conversation with someone who is only half-interested.  The best multitasker cannot fake being fully present.  Even during phone conversations, we can tell when someone is sharing their attention between us and something far more (or less) intriguing.

While this half-invested behaviour is frustrating, and can feel insulting when we are on the receiving end of it, it somehow doesn’t feel as bad as when we do not allow ourselves to be fully present; when we do not fully show up ourselves.  As ourselves. 

By this I don’t mean the times when we choose to be half-interested.  I mean the times when we sit down to the table and choose to send our representative instead of ourselves.  We send the version of ourselves we think others want to see.  We choose to answer questions with ideas that may be pleasing but that do not reflect our true beliefs.  We choose to go along with things said, that allow us to fit in, but that may not demonstrate what we know to be true.  We tow the party line at the expense of daring to put forth original thought.

Even worse than this is when we not only offer thoughts that do not reflect ourselves, but when we present a picture of ourselves that is not reflective of our truest self.  Sadly, for hundreds of years, women learned to present images of themselves that often minimized their intelligence, their free thought and their unique way of seeing the world.  Their presence was orchestrated by societal norms rather than by their individuality.

This is the worst use of our presence; when we make the choice to have our presence not be a present at all.  This is when our presence, our individuality, though wrapped in a pleasing package, when opened is found to be lacking the shine we had hoped for.

This week, each of us will be asked to be present somewhere in our lives.  Each of us will be asked to ‘show up’; to sit down at the table as ourselves, and not send our representative in our stead. It may be as simple as having a genuine conversation.  Perhaps we will be given the chance to hear a new perspective and asked to offer one of our own. Perhaps a friend will tell us about something they are dealing with and we will answer with true empathy – rather than offering well-rehearsed platitudes.  Perhaps it’s time your workplace sees you for the intelligent contributor you are, rather than as the cooperative yes-person you have been.

Many years ago, when our daughter was about seven, her cat was run over by a car.  She was devastated.  At school the following morning, long before classes started, one of the teachers, the beloved Mrs. Goerlitz, heard about it and asked if she could take Kaitlyn to her classroom for a chat.  Mrs. Goerlitz was also a cat lover and she understood some things about loss.  Later, Mrs. Goerlitz told me they had a good talk about Kaitlyn's cat, and they had a little cry together. 

This is the priceless gift of presence.

The group in the workshop at the Alberta Cancer Foundation chose to be present this past week.  They did not pretend to be something they were not.  They had honest conversations.  They acknowledged each others strengths and bravely revealed what things needed their attention.  They agreed from the start that they would not send a representative; they would show up fully themselves.  They honoured their own presence and the presence of the others in the group. 

Life feels too short and too important to play silly games.  When the ‘honour of your presence’ is next requested, really go for it.  Show up.  Do not send your representative.  Have presence.  Be present.  Be a present.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How am I honouring my presence?’.

Elizabeth is a certified, professional Life and Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is also the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership and personal coaching for individuals and teams.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. Contact Elizabeth and allow her to help you to honour your presence.

Happy Easter!   Although Easter Sunday falls late in the calendar this year, no matter when it arrives it always manages to make me think of the beginning of spring.  Of renewal and new life.

And as life would have it, I had plenty of opportunity to think about renewal this past week.  I suppose it started with practical matters.  I received notices, both in the mail and by email that our car registrations are up for renewal.  In this case, renewal is a simple matter of paying money.  We don’t have to do any deep thinking about whether we still believe in this, whether it brings happiness or whether we need to tweak it.  The bottom line is: if we want to drive, we need to send money and renew it. 

Other examples of renewal were more complex.  On Monday, I flipped on the television and watched in horror as the beautiful Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris, France, burned.  Tears sprang to my eyes as the steeple, unable to remain upright due to so much structural damage, toppled.  The devastation seemed even more heartbreaking given the fire occurred during the most holy week of the Christian faith.  Beyond the use of the church for worship, for close to 850 years this incredible architectural masterpiece has hosted millions of tourists and guests; some coming to partake in a service, others lured inside to witness the beautiful stained glass, stone carvings and tapestries, some to listen to music played on The Great Organ,  and some to simply feel the sheer magnificence of the ancient building.  
 
I have never been to Notre Dame cathedral, and yet I could imagine what must be going through the minds of those who see it daily, and who have assumed it will always stand as a familiar landmark in their home country.  I imagine conversations being had around the topic of renewal.  Parisians and all French, have a decision to make about renewal.  This is not as simple as my car registration.  In this case, a decision needs to be taken about whether this country, and this city, declare they believe Notre Dame Cathedral is something worthy of them renewing their commitment to.  This building, so revered and at the same time so taken for granted because of its longevity and steadfastness, needs to be chosen once again.  Just as almost nine centuries ago, a group of people who had a vision for its greatness committed to its plan and construction, so now will a different group of people need to decide whether they will renew their commitment to this piece of their country.  By all reports, the emotional decision was made before the final embers were doused.  So too it seems, was the financial decision, with money pouring in before daybreak on Tuesday.  A promise for the renewal of Notre Dame has been made.

The reason I had turned on the television during the day on Monday was not to catch the news, but to watch the Boston Marathon. It’s my once-a-year treat to myself.  I love this race.  This year I was especially excited because our friend, Brenda, was running in it. I wanted to watch in the off chance I would see her and her bright green socks fly by.
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I love to hear the commentators give the background of some of the elite runners. I love to hear the stories about the history of this old marathon.  I love to remember being there.  I love to be inspired.  I love to think about renewal.  My renewal.  This, for me, is more complicated that the renewal of our vehicle registration.  It is similar to, but not exactly the same as the commitment of the French to renew their beautiful church.  My personal renewal does not come down to money or to deciding whether I can put the broken parts of my body back together.  For me, this is deciding whether I can renew a love I have deep inside me.

I love to run.

It is that simple, and that complicated.  Running gives to me something that nothing else in this world gives me.  Not biking, not hiking, not yoga and not even dancing.  Not facilitating workshops, not baking, not caring for others, not teaching and not sightseeing.  Running is the thing that makes me feel most like myself. 

There are more than a dozen very sensible reasons I should not be running.   And yet….

Each of us has at least one of these yearnings deep inside ourselves.  Each of us knows what it feels like to bury that yearning, even to ignore it and pretend it does not exist.  Sometimes we convince ourselves that we have outgrown it.  Sometimes we pretend that we’ll get back to it someday.  Sometimes we think someone else will give us the space to pursue it.  Sometimes we forget how close and how far we can be from a simple renewal.  Sometimes we hear a whisper.
I suppose I always assumed I would someday get to Paris and see Notre Dame.  Now, I can only imagine that it may not be completely repaired in my lifetime. I suppose I also always assumed I’d be running again.  This year, I have of course been completely sidelined from this for good reason.  Even I know it makes no sense to run on broken bones.  This week the coinciding of the Boston Marathon and the fire at Notre Dame, felt like whispers, helping me realize it’s time for me to do some personal renewal. 

I cannot assume running will always be available for me.  At the same time, I’m not yet ready to assume it is over for me.  And so, I am renewing my dream to be a runner.  I don’t know yet what exactly it will look like.  I’m guessing it will never again be six days per week, with high mileage.  I do know that on Monday afternoon, after Brenda crossed the finish line, and I was watching the ‘back of the packers’ finishing the Boston Marathon, I went downstairs and got on the treadmill.  I walked for five minutes.  Then I ran 30 seconds. 

I was renewed.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What is whispering for my renewal?’ 

Elizabeth is a certified, professional Life and Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is also the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership and personal coaching for individuals and teams.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. Contact Elizabeth and allow her to help you find renewal in your business and life.

Just as I have thousands of other times, last week I put away my groceries.  I can’t say for sure which it was, but either I was hurrying to get finished so I could get to my desk and start working, or I was just being absentminded, but one way or another my hurrying came to an abrupt stop when I reached to put a carton of milk in the fridge and a shelf magically moved to allow it to fit!

The milk normally goes on the left side of the fridge where the shelf heights have been adjusted to accommodate the taller sizes of containers.  This past week I had inadvertently opened the right side of the fridge and was trying to shove the milk onto a shelf that was only half the height I needed.  Imagine my surprise when the front half of the upper shelf gently slid backward fitting perfectly under the back half of itself.

Whawhaaat??

How was it possible that after using this fridge for almost four years, I had no idea this shelf had a dual function?  I had assumed, that the way I had been using the fridge was the only way it could be used.  I had never looked at it closely enough to notice any other possibilities. 

It made me ponder how often I do this with other things.  More importantly, how often do I do this with people.  Especially people I think I know well.  How often do I assume that the things I have always known about them are the only things there are to know?   That the skills and talents I believe they have, are the only skills and talents they really have.

My teacher days were spent in a country school where the students arrived in kindergarten and left after they graduated from grade nine.  I recall having conversations with many of these students while they were in their early teen years.  They were trying to make changes in themselves but they couldn’t seem to shake whatever image the others were holding about them.  The other students, and sometimes we teachers, continued to see them in the same way we had always seen them. 

It shouldn’t have surprised any of us that often the very quietest students, those who never tried to steal the spotlight at our school, became well respected leaders in a new setting.  And sometimes students who had been willing to settle for second string on one of the teams, became a shining star on the basketball or volleyball team.  I remember one boy, who never, ever drew attention to himself, who went on to be a varsity track runner.  Each of these students, had a hidden shelf.  Each of them kept it out of sight until the moment it was either needed, or someone pushed up against it enough for it to be revealed.

Humans have a wonderful capacity to see patterns and to organize data.  It gives us comfort to categorize things and people, putting each neatly on just the right sized shelf in the fridge.  There is a danger in doing this.  Once we make our quick assessment and get the fridge closed, we stop noticing other possible ways we could have catalogued the qualities of the people in our lives.  And even more concerning is that sometime when we use one label for a person, it comes with a lot of fine print that may or may not accurately describe them.

What a shame.

No one is all or nothing. No one is a complete free spirit. No one is void of creativity.  No one loves being included in every single thing, every single time.  No one likes being left home alone, excluded from every single thing every single time.

Each of us is complex.  Each of us has hidden shelves, tiny gems, that are often only revealed when others get an unexpected glimpse of us in an unexpected way.  The trick to revealing these shelves is twofold.

Part one asks that we become more curious and open minded about each other.  It requires that we suspend our assumptions about others for a bit in the hope they will be comfortable enough to show us a new shelf they have been waiting to reveal.  When I work with clients who mention some new idea or interest they would like to pursue, it shocks me that often they are completely prepared for their idea.  They have a manuscript written, they have a travel brochure in a drawer and a trip planned, or they already know how to play the instrument they are talking about. They just needed someone to gently nudge the shelf.

This of course leads to part two of revelations.  We ourselves need to be willing to take the risk to reveal the hidden gem parts of ourselves to others.  What a terrible waste it would be for us to come to the end of our lives knowing we had talents and dreams and contributions we chose not to reveal. 

We live in a strange time; a time of needing to declare our ‘tribe’.  Unfortunately, by doing so we also often declare our allegiance to every single thing that tribe represents and it is easy for us to forget to show up as unique interesting, complex beings.  Similarly, by ignoring these same possibilities in other we miss out on some of their incredible gifts. 
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My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What shelf will I slide?’

 Elizabeth is a certified, professional Life and Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is also the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership and personal coaching for individuals and teams.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. Contact Elizabeth and allow her to help you slide back one of your hidden shelves.

Last Wednesday evening a text came to Jim from my cousin Brian, who lives in New Brunswick.  Brian and David, his brother, were going to be travelling from New Brunswick to Saskatoon, with a three hour lay-over in Calgary.  David and Brian’s curling team had just won the New Brunswick Provincial Master’s curling championship, securing them a place in the National Master’s Curling Championships in Saskatoon.  Brian wondered if we would be able to meet them at the Calgary airport for a visit during their layover.

To lend some background, if you are a regular reader of my blog, you’ll recall that my family spent our annual childhood summer holiday in New Brunswick, on ‘the Farm’ with these cousins.  They are the oldest two of Uncle Roy and Aunt Muriel’s six children.  My dad and Uncle Roy were brothers and each summer Dad loaded up our station wagon, attached the homemade trailer and took us to our ‘most magical place on earth’ – the Farm.  We loved these cousins.  We created adventures with them, we ‘helped’ them with the milking of the cows on their dairy farm, we put in countless loads of hay, we found litters of kittens in the barn, we re-purposed an old cabin as a new fort, we sang together, pulled pranks together and played games.  As far as we were concerned, going to the farm was better than Disneyworld; it was pure magic.

I was thrilled to hear David and Brian would be in town for a short visit and we made plans to head up to the airport the following evening.  We fought the traffic and arrived just in time. Jim texted Brian to let him know we were just outside the arrivals doors.  And Brian immediately called Jim, but not with the message we were expecting!
Brian told Jim they would not be coming through the doors because he was still in New Brunswick!  In his sugar bush, tending to the late run of maple syrup.  Brian did assure us though, that they would be arriving in Calgary at the exact same time, on the same flight on Saturday evening.  We were two days early!  When we re-looked at Jim’s text, sure enough, it said Saturday. We knew Jim couldn’t make it on Saturday but I could, and for two days I looked forward to seeing David and Brian.

My visit did not disappoint.  It always feels like home to see my cousins and this was no exception.  We found a restaurant and visited over dinner.  Of course, we caught each other up on the comings and goings of our spouses, our siblings, our children, our siblings’ children, our children’s children and each other.  I asked them about their parents, our much-loved Uncle Roy and Aunt Muriel and I was delighted to hear that they continue to be well.

When I specifically asked about Aunt Muriel, David mentioned that he felt she must be just fine because she still let him steal a cookie from her cookie tin every time he came in her kitchen. 

The cookie tin.  

Just the mention of this iconic tin flooded me with memories.  Aunt Muriel received this cookie tin in May of 1955 as a shower gift.  I can’t say for absolute sure that she started filling it with ginger snaps that very month, but I do know that as long as I’ve been alive, and I’m guessing as long as David, who is four years my senior, has been alive, it has been sitting on her farmhouse kitchen counter, filled to varying heights, depending on the flow of visitors, with her famous ginger snaps. 

For us, Aunt Muriel’s cookie tin was about so much more than cookies. While the cookies inside it were wonderful, the much more important part was the cookie tin itself.  This cookie tin is not fancy and it doesn’t pretend to be.  Neither does Aunt Muriel.  Both are much more about the quality of what is on the inside rather than making a show of what is on the outside.

To lend some perspective, Aunt Muriel is not one of those eighty-year-old women who sits waiting for someone to arrive to share a cookie with.  She is in fact eighty years old, but most days it’s hard to find her at home.  She teaches and volunteers for St. John Ambulance and is the unit leader for that organization.  She is a volunteer with Victim Services and she volunteers for the Sharing Club.  She knits baby hats for the Mother’s Cupboard at the Regional hospital and knits prayer shawls for the church. 

The cookie tin represents her well.  It represents a warm welcome to her home.   It represents consistency.  It represents equality.  It represents comfort and safety.  It represents a deep knowing that whoever walks through that back kitchen door, is made to feel as though they belong.  It represented family to me and my siblings when life took a rough turn for us.  It represents home.

Each of us would do well to find and proudly display a version of our own cookie tin.  For most, it will look nothing like the one on Aunt Muriel’s counter.  For all of us it will represent our truest, life-long values. 
For me and my siblings and my cousins, that cookie tin doesn’t look old or worn out.  Rather, just like our Aunt Muriel, it looks like pure welcoming love.

When David and Brian finish curling in Saskatoon and arrive back home in New Brunswick, no doubt sometime next week they will find themselves walking through the back door of Aunt Muriel and Uncle Roy’s house into the kitchen.  And when they do, whether they have won or lost, they’ll find a ginger snap cookie waiting for them in the beautiful cookie tin on the counter.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What’s in my cookie tin?’
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Elizabeth is a certified, professional Life and Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is also the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership and personal coaching for individuals and teams.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. Contact Elizabeth and allow her to help you find your cookie tin.

The Calgary City Council is in the midst of making some new decisions around helping the city become more ‘green’.  Green like recycling.

There have been debates about whether residents should be able to choose their own size of black (garbage) bin, with less cost associated with smaller bins.   Over the past couple of years we have added blue and green bins, one for paper, one for food waste.

Part of me shakes my head.  It’s hard to believe this is even a discussion in 2019.  I grew up on a farm and we were reducing, reusing and recycling long before it was sexy.

All our food scraps went into a container that was carried to the barn each morning and shared with the chickens.  It was unheard of for us to use tinfoil only once.  We washed and dried it, folded it and saved it for next time.  We did the same with plastic bags.

Birthday and Christmas gifts were unwrapped carefully and the paper was saved for the following year. My mother took her own containers to the newly opened ‘health food store’, The Horn of Plenty, in Dundas.  It may or may not be true that she single-handedly kept it open with her purchases in those early days.  However, last summer when I was in Dundas, I did notice that it was still open, in its same location, forty years later.

As a teenager I was often mortified by all of this, even though at the same time it felt very normal to us.  I thought others might think we were poor, never realizing that in fact my mother was a very early adopter of environmental consciousness.

Of course, as I’ve grown older, I can appreciate those lessons modeled for us.  However, I’m wondering if it isn’t finally time to fully start a rebellion against these now common ideas of reduce, reuse and recycle.

Rest assured, I don’t want to get rid of my compost bin.  Or my blue bin.  But I have noticed some of the organizations I work with have become carried away with reduce, reuse and recycle. Not the environmental kind.  The personal kind.

How often when working with a client do I hear some version of an old, old story.  Something like, ‘I’ve tried everything.   I’m doing absolutely everything I possibly can.’  Really? Or is this simply a well-used, several times washed piece of tinfoil they have carefully tucked way and have brought out to use yet again?  This kind of recycling allows them to stay in their very comfortable, very unappealing situation.

Personally, I can find lots of situations where I have gone overboard with reduce, reuse and recycle.  I have reduced or minimized some of my character strengths to allow myself not to look show-offy and at the same time to allow others to look better than they are.  I’ve reduced some of my accomplishments to single sentences.  I’ve reduced myself to tears, convincing myself I don’t quite have what it takes.

I’ve reused excuses until even I have had to recognize their silliness.  When my kids were little and our staff was heading out together after work, I most often declined letting them know I was heading home.  One day, when both kids were away at university, this exact same scenario occurred. Exactly as I had always done, I headed home.  I was half-way home before it struck me, ‘What in the world am I rushing home for?  The house is empty!’  My recycled, reused story, once both useful and truthful, had become nothing more than a comfortable hiding place for me. 

Each of us is excellent at reducing, reusing and recycling.  Of course, we are.  By doing these we keep ourselves as the people we easily recognize.  We give ourselves permission to not grow or change.  By doing this we also miss out on incredible opportunities.

While I am continuing to embrace the reduce, reuse, recycle efforts of  the big city, I’ve decided that for the most part, I’m going to scrap many of them in my real life.  When I’m doing things, I’m asking myself to recognize when I am just doing it, or not doing it, because it is easy, familiar and recycled. I’m becoming braver.

I’m trying things I’ve never done.  I’m saying yes.  When I hear me telling myself a familiar story I pause and question whether it is the truth.  Or is it some old reused thinking.  Perhaps it is time to quit my recycling and treat myself to some shiny, non-bio-degradable, new ideas and adventures?  Perhaps even some of the one-use-only variety.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Does this need reducing, reusing, recycling, or …. replacing?’
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Elizabeth is a certified, professional Life and Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is also the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership and personal coaching for individuals and teams.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. Contact Elizabeth and allow her to help you stop recycling!

This year, in a rare occurrence, the arrival of spring weather in Calgary coincided exactly with the calendar arrival of spring.  For five days we enjoyed above seasonal temperatures, an Alberta blue sky, the steady dwindling of snow piles and the inevitable puddles left behind.

For those with even an inkling of childlike wonder in their soul, the puddles call us, begging the quieter types to either gingerly walk through them or carefully place a twig boat and watch it sail away.  For the more adventuresome spirits there is a pull to jump straight in with the intention of creating a splash.   For both there is a lure to throw stones into them to watch the ripples.

On Wednesday, the warmest of the days, I had the chance to take little Benjamin for a walk in our nearby Provincial Park.  It too has seen its share of melting this week and it didn’t take long for me to find a puddle to show Ben.  At just fourteen months, Ben neither knows what a puddle or a stone is, and other than dropping a few vegetables onto the floor during dinner, he hasn’t got a clue how to throw.  I still thought he might appreciate the wonder of watching a stone hitting the water and creating first a splash, and then the seemingly endless rings of ripples.  We stood together at the edge of a puddle while I gently tossed a few stones.

Thinking that Ben stood very little chance of success with the stone throwing himself, I still felt the urge to place a rock in his hand to see what he might do.  He enjoyed the texture and I’m sure he would have loved the taste had I let him sample it.  It turns out that although Ben cannot quite throw, he did understand the idea that if he dropped the stone in the water, it did its part in making the tiny splash and then the ripples.  When he dropped his first little stone right at the edge of the puddle, it tugged at my heart to see the little ripples fan out.

It turns out that even the tiniest among us, using the tiniest stones, can have an effect on this world and her inhabitants.  Sometimes we don’t have to do much of anything at all; just show up, drop a stone and watch.

Ben, was, for the most part, blissfully unaware of the affect his stone throwing had on me.  In some ways, it’s how he travels through life these days.  He goes about his business of discovering his amazing, ever-expanding world with no awareness of the ripples he creates.  The rest of us are completely aware of his affect.

I’m guessing many of us, like Ben, travel through our own ever-changing lives dropping and throwing stones without recognizing their impact.  We throw and turn away before the ripples start.  No doubt, sometimes the stones we throw would have been better left on the path.  We can easily hurt others with our stones; I suppose this is why, as children, we were taught not to throw them.  But other times, throwing stones and creating ripples is exactly what we should do.  These stones are gifts.

We’re throwing stones when we smile at someone.

We’re throwing stones when we pay a genuine compliment.

We’re throwing stones when we acknowledge someone’s value in our life.

We’re throwing stones when we take time to listen.

This past week, not only was it stone throwing weather in my part of the world, it appears there were both ugly and beautiful stones being thrown around the globe.  Christchurch, New Zealand, had such a large stone thrown at it, it’s rippling impact will be seen and felt for years. 

So too, will the impact of the very direct stone of fierce resolve thrown by Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of that same country, as she fearlessly took steps to ban military style assault weapons, defining clearly the safe and compassionate kind of country she planned to lead.  And by all accounts, the citizens of New Zealand are all standing by ponds and puddles and oceans tossing stones of kindness as gently as they can, in hopes that these ripples too will have a lasting impact.

I wish we hadn’t been taught to not throw stones.  I wish instead we’d been encouraged to find as many gift-giving stones as we could, and to carry them carefully in our pockets as we travel this world past puddles and ponds and lakes and rivers and oceans.  Then when the world reveals one of her needs, we could stop and choose just the right stone to toss, to create ripples of the kind I felt when Benjamin dropped his little stone, and the kind the mourning citizens of Christchurch need to feel this week.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What stone am I throwing?’

Elizabeth is a certified, professional Life and Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is also the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership programs and personal coaching for individuals and teams.  Contact Elizabeth to find out how to choose the right stones to toss to create the ripples you long to make.

After far too many months of missing activities I love, as I’ve waited for the bones in my foot to mend, I’m finally resuming some of my favourites.  I’m having to make some modifications.  At dance, I’m easily spotted as the sole person sporting her supportive running shoes, setting me apart from the others so nicely decked out in their toe-tappers.

At yoga, I’m noticing I’ve lost some balance when standing on my left leg.  This reminds me that although clinically all the bones in the foot are now healed, the ligaments and muscles are weak and have ‘forgotten’ how to support me.  On top of that, I don’t have confidence in the strength of my foot…yet.

Tuesday at yoga, our instructor, the magnificent Mona Power, guided us into one of the warrior poses.  As we were doing it, she looked out over the class and noticed that some of us had shoulders that were creeping up toward our ears.  She gently reminded us, ‘Relax your shoulders.  Don’t place stress where it isn’t needed’.

A light bulb switched on in my head.  Don’t place stress where it isn’t needed.  I know I should have been completely focused on the breath, the very life-force of yoga, but my mind drifted to real life. 

Where have I been placing stress that I don’t need it?

In the warrior poses, strength is needed in the legs.  Our feet need to be firmly planted on the ground so there is stress involved in that part of our body.  We also need to ‘put some muscle in our arms’ as we try to hold them as parallel to the floor as possible.  We do not need to place stress in our faces or our necks, and we certainly don’t need to put stress in our shoulders by lifting them toward our ears.  Not only does it look kind of silly, it actually focuses our energy on a part of the body not meant to be activated in this pose.

I know there are almost always lessons about life to be learned from yoga.  This one was so obvious it should have been labelled, ‘Exhibit A’.  How often we place stress in our lives where it is not needed.

This past weekend we were lucky to have our son, Greg, home for a few days while he was interviewing in Calgary.  We love getting together as a family.  Knowing we only had a few days to enjoy his company I wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to see him for a visit.  And I wanted my own chance to visit with him.  And he had interview prep to complete.  It was a lot to squish in.  As I anticipated the dinner I was making for a group of us on Friday, and thinking about how to manage to try to get a bit of prep done ahead for the upcoming dinners on Sunday and Monday, Mona’s words arrived in my head. 

Don’t place stress where it isn’t needed.

I could envision two distinctly different scenes.  In Scene One, I was bustling around the kitchen in a hurry, trying to make sure everything was ready before people arrived.  In this scene anyone watching could figure out I was concentrating on the task at hand, not really taking time to visit or think about much else.  I didn’t engage in much conversation other than to assign tasks and I sent the clear signal that important conversations could be saved for later.

Scene Two, however, looked and felt different.  Though I was still moving quickly in the kitchen, making sure everything was ready, my energy did not have the feel of urgency to it. I had time to prep and visit.  I could place cut up vegetables in the salad rather than toss them in.  I could learn a bit about Greg’s thoughts on his potential jobs while we worked together.

Both scenes would have similar outcomes.  Either way, the meal prep would be complete.  Either way the people would arrive and we would have enough food.  Either way I would have spent a few hours with my son.  The difference would lie in whether I chose to have a visit with only my son, or if I wanted to invite Stress to join us. 

Mona’s words turned in my head, ‘Don’t place stress where it isn’t needed’.  I had to laugh; food does not taste better if it has been prepared with an extra dash of stress.  I think, thanks to Mona, I chose well this past weekend.  I have not always done so. 

I can recall an evening when Jim and I left home slightly late for an event.  We were not really speaking in the car.  We were not mad, but we were not speaking, thinking that every ounce of energy was needed to propel the car to our destination with as much efficiency as possible.  How much nicer it could have been if only we had placed the appropriate amount of stress on the car to get us where we were going, and saved the rest to be used if and when it was needed. We did not arrive at our destination any earlier because we were quiet.  We certainly did not arrive in a more relaxed state. 

Sometimes the needless stress we place on ourselves comes in the form of us trying to do more than time allows.  Most often this happens when we trick ourselves into thinking that time will stretch for us.  Most often, the unnecessary stress comes from the response our body has toward what we are trying to do.  The stress shows up in who we are being, rather than in what we are doing. 

It’s interesting that when I think of Jim and I driving on that evening, for the life of me I cannot remember where we were going, I cannot remember what we did once we arrived and I cannot remember our drive home.  I can clearly remember the needless passenger, Stress, we chose to place right in the front with us; exactly where she was not needed.
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My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Where am I placing stress?’

Elizabeth provides leadership and personal coaching for individuals and teams.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for corporate, public and private groups.  Contact Elizabeth to help you learn how to chose where to place stress.