Alberta has been in a deep, bone-chilling cold this month.  We had been lulled into thinking we’d ‘get off easy’ this year, after such a long, long winter last year.  But when the calendar flipped over to February, Mother Nature flipped a switch and our fantasy ended.  For well over three weeks, we’ve been experiencing one of those winters that one day will become one of those ‘I remember when’ stories.

On Tuesday of this week, I decided to test my now un-cast foot in a yoga class.  I’ve been missing Mona and her incredible classes since the summer.  So has my body.  I have careful instructions not to push things too far.  Although the bones are healed, the tendons and ligaments have been lulled into a false sense of strength by being constantly supported by a tight-fitting shoe.  And yet, enough was enough.   So, on an unusually warm-for-this-month morning, Jim and I headed over for our class.

When we came out of the building, the sun was shining brilliantly and had we not heard the forecast for more cold and snow, we could have been tricked into thinking Balzac Billy was right in predicting an early spring.  Suddenly transported back many years, I surprised myself by saying, ‘Touch of spring in the air, Mr. Critchley’. 

When I first started teaching, at the ‘old Red Deer Lake School’, I was the youngest teacher on staff.  My first classroom was a windowless room, but by my third year I had a room that overlooked the playground, and the picturesque, local country church.  Each day after school, I’d sit at my desk and plan my new lessons for the upcoming days.  While I sat there, every year starting in January, our newest custodian, Kurt, would come into my classroom, walk up to the front of the room, head over to the window, look out over the playground to the church and say gently, ‘Touch of spring in the air today, Mrs. Critchley’.  And I would reply, ‘I think there is, Kurt’.  This became our daily ritual.  Every day Kurt would come in to my room.  Every day we would say the same thing.

This little ritual went on for years.

Kurt and I weren’t friends.  I did not know his last name.  He likely did not know my first name. He was what I thought to be a middle-aged custodian, and I, of course was a young teacher.  We were both relatively new to the school and its community.  And yet, every day we made this simple, kind connection.

Several years into our after-school routine, Kurt came in and carried out his part of our ritual:  ‘Touch of spring in the air today, Mrs. Critchley’ he said.  And I replied, ‘I think there is, Kurt’.  I was expecting our usual comfortable silence as he would continue looking out the window for signs of spring and I would continue looking at the papers on my desk, when he surprised me by saying, ‘Critchley is not a very common name.’  To which I replied, ‘No, it really isn’t’.

Kurt went on to tell me that he once knew a Jack Critchley, when he worked in St. Catharines, ON as a school custodian.
 
That got my attention.  Jack Critchley was my husband Jim’s father’s name.  Jim’s dad had died about fifteen years before this conversation and he had been a principal at McArthur school in St. Catharines.  As Kurt and I talked, we discovered that the Jack Critchley he had known and Jim’s dad, were the same person.  More than that, when Kurt had been the custodian at McArthur School, and Jack Critchley, Jim’s dad had been the principal, Kurt had been having trouble providing for his family.  Jim’s dad helped him.  He helped him find a home to rent, he helped him with money for the rent, and he helped him with other things until he could get back on his feet.  Kurt had never forgotten this kindness.  I told him I would tell Jim and his mom, and that they would be so pleased to hear about this.

I am guessing that when Kurt was struggling many years ago, when he worked in Jack Critchley’s school, he was not feeling a touch of spring in the air.  If I were a betting girl, I’d put my money on the fact that it must have felt a lot more like a long cold winter, with no end in sight.  Somehow, and I do not know this part of the story, I imagine Jack and Kurt got to know each other, and over time, Jack realized the situation Kurt was in.  Jack Critchley chose to bring a touch of spring to Kurt and his family’s’ life.  Jim’s mom did not remember this happening when I told her, and the boys, Jim and his brothers, knew nothing of it.  I guess that didn’t matter.  We don’t need to see spring rain and sunshine, to know it has come.

In my early teaching years, when, like clockwork, Kurt would come into my classroom after school, most days there really never was any touch of spring in the January, or February or even March air.  Most days the thermometer was dipping in the minus double digits.  Many days a cold wind swept over the Rocky Mountains.  Yet each day we stuck to our script.  His gentle comment, ‘Touch of spring in the air today, Mrs. Critchley’.  And my kind reply ‘I think there is, Kurt’.   
It may not have felt like spring when Kurt came into the room but I could almost hear the tulips pushing through the soil by the time he left.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What touch of spring can I offer today?’
​
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 bring a touch of spring to your organization and life.
 
 

It happened!   Little Benjamin has taken his first steps!  He’s been crawling for what seems like quite a few months and this week I made the comment that he may not walk for a bit more because he is really so adept at getting around by crawling.  What do I know?

The very next day he struck out on his two feet.  This little guy does not start with one single step; he prefers four to five at a time.  And of course, when he did it, the crowd went wild!

As I’ve pondered not only the wonder of his learning to walk, and all his other little milestones, I thought about how readily we acknowledge his accomplishments and work hard to give him the confidence to continue to take risks and try new things.  We all laugh at how one little boy, not yet thirteen months old, can have a whole group of us watching him, thanking him for handing us a toy, exclaiming ‘good job’ as he climbs stairs or carefully enunciating as he tries new ‘words’.  This of course led me to wonder when this kind of acknowledgement stops.

It would be silly of course to have our co-workers gather around our desks and clap each time we completed a report.  And it would drive us crazy if someone followed us up and down the aisles of the grocery store, loudly commenting ‘good job!’ each time we placed an item in our cart.  On the other hand, the adult world would be a pretty silent place if the only sounds we heard were those made in praise or acknowledgement.  We simply stop using this muscle.  Yet in this case the silence is not golden.  In fact, it feels lonely.

Global studies state that 79% of people who leave their workplace do so because they feel unappreciated.  Imagine.  Seventy-nine percent!  It turns out that these people do not necessarily dislike the work they do.  They do not dislike their pay.  They do not dislike their holiday time.  Or at least they do not dislike these things enough to leave.  The thing that drives them away, is not feeling valued.  Once they begin to feel undervalued and unacknowledged, they begin to disengage.  It’s not a long walk from disengagement to leaving.  Maybe four or five steps.  With no one noticing.  How is it possible that as a society, we go from clapping for a human being taking a step, to ignoring competent, kind, hard working people in our lives.

I took this one step further in my thinking.  Since we’re not doing a great job of expressing appreciation in the workplace, is it possible that we are doing an equally poor job of expressing it in our personal lives, with our families and friends?

Most of us don’t want or need praise or acknowledgment for tasks we do.  What we do crave is for someone to notice us.  Not in a superficial way, but in a way that lets us know we are valued, truly seen, and appreciated.

In the case of the workplace, we shouldn’t be surprised to know that not all leaders are created equally.  Very often people are promoted to a leadership position because they have done their regular job well.  They do not necessarily have leadership training or intuition.  They may never have realized what an impact they could have by simply taking time to notice what goes into their employees’ efforts.  What is underneath the actions.  What they hope to be noticed for.

The rest of us should not expect to be excused for not knowing.  We know what it is like to feel invisible.  We also all know what it is like to be seen for the person we value being.  Every human being craves being valuable, needed and important.  From small children to CEO’s, we each want to know someone’s world is better because we are in it.

This week, I challenge you to step out and make time to show one person you value them.  Not superficially (you did a good job), not absentmindedly, not casually.  Really, stop, identify what would make them feel seen, and let them know.  Clap for their steps.  Cheer for their stair climbing.  Listen carefully to their every word.   Inside, they have the same desire to feel like as important a part of the group as little Ben.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What can I acknowledge?’
​
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.  

With January in our rear-view mirrors, it’s an interesting time of year to take a look at how we’ve done with some of our New Year’s resolutions.  Even when people tell me they don’t ‘do’ resolutions, what I notice is that almost every person really does.  The methods are different.  The idea is the same.

Some folks go all out.  They purchase a new journal, set up a physical, visible calendar in a place that will both remind them of their goals and keep them motivated.  They often set up structures of accountability to ensure success.  And they tend to share their goal, out loud, or on social media so they have people asking about it and cheering them on.

In the second camp, are the people who do less ‘sharing’.  They tend to do all the same steps as above, with a few modifications.  Their accountability process is a bit quieter.  They will likely have a tracking system but it may not be as visible.  Perhaps they track in their phone or on their laptop.  They also may tell a few trusted friends or family members but they tend not to want too much loud cheering from random people.

The third group are those who have vague or more broad goals.  These fall into the category of things like, ‘This year I’m going to …. get my photos organized, spend more time in nature, make more time for my friends, get in shape, lose some weight, take more risks etc.  The trouble here is it’s really difficult to know when this goal has been accomplished.  Exactly what does ‘more’ mean?  It’s hard to check a goal off a list or even to feel good about it when we don’t have a clear picture of what we are aiming at.

The final group is those who say they do not ‘do’ goals.  The interesting thing about many of these people is they do think about their lives, and about things they might like to have, change or improve.  What they refuse to do is to announce those ideas to others, or even out loud to themselves.  I’ve heard things said like, ‘I know I won’t follow through so I’m not going to bother.’  Or ‘No one ever accomplishes what they say anyway.’  It’s kind of like saying, ‘I’ll show them I’m going to fail before they see for themselves.’ The saboteur, or Inner Critic, shuts down these dreams before they get out of the gate.  It’s important to notice, this is not a lack of a dream or goal, it is simply the fear to act on it.

No matter what group we find ourselves in, and for me I’d say I’m closest to group two, we each do have things we want to have completed before our final trip around the sun.  However, just because we think of those things, and can identify them, and have them filed neatly in our brains, the only guarantee that we will accomplish them is to start with a wait loss program.  Not weight loss – the most common New Year goal – but wait loss.  We need to lose the idea that if we wait long enough, the time will suddenly be right.

We all spend time waiting.  We wait for the right moment, we wait for Monday to start a diet, we wait until we have completed the next course before applying for a job, we wait until the kids have grown up, we wait until we have saved the money, we wait until someone else is ready, we wait until the mortgage is paid off, we wait until we retire.  On a smaller scale, we wait until tomorrow to make the phone call, to clean up, to work out, to visit a friend and to do our best. 

It’s time to lose the wait.

For the little things, the phone calls, losing the wait simply makes us feel better.  And often by accomplishing these tiny tasks, we free up our minds up for more important matters.  We’ve all finally summoned up the energy to tackle some looming task, only to finish it in a fraction of our imagined time and to feel infinitely lighter upon its completion.  This kind of wait loss feels incredible!

For the bigger things, for the ‘wait until the kids have grown’ things, it’s understandable that at first glance it would be fair to consider that we cannot abandon our good sense or act recklessly.  Our wallets and commitments may clearly tell us that some waiting is in order.  The trick to waiting is to fill bits of the space between the present and the ‘kids growing up’ with activities or steps that give us a small taste of what we yearn for. 

If we hope to travel to Italy once the kids have launched, there is nothing holding us back from listening to ‘How to Speak Italian’ in our cars as we sit in traffic, or attending a local travel show to hear about the beautiful sights, or taking a course in Italian cuisine, or even opening a separate bank account we label, ‘Italy’.

I challenge you this week to think of one of your more meaningful goals and to think of one thing you could do, this week, to begin to bring the goal to life.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What am I waiting for?’
​
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.  What are you waiting for?

It’s been a frigid week in Central Canada.  Normally, we on the prairies and in the Foothills of the Rocky Mountains are the folks contending with bitterly cold winter temperatures.  When Jim and I first moved to Alberta many years ago, we would spend some time on Sunday afternoons writing letters back home to our families to tell them about our life here.  Those letters inevitably included some talk of weather.  Where we grew up in Southern Ontario, a temperature of -20°C was unheard of.  Our families could not believe we were experiencing this kind of cold on a regular basis, and that plenty of days the mercury dipped even lower.  We learned about the value of block heaters and the pitfalls of diesel engines for those bitter winter days.

This week, each night I’ve watched the news and looked at the weather map with its ‘red’ zone of frigidity covering Canada from Manitoba to the East and I’ve shaken my head, both thankful we’ve been spared the bitter cold for now, although I hear it is on the way, and wondering about how people who have not had to deal with these weather extremes, and who do not have mechanisms in place to do so, are able to do so now.

While the weather has captured my immediate attention, the story coming out of Melfort, Saskatchewan about the hearing for the driver of the truck involved in the Humboldt Broncos bus accident has captured my heart.  Last April, our country, and the world, was heartbroken as the magnitude of the Humboldt tragedy was revealed.  At that time, it felt like Canada knit itself together to support this hockey community and all the families affected.

This week, we have been asked to create a safe container for these families as once again, we bear witness to their suffering and grief.  Barely able to listen to the victim impact statements being reported, I am awed by how people who have not had any possible way of preparing for such tragedy, have had to face it.  And face it with an audience of millions watching.

I am always proud to be Canadian.  It feels wrong, or somehow unearned, to say that I am even more proud to be Canadian, watching how these grieving families have conducted themselves this past week.  We, the observers, see these families as a group.  They however, are each very individual in their grief.  No two families are the same.  No two losses are the same.  No two feelings are the same.  No two coping mechanisms are the same.  No two members of any family are the same.  No two grief responses are the same.  We have seen the range of grief from disbelief, to compassion, to forgiveness to rage.

And yet there has been a sameness about them.  They are the same in their courage to come face to face with the driver of the truck.  They are the same in recognizing the enormity of the tragedy.  They are the same in carrying themselves with dignity and grace, while no doubt at times wishing they could scream their agony so others could get a glimpse of their grief. They are the same in accepting that each of them is different.  They are also the same in recognizing the complexity of this case.  It would be so, so much easier if any sense could be made of it all.  They are the same in their efforts to make sense out of such a senseless event.

It’s no wonder that the men, boys and young woman involved in this crash have had so many wonderful tributes made to them.  Clearly, each member of this Humboldt family was inspiring.  In watching their families this week, it isn’t hard to figure out why this is so.  They were inspiring because they came from families who taught them to be inspiring.  This was their ‘being’.  Clearly, from a young age, each of these players, the trainer, the coach, the bus driver and the sports reporter was taught to be more than their skill.  They were taught to cultivate the deeper, more important parts of themselves.  It is my understanding that the coach, Darcy Haugan continued instilling this legacy with the team.  He wanted them to become the best versions of themselves, to represent themselves and the community well, and to make decisions about how they would react and behave amid the pressures of the game of hockey.  He, and their families understood that by practicing these qualities regularly, in every day life, in ordinary situations, they would build the muscles needed to exhibit the same qualities when the stakes were much higher, the situations not so ordinary and emotions nearer the surface.

No one could have imagined how high the stakes could get.

While I am awed by the dignity of these families, I should not be surprised.  They are simply demonstrating what they taught to their children.  The are the purest example of being exactly who they were asking their children to become.  They have shown up to the trial this week exactly as they seem to have shown up in their lives; as authentic, caring, decent, integrous, respectful, family-oriented Canadians.  A tragedy such as this one does not create these qualities; it does reveal them. 

This week, as the rest of the country hunkered down to deal with the cold, a warmth was felt on the prairie.  I like to think it was simply the residual grace and courage continuing to flow from these grieving families.  May the rest of us Canadians, continue to hold them in our prayers and thoughts. We are not out of winter yet.

My inquiry for you this week is ‘What am I cultivating by this small action?’
​
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.