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myself when I looked at my calendar a couple of days ago and realized that we will turn the mythical page of our outdated paper calendars over this coming week and welcome May.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.