Any one who deals with people knows that dynamics seem to flow more easily when there are even numbers of people.  Parents who have three children will often mitigate this by inviting another friend over – it just makes life easier.   In team meetings, even numbers allow people to pair up for discussion.  When two people are talking, often they each have a chance to offer their opinion.  If there are three, sometimes a quiet team member can be overlooked.

I’m guessing this explains why expressions ‘I felt like a fifth wheel’ and ‘Three’s a crowd’ have stood the test of time.

Based on that, one could jump to the conclusion that any two people would navigate the water of their relationship more easily than if there were three.  Not so fast.  Any time two people interact, there are actually three entities involved: Person A, Person B and the Relationship.  The relationship is, in fact a separate and very powerful member of any alliance.
When I first heard this, I thought it could be far-fetched.  However, as I have learned more I realize the truth in the idea that the relationship is its own distinct part in the connectedness of people.  In fact, the relationship itself may last longer than either one of Person A or Person B.

Think about a relationship you have had that has ended.  While either Person A or Person B may no longer be physically present, the relationship lingers and can even cause both grief and joy.  We can easily think of two people who are individually both wonderful, but whose relationship is not healthy.  This is not necessarily because either person is flawed; it could simply be that the relationship is not serving either of them well.  In the same way, people can look back with fondness on a relationship they might have had with someone who is no longer in their life.  While the physical person may not be present, the relationship can still bring them great joy.

Similarly, unhealthy relationships that have ended between two people can bring great pain, even when the people are not physically linked anymore.  The relationship can continue to influence feelings and behaviors.

When two people have a relationship with each other, and a third person is introduced to the mix, room must be made for both Person C and all the relationships; there is a relationship between Person A and B, between A and C, and between B and C.  And then of course there is the elusive relationship between all three – no wonder there can be hiccups when three people collaborate!

When I am with a client who mentions that they are having even a minor difference of opinion with someone in their life, I love to work through the following exercise to help them find a new way to proceed.  Coaching is never focused on how others can change to make us feel better; it is always focused on the client and the power they have over themselves. 

In this exercise, I ask the client find three points they can use to make a triangle in whatever space they are in.  I have them to chose one point, Point A, and to stand on it.  This place represents their own point of view.  As they stand at Point A, I have them describe the situation to me from their perspective.  They are encouraged to get as passionate about their stance as they can.  They are to stand firmly in their own position.

Once they feel they have expressed all their thoughts on the situation, I ask them to move to Point B.  Point B represents the other player in the dispute.  As they stand on Point B, they are to become Person B.  From here they are to give the point of view of Person B as if they are Person B.  It is important that they speak in the first person when they are talking.  For instance, I ask them to say, ‘I think that ….’ rather than saying, ‘Well Person B would say….’   Once they have finished being Person B (you will be amazed at how well you can take on the persona of Person B; even children can do this), I always ask them to return to Point A to mention anything they might have missed the first time.  (Sometimes Person B will have triggered a memory😊) Finally, they will have spoken everything they need to from both Points A and B and I ask them to move to Point C.

Point C is the point of view of the Relationship.  I ask them to take on the role of the relationship.   Specifically, I ask, ‘What is it that the relationship can see that has not been expressed’.  And finally, I ask, ‘What does this relationship need?’.  Usually at this point, you can hear a pin drop.  All of the fight goes out of the person as they focus on the question.  Many answers have been given; all have been valuable.

Once the point of view of the relationship has been heard I have the client return to Point A.  As you will recall, this is their own point of reference.  Once here I ask them, ‘Knowing what you now know, what is it you need to do?’  There has never been a time when the person cannot think of something they can do to help solve the dispute, to grow the relationship and to honour her or himself.

Once you start to think about relationships as entities separate from the people, it is very hard to think of them any other way.

As you move forward through this week, think of all the relationships you have guardianship over.   Think of times that, had you considered what the relationship needed, you could have eased a lot of stress.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What does this relationship need?’
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There are many, many relationships in any life. Book a coaching session for yourself, a group or your workplace to learn how to effectively nurture relationships to create the results you desire.

I have been taking Yoga for about three years from a wonderful instructor, Mona.  Mona’s classes are challenging, yet doable, varied and incredibly enjoyable.  She speaks with her French-Canadian accent and we often chuckle together when she mixes up her body parts.  It’s not easy to extend your right leg in front of you and rotate your elbow (ankle!). 
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At the start of each class, Mona (@fitnessandmindbodywithmonapower on FB) centers us by having us sit in lotus position and bring attention to our breath.  We close our eyes, palms turned upward on our thighs and breathe.  Mona tells us to make sure we pause between each breath.  Last week she said, “Breathe in.  Pause.  Breathe out.  Make sure you take a pause between each breath.  Wonderful things can happen when you pause between the breaths.”

That sentence, “Wonderful things can happen when you pause between the breaths”, really stuck with me.  I began to think about life and about what it is like when I stop, even for a few seconds and pause. 

I am a doer.  I love nothing more than to check things off my often-long list.  I began to think of how I tend to approach many things in life.  I like to get started, keep focused and get finished.  I suppose it started when I was very young.  Dad trained us to get the work finished first, and then we would have time to play (or not).  There weren’t many pauses built in to our days.

Jim is a pause-er.  When we go on a walk, I usually have an idea of how far we are going and how long it should take.  In my head, I sort of book that much time before we head out the door.  If we are walking in the park, Jim will always notice an interesting bird, or see a little animal, or stop for a drink or a sit on a bench, and inevitably we will pause for a few minutes.  This used to make me quite antsy.  I would think about how we would be ‘late’ if we kept stopping.  Over time, I have come to appreciate and even love our little pauses.  It is in the pauses that we see some wonderful things.  Just like Mona says.

Stephen Covey talks about the small time, the pause, between a stimulus (event) and our response.  He maintains that if we notice and use that pause, we can choose our response.  He says that we are response-able.  How often do we simply respond without pause, and then wish we could take back our response?  The pause gives us time to think about the words we will say, and to think about the impact they will have.  It reminds us that we are able to choose.  This can all happen in seconds. 

Since Mona mentioned that ‘Wonderful things can happen when you pause’, I have begun to remind myself to pause, and I have made up a new word.  I’ve begun to think about the pause-abilities (possibilities) that become available when I remember to pause.  I imagine what is pause-able (possible).

Think of a time when you have been in a situation where things were not going your way.  So often, in cases like these, we stubbornly continue with what we are trying to do even when we can clearly see it is not working.  We get frustrated, and even mad.  We might lash out at someone who is offering us ‘suggestions’.  We keep our blinders on and refuse to open our minds to new ideas.  We forget to pause.

Imagine what a difference it would make if we could take a second or two to pause; and in doing so to remind ourselves that ‘wonderful things can happen when we pause’.  We might even take a breath or two and give ourselves time to imagine different pause-abilities.  I can think of many times in my life when, if I had just slowed down for a minute or two, and taken pause, I might have created a completely different outcome.

I’m getting better at pausing.  Lately on our travels, we make sure that we don’t schedule our time so tightly that we won’t have time for ‘pauses’.  That way, if we see something that wasn’t on our list, we can still take time to explore it.  Many of the unexpected things we have experienced in the pause, have been the things we have loved and talked about for years later.

This weekend is the long weekend.  Surely on our weekend with an extra day, we can each find a time to pause.  Wonderful things can happen in the pause.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What possibilities are there in this pause?’
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There are unlimited possibilities waiting for you in the pauses.  Book a coaching session for yourself, a group or your workplace to learn how to effectively use the pause to uncover some unexpected things.

I had an entirely different blog prepared for this week.  Yesterday, as I was updating our Building Hope Society website, I was browsing through some pictures of our trip to Africa, and I was remembering how much I loved being there and at the same time how difficult it was to see the overwhelming amount of need.  Before I went, I was pondering how I might cope with what I would see.  I wondered if I would think that I had to try to fix everything that I saw.  I wondered if I, and others, would place big expectations on myself for both my time there and for my time when I came home.  I was afraid that I might be forever changed.  Jim and I had many conversations about how we would need to steel ourselves against what we thought could be a strong pull to come home with a couple of more children (as if it were that easy), a resolve to never waste a morsel of food again, a desire to quit wearing deodorant (I think Bono started this one) and a chance that we would become preachy about world affairs.  It was a lot to worry about!

I had a conversation with a wise coach a few weeks prior to our departure about who I wanted to be on our trip.  The most wonderful feeling of freedom came over me as I realized that what I wanted for the trip was to ‘Be A Witness’.  This freed me up from needing to go there to fix anything and from worrying that I might need to change my own thinking or life.  I told our small group of travelling companions about this expression, and we used it many times each day as we fell in love with the people and sights of Kenya.

This weekend we will celebrate Mother’s Day.  I was thinking that as I faced motherhood for the first time, I likely had many of the same thoughts going through my head as I had before our trip to Africa.  I was heading into unknown territory. I knew that what I would experience would change me. I didn’t think I wanted to let go of the familiar life I had.  I didn’t know if I was up to the task of doing what would be asked of me.  And yet I really, really, really wanted to go on this trip called Motherhood.

I wish I had known the expression ‘Be A Witness’. 

When we are given the gift of a child in our life, we certainly have responsibilities around keeping them safe and providing them with opportunities to thrive.  However, these precious bundles really do not belong to us.  They are put in our care, and we would give our own lives for them, but they are not our possession.  They each have their own life to live, they have their own mistakes to make, their own successes to celebrate, their own personalities to wear, their own talents to perform, their own fears to face and their own hearts to be broken and to be filled with love.

We, as mothers, have been given the precious, and sometimes very difficult, job of being a witness to their lives.  Once the food, and shelter and love have been provided, this is our most difficult task.  We want so badly to protect them from the ills of the world.  We want them to avoid the pitfalls that slowed us down in our lives.  We want other people to think that they are good people.  I wonder, when I think about all the things I wanted to protect my children from, if I wasn’t really trying to protect myself.  It is very hard to watch your children hurting.  It is very hard to see them make decisions that might not be ones we would make, or choose friends we would not choose for them, or have other people judge them.  It is hard to see them disappointed, to face rejection and to watch them be afraid.

Even when our kids were tiny babies, we recognized that they were not little clones of us.  They arrived intact, completely whole, and completely themselves.  They had their own little personalities and their own likes and dislikes.  They had places to go, things to do and people to become.  It was pretty clear that the person they needed to become was not me.  And it was not Jim.

As I learned to ‘Be A Witness’, my joy with being a mother expanded tenfold.  I was able to recognize the part that I was given to play; I was a provider, a nurturer, a guide and a safe place to come home to.  After that, the best thing that I could be was to ‘Be A Witness’ to the incredible lives they have made for themselves.  When I was a teacher, I got to witness the lives of so many children.  I had the chance to tell the parents about what I witnessed in their children, and even to remind them that some of the qualities that they viewed as limiting in their child, were actually serving their child very well.  It is sometimes easier to be a witness when we are not looking at things through a magnifying glass.

These days I love to let my ‘Witness’ steer my ship.  I can honestly sit back and watch in wonder, the direction that our children’s lives are taking.  I am more accepting that there are no wrong decisions.  I watch with curiosity as they show me how they are choosing to live.  I love it when they are brave.  I choose to Be A Witness to their lives as they navigate the waters of their own journey.  And I choose to continue to be a safe port for them to come to.

Happy Mother’s Day! May your day be filled with witnessing beauty and gifts of your children.

My inquiry for you this week is, "How can I 'Be A Witness'?"

Learn more about the power of ‘Being A Witness’ in your life.  Book a coaching session for you, for your workplace or for a group of friends.  

This week I had the opportunity to volunteer at a Habitat for Humanity Build.  It happened to be an all women’s build, we happened to have perfect weather, and I happened to get to share the day with my daughter, Kaitlyn and some of my good friends.  When a day like that comes together perfectly, it’s hard not to spend some time thinking about how fortunate I am. 

As I was painting the closets of some small bedrooms on the upper floor of the four-plex we were working on, I was imagining what it must be like to be the family who will move into this home.   We had been told that families who qualify for a Habitat home must have children living with them, and that they have often moved many times, from low income housing, to the basements of families and friends, to places I can’t even imagine.  We heard about a family who had recently received a similar Habitat home.  They had moved there from a basement with deplorable conditions; one of the children in the family was originally excited about their basement suite because he thought that there was macaroni on the floor – in fact it was a fungus growing.

As I worked away, listening to the sounds of power tools, hammers, instructions being given, teams working together, and laughter, I thought to myself that if someone were watching us, what they would have seen us creating was a structure for a family.   In the simplest sense of the word, structure means anything composed of parts, arranged together in some way.  This is exactly what we were building; a structure.

However, there are also some different definitions of structure.  Structure can be thought of as a systematic framework.  During our Habitat build, our day was structured for success by the careful planning of the organizers.  Structures can also be thought of as things put in place to give us maximum success.  One of the reminders we were given at the build was that if our knees were higher than the top of the ladder, then we were too high.  This was an easy structure used to keep us safe.

Structure is incredibly important for the successful running of our lives.  If we examine the day to day activities of successful people, we will find that they use many structures to set up their lives for success.  Structures can be thought of as habits or of routines that we establish to remind us of ways of being or of things to do. 

My friend Brenda set up a structure for herself at the beginning of this year.  She had heard about a person who used to be a runner who had decided to get back into the sport.  He had made it his goal to run 300 days out of the year.  Brenda thought that this was a great idea and she decided to give herself the same 300-day challenge for walking.  The rules were simple. She had to go outside and walk 300 days out of the 365 days in 2017.  She did not set any minimum distance or time.  The structure she used was to put a star on her calendar each day she walked so that she could easily keep track of her day without a complicated system.

On about the third week into her program, she had only missed two days.  One cold evening in January, at about 8:30 at night, her twenty-something year old son Daniel said, ‘Mom, you didn’t get a star today!’  It was about -20 and pitch dark out.  Brenda had thought that this might turn into one of her days off.  However, she said that a few minutes after hearing Daniel’s comments she found herself and her husband bundling up and heading out into the cold night for their walk.  This simple structure of putting stars on the calendar not only kept track of her walking, it also allowed room for others to encourage her.  Up until this moment she had not realized that anyone else was even noticing what she was doing.  A simple structure like this can turn into an incredibly powerful tool.

An even simpler structure was used by the facilitator of a leadership course I took.  She said that before each class she taught, she would take a deep breath and silently say, ‘It’s ShowTime!’  This structure reminded her to give her absolute best to the participants in her class.    Because I was a teacher at the time, this inspired me to stand at the front of the class before every lesson, look at my students and say to myself, ‘I wonder what they have brought with them today’.  This structure reminded me to be kind and to give them a place of safety. 

When I am coaching clients I often ask what structure they will put in place to help keep them on track for their goal.  Sometimes they choose to email me to tell me they have followed through.  Sometimes they will put a picture somewhere to remind them, sometimes they tell other people what they are doing.  There is no one right way to create structures; the important thing is to have them.

I suspect that the structure that I had a very small part in building this week will soon become much more for some family than just a place to lay their heads.  It has the potential to give them a chance to think and dream about some of their next steps, knowing that they have a sturdy, safe, well-made home.  My hope is that it will give them space to see new possibilities, to establish some structures for success and to create some incredible memories.
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Learn more about using structures in your life to create the success you want.  Book a coaching session for you, for your workplace or for a group of friends.