On Tuesday morning, I woke to the sound of my alarm at 6:30.  This was not a working morning for me and yet I had set my alarm.   This summer, similar to last, I’ve carved out Tuesdays for my long bike ride. This week I had heard that, finally, after a summer of cooler temperatures and plenty of rain, on this particular Tuesday, we were expecting an ‘Alberta blue sky’ with real summertime temperatures.  I did not want to miss the best part of the day.  Usually my friend and biking partner, Rhonda, and I go together.  This week we had had to adjust our calendar to do a Wednesday ride instead but I still did not want to miss the magic of Tuesday morning.

My absolute favourite time of year for cycling and running is June and July.  And if I could pick my ideal time of day it would be about 5:00am.  For the non-Albertans among my readers, the sun rises early here at this time of year and by five in the morning we are usually in full light.  Now that Jim and I live the urban life, I hesitate to venture out alone quite so early, but when we were on the acreage, on almost any June or July morning I could be found running down a quiet country road by our home in the golden morning light.  These days, my runs have more often turned into rides and my timing has been delayed by an hour or so but the beauty of the morning remains.

Even when I was teaching, and even when the exhaustion of the year felt like it could win, I couldn’t resist the lure of my early morning ventures out onto our quiet road on June mornings.  One rare look at a new born fawn, a glimpse of a family of ducklings or the sound of a mama elk calling to her tiny spotted calf, would make an entire month of wake-ups worth it. 

People wondered why I was so insistent that these special runs could only take place in the early morning. Surely a late afternoon, or an early evening run or bike in nature would offer the same treasures? 

Not so.

Part of this of course, was that we were beyond fortunate to have access to the kind of nature we found right at our doorstep.  But it is more than this.  There is something about what is revealed after a period of quiet or silence that causes the special connection I knew I could only find while much of the world slept. 

So many people are afraid of silence.  They want to fill it with words or with other distractions.  It is as if, to them, the silence is awkward.  It feels like an uncomfortable void that needs filling.  I find it to be just the opposite.  What I have always noticed in nature, turns out to also hold true for humans.  Just as the animals are more likely to feel safe revealing themselves after the quiet of the night, so too are people often more likely to let us see some precious bits of themselves if we give them the quiet space to do so.

When I am coaching clients, my main job is to ask good questions.  And then to wait.  Usually people have fairly quick answers to questions.  These are answers that they have thought of before.  They are safe, completely acceptable answers.  They are even truthful answers.  But when I remember to not fill the silence, but to wait, and sometimes to wait some more, more important information is revealed.  It is what is revealed after the silence that is often the real jewel.

A jewel is something precious; a gem.  In museums, jewels are not left out in the open for visitors to handle.  They are locked in cases or kept under glass.  Very few people get to touch or feel them.  The people who are privileged to be present when the glass case is unlocked, are so because they have proven they can be trusted to handle them without causing damage. 

Each of us has jewels within ourselves.  So often when we talk to one another we do not reveal our jewels.  We stick to safe, comfortable, less valuable information that is neither new to us or the listener.  This is not indicative of whether we have jewels to share or not.  Every single person has many jewels; many parts of themselves that they tuck away until they feel someone else can be trusted to handle them without causing damage.  One way we can prove our trustworthiness is to wait in the silence; showing we are truly interested in knowing more; showing that we will carefully handle the gems that are revealed to us.

This weekend and in the early days of next week, Rhonda and I will be completing a four-day bike trip in the mountains.  I’m hoping that in the quiet of the mornings Mother Nature will reveal some of her treasures to us.  As is our pattern, we will ride much of the way in comfortable silence.  We will of course, fill some of the time with idle chit chat and with lighthearted conversation.  We’ve been known to think we are hilarious.  But some of the time, we will ask each other just the right question, and leave just the right amount of silence so that the other can reveal a jewel.  And that will be my most treasured part of the trip.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What jewel is waiting in the silence?’
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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 leave enough silence to make room for the jewels.
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Last Sunday, Jim and I were walking through one of the barns on the Stampede grounds on the final day of the Calgary Stampede.  A beautiful cow, clearly freshly groomed and ready for showing, was led into the corridor in front of us.  As we walked along behind her, Jim gave me the warning, ‘Watch your step!’.  Bossy had lightened her load as she walked along and we were right in line for a direct ‘step’.  A quick dosey doe had us out of harm, and smells, way with no damage done.

As we were laughing about our near miss I was thinking about the idea of steps.   I suppose part of that stemmed from the fact that the reason we were on the Stampede grounds to begin with was for me to perform with the Chinook Country Dancers for the final day of the Stampede.  Our group had taken many, many steps over the past two weeks.  My Garmin watch keeps track of my steps and I went back to find out how many I had taken over two weeks of dancing.  No wonder I had some tender tootsies; I tracked 241,542 steps in our dance performances during that time.  Some of the girls would have done more as they performed at a few extra venues.

That’s a lot of steps.  And yet it isn’t the steps alone that tire us out.  It is the concentration needed to remember which steps belong to which dance, and which order those steps go in that also take a toll.    The beauty of our dancing is the synchronicity of so many feet.  It’s mesmerizing to look down a long row of dancers and see every one flicking their right heel at exactly the same moment.   Without looking at our feet, we are ‘watching’ our step every minute of each performance.  The wonderful part about this group is not only do we watch our own steps, but we help each other watch their steps too.

Having about thirty dances to recall, it’s easy to momentarily lose our way when we catch the eye of someone in the audience, or when thinking we have a dance mastered, we allow our mind to wander to something mundane like what treat might be awaiting us at the end of the performance.  Every single one of us has mis-stepped and every single one of us has been gently steered back on course by the equivalent of someone saying, ‘Watch your step’ in the most comforting sort of way.  No one really says these words of course.  What they do instead is keep their own focus so that by watching them, we can quickly get back on track.  Or sometimes if we say out loud, ‘I forget this one’, one of our dancing sisters will tell us to stand beside them as we begin and they will remind us of the pattern as we get started.  Once we are out of danger, they allow us to take over on our own.  None of us thinks we have to be perfect.  Each of us is just so grateful to be part of a group that accepts wrong stepping as part of the experience.  And each of us is thankful to have support around us as we find our way.

Most of us, including me, do not accumulate most of our steps while dancing.  Most of us gather the vast majority of our steps during regular living.  Each of us will take millions of steps as we walk our journey from birth to death.  Some of these will be the Garmin type steps; the ones we physically take each day.  Others will be the more proverbial types; the steps we take toward or away from a new career, a new level of health, a new understanding or a potential new friend. 

Some of us are terrified to take new steps; steps that lead us onto unfamiliar trails.  It is good to remember that although it is possible, it is very, very rare for one single step to completely derail us.  More often than not we are safe to make some mis-steps.   We can recover if we step in cow manure.  We can get back in step if we forget our routine.  We can find our way if we veer off course.  We can even wander down the ‘wrong’ path for years, and still find our way back to a path that guides us to the place that is a better match of the vision we have for ourselves. 

I’ve spent a good deal of my life on safe paths.  I have well read maps in my hands, helping me to stay on course.  And I have had some wonderful experiences.  In my most truthful moments, I can admit that I have also very likely missed some incredible scenery.  I don’t really want to step into cow manure but I do think I am at a place in life where I want to step into some arenas where I don’t know all the steps. I want to try some new things, make some new friends, see some new places and have some new insights.  I even think I’ll be ok if I do find some manure on the bottom of my boots.

Twenty years from now I suspect I’ll be more disappointed by the steps I was afraid to take than by the mis-steps I dared to make.  

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How clean are your boots?’
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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 embrace even the smelliest of steps.
 

If you live in Alberta, unless you live deep under a stone, it’s impossible to be unaffected by the oil industry.  This valuable, non-renewable resource, oil, found in abundance deep within the earth here, has long been viewed as this provinces’ path to prosperity.  It would be hard to argue that it has not served us well.  Once upon a time, news stories focused on large oil strikes; these were always cause for celebration.  In recent times, news stories are filled with how to stop its production or at least how to balance its production with an equal eye to our environment.

There are so many arguments for each side it’s hard to keep them straight and its even harder to know the truth.  From the point of view of this very ‘average Albertan’, I don’t see it as an either/or dilemma.  Although I was raised in Ontario, my Dad worked at a large oil refinery.  His job there allowed my family to live.  It would be hard for me to curse the very thing that helped my dad feed his large family.

I also know that many of the things I enjoy so much in my life would not be possible without petroleum.  I love to ride my bike and my helmet saved me from cracking open my head during a crash I had about 9 years ago.  My bike tires and my helmet are both petroleum-based products.  The nail polish and lipstick I use as part of my costume for dancing with the Chinook Country Dancers are products made from this same petroleum.

The water pipes in my house, my contact lenses and many of the clothes in my closet are petroleum based.  When Jim had his heart attack, had he needed a heart valve, that too would have been a petroleum-based product.  I’d be pretty hypocritical to say we just need to find new ways to get around town.

At the same time, I love some of the other non-renewable resources in my province too.  I love our mountains.  I love our clean water, our rivers and lakes.  I love our fresh air.  I love the wide, open spaces that house our abundant wild life.  And I love the people.  I certainly don’t wish to have these in jeopardy any more than I wish to stop riding bike made with petroleum-based tires.

Our current political landscape would have us believe we need to take a side.  We need to commit.  We need to declare that we are either for or against; in or out; right or wrong.  There seems to be an attempt to reduce this to a binary problem where there are only two possibilities; the correct one or the incorrect one. Each side of course, believes their side is the only right way. 

As I’ve been pondering the oil dilemma, trying to imagine possible alternative ways to think about the issue of non-renewable resources, I’ve naturally been thinking about how it pertains to people.  Not necessarily how people will be affected if we continue or do not continue to invest in the oil industry, but more like how do we treat non-renewable resources of a more human kind?

My friend, Sandy, was diagnosed with cancer in February.  Over the past four or five months she has completed her chemo and radiation regime and this week she got the most incredible news.  Her oncologist says her treatment could not have gone better.  She still has some more treatment to undergo, but the news was beyond fantastic.  You kind of don’t know how close to your ears your shoulders have risen until you breathe the sigh of relief that comes with this kind of news.  The sigh is so great it often pushes water right out of your eyes. 

Sandy’s life is non-renewable.  She gets one trip through, just like the rest of us.  The hours in each of her days are non-renewable.  She can no more get any one of them back than the rest of us can.  My friendship with her is non-renewable.  Youth is non-renewable, middle-age is non-renewable and old age, if we are lucky enough to experience it, is the same.  Moments of kindness are non-renewable.  We can’t get them back.  We can hope for new ones in our future, but we cannot get back moments where we had an opportunity to say or do something kind.  Comments can be non-renewable.  Inspiring moments can be this way too.  We experience them and then they are gone, so quickly we wish we could have a redo.  How often do we look back and wish we had fully appreciated the circumstance we found ourselves in?

It’s sobering to think how often we squander our valuable, non-renewable resources of people and time.  When I look back on some of the times in my life when I was too afraid to put my whole self ‘out there’, I regret I cannot get those moments back.  I suppose I was trying to protect a little bit of myself; I thought I would save my best self and pull it out to use when the time was right, never realizing that some opportunities are non-renewable.

I’ve had a perfectly wonderful, non-renewable dancing week with the Chinook Country Dancers.  By the end of Sunday, I will be completely spent; exhausted and sore.  And I am perfectly fine with that.  I know I will never get this week back.  So, I have tried to wring every wonderful moment from it I can. 

I don’t have a solution for the minds trying to figure out the oil industry or the environment.  I will continue to appreciate my abundant, non-renewable life, understanding that much of what I enjoy could not be possible without the oil industry.  I’ll also continue to be a good steward of our environment. 

And tired or not, I’m going to find a few minutes to celebrate with Sandy.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How am I choosing to use this non-renewable time?’
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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 make the most out of your most valuable non-renewable resource; your life!
 
 

​The Calgary Stampede has begun.  Yahoo! We’ve been dancing up a storm, and several times, dancing in a storm.  This Sunday and next week we will spend many hours down on the Stampede grounds, serving as ambassadors for our city, and entertaining folks from all around the globe.

As the tourists wander among the displays and demonstrations showcasing our Western Heritage, they will no doubt have a chance to see some artists showing off their carving skills.  I am always in awe of the creative talent of these people; the chainsaw artists are particularly captivating.  It fascinates me to watch one of them take a large piece of wood and, using a chainsaw, gently carve away the outer pieces, the pieces they don’t need, to eventually reveal a spectacular piece of art.

How do they know what to cut away, I often wonder?

My dad was a carver.  Although he was skilled with a chainsaw in the woods, this was not his chosen artists tool.  He preferred carving using his special knives.  Dad wasn’t always an artist.  When we were kids and would go camping, he would teach us to whittle away on a small piece of wood.  If we were lucky, we would end up with a little wooden whistle; one that actually worked!  None of us had any clue there was an artist living inside our dad.  In fact, if any of us had dared to show a strong tendency toward a career in any of the arts, we’d have been strongly discouraged.  Dad steered us in the direction of ‘real, sensible’ jobs.

Not surprisingly, when my siblings and I are lucky enough to be sitting around a kitchen table visiting together, it’s no wonder we sit as nurses, teachers, police officers and generally sensible, hard workers.  We all chose practical, respectable jobs.  So, you can imagine our surprise, when in his retirement, our Dad, our Dad who had spent his career at a very sensible shift-working job in the boiler room of a large oil refinery, became a carver; an artist.

His first efforts were good, but by his own admission, not yet great.  Year after year he would spend hours each day of the winter in his woodshed, practicing his skill.  Small carvings of trolls soon turned into carvings of deer, elk and bears.  Eventually he started to create beautiful carvings inside moose antlers.

When I asked Dad how he knew what to do, how to know what to cut away, he’d reply that the object he wanted to create was already perfectly intact inside the wood.  All he had to do was to carve away the unnecessary pieces.

Whoa.  Who knew?  For a man who had little use for philosophy, Dad could certainly be insightful.

This little gem of wisdom applies to people too.  Each of us, at our core, is perfectly intact.  We have passions and skills.  We have dreams, ambitions and aspirations.  And yet many of us cannot not find these.  Somehow as we have grown up, we have pushed them down, hidden them away and even forgotten about some of them.  
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To find these bits of ourselves, all we really have to do is to carve away the exterior bits that serve only to stifle some of the best parts we have to offer.

I was watching little Ben last week.  As is our habit, we took a walk in our local provincial park.  Ben loves to walk in tall grass and not far along in our walk he veered off the paved path and headed through the what looked to be just tall grass growing in the forest.  As he took his little steps, grass up to his shoulders, the blades seemed to part for him, revealing a narrow, but well-worn path used by the deer that frequent the park.  It dawned on me that the path is always there, it’s sometimes just a little overgrown so that from a grown-up perspective, it’s hard to find.  Just like with wood carvings, all we have to do is push aside or cut away what we don’t need in order to uncover the way forward.

In our lives there is plenty of extra growth covering our path, and there is even some very tough wood concealing our passions and aspirations.  Sometimes we have become so busy with our real, sensible jobs and responsibilities we push our dreams aside until they are overgrown and hard to see.  Sometimes the voice in our head convinces us that sealing them away with wood might be a good idea.

But once in a while, something happens to remind us of ourselves.  Perhaps we see an old picture, or hear a song, or read an article, or meet a person, that cuts through some of the wood and shows us a path forward.  A path that allows the best bits of us to shine.

Over the coming week, my most wonderful dancing partners and I will be performing at Rope Square and on the Stampede grounds.  I’ll likely pass some of the carvers on the way to our performance area.  And I’ll be ever so grateful that one day, about four years ago, I met some dancers in red shirts, who have helped me chip away at my outer layers of wood to uncover my dancing shoes.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What’s hidden underneath the wood?’
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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 cut through the noise to uncover what is important to you.
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