On Tuesday, late in the sunny morning, I pedalled into St. John’s, Newfoundland, ending my 4800km bike ride across Canada.  In reality, I was in my local Provincial Park in Calgary, still fifteen kilometres from home.  There was no band, nor was there flag waving.  But I was imagining being by the Terry Fox statue gracing the Atlantic shoreline in St. John’s.  No matter what, this moment marked the end to my summer cycling adventure; the virtual Cross Canada Challenge.  Mission accomplished.

I’d noticed in the last three or four days of the ride I’d been dragging my feet.  I still set my alarm every night, and clipped on my bright flashing red bike light in the early hours of dawn every morning.  I still had plenty of energy, plenty of get up and go, and I still felt good while I was on those two wheels of mine.  I still had lots left in the tank to carry on with my normal day after my ride.  But something felt a bit off.

A bit of soul searching revealed the answer; I didn’t want the adventure to end.  Turns out, I love the journey.

This surprised me a bit.  After all, I’m the list girl.  I get such satisfaction from completing a task and checking it off my list.  My lists give structure to my days, and keep me moving forward.  And yet, I was hesitant to put a check mark beside this particular item on my list.  Usually when I need to unscramble my thoughts, and allow quieter ones to come to the fore, I go for a ride.  But since I promised myself a couple of days off, I’ve spent the last few days doing some things I haven’t had time for while riding, and hoping my thoughts would organize themselves.

I’m not sure my mind has been able to process this as well as if I’d been biking or running, but I have managed some clarity.  As best as I’ve been able to figure out, I think I love lists because they are my ‘doing’.  They remind me of what I need to accomplish.  These are the tangible things in my life.  These are the things I can report on.  When someone asks, what have you been up to, I can turn to my list to account for my time.

Things that never make my list are the parts of my life that are my ‘being’.  I have never added to a list things like:

• Enjoy the afternoon with Benjamin
• Talk to Jim’s mom
• Visit with the kids at dinner
• Watch the sun rise
• Cycle through the mountains
• Connect with my sister in the evening

 
These things are part of my days.  Perhaps they are on some kind of mental list, but they are not on the check-it-off-the-list, kind of list.  These feel different.  The bike riding felt like it could be on this non-list.  These are the things I don’t want to end.  Each one of them ends, of course, each time, but I don’t want the chance to have these moments to end.  These are the rich, memory-making moments for me.

I was reading a book this week.  In it a little girl, who was invited to a small birthday party for an older man, asked the man, ‘Has it been fun getting to 81?’  This stopped me in my tracks.  How would I answer this, I wondered?

I know my idea of fun isn’t exactly what it might be for some others. I rarely have days filled with side-splitting laughter.  I haven’t been screaming with joy while cliff-diving.  No one has ever wondered where I was last partying.  Using these measures of fun, I am a dismal failure.  Since I know this isn’t true, I can only conclude that while I love this question, and I think I even need it, it is not the exact right question for me.  I don’t think the question that needs asking to me is ‘Has it been fun getting to your age?’  I think a better question for me is, ‘Have you been able to accomplish your mission?’

My mission has nothing to do with my check list.  It has everything to do with my other list; my non-list.  My longing for my bike adventure to not end was not about the physical part of the challenge.  I am more than happy to give my sore butt a break, and to sleep past 5:00am.  It was about being in nature, enjoying the feel of my body as it responded to getting stronger, and of sharing some of the rides with people I love, with my brother, Daniel, my son, Greg, my husband, Jim, my friends, Brenda, Daryl and Rhonda.  My mission is about connection, about caring for and taking time for, myself, for those I love, for those with whom I share this planet, and connection with nature itself.

As this ride has ended, my feelings remind me to fill my days with things that accomplish my mission.  I still need my list; this is how I get things done so I free up time for the important stuff, for the mission stuff.   After all, we can’t linger visiting after dinner if there isn’t a dinner to put on the table.  I must, however, also remember to do as many things as possible to get me to the place where I can proudly say I have accomplished my mission.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How am I accomplishing my mission?’
​
Elizabeth is a certified professional 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 coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to clarify your mission.
 
 
 

In the next week or so, thousands of small, and not so small, children will be heading off to school, carrying their backpacks.  This year, with the complications of Covid, those packs will likely contain not only the regular school supplies, but also some new essentials that I really wish kids didn’t have to think about at all.  Our new reality, however, is that these new things, the sanitizer, mask and endless reminders to physically distance, are necessary for everyone’s best chance of remaining in good health.  On the very first days of school, the packs will be much heavier than usual.   The new supplies for the new year fill the packs to overflowing and parents might need to lend a hand to make sure everything arrives safely the first day.  It’s nice to pick up a pack and carry it for someone else, especially when it looks like it must be heavy to manage.

I’ve been thinking a lot about heavy backpacks this week, and about how and when we help carry them for others. 
While not all of us are students or teachers returning to a classroom this fall, each of us still carries a backpack through our life.  We walk through the years of our time on this earth with a backpack firmly affixed every day.  Sometimes it is filled with treasures, so wonderful they feel light and effortless to bear.   In times like these, we can often not only easily manage our own pack, but we often feel as though we have enough strength left to reach out and help others with their loads too.

There are other times when our backpacks feel very, very full and heavy.  They can be weighed down with the burden of things needing to be done.  They can also be weighted with our thoughts and concerns.  I’m guessing those returning to schools next week will have things of both varieties in their packs.  I worry that the students will have filled the leftover nooks and crannies of their packs with their own variety of worries; worries about catching Covid, worries about ‘making Grandma and Grandpa sick’, worries about being behind in work, and all the regular worries of a new school year. 

I know our daughter and son-in-law, both teachers, will return to school with their packs stuffed full too; full of questions, new plans, worries about the students in their care, about themselves and what they could bring home, about the uncertainty of the school year, about the different skill levels of students they will encounter, and about smiling using only their eyes.  I would dearly love to sneak over to their house, and take a few things out of their packs, so they would be easier to carry.  I know, of course, this is not the right thing to do.

One of the most critical beliefs in coaching is that each of us is creative, resourceful and whole.  Each of us has the answers we need inside ourselves.  We are the experts on ourselves.  No one knows us as we know ourselves.  We are not broken, we don’t need to be fixed and deep down, we know how to best manage the challenges we face.  Each of us is the expert on our own backpack; on what is in it, on what we could remove, on what we need to keep tucked far at the bottom and on what little treasures are in each of the little secret pouches on the sides.

It’s really important that we are allowed to carry our own packs.  It’s important that we feel in control of ourselves. While we may not be able to choose all the things we have to carry, we certainly are capable of choosing how to manage them.  We are capable of choosing what things we might not want to manage right now, and what things we do want to focus on. 

When others take charge of our packs, they send us an unintentional, but clear message that we are not really capable.  We get the feeling that we can’t trust our own instincts and knowledge about ourselves.  So, what do we do then, when we notice someone struggling with their pack?  And what do we do when we need help with ours?

One of the most helpful things we can do for others is to simply acknowledge the weight of their pack.  Having someone be a witness to our struggles is incredibly load-lightening.  It is also helpful to have someone walk beside us.  We don’t need them in front of us leading us; we don’t need them behind us; we need them beside us, letting us know they are with us. 

A week-and-a-half ago, as I was trying to keep up with my self-imposed biking schedule to get me virtually across Canada, the person ahead of me, who I only knew to be Ironwill Justus, reached out on Facebook.  We had been able to see each other’s progress on the site of the ride, but we did not know anything about each other except for our names.  ‘Ironwill’ is really Bill, but Ironwill is perhaps more apt.  All I knew about him, I had learned through watching his mileage each day.  I could see he was the real deal.  I knew by his consistent numbers that he would arrive at the finish line days before me, but I still loved to do my best to keep him in my sights.  In his very first message he typed:

‘You rock lady.  My daughter is in Calgary.  When I get out there, we will have to meet. I’m going to finish this up in 10 days, then drop into a rest period for the big ride of the year; what would have been an Ironman!!  Keep it up. You’re impressive to say the least!’

Bill likely did not know it, but this was the perfect way to lighten my load without diminishing me in any way.  He acknowledged my effort.  He did not minimize his own.  He championed me.  And he made me feel like I had an ally; like he was by my side.  I felt supported and at the same time like I had full agency over myself – no advice, no suggestions, just support.  His much-appreciated words have been in my backpack since then. 

Over the next few weeks, we’ll encounter plenty of people with full backpacks.  How nice it is to know we don’t need to reach out and carry their back packs for them.  We simply need to get into step beside them for a bit to lessen the weight of their load.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Who needs me to walk beside them?’
​
Elizabeth is a certified professional 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 coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to navigate bumps in your road.
 
 

As I cycled past it in the park this week, I had to circle around to take a second look.

‘This area has been spot treated for pests!’, read the sign.

I was chuckling to myself as I pedalled along, wondering just exactly what kind of pests it was referring to.  My imagination roamed around picturing varmints, noxious weeds, small children and even a few irritating grown-up-sized people!  If only it were that simple, I thought; to spot treat the pests in our lives.

One of the nice things about biking long distances along pathways, is that other than taking care around the bumps, and watching out for other people, there aren’t too many dangers.  There are no cars or trucks to worry about, no street signs or stop lights.  That leaves lots of room in my mind for thinking.  And so it came to be on my rides this week, I began to think about the pests in my life and how I could use a spot treatment on them.

In my little world, I don’t have a lot of noxious weeks or varmints to deal with.  I only have one small child who I love dearly, and I only hang out with people I like.  I have however, identified some pests that could use a spot treatment or two.  I have the pests that show up in the form of unwanted thoughts.  These are never the kind of thoughts that say, ‘Liz, you are full of grace.  Awesome work with your patience!’  Nope!  I don’t have any of these little pesky thoughts at all.  The thoughts that double as pests in my life are the ones that make me worry.  These are the thoughts based on no reality at all.  They are the ‘what if’, ‘the why didn’t I’, the ‘I should have’ thoughts.  They race around and around gathering speed and certainty as they go.

If I had a spot treatment for these useless thoughts, these pests, I could eliminate the ruminating about worst case scenarios and use the time to think about realistic approaches and solutions.  I wouldn’t wipe out the entire thought, just the part that serves no purpose.

Another kind of pest that could use a spot treatment in my life is my endless list of jobs.  My sister reminded me that we were raised on a side dish of ‘We’ll have time for fun when the jobs are finished.’  In some ways this is a great thing to teach children.  It teaches the idea of delayed gratification, and of responsibility.  It may even help children learn to get the tough stuff done first, and then the rest is easy. There is a catch though; when you are a grown up, the jobs are never done.   I could use a little spot treatment to help me erase the jobs at the end of the list, the ones that really don’t matter at all, so there would be time to focus on more of the fun stuff.

As I continued to think about other ‘pests’ I might like to eliminate, my thoughts matured from just wanting to eliminate certain things to a more evolved way of thinking.  When I think of spot removers in the real world, they serve a separate function other than simple elimination. 

If you go to the dermatologist to have some spots removed, she does not leave a big empty hole where the spots once were.  Rather, once the little scabs have healed, the patient is left with nice clear skin.  In other words, the dermatologist did not so much remove a spot or two, as she did simply reveal the new skin underneath.  The same applies to those little laundry spot-removing pens.  When the pen is rubbed over the spot, what is revealed is the lovely fabric; the one that was always there, but that couldn’t be seen because it was being covered.

This led me to think about how I could use this kind of spot treatment.  When I am feeling afraid, or unconfident, if I could just use my magic spot treatment, I’m sure I could rub off some of those feelings and reveal my bravery; my bravery that is sitting just underneath the layer of doubt.

When I am finding myself acting stubborn, I could gently rub my spot treatment along the ‘stubborn’ and uncover my open-mindedness. 

When I’m questioning the right course of action, I could use the spot remover to release my inner wisdom.

Everything we need to become our best selves is within us.  Sometimes we convince ourselves we no longer, or perhaps never did have, certain traits.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Often, the very traits we long for are just sitting below the spots.  Perhaps all we need is a little sign, like the one I saw in the park, that might say:

‘Spot treatment for pests available here anytime’

This might be just enough for us to remember to look not at the pest, the spot, but at the gem underneath, just waiting for an invitation to show up in our lives.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What pest needs removing?’
​
Elizabeth is a certified professional 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 coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to navigate bumps in your road.
 

Every morning I get up early and head out on my bike.  You’d think by now, even though I don’t take the exact same route every day, that I would have figured out not only where the bumps in the road are, but how to avoid them or navigate them.  And yet, as surely as the sun rises each day, every time I bike down a certain small hill in Fish Creek Park, I manage to hit the same bump.

This bump is not big.  It would not be hard to avoid.  It sits right in the middle of the path.  To give some perspective, the path is about eight feet wide, with a line down the middle, and the bump is right in the middle.  The bump is only about eight inches in diameter.  By rights, I should be biking on my own side of the path, not in the middle.  I really should not ever hit this bump.  In complete fairness, it is at the bottom of the little hill right where the path turns to the right, and there is an unobstructed view of any oncoming ‘traffic’ so it isn’t beyond the imagination that I would steer slightly left to make the turn at the bottom easy to do without too much braking.  Still, you’d think by now I would have this figured out.

As I hit it for the umpteenth time early this week, I began to think about how I react to bumps in the road.  As often happens when I start to ponder a thing, the universe cooperates nicely.  This time she did not fail me; she provided plenty of real-life examples for me to do my study of bumps in the road.

Tuesday morning, I took the same route, hit the same bump and kept going.  I decided to do a little out and back loop to add to my ride that day.  This section of the path is slightly narrower, but is still plenty wide to accommodate bikes and pedestrians.  It does have the feel of being narrow because the Bow River is on one side, with just a narrow bank separating it from the path, and a chain link fence on the other that spans about a kilometre.  After I turned back at the end of the loop and came to the chain link section again, I came upon a couple of cyclists stopped in front of me.  As I approached, I could see there had been some kind of accident and a female cyclist was laying across the path, trapped under her bike.  I slowed and stopped at a bit of a distance back.  Clearly, they were trying to sort things out and often too many helpers are not helpful after all. 

As I waited and watched, I couldn’t help but think this was a real live bump in the road.  I turned on my observation sensors.  A lot of the bumps we encounter are going to be unexpected.  From what I observed there were several distinct ways people had of dealing with this particular unexpected bump. 

The first two cyclists to stop were the two young men who had been cycling toward the fallen woman when the incident happened.  I later learned she had noticed them approaching, on their own side of the path.  Wanting to be considerate, she moved slightly to the right of her side of the path, where there was the chain link fence.  It seems she got just a bit too close to the fence for a second, just long enough for her right handlebar to catch in one of the links, and send her flying, ultimately trapping her in the frame of her bike.   The two men felt absolutely awful.  They were repeatedly apologizing in a very Canadian way, although it turns out they did absolutely nothing wrong.  They stayed with the woman and tried to help. 

They kept trying to help her up, which was impossible because of the way the bike was laying.  She eventually, although she was in shock, told them how to help her up, bike and all, after which she was able to untangle from the bike.  These guys dealt with the bump in the road by being reactive.  This was not bad; they did their best to make a bad situation as good as they could figure out how to.  This was a kind of ‘patch it up as best we can’ approach.  They left the situation having done their best, but feeling very badly nonetheless.

The second kind of reaction I observed came from one member of a group of six cyclists who cycled up behind me, and behind two other cyclists who were also behind me, after I had been stopped for a couple of minutes.  I’m sure the poor lady on the ground wondered how in the world this little section of the path had suddenly become so popular.  After these six took in the situation, (I can only assume they thought that since an ambulance didn’t need to be called, there was no need to stick around) one of the men, a man in his late 60’s or early 70’s, asked loudly, ‘Can we at least get past?’

Being a former teacher comes in handy in this sort of situation.  I was already close to this man, since he clearly had not remembered to observe social distance when he muscled his way up beside me, so I had the teacher trick of ‘get in close proximity’ in my pocket.  I also employed my very effective teacher ‘look’, and quiet, no-nonsense voice that told him that unless he wanted to cycle over top of the woman, he’d have to wait a minute like everyone else.  This kind of person seemed to see the bump in the road as nothing but a nuisance.  Since it did not apply to him directly, he wanted to get on with far more important things.  I’m guessing he left the situation only thinking about how it had been an inconvenience for him.

The two cyclists who came up right after me took a different, also not bad, approach.  They waited quietly, noticed that enough others seemed to be involved and then passed on through once the path was clear. 

My reaction was different than all of the others too.  I was lucky in that I had time to think about my reaction as I stood watching.  As I heard the others offering to call someone for her to come to get her, and her replying in her ‘shocky’ voice that she would just stand beside the fence for a while until she felt better, I thought I would hang around for a minute.  I’ve experienced laying splayed on the road, once with a broken collarbone and four broken ribs, once with a broken foot.  It’s embarrassing, it really hurts, it’s surreal, it's scary, and it’s impossible to think clearly.  So, once the others slowly pedalled off, I pulled my bike up beside her and said that I was just going to wait with her for a bit until she felt better.  I know that when people are in crisis, they often don’t know what they need, so asking what I could do to help would not have been helpful.  As we stood together, she began to tell me what had happened.  She was in tears and badly shaken up.  Eventually we checked her bike to determine if it was rideable, since she really wanted to get home under her own steam.  I understood this too – the old get back up on the horse theory. 

Once we saw the bike would be ok for her ride home, I told her I was going to slowly ride with her.  I said I would ride in front of her, not behind, because she did not need me watching her as she tested her confidence.  We rode along very slowly for about a kilometre.  She called out that she thought she was doing ok.  I called back some encouragement and suggested we see how her gears shifted as we went up and over a pedestrian bridge.   That worked too. Eventually, when I felt she was doing pretty well, I pulled over.  We chatted a bit and once I thought she was ok to be on her own, we parted ways.  My reaction wasn’t perfect, but I did feel good about it as I went on my way.

Later this week I had another place to practice dealing with bumps.  I was out pedalling and had a flat tire.  Once I stopped and saw the problem, because I had been thinking about bumps, I said to myself not, ‘Oh rats, I have a flat tire!’ but rather, ‘Oh, this is a bump’.  This simple act of identifying the situation as a bump allowed me to understand very quickly that I had complete control over, not the tire, but my way of dealing with it.  I wanted to leave this situation feeling as good about my response as I had earlier in the week.  I pulled over to the side, called Jim so he could provide back up if I needed it, got out my trusty tools, and sat down to get to work.  I have now changed my very first tire all by myself!

We all experience bumps.  This year, the road has been filled with them.  We can practice noticing them, naming them ‘bumps’, and choosing how we’ll respond.  It gives us a sense of control, and like many things, the more we practice, the better we get at taking the reactiveness out of our response. 

May you watch for bumps in your road this week and be delighted with your ability to navigate them.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What opportunity does this bump provide?’
​
Elizabeth is a certified professional 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 coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to navigate bumps in your road.

Every evening, after the biking and the jobs are finished, and the day is winding down, Jim and I find ourselves in front of the television for an hour or so.  Last week, Jim set the PVR to record The Book of Negros.  He had read it years ago, when it was first written by Canadian author, Lawrence Hill.  I have not read the book, but certainly know of it.

On Monday evening, we watched the first hour of the three parts of the movie.  I have to admit, I found it very difficult to watch human beings treat one another in the way shown in the movie.  I have no doubt the behaviour is correctly portrayed.  This book centres on the slave trade in the 1800’s, and focuses on the life of a girl, Aminata Diallo, who in the first episode, at age 11, was taken from her West African village and sold into slavery, eventually ending up in South Carolina, USA.  Since I found myself looking away from the screen occasionally as we watched, I decided to get down on the floor and do my daily stretches that had not found themselves in the early part of the day.  So, part of the time I was watching and part of the time I was listening.

There was one line, spoken by Aminata, that caught my attention. She was shackled on board a ship with others in her same situation and she struck up a sort of friendship with a young boy on the boat.  As they sat together, she asked him, “How are you known?”

How are you known?

I assume if this movie were set in 2020, the question might have been, ‘What’s your name?’  But ‘How are you known?’ asks so much more, and is such a wonderful question.

I began to think about how I might answer this question if it were asked of me.  How am I known?  I can answer this of course, with some obvious, honest facts.  I am known to be a teacher.  I am known to be a mother.  I am known to be a wife.  I am known to be a runner and a biker.  These are kind of the nuts and bolts answers.  They could describe many, many people.  There is nothing about any of these that really tells anyone much about me. 

Then I thought I might answer the question with traits, instead of job descriptions.  I could say I am known to be organized, to be honest, to be disciplined, to be kind, and sometimes to be funny.  Even as I list these, I recognize these would never give a stranger a clear picture of me.

What is it to be known then?  When others truly know us, they know some of what lies deep inside us.  They know some of our hidden dreams, our insecurities, our history, and our longings.  The more I have thought about this, the more I have come to understand that worse than having a boring answer to ‘How are you known?’ is to get to a place in life and wonder, ‘How am I not known?’  In other words, what unfulfilled dreams do I have?  What unfulfilled longings have I left untouched?  What do I wish I had tried?

Hollywood lost a legend this past week.  Regis Philbin, long-time host of Live with Regis and Kathy Lee, Live with Regis and Kelly, and then host of Millionaire, died at 88.  In a 20/20 episode documenting his life, he described that a big regret he had was not hitting his real stride until quite late in his life.  In the documentary, he returned to his high school, where an auditorium had been named in his honour.  He surprised me when he said that during his high school years, he had never participated in any of the performances that went on in that space.  He wanted to, he dreamed of it, he could imagine it, but he was afraid.  He was afraid he might disappoint his parents who did not hold acting as a dream for their son.  He was afraid he might fail.  He was afraid to show his true self.

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to be known.  I’m not finished my thinking.  What I do know is it is always a risk to reveal parts of ourselves to others.  I also know that living ‘safely’, not rocking the boat, not showing up in a new way, not growing, will not serve me well, and will not make me proud of myself at the end of my life.  I think Regis Philbin came into his own at the very moment he became brave enough to fully reveal himself; when he allowed others to know him.

I hope the fictional boy on the boat in The Book of Negroes, also figures out how he wants to be known. I am guessing, based on her strong character, the eleven-year-old girl, Aminata, will eventually leave no doubt about how she will be known.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How am I known?’
​
Elizabeth is a certified professional 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 coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to make yourself, and your organization, known.