It’s been a back and forth couple of weeks.

Last Sunday morning we had a call from our daughter Kaitlyn.  Ben had awakened with what looked like an eye infection, a cap off to the cold he had been fighting, so she was off to the walk-in clinic with him.  After a couple hours of waiting, the easy diagnoses was made.  It was in fact an infection and the dreaded eye drop insertion began.   After getting settled nicely back at home, she put Andy down for his nap.  When he awoke, he was having trouble breathing and he had developed a cough with the telltale signs of croup.  Croup is an infection of the vocal cords, voice box, windpipe, and upper airway of the lungs.  It’s not to be messed with.

Knowing this, Kaitlyn bundled him up and quickly headed back to the doctor, this time to Urgent Care.  Thank heavens for good medical care.  They ended up there for hours, but by late that night they were back home, with Andy’s airway opened thanks to the wonderful world of oral steroids.  This was quite a contrast to many years ago when Kaitlyn had croup as a baby.  We rushed her to the hospital where she was kept for a few days in a croup tent.  There were no oral steroids, just oxygen administered consistently in a tent above her crib to help with laboured breathing.

While Andy’s breathing improved, he was still quite ill with a bad virus (or two or three as suspected by the doctors).  To add insult to injury, by the time Kaitlyn arrived home with Andy, she too had started to show signs of having some kind of virus and had lost her voice.  By the next morning, she too, was down with one of the many respiratory viruses circulating.

By Tuesday night a corner started to appear. She felt they might be rounding it, and she could return to work, and Andy to his day home.  Those arrangements were made.  But by early morning, sweet little Andy was now infected with his own eye infection.  Another phone call to us and back to the clinic we went with Andy while Kaitlyn went to work. The doctor who saw him this time prescribed antibiotic drops, listened carefully to his lungs, and recommended he stay home for a while and to watch for worsening symptoms.  By noon that day, Kaitlyn was too sick to stay at work so back home she came.

And so it went.  Back and forth. 

Friday there was one more visit to the clinic for Andy to have his breathing checked again.

In the midst of it all, with the temperatures dropping, and the roads too slippery for non-essential travel, I took the opportunity to do some ‘back and forthing’ of my own.  Part of it involved thinking back on my leadership, noticing what parts of it have served me well, and looking forth into my next leadership opportunities, to make decisions about how I will choose to be.  While some of my thinking involves my leadership as a professional, most of it has landed on my personal leadership; leadership of myself. 

Leaders are, by definition, those of us responsible for our world.  That includes me.  And you.  Understanding this, it’s a good idea to take time every once in a while, to examine my leadership, both the reality of what it is now, and the vision for what it might become.
 
My reflections have involved my past, both distant and more recent.  Back and forth I’ve gone, sometimes with chuckles as certain memories come to the surface, and sometimes with unexpected tears of emotion appearing on my cheeks.
One of my writings was about an experience I had in university.  I considered trying out for the track team when I was entering my third year.  I’m not sure I would have made it, but the fact I was considering it surprised even me.  After all, I was a head-down, work-hard student.  As I wrote about this, I examined why I had not tried out.  The truth is I thought (at the time I ‘knew’) it would not be seen as a favourable thing to do by certain people who I loved.  University was, after all, about academics.  That’s all it took for me to choose to not do it.  I don’t remember trying to change anyone’s mind.  I don’t even remember feeling that badly.  I just had a strong feeling about not putting my wishes before those of others.
Putting others first is not a bad trait.  But when used to the extreme, or without much thought, or even just as a habit, or worse, as a way of hiding from potential failure, it’s a good recipe for missing opportunities, and for not following passions.

As I looked back and forth, back on that experience, and forth on other events in my life, I could see a pattern of me playing safe in life when I thought the stakes were too high, particularly when I thought I might ruffle feathers.  I know and respect many ‘feather rufflers’, but looking back at my own life, I recognize that at best, in many ways, I often simply gave those feathers a little pat, often doing more smoothing than ruffling.

Sometimes when we look back and forth, especially when we risk doing so through a very clean lens, we notice that we repeat many behaviours over and over again.  We dress them up differently, give them new settings, new wardrobes, sometimes even adding new characters, and making new rationalizations, but at the end of the day, we repeat familiar patterns in our lives.

As part of my reflection, I continued to look back and forth, noticing that as the years grew, my feather ruffling improved.  Even so, I wonder what opportunities await me now that I might still, automatically, without any thought at all, dismiss out of habit.  And I wonder what opportunities I might just seize, what feathers I might be willing to ruffle.

When Kaitlyn looks back on these past two weeks of back and forth, back and forth to the doctor, to the clinic, to Urgent Care, and to work, I’m guessing first she’ll just be wishing she never has to experience weeks like this again.  She’ll be wishing she doesn’t have to miss any more work and that she doesn’t have to feel guilty about doing so.  I strongly suspect, though, that as time passes, and she looks back on her life with those two little boys, and forth to their more grown-up years, she won’t have one single regret about the time, care and love she gave them. If a few feathers were ruffled in the process, I suspect they’ll look wonderful in her cap.

As you look back and forth on your life, I hope you find some beautiful feathers you were willing to ruffle in service to your leadership.  I know there are more waiting to add to your cap.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What feathers am I ruffling?’
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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 and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to choose which feathers to ruffle.
 
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This week as Ben and I were waiting for an appointment, he introduced me to some of Chris Hadfield’s videos from his time in the International Space Station.  These are short little clips of astronaut extraordinaire, Chris Hadfield, doing everyday little things in space.  In one he shows us how he brushes his teeth, he makes a peanut butter sandwich in another, and in yet another he wrings out a water soaked cloth.

Ben is fascinated by these, as am I.  It’s the first time I’ve seen the intricacies of space presented in such and interesting and easy to understand way.  For me, NOT a science geek, to be so enthralled is a first.

This week, while I haven’t spent any time at all thinking about the possibility of me going into space, I have spent some time thinking about firsts, and being first.

It’s an obsession our society seems inflicted with, this being first thing.  When I was growing up, the entire world watched, collective breath held, as we waited to see who would be first in space.  Would it be the Soviet Cosmonauts, or our neighbours, the American Astronauts.  Then, I suppose out of fear that one side or the other would certainly not be first, the contest broke into several sub-contests.  Who would be first to get to the moon?  Who would be first to land on the moon?  Who would walk on the moon first?  And in later years who might re-enter the atmosphere and land more like a plane rather than splashing down in the ocean?

History, ancient and modern, is filled with stories of humans and their quest to be first.  Today we read stories about incredible feats of firsts; the first person to fly solo around the earth, the first woman to fly a plane, the first free standing tower with an observation deck at the top, the first freeze dried food, the first antibiotic, the first person to earn one billion dollars, the first basketball/soccer/hockey player to reach a milestone in the statistics of their sport, the first woman to run an official marathon.

We breed this into our children, this idea of being first.  Who will be the ‘first’ to smile, walk, talk, bike, run or read.  Some kids couldn’t care less.  Life for them unfolds according to their own schedule and they don’t pay much heed to the pressure of others.  Other kids would not even hesitate to knock over a few playmates on their way to being first at the water fountain or being first in the recess line.

When I was in my final year of high school, all my friends were talking about university.  Jane wanted law school, Tracy was headed for medicine, Jan was intrigued with Urban and Regional Planning.  I had never really considered a life beyond high school.  High school graduation was the goal in my family. The more I listened to my friends, the more I wondered if university might be a possibility for me too. 

However, there was one major hurdle.  My parents were not enthralled at the possibility.  I hadn’t exactly asked them outright, but I’d sat through enough conversations, possibly lectures, at the dinner table where Dad, a factory worker, shared his disgust at ‘these guys’ they brought into the boiler room, ‘these guys’ with fancy degrees, most of whom 'couldn’t even change a tire'.  We all knew for sure  that a university degree was a lot of money to spend to not even learn to change a tire.

When I summoned up the courage to ask my parents if I could go to University of Waterloo to study Math, the response was not a flat out no, but it was lukewarm at best.  I believe it was, ‘If that’s what you think you need to do.  You know we can’t help you.’  I have no idea what gave me the courage to push forward, to order the calendar from which to select my courses, to figure out housing and my schedule, and apply and be accepted.  I suspect knowing my friends were doing the same thing as they applied for their programs, normalized it somewhat.  But for a girl who was NEVER called a rebel, it was a huge step for me.  My parents could not help me financially, but they did sit with the large book of courses and tried to help me sift through the ones I needed to take.  And of course, Dad taught me to change my tires.

For me, the goal was simply to study Math, and to become a Math teacher.  An unintended consequence was that I became the first member of my family to attend university, and perhaps even better, in doing to, to reassure Dad that I was not going to think I was too good for them anymore.  That, in fact, was his unspoken worry; that I’d outgrow our farm and our family.  It turned out, he became proud of me, and I never outgrew either the farm or family.

I've never had a burning desire to be first.

But.

I do have a great admiration for those who dare to walk through fear to reach a goal, sometimes becoming first in the process.

At this stage of life, I’m not in a hurry to be first at many things.  I’m not in a hurry to reach the end of my life first.  I’m not in a hurry to be first in most lines.  I’m not in a hurry to be first to stop doing activities I love.  I’m not in a hurry to stop trying new things.  And I’m not in a hurry to be the first to try every single new thing.

There are so many ways we can be first.  When Ben and I sat and watched Chris Hadfield, it was completely apparent that Mr. Hadfield is passionate about what he does.  I do not believe he chose the exploration of space so he could wear a blue, first place ribbon, on his chest.  I do not believe he chose to create videos so he could claim he was the first to make them.  I think he chose his passion, space exploration, because he simply loved it,  and then he fully committed to it.  The part where he became first, was simply a lovely side effect. 

I hope I too can be passionate enough about who I strive to be, that I’ll have the bravery needed to be follow those passions and in doing so to perhaps accidentally become first at some things.  I hope I can be brave enough to be the first to apologize when it’s needed.  I hope I can be the first to encourage someone else, even if it means they end up  ‘better than me’.  I hope I can be the first to say, ‘I’ll help’, or ‘How are you?’.  I hope I’m first to open my heart to new adventures and new friends, and also to be the first to be grateful for the relationships that have served me so well thus far in my life. 

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How am I being first?’
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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 and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to be first.
 

Each Tuesday, weather permitting, I take part in a Tuesday Trek, with three of my friends.  Tuesday Treks are hikes, hikes in the foothills and mountains of the majestic Rocky Mountains.  These are precious days to each of us in our group.  The value of the hours spent together is impossible to define.  There is no dollar value to be certain, and even the value on our physical and mental health is hard to calculate.  But this we know.   Our lives are indisputably better because of this time spent together.  Time spent slogging uphill, hashing out worries and dreams, laughing uproariously at our own hilarity, and breathing in the beauty all around us.  Inevitably, our hikes also involve many, many pauses for taking pictures.

I’m not a particularly great photographer but still, I’ve loved taking pictures ever since I was old enough to buy myself my first camera.  In those days, we used film.  The stuff that came in the little rolls, that had to be inserted and fed into the back of the camera, and then once enough pictures had been taken to complete the roll of either 12, 24 or even 36 pictures, had to be removed to be sent away to be developed.  In my case, we lived in the country, so I had to mail away my rolls of film.  Sometimes, several weeks later, when the developed pictures were returned, also by mail, I’d be surprised to open the package and see a few pictures that might have been taken a full year earlier.  We never considered ‘wasting’ pictures.  If only nine pictures from a roll of twelve were taken during a holiday, the remaining three (or sometimes four if we were lucky enough to get a bonus frame) were saved to be taken on the next important occasion, usually the next summer holiday! 

This ritual of film buying, and development continued long after Jim and I were married.  We used to have a little habit of, when the photos came back from the lab, which at that time had been upgraded to one-hour service, scanning the photos for ‘rippers’.  Rippers were any photos where, according to ourselves, we looked awful.  We would literally say, ‘Ooooh, that one’s a ripper’, then take the photo, rip it up and dispose of it.  We never called a photo of someone else a ‘ripper’, nor we we allowed to rip up a photo of someone else.  The fun was all in only noticing ourselves.

This of course is what most of us do.  Even though we’ve progressed to the modern technology of digital photography, when we take our snapshots, we often quickly glance at them, specifically honing in on ourselves.  When we don’t like what we see, we click on that handy little garbage pail icon in the bottom right corner and rid ourselves of the evidence.
This week I’ve spent some time looking at and thinking about pictures, specifically about the ones with me in them.  No, I haven’t been scrutinizing them to see where I look the best, after all the landscape is so forgiving there is plenty of room for less than perfect human models.  Instead, I’ve been thinking about how I would like to see myself when I look back at the picture I’m creating of my life.

The thing is, we don’t need to wait for the photos to be developed or reviewed in order to eliminate the rippers.  We can deal with the rippers of our life in real time.  

Each of us has the capacity to imagine the picture we have of our very best selves.  We know who we are striving to be.  We know our values, whether they be family, hard work, success, financial stability, integrity, adventure, security, generosity, or any of the endless values we have to choose from.  We also, when we are at our very best, can notice when we are being true to those values close to our hearts.  We are completely aware when we are not living our lives in alignment with our precious values.

It is in those moments when we get that ‘off feeling’, when it is as if we are standing on a balcony looking down at ourselves and truly noticing our behaviour and our impact, and recognizing we are not being the person we want to see in our pictures, that our behaviour is not giving us the impact we desire, that we have the split-second power to shift.  We have the chance to notice a ‘ripper’ in the making, and stop it long before it is developed, and the envelope opened for all to see.

Even little kids can be taught to think before they act.  It takes them a few tries to learn to self-regulate enough to stop and think before doing.  But they can do this and so can we.  We alone have the capacity to create the picture of who we want to be in the picture of our lives.  We cannot always paint in the surrounding landscape.  We do not always have full choice over all the details in our lives.  We do have full choice over how we show up, over who we are, and over who we are being.  The best thing about it is not only do we have the choice, we also have the ability to choose this over and over and over again, making subtle changes as we go until the picture is exactly right.

When I look over our pictures from last Tuesday’s Trek, I am lucky to see the gorgeous scenery in each of them.  Other than making the choice to get out of bed and hike up Prairie Mountain this past week, none of us had a thing to do with that incredible landscape.  What we did have choice about was how we could be seen in our pictures.  I notice in all of those containing humans, that there is joy, interest in one another, a readiness for adventure, and interest in and compassion for our fellow travellers.  They are pictures I am proud of.
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 and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to catch rippers.
 
 

We spent last weekend in Yukon with Greg and Cara.  This was a long overdue trip to celebrate Greg’s successful completion of his PhD.  The pandemic, followed by the North’s caution about opening up after Covid, followed by life in general, sidetracked us from this trip.  Finally, this year, we committed to making it happen.  The big dream was to stand under the big Yukon night sky and take in the glory of the Northern Lights.  I’ve seen them before when we lived on our acreage.  But there was something drawing us to try to witness them in their homeland.

Alas, it was not to be.

The Northern Lights were, in fact, very active all weekend.  We, in fact, were poised to see them.  We stayed at a place called Inn on the Lake, about halfway between Whitehorse and Carcross, in the middle of the sparsely populated lake community of Marsh Lake.  There is no light pollution there.  The location of the Inn provided the perfect viewing spot.  Everything was perfectly orchestrated for success.  Except for Mother Nature.  She must be feeling the unease of the rest of the world, for she has blanketed the Yukon and Alaska with uncharacteristic cloud for almost two weeks. 

There were moments in each day when bits of blue sky would peak through.  We’d have a couple of phones active, tracking not only the solar flares that indicate strong Northern Lights, but also cloud cover, possibility of rain, and temperature, so hopeful for a glimpse of the spectacular Lights.  We had all the gadgets at our disposal.  One night, it looked like there was going to be a brief window of possibility around 3:00am.  We set alarms in each of our suites and Greg and I met outside to check out the sky.  Sure enough, there was a break in the clouds.  But the almost full moon was so bright, there was no chance for the dancing Lights to shine down.

I was disappointed that my image of us seeing the Northern Lights, first right from the car on our drive from the airport to the Inn, and then each following night at the inn,  was not realized; the beauty of those lights was, after all, the main focus of our trip.

Beauty is not always found exactly where we are looking.  Beauty does not always look the way we expect it to.  True beauty does not always align with our imagination’s ideas.  And our expectations are often realized in ways we never expect.

So it was for us last weekend.

We had a most wonderful time in Yukon.  Jim and I had a brief glimpse of this magnificent place in June when we were there for a few short days for my bike race.  Greg and Cara have never been.  Yukon isn’t glamourous in the commercial sense of the word.  The restaurants are not, for the most part, gourmet.  The lodgings are comfortable, but not like those found in a fancy resort.  The people dress in clothes designed to move and work, not designed for fashion shows. 

Yet Yukon holds a beauty not found in many places.  We found its beauty.  Not in the night sky, not under the colours of the Northern Lights, but in every other place we looked.  We found beauty in the early mornings, looking over the calm waters of Marsh Lake.  We found beauty as we played a game of three-person crib, as six tundra swans, first appearing as a bright white line, soared close to the waters’ surface toward the shore.  Then later that morning as two foxes played together on the shore.  There was beauty in the incredible fall leaves, still hanging on the trees on the drive along the Alaska Highway to Skagway, and in the spectacular mountain vistas along the way.  We literally gasped at the beauty of two large black bears, looking completely at home in their vast backyard.

This weekend we celebrate Thanksgiving.  You may or may not recall that there isn’t much I love more than a beautiful clean countertop.  This weekend I’ll be expanding my view of beauty.  I suspect I’ll find it among the piled up dirty dishes, reminding me how lucky we are to have the beauty of our family around us.  I’ll find it in the exuberance of two little boys as they try to contain their energy at such an exciting family get together.  I’ll find it in laughter and perhaps even in tears.  How lucky are we to have a home where both are welcome.

Last weekend I expected to find myself standing under the night sky marvelling at the Northern Lights.  I did find myself under the night sky.  At three o’clock on Saturday morning when Greg and I met outside to check the sky, we stood there together for a few minutes.  The magnificent moon shone brightly, obscuring any hope for our viewing of the Northern Lights.  But it was still magical, standing there with my son in the silence of the land. 
That’s a little moment of beauty I’ll treasure forever.

My inquiry for you is, ‘Where is the beauty?’

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 and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to find out how notice beauty.