Being a mathematician, I’m intrigued by the circle from a mathematical perspective, but really, only for so long.  In the last week, however, circles keep finding their way into my regular life, and I find myself newly intrigued.

My yoga instructor, Mona, switched things up at the end of October.  For our Halloween class, she had us place our mats in a circle, facing inward.  We had candles in the centre to really set the mood.  What was supposed to be a one-time thing, has turned into a new way for us to be in the class.  With the mats in a circle and us facing each other, the difference in energy in the room is completely different, better.  Instead of us each simply coming to class, facing forward, and being self-centred, we became a group.  It’s rather amazing.  Mona hasn’t switched how she delivers the class.  We don’t chit chat with each other during class.  We are still each self-centred.  Yet somehow, we have become a group.  There is a feeling that we care about one another, rather than us simply occupying a space together. 

This week we also had our Chinook Country dancer’s Christmas party.   This marks the end of our fall season of lessons, and marks the beginning of our Christmas performances.  The party was wonderful.  We had the hall filled with all the dancers, mingling and dancing together.  One tradition at this party is that each year about ten dancers secretly prepare a special dance that they perform at the beginning of the party.  This year, I was part of that group.  Our song was… wait for it… Come on Barbie.  We practiced for weeks and arrived in full Barbie regalia.  From Birthday Barbie, to Golf Barbie, to Workout Barbie to Western Barbie, to me, Construction Barbie, we danced our way around the stage to cheers and laughter and clapping.  Afterward, I was changing out of my Barbie work boots into more comfortable dance shoes when I heard the announcement for our dance called Fishers.  I LOVE this dance.  I love the music, and the flow of the dance, but most of all I love that we almost always perform it standing in a circle; two concentric circles actually, one large circle on the outside facing in, and a smaller circle on the inside facing out.  I usually stand in the outer circle.  From there I love the view I have of all the dancers in our group. 

Upon hearing the first notes of the song I quickly shook off my boots, put on my runners and joined the circle.  For three minutes I breathed in the incredible energy of this group.  Smiling across and around the circle at the other women brings such a flood of emotion to me.  I have a feeling of being part of something much larger than myself, something special and powerful.  It feels like we have safety and support in this group.  I feel like we are each seen when we are in this formation; seen as individuals, seen as human beings all walking together, seen as friends, and seen as supports for one another.  I wish I had the right words to describe this magic. 

I had one other circle experience this past week.  I was working in Ontario with a small group of leaders.  Around a table we sat for four days.  The energy here was the same.  We were working, and yet we were bound together in the work, and with each other.  In this group too was support, a common purpose, and a kindness extending well beyond professional ‘niceness’.

It cannot be a coincidence that all my different groups, ranging from five to twenty to seventy, all contained such great energy, and that all left me with such a feeling of deep belonging.  I’m beginning to think it has something to do with the circle.

When we organize ourselves in circles, it’s hard to remain isolated.  It’s hard to pretend we don’t notice others.  It is hard to avoid being seen.  There is a strong feeling of connectedness, perhaps even a feeling of responsibility for caring for the others who stand with us.

This has led me to think about the importance of circles in our lives.  We often speak about our circle of friends, or our circle of colleagues, or our circle of acquaintances, or our circle of influence.  At the same time, we often behave as if we are standing in rows, all facing forward, rather than sharing a circle with these people.  When we ‘stand in rows’ it’s easy to not see.  It’s easy to remain self-focused.  It’s easy to feel isolated.

I propose that every once in a while, if we stood, or sat, or danced, in a circle with each of the groups in our lives and did nothing more than look at one another for a few minutes, we would improve our connections, our productivity, our feelings of belonging, our self-worth, our commitment to caring, and our strength as a community. 

This weekend I plan to sit in another circle.  Our family is gathering for a pre-Christmas get together.  I can hardly wait to sit and look across the table at each of us as we share meals, play games and talk.  It’ll be a good chance to catch up, to hear about the busy lives of everyone, and to remind ourselves of how lucky we are to be part of this precious circle.

December and Christmas are rushing toward us.  May you find time to be with and to appreciate each of your circles. 

My inquiry for you this week is, 'Who is in my circle?'

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 create meaningful circles.
 

I’ve been lucky to have some extra time with our little Grandjoys this week.  Their mom and dad have been busy with Parent/Teacher interviews in the evenings allowing us some school pick-ups, suppers together, extra playtime and even a sleepover.

No matter how much we enjoy our time together, these two active little brothers can still have moments of bugging one another.  We remind them about sharing, and playing together, and once in a while, when one takes something of the other’s, I might say, “Put that down.  It’s not yours.”

This week, I’ve realized I too can benefit from a version of this same reminder in my life.

I’m heading off to do some work in Ontario next week.  For about a year, I’ve been working on a project with several women’s shelters there.  This trip may be the final one for this particular project. 

I love working with these women, these women who devote themselves to other women, to their safety, to supporting their choices, to their well-being.  I don’t work on the front line of this organization.  I work with the Leadership Team, in service to them, to their leadership and to their vision for not only their organization but for all women.  Sometimes my work looks like leadership training, sometimes like visioning, sometimes creating organizational operations, and this time, a combination of all.

Although my role does not include carrying out the plans made, I cannot help myself from becoming emotionally involved in the work.  My heart, or soul -  in this case I’m not sure how to differentiate, cannot help itself.  It simply joins in the process.  It takes all my self-management to stay in my role, to know where my best value is, and to carry out my job.  But I still carry some of the weight of the stories I hear about the women served, and those of the women devoting their lives to this service.

I would do well to remind myself, ‘Put that down.  It’s not your rock to carry.’

When we were hiking this week, one of our topics of conversation centred around how we each somehow mistakenly believed that once we reached a certain age, our worries would disappear along with our smooth skin.  There wasn’t any debate about the truth of this.  We were wrong.  Not just a little wrong.  Really wrong.

While we were smart enough to recognize our wrongness, we had more trouble pinpointing the exact cause of our current state of worry.  After all, in our earlier years, we each led busy lives.  We each had plenty of years where we were responsible for keeping a lot of balls in the air.  We navigated careers, raised children, cared for aging parents, welcomed new members to our families, volunteered, and dealt with illness, injury, and relationships.  Somehow during that time, we also managed friendships, hobbies, and households.  On paper, those should have been the years most filled with heavy lifting.  These more recent years should feel lighter.

The problem is they don’t.

We hiked and we pondered, and we climbed over many, many rocks.  I finally came to this; achieving wisdom may be as simple as us understanding we do not have to carry all the rocks.  There are rocks all around us, just begging to be picked up.  Each of those rocks needs to be carried, but not every single one of them needs to be carried by us.  We would do well to get very skilled at knowing which ones are ours to carry, and which are not.  To recognize when others are carrying heavy loads, and not add rocks to their pile.  We should remember that once in a while someone else needs help with one of their rocks.  But often, when we simply choose to pick up a rock that is not ours, and worry over it, it does not help the true owner of the rock at all.  What might help them is our steady presence, and support.  We all have rocks to carry. Sometimes we need the gentle reminder, ‘Put that down.  It’s not your rock to carry.’

My inquiry for you this week, is ‘What rocks are mine to carry?’
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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 the rocks to carry.
 

Earlier this year I was driving home from a dance performance when one of my dancing friends (who shall be nameless for her protection), told us about a little comment her daughter had made years before when she was a teenager.
The two of them had been getting ready to go out somewhere.  The mom, my friend, was choosing nice clothes to wear, putting on some makeup and doing her hair.  Clearly, she was taking too long for her teenage daughter.  As she put on the finishing touches, her daughter asked, “Why are you bothering to do that?  You had your day.”

As unnamed friend finished the little story, the rest of us in the vehicle sucked every bit of air out of it as we gasped in horror!  Had our day???

WHEN?!

And WHY DIDN’T SOMEONE TELL US?!!!

Once we all exhaled, we laughed uproariously together.  Yes, this of course would be how a teenager would view their mother.  From their point of view, we have clearly ‘had our day’.  We’d had our chance to be young.  To look in fashion.   To wear the latest trends, and to be ‘cool’.  We’d had our chance to hang out with friends, and to be ultra self-conscious about ourselves, wondering if we fit in at all.  We’d definitely had our day.  Unfortunately, none of us could tell the others when it had been.

As we drove along, thinking of all sorts of ways we had and had not ‘had our day’, through the side-splitting laughter, there were also hints of deep thought.

What if we HAD had our day?  It was possible after all.  What if ‘our day’ had happened while we were busy raising our children, working, and trying to keep everything together.  What if it had happened when we were still trying to figure out what we believed in, and how we fit with the world.  What if it was when we were studying hard in university?  What if we really had had it and had missed it?

As we talked together, we agreed that whether or not we’d ‘had our day’, we believed we still had at least one day ahead of us that might just be ‘our day’.  What would it look like we wondered?  Would we recognize it when it was happening or is it possible we might miss it again.

I’ve thought about this so much since then.  When I look back upon my life, even when I search through my photographs, there are none, not even one, labeled, ‘Your Day’.  And yet, I know I’ve had my share of spectacular moments. One of those might have happened within ‘my day’.   I just cannot, for the life of me, pick out which day was my day.

As I look forward to my next years, I wonder which day will be ‘my day’.  I wonder how I will know.  I wonder if I’ll recognize it, or if I’ll have to wait several more decades until someone much younger reminds me again that ‘I’ve had my day’.

Most of us recognize, in real time, when it is not ‘our day’.  These kinds of days have a feeling to them, a feeling as though if anything can go wrong, it will.  Everything feels just slightly off.  It’s as if we are one gear out of synch.  But the days that are ‘our days’ are not quite so easy to recognize in real time unless we know what to look for.

Here is what I now know about recognizing ‘my day’.

For the most part, ‘my day’ is never going to show up on the calendar as ‘This is Your Day’.  Rather ‘my day’ is any day in which I live in a moment of joy.  Sometimes my moment is brief.  It’s important for me to be alert, and present, for these moments can be so fleeting. 

My moments of joy are the moments that fill me up.  They make me feel.  They are often shared with people I love.  They have no rules around them.  When it is ‘my day’, I might be leading a workshop where everyone connects to the work, and where I am at my personal and professional best.  Joy. 

Or I might be toboganning down a ‘mountain’ with two-year old Andy.  Joy. 

Or carrying him back up that same mountain.  Actually, the moment of joy is not so much the carrying part but when he asks me, right as we come to a stop at the bottom of the hill, ‘Gramma, can you please carry me up the mountain?’.  Joy.  I cannot think of a mountain I would not carry either him or his brother up.

‘My day’ sometimes feels like a great conversation, like the one I had this week with another one of my friends as we talked about our ‘Gramma worries’.  Joy. 

‘My day’ can be me hurrying to put the finishing touches on a meal, and stopping to listen to the sounds of all the different conversations between the people in our family.  Joy.

‘My day’ can be dancing to a brand new-to-me, chart topping song, one that our dance instructor Reba J, did not think for one minute we were too old for.  Joy.  I especially know it’s my day when we dancers face each other, and catch ourselves with huge smiles on our faces, knowing we belong to something so, so special.  Joy x 2. 

‘My day’ can be hiking up a mountain.  Not the whole thing, but the parts when we stop to hear … nothing at all.  And the parts when we find ourselves either in rich conversation, or tears of laughter.  Joy. 

‘My day’ can be visiting Shirley on her farm with Ben and Andy.  Here ‘my day’ consists of the boys climbing up into the grain trucks and ‘delivering zebras to the zoo’.  And picturing the combines all lined up together as Shirley describes the day last week when kind neighbours arrived with machinery and trucks to help get the last of the crops off the fields before the snow came.  Joy.

It’s definitely possible that I’ve already ‘had my day’.  But on Friday we’ll be visiting Shirley with Ben and Andy and I have a strong hunch that too, is going to be ‘my day’.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Is today your day?’
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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 notice ‘your day’.