A couple of weeks ago, our daughter, Kaitlyn, attended the funeral of one of her most favourite high school teachers, Mr. Dolan.  Mr. Dolan, along with his colleague and best friend, Mr. Valleau, headed up the journalism department at the high school that our kids attended. 

It was under the direction and friendship of Mr. Dolan and Mr. Valleau that Kaitlyn and her wonderful friend Ashley, had the seeds of journalism sprinkled on them.  They learned to write news articles, eventually becoming regular contributors to their school newspaper.  They were introduced to broadcast, becoming co-anchors on the closed-circuit school television show, LTV.  Each morning the school news was broadcast in-house, to all students and faculty, via televisions in their classrooms, with Kaitlyn and Ashley at the co-host desk.

Along with the journalism skills the girls honed throughout their years at the school, they also found a place of belonging.  In a school of more than fifteen hundred students, it would have been easy to make themselves invisible, blending into the throngs of students.  Instead, they were encouraged to find their voices, and use their talents to add to the diverse extra-curricular program at the school.

So much did these two teachers and this program impact Kaitlyn and Ashley, they both followed their dream of journalism to the prestigious Ryerson School of Journalism.  Kaitlyn and Ashley were not the only students impacted by these teachers.  Over the more than twenty-year span of this locally created journalism program at the high school, many, many students were gifted with the time of these two mentors. One student, Jodie Martinsen was part of a team who won an Emmy for their documentary, Ghana: A Digital Dumping Ground. 

After Mr. Dolan’s funeral, Kaitlyn had the opportunity to meet his daughter and to tell her of the impact her father had.  Kaitlyn told her that during one of her moves overseas, she had mis-placed and eventually lost her treasured copies of the Scarlett Fever, the school newspaper, covering the three years of her high school life.

Mr. Dolan’s daughter said that while going through her dad’s belongings, she had come across the bound copies of the school’s newspapers from Kaitlyn’s three years!  She offered them to Kaitlyn, who was touched beyond measure.  They organized to meet in order that Kaitlyn could receive the copies.

I haven’t seen the papers since Kaitlyn received them.  If I did see them, it would be very unlikely I would recall any of the activities being reported on, nor would I recognize most of the names associated with the articles.  I don’t know if Kaitlyn remembers the details of the activities either.  What I do believe she remembers is the feeling she had being part of the writing and editing team.

I think she remembers the feeling of knowing that she was being counted on to show up.  I think she remembers that she mattered.  I think she remembers that she was required to do her best.  And I think she remembers that because she was in the ‘public’ eye, she made herself courageous enough to help others feel like they had a sense of belonging too.

This week, I was driving over to Kaitlyn’s house early one morning to watch little Benjamin as his mom and dad headed back to school for another year of teaching.  I offered to watch him this week because his regular care-giver is away on a long-planned family holiday.  Winding my way through their neighbourhood, I stopped to let a young boy, perhaps eight years old, and his mother, cross the street.  They had their arms pretty tightly linked together.  I can’t say what they were talking about with one hundred percent certainty, but considering it was the first day of school, and based on their body language and the worry in their eyes, I am imagining that they were each having their own struggles with their thoughts about this upcoming school year. 

I couldn’t help but make a wish for that little boy.  I wished that he could be welcomed into the classroom of a teacher like Mr. Dolan.  I wished that he might learn wonderful things.  Even more importantly, I wished he could find a sense of belonging; of feeling that his presence was important, of knowing that he was being counted on to bring something special to his classroom, of believing that he mattered.  In twenty or so years, it is possible that he might not even recall the name of his teacher.  But if that teacher has done her or his job well, that little boy will be passing those same gifts on in this world.

After teaching at the same school for a number of years, Kaitlyn started at a new school this year.  She had the usual jitters of being a new teacher to a school.  While I sympathized with her and understood her worries, I really couldn’t help but feel completely at ease inside myself.  I know that she carries some of Mr. Dolan’s magic with her.  I know she has the most wonderful ways of creating lessons and units that engage students and give them a place of belonging.  I know she requires students to do their best and I know she creates a space where they can be courageous. 
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I think the timing of her receiving the bound books containing the old newspapers was serendipitous.  It was a perfect reminder that all any of us really wants is to know we are welcome, that we bring unique talents and that we belong.
My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How am I creating belonging?’

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 create belonging.
 

Last week we had one of our whirlwind trips to Southern Ontario.  The stars aligned for us this time and we were able to fit not only birthday celebrations for Jim’s mom’s 90th, a two-part, two-day wedding celebration, visits with both of our siblings, a couple of days with Greg and Cara, and a fantastic evening watching Come From Away but I also had the most unexpected visit with my childhood friend Tina.

Tina and I were absolute best friends when we were little girls.  Only four houses separated her home from mine and we could have found our way to each others home with our eyes closed.  At St. Joseph’s school we were always in the same class, right through to the end of grade eight.  Tina and I played together by the hour.  Playing ‘school’ was our absolute favourite; our siblings and neighbourhood friends made up our first classes.  One summer we spent what seemed like the entire summer, co-authoring our first book.  We were the writers and the illustrators both.  I cannot recall one argument or one harsh word between us. I loved Tina and she loved me.

After our Mom died and our Dad remarried, our new blended family moved away from my childhood street and of course away from Tina.  Although we were, in fact, only about a thirty-minute drive from each other, with me in the country, her in the city, and phones reserved for only ‘important’ calls, Tina and I lost touch.

Years later, on my wedding day, as Jim and I, newly wed, accompanied each other down the aisle of St. Joseph’s church, I caught sight of Tina, sitting in one of the back pews of the church.  She had seen our wedding announcement in the weekly bulletin and had come to see me married.  It might have been the best wedding gift I received.

And then, long before Facebook and email, we lost touch again for nearly thirty years. It was my sister Margaret’s chance encounter with Tina’s sister Maria, in a different city altogether, that allowed us to reconnect through email.

With this very sporadic contact over close to half a century, you can imagine my complete and utter astonishment when I joined my sisters and my mom at our family farm for a several-month-belated birthday celebration for me, and Tina walked down the hallway and into our farm kitchen to join us!  My sister Mary had invited her without my knowing.  The last time Tina had been to my birthday party, we were both ten years old.

We cried and hugged and cried some more.  Not one single word was needed to let each other know what this moment meant.  It was as if we were each acknowledging all that each of us had been through in our lives and it felt just like going home.  It is indescribable how comforted I was being with Tina; Tina who knew me ‘when’.

Over the course of the evening we caught up on our lives and our families.  Tina told us she is spending most of her time these days helping her parents, both in their nineties, navigate this most precious stage of their lives.

After Tina left, I found a little birthday gift she had brought for me.  Pens and a journal were the perfect gift from my co-author.  Even more perfect was the card.  The final sentence of the card stood out for me:

“Through your posted writings you continue to share your wisdom and joy – helping me to reflect and recharge as I accompany my parents on their final journey.”  I love you.  Tina.

This idea of accompanying has been rolling around in my head ever since I read the card.  What exactly does it mean to accompany someone?

The essence of ‘accompany’ can be best captured by the expression ‘be present with’.  Each of us is invited to accompany, to be present with, others many, many times in our lives.  It is at the same time both very simple and very difficult to accompany another.  It is for sure a privilege.

When we accompany, we are not asked to navigate, nor to give advice, nor even to know the way.  Sometimes our physical form is not even required.  We are asked to simply be present with someone else as they walk their journey, short or long. 

It’s a bit sobering to recognize that things we may say or do can accompany others on their life journeys.  Once in a while we can find ourselves being accompanied by thoughts and feelings that no longer serve us well.  In these cases, we are best to kindly, but firmly, thank our thoughts for their company, and reassure them that we are ready to move forward without them.

I have been accompanied by many wonderful people in my life.  Some have accompanied me for a very short time, some for long periods of time, some in my mind, some in my memories, some in my heart, and some by my side.

As I’ve thought about Tina’s message this week, I’ve been accompanied by my wonderful memories of her.  I realize that she has accompanied me throughout my life. Our hours and hours of playing school, practicing how we would be as teachers, modeling ourselves after our beloved Mrs. Beausejour, laid the foundation for my teaching career.  I suspect it did for Tina's too.  Both Tina and Mrs. Beausejour accompanied me throughout my career as a teacher. 

Tina, and her mom, have accompanied me in my kitchen.  I spent hours watching her Mama lovingly prepare incredible feasts.  Sometimes these days, I manage to catch the smallest smell of something that takes me right back to their kitchen, and I sense their accompaniment. 

Tina’s gentle, steady friendship has accompanied me always.  It feels like a full circle moment to recognize that Tina has accompanied me for nearly my whole life, and that my blogs now accompany her as she accompanies her parents.
I love this concept of accompanying.  In its best form, it is comforting, gentle, strong and safe.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Who am I accompanying?’

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 accompany and to be accompanied.

This morning Jim mentioned he had a lot to do.  He mentioned one of the things he should is to mow the lawn today.  That, of course, got me thinking about all the things I should be doing this week too. 

We are heading off to Ontario for a few wonderful celebrations.  We have two wedding ceremonies and receptions to attend, and we will celebrate the wonderful milestone of Jim’s mom turning 90.  We’re also managing to squeeze in a trip to Toronto to see Come From Away.  This one has been on my list since I first heard about it and I can hardly wait to experience it!  The spaces between those activities will be nicely filled in visiting the rest of our family and friends.  One thing I shouldn’t do before this trip is to wonder how to fill our days!

As happens to so many of us, as we are mentally preparing for trips, we suddenly find ourselves with long lists of things we should do before we drag the suitcases out the front door.  I often suddenly need a clean fridge and a completely checked-off office to-do list.  Things that I might never have thought of should I be staying home for the week soon become urgent.  It seems imperative to start looking at all toiletries; shampoo that could easily last another month promptly becomes top priority to refill.   Appointments I have put off making, for no other reason than they aren’t urgent, suddenly call to me to get them written on my calendar.  I should touch base with so and so I think.  And I should definitely vacuum out my car!  I really should download the pictures from my phone too.

On and on the list of shoulds goes.  I know I’m not the only one to do this.  Jim does it too.  And many of our friends tell of the relief they feel when they finally drive away from their homes or get on the plane or train, finally able to let go of what they should be doing.

And I began to wonder why we, as our friend Jack would say, ‘Should on ourselves’?

It’s one thing to should on ourselves over a fabricated list of things to do before a holiday.  This is almost forgivable. It certainly is understandable.  Sadly, our should-ing is rarely limited to the days before travel.

It can’t possibly be healthy to should this much.

There is something about should that immediately slams shut the doors of creativity and possibility, sending us a message there is only one way to approach a matter, that makes us feel like we are lacking in some way, that there was a point of pivot that we clearly missed and had we not, our lives would be oh so much better.  The use of should has a heaviness to it.  It comes with shame, pointing out that a more satisfactory person, would surely never find themselves in this position.  If only we had somehow been better.

It’s even more paralyzing when someone else tells me I should.  ‘You know what you should do?’  they might say.  ‘You should….’

It could be partly rebelliousness that causes me to bristle at this.  More likely though, it is the idea that someone else thinks they have the single answer for me.  Even worse is the fact they think they need to guide me, as if I were lost and unable to find my way.   I suppose I should be grateful there are clearly such smart people looking out for me.  Alas, I am not.

If we are lucky to live long enough, we start to understand that in the mundane decision-making of our daily lives, there really is no right or wrong, no best or worst and not even much good or bad.  Most of our decisions are not life-threatening.  Most of the choices we make are simply those taken from long lists of possibilities.

Just over nine years ago, on a beautiful late May morning, I went for a bike ride with Jim and Greg, who was home for the weekend.  I suppose I should have done my housework before we left.  I likely should have planted the garden too.  Maybe even mowed the lawn of our acreage.  As it was I did not.  On the bike ride, I fell, breaking my collarbone and four ribs.  I was left pretty incapacitated and in substantial pain for some time.  I did not return to work for the balance of the school year.

To complicate matters, Jim was scheduled to leave the following week with my brothers, brothers-in-law and my Dad to go to a remote fly-in fishing lake to spend five days fishing and celebrating Dad’s 80th birthday.  Jim wondered if he should stay home.   He knew we still needed to mow the lawn and plant the garden and clean the house.  But I encouraged him to go, as they had all been so excited to be part of this birthday trip.

My dad unexpectedly died on the last day of that fishing trip.  There was no warning.  There were no advanced symptoms.  His heart got tired, he rested his head on Jim’s chest and left this earth.  I was so grateful Jim had not listened to his shoulds, and that he was by my Dad's side.

I’m not completely clear about the details of the next week.  I know we made a trip to Ontario for Dad’s funeral. What is completely clear is what I faced when we drove down our driveway upon arriving home.  I expected to face all of the shoulds Jim and I had left behind, but I did not.  Our lawn was perfectly mowed and manicured.  The garden was rototilled.  There appeared to be rows of vegetables planted.  There were flowers in the flower beds.  And when we entered our home, the vacuuming was done, the dust had disappeared and the floor and windows sparkled.

Over the next few days I learned that a group of our friends had come to our aid.  Not because they should.  Not because we should have but did not.  Just because it was how they felt they could show their support.  Maybe I should have felt embarrassed but I only felt loved.

These days I still find myself should-ing sometimes.  But I’ve grown a bit wiser, so when I hear the beginnings of should I just exaggerate that initial consonant blend so it sounds much more like shhhhhhhh.  I’ve discovered that there are gifts to be found under our piles of shoulds.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How am I should-ing on myself?’

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 spend less time should-ing on yourself.
 

This week I have been noticing spaces.  More precisely, I’ve been noticing what is filling up spaces.  It’s funny how once you put your attention on something, you see it in many different places and in different ways.  I always knew this was true about things (when you buy a red car, suddenly the roadways are filled with all sorts of red cars), but this week it has dawned on me that it is also true about ideas. 

I don’t know if it was my closet or the Roger’s Cup Women’s Final match that first started my mind working.  No matter which it was, this idea of spaces has been rolling around in my head.

I’ve been staring at my full closet for some time now.  When my friend Sheri Bruneau, of Get It Together, blogged about how rainy days inspire her to clean out her pantry and other small spaces, and when Sunday arrived as a rare rainy Calgary day, and when just the day before I had gone to my closet and could find ‘nothing to wear’ out of the dozens of possibilities, I knew it was time to face the music.  Or at least to face the task of acknowledging the reason I had ‘nothing to wear’.  I had nothing to wear because I had been persistently hanging on to clothes that no longer serve me well. 

I talked Jim into tackling his side of the walk-in at the same time.  He humoured me, although I did notice that at the end of it all, he had parted with exactly five shirts while I had filled a black garbage bag to the brim.  I had been coerced into this by myself, by promising myself I would only spend thirty minutes on it.  If you are a regular reader, you’ll know I’m an overachiever in certain areas, time being one.  So, it was an hour later I found myself stuffing the final items into the garbage bag and then walking into the closet feeling like I could breathe again.  The space was less full of stuff, and more full of room for me to think.

It’s as though the closet had been filled with indecision and now was filled with possibility.  In fact, it had nothing to do with the stuff at all, more with the feeling of the space itself.

My reward for the newly cleaned closet was to watch the Women’s Final of the Roger’s Cup.  I had turned the television on when I went to the basement to do my daily stretching and I saw that a young Canadian, Bianca Andreescu, would be playing against the very decorated, very famous, very talented, very strong, tennis icon, Serena Williams.  I, like so many other Canadians, was excited to see how the match would play out.  It was, of course, an ending that no sports writer could have written in advance.

Only nineteen minutes into the match, before either competitor really settled in, Serena Williams, who later revealed upper back spasms to be the game-ending problem, conceded defeat.  She simply did not have it in her to go the distance.  The crowd stood in stunned silence.  It was as if all the air had been sucked out of Rogers Place.  No one quite knew what to do.  The space felt like a vacuum. 

And then, the nineteen-year-old rising star, took charge.   There were so many possible ways she could have handled this situation.  After all there was no rule book for this.  What she did do was to fill the space with so much grace that all of Canada could share in it. 

Bianca Andreescu walked over to her idol, told her she could relate to her injury, told her how much she admired her and told her that she knew Serena would be back and that she was rooting for her.  She then cried with her, hugged her and finally returned to her place just off the court where she would wait for the awards presentation.  

In that one simple move, in her action of approaching her idol, hugging her and empathizing with her, she filled the space, once full of the uncertainty of thousands of spectators, into a space of grace; a space where everyone was given the opportunity to feel pride instead of deep disappointment.  Upon witnessing the composure and class of Bianca Andreescu, the person who must have been most disappointed of all in the game ending this way, the rest of Canada, and many other fans around the world, took their cue and for the most part handled themselves with grace. 

It’s amazing how when you make room in a space and deliberately, consciously, purposefully fill it, it doesn’t leave much room for things that don’t serve you quite as well. 

Bianca Andreescu filled the huge space of the arena perfectly last Sunday. 

Each of us fills spaces when we share company with others.  We fill spaces at our work places.  We fill places at the dinner table.  We fill spaces in conversations.  We fill spaces in our communities.  We fill spaces in all of our interactions with others.  When we choose to allow the spaces to fill themselves with uncertainty and negativism, like my closet had and like the stadium may have before Andreescu took charge, we lose the opportunity to consciously fill it with our best selves. 

Every time we take our place with others, we have a chance to fill the space however we choose.  I wish I could say I have always chosen to fill the space I occupy with acceptance, wisdom, patience, humour, kindness and grace.  I have not.  But I have a feeling, after watching the magic on the court last week, I’ll be making more mindful decisions about how I want to fill the spaces in my life. 

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How am I filling this space?’

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 purposefully fill the spaces in your life.

My mother-in-law, Mary, is going to celebrate her 90th birthday later this month.  We will be heading east to do some celebrating with her!  She and I have some plans; we need to go shopping to pick out a few new outfits, we have a date to travel to Toronto to see Come From Away, we’ll have some ‘out for dinners’, of course we will head to Avondale Dairy Bar in Niagara-on-the-Lake for our traditional celebratory Critchley ice cream cone, and then there will be the birthday church service and brunch.

You might have to read that twice.  She is turning 90.  We will be with her for about five days, and yes, she’ll keep up just fine.

Earlier in July, Mary was hospitalized for eight days.  We, and she, and all of her family and friends were incredibly worried.  She was very sick and it took a diligent team to get her back on the mend.  Now, a few weeks later, she has gained a lot of strength and is really looking forward to the upcoming festivities.  She and I like to talk on the phone a couple of times each week.  If I’m lucky, I have as many things to tell her about my life as she does about hers!

Last week, I had tried to call her Tuesday with no answer, then Wednesday evening with the same result and by the time the phone was going unanswered yet again on Thursday evening, Jim and I were trying to figure out whether we should be worrying.  I had the feeling she was out and about enjoying summer so we decided to give it one more day before we called her sister, Joyce, who lives nearby.  Sure enough, that night at about 8:15pm my time, which is after ten o’clock for her, she called me back.  And, sure enough, she had just come in from having supper with another one of her sisters, Leila.

As we chatted, she filled me in on the past couple of days.  On Tuesday evening she had gone to Niagara-on-the-Lake, to the Shaw Festival to see Brigadoon, which she had loved.  On Wednesday, she went to church in the morning, to choir practice in the afternoon and then in the evening (after a late afternoon medical appointment) she drove herself to see a concert at the Sunset Music Series in Charles Daley Park.  She often takes her sister Leila, but on this day, Leila couldn’t go so Mary decided to go on her own.  Their sister Joyce was playing in a band as part of the entertainment and she did not want to miss it.

She always loves the Sunset Music Series.  As the name suggests it is an evening outdoor concert, each week featuring a number of lively bands.  The park, overlooking the beautiful Lake Ontario, is filled with hundreds of spectators, and sitting, listening to music is a perfect way to spend a summer evening. 

Mary described her wonderful evening to me.  She told me that after not being able to secure a handicapped parking spot, she made her way, with her walker, her chair and her sun hat, down the slope toward the stage hoping to find a place to sit.  Part way down she noticed a bench with two people on it, but with still some room left for others.  She asked if anyone was sitting there and they replied that one of the spots was spoken for, but she was welcome to use the other.

As they waited for the music to begin, she started to visit with the young man beside her.  It turned out he had just returned from Hong Kong where he teaches.  He was home for a month to be with his parents (the other two people on the bench).  She questioned him about the political climate in Hong Kong, wondering if the news was giving us an accurate picture.  He showed her pictures on his phone of the rioting – he had taken these from the balcony of his apartment.  She told him she had been praying for the people of Hong Kong and that it would be easier to pray since she now knew someone directly affected.  My mother-in-law, Mary, is an Anglican priest and I’ve always maintained she has a pretty direct line to ‘The Big Guy’.

As the evening progressed the young man headed to the snack bar and asked if she would like anything.  She replied that she had been hoping for some back-bacon on a bun, but had given up thinking about it since she didn’t think she could make it all the way down and back.  He happily brought her the desired bun and refused to let her pay for it.  He said it was his pleasure.  Later, his parents headed off for some cookies and asked if she would like some.  She told them that the ginger cookies were delicious and she would love some.  Although those ended up being sold out, they returned with some treats to share, again, at no expense to her.  She said it was a most wonderful evening.

I began to think about how I might have acted in that situation.  It did not take me long to realize that while I might have gone to the concert alone, especially if my sister was performing, I would very likely, when the young man asked if I had wanted anything to eat, have said no thank you, that I was fine.  I could have waited until I got home to eat.  I often find it easier to do for others than I do to allow others to do unto me.  I don’t think I am unique in this.

And I don’t think I am necessarily right.

Many of us were raised on a steady diet of ideas like, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’.   While I believe this, and while I do love to find ways to do, I have also come to understand that when we refuse to allow others to help us, or do to us, we deny them the opportunity to receive the satisfying feeling we have when we ‘do unto them’.  I know I have, on more than one occasion, caused frustration to others when I make myself so efficient that there is no room for anyone else to help lighten my load.  It is as if I only fully learned the first part of this statement.

In Mathematics we have things called Corollaries.  These are statements that follow with little or no proof required from already proven statements.  If the ‘Do unto others…’ statement is proven, as most of us accept it is, I wish we had all also learned its corollary: Allow others to do unto you what you so enjoy doing unto them.

I was thinking about my mother-in-law and the young teacher after the concert and I was wondering which of them went home happier; the one who joyfully did unto another or the other who accepted with joy, what was done unto her.
My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How can I become the other?’
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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 access your invisible pockets.
 

This past week I had the most wonderful adventure.  My cherished friend and biking partner, Rhonda, and I biked the 320km route from Canmore to Jasper, Alberta, along the gorgeous Columbia Parkway.  This has long been on my ‘Life List’.

This wide shouldered, two-lane highway is one of the most spectacular in Canada.  The Rocky Mountains flanked us on the left and right and challenged us as we climbed toward her peaks, and descended to her river-filled valleys.  As we biked along, past waterfalls and goats and even a few bears, we reminded each other to look around and to try to take it all in. 

There is something about biking in nature that gives me a chance to clear my head and to think about life. 

As we prepared for the trip, besides doing some good training rides, we spent time planning for our trip.  Because we would need to transport four bikes on the first day (Rhonda’s husband, John accompanied us for one day and Jim brought his bike along hoping to leap-frog ahead of us with his support truck and bike back toward us whenever he could) we knew we needed to be strategic about what we brought; maps, luggage and a bit of food made the list.

The maps were easy to download and to be honest, it would have been very difficult to get lost.  With the exception of a few twists and turns in Banff and Lake Louise, there is only one road going to Jasper from Canmore.  The concern for me was not in losing my way, rather it was in navigating the altitude challenges.  Over the trip we gained about 2700m of elevation gain.  That’s a lot of uphill pedal strokes.

I operate best when I have an idea of what I’m facing so we downloaded an elevation map to complement the road map.  Over breakfast we would pour over the maps, trying to determine at what time of the day we would encounter the climbs and descents and making plans for good places to connect with Jim.  Mentally, this was great preparation; physically it did not change a thing.

Jim provided vehicle support for us meaning, using his brand new, super-long-range-walkie-talkies, advertised to reach up to 56km but in reality that, in the terrain of the mountains reached more like 10km, we knew we could have his help pretty quickly with the press of a button and some crackly, ‘Hey good buddy….’ chatter.   Because he was leap frogging ahead of us and meeting us at least every 20km, we did not have to carry much gear, allowing us to keep our bikes as light as possible.

Our food was easy.  We had some lunch items in the truck, some snacks in our packs on the bikes and water in one of our water bottle holders.  We filled the second water bottle holder with a canister of bear spray, which I will sheepishly admit, I did not even consider reaching for when I unexpectedly came far too close to a black bear, who was enjoying grazing on his berries on the side of the road.  When I looked him in the eye as I flew past all I could think was to stay upright, stay out of traffic, and keep pedalling!

It’s wonderful how life takes every chance she can to remind us that we aren’t as prepared or as under-control as we might like to think we are. 

​​We knew Day Three of the trip would give us our biggest challenge.  While Peyto Lake and Bow Summit, both reached on Day Two, are officially the highest points of the road, the longer road to reach them meant the angle of the climb was less steep.  But on the morning of Day Three, we had to contend with the biggest climb; a climb around Big Bend, to the aptly named, Big Hill.  I made two mental mistakes this day.  We had printed off the elevation map on a single page.  The danger with this was two-fold; first it was hard to measure exactly how far it was between places, and second when it looked like it would be ‘all downhill from there’, it might not have been quite true.
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So, although I found what I thought to be the entire climb to be tough, I began to pat myself on my back a bit too quickly, thinking I had it conquered.  It turns out I was about ten kilometres too quick in the back-patting area.  It took a minute but I was able to get my head around it and keep going.  Finally, at the top we stopped, tired and proud, had a drink, took in the scenery and put on our jackets for the cooler descent.   I was delighting in the fact that it would now be ‘downhill all the way’. 

I won’t surprise you with the exact words out of my mouth when, after cruising downhill for a few kilometres, we came face to face with another steep ascent.  I will say that Rhonda and I said the exact same thing at the exact same time.  My poor quadricep muscles were talking to me in roughly the same kind of language and I really wondered if I had it in me.

It is in moments like these we need to think less about what we are doing and more about who we are being.  Luckily for me, somewhere deep down in an invisible pocket of my bike shorts I must have packed my ‘being’.  I dug that tiny little nugget out and listened carefully to myself as I said, “Lizzie. (Not many people call me this).  You can’t always see every mountain that will be placed in your path in life.  You don’t get to choose the mountains.  You do get to choose how you will climb them.”

I’d love to say that in that moment the mountain flattened out and I cruised to the summit.  In truth, the mountain remained the same.  But I did not.  I had made the choice to continue to be the person I was hoping to be when I dreamed of this trip.

Each of us has huge-looking mountains placed in front of us as we navigate the road of life.  While having carefully printed road maps, good gear and some good food can help, these, it turns out are not the secret ingredients for climbing mountains.  In my case, I have determined I had two secret ingredients.  One was that I had such great partners to ride with.  Knowing Jim was close by and ready to help removed the feeling of isolation.  Knowing Rhonda was with me every pedal stroke was not only a gift, it was my most invaluable support.  I believed we could do this together.  And finally realizing I had within me the strongest tools I would need, gave me the peace I needed to simply be in the moment.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What’s in your invisible pocket?’
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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 access your invisible pockets.

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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