The treadmill gets a bum rap

I surprised myself the other day while running on a treadmill.  I have always thought of the treadmill as a metaphor for people who are stuck in the rut of working too hard and they can’t stop.  It finally dawned on me: I can get on or off a treadmill any time AND I can choose how hard I work.

The treadmill is a wonderful metaphor for choice in our world.  Whether thinking of the treadmill in the gym for humans, or the treadmill in the hampster cage, the same principles apply for physical fitness or my work/life fitness.  They also apply to a community’s fitness:

  1. I choose how fast, slow or steep I go. If the going is too slow or too fast, I can adjust. I can slow to a walking pace to relax, or I can bump up the pace to meet the needs of the moment.  I am not required go full tilt all the time.  I am also not required to slack.  The choice is mine.
  2. I choose how hard to work. I make decisions about how fast or how steep the work is, in alignment with my fitness goals.  I recognize that if I work hard and fast all the time, I will not last as long as if I work hard and fast with breaks to slow down.
  3. I choose when to get on or off the treadmill. When I want a good workout, or even a steady pace, I get on the treadmill.  When I have had enough, I choose to get off and go for a snack.
  4. I choose to seek feedback about myself. As I work, I can seek feedback about the toll the work is taking on me.  I can take my pulse, or use the heart-rate monitor on the treadmill, to see if my work is too hard or too easy for my fitness goals.  By welcoming feedback – especially from my own body – I will make better choices for me.  If I don’t seek feedback, the treadmill may just throw me off.
  5. To make the right choices for me, I need to have goals in mind. How fast, how hard, how steep, and when to get on/off are all connected to my fitness goals.  Is there a big event I am ramping up for that requires harder work for a length of time?  Will I need to allow myself a break after that?  Are there other things happening in life that mean I should slow down?  My choices and feedback are intertwined – my goals will determine the feedback I will seek, and the feedback may alter my goals in turn.
  6. I choose the role a treadmill will play in my life. What are my fitness goals for my work life?  What sort of workout do I need at this moment?  How does this workout relate to by bigger goals further off in the distance – will it help me get there, or just tire me out?
  7. (Note: running faster on the treadmill will not get me off the treadmill.)

The bottom line is this – while on a treadmill, I have a choice about how hard and how long I work.  I can also make choices aligned with my goals and intentions.  These principles apply to anyone, any organization or community: intention around pace, intensity, feedback, goals.

It’s up to me to do what I need to do to suit myself.

It’s up to us to do what we need to do to suit ourselves.

The gift of receiving

I have missed and overlooked a lesson that my kids are offering me every year: the gift of receiving.  They are full of joy and trust and love.  They are thrilled knowing this Christmas season they will receive gifts destined just for them.  They are full of wonder and awe.

I realize I have been making an assumption my whole life that giving is hard to do.  It can be hard, particularly when I give something we are attached to.  It was hard as a kid, but as I have grown older, it gets easier to see that what I have to give is more precious to others than it is to me.  What has gotten harder is receiving gifts from others.

Back to my kids – full of joy and trust and love when it comes to asking for receiving gifts.  As an adult, I am noticing that it has become increasingly difficult to receive, let alone ask for, a gift. Receiving a gift – a compliment, a favour, a thank you, a gift – is  fraught with emotion.  A brush-off, suspicion, anxiety, fear, powerlessness, selfishness, vulnerability all take their turn.

Within me, receiving a gift feels like I am broadcasting weakness.  How dare I reveal that I don’t have everything I need, that I am all together.  I must put on a brave face no matter what.  If I am sick or hurt, it is easy to rationalize welcoming help.  But if I am physically well, then I had better not ask for anything.  But this does not serve me or others well, in the end.  Even the gifts I did not ask for, the ones that make be feel bad but are really in service to my own personal learning and growing. Those gifts that I realize much later that really were gifts, not torture.

At the bottom of all of this is my sense of self worth. The biggest gift I can give is to myself – the gift of receiving.  I will be honest and reveal when my soul feels bad and ask for what I need.  When I receive the gift of hard-to-hear feedback, I will receive it as a gift to be in better relationship with those around me.  When the world says “no” I will take that as a sign that I am not needed there yet.  When the world says “yes” I will take that as a sign to jump in the canoe and head down the stream.

Receiving gifts is tough, perhaps because it is closer to my heart and my sense of well-being.  Far more personal, even threatening.  But also far more rewarding.  And more giving.

A parting note to self (via my friend Chris Corrigan) – it is hard to give if the gift is not received.

The gift of the sprained ankle

Sometimes you have to be hurt before you sit on the sidelines.

My outdoor soccer team decided this last summer that we would field a team for the indoor season.  We love doing this together and so off we go into a new adventure.

The morning of Game 3 I took an unexpected and tumbling trip down the basement stairs and landed in the emergency room, and left with four staples in my head.  I went to the game that night and watched from the bench.  I support my team no matter what.  Then on my first shift of Game 4 I got tangled with the opposing team’s keeper and hobbled off the field with a sprained ankle.

And so I am wondering what the Universe is telling me.  It might be about soccer, or just the phenomenon of noticing when it’s time to take to the sidelines for a bit.  A question from a couple of team mates startled me in the middle of Game 3: “are you in agony watching and not playing?”  As I reflect on this, I notice that I wasn’t in agony.  I didn’t even think of being in agony until it was mentioned.  I couldn’t do anything about it, so I just watched and enjoyed my team’s efforts.

I have a feeling that the agony, however, is setting in around this ankle.  Not only can I not play soccer for a while, I am required to keep it elevated.  I can’t be physically active.  I have to sit or lie down.  This could well drive me nuts.  It is not lost on me that also at risk, if I do not heal well, is skating, cross-country and downhill skiing.  I love winter and I consider not being able to do these things agony.

But I am curious about what windows might be opening.  One gal on my team has suggested I start doing other things to keep my fitness level up.  I could do weights, and she advises that combined with the weight I have lost I could get quite ripped!  There might be other physical activities that could serve as cross training for running and soccer, that might even improve my performance.  Beyond the physical, I can spend additional time writing and doing things I like around home.  I can find a balance of these things.  Nothing is lost when I notice that other things are gained – I just have to be open to finding them.

So the conscious choice I make is to be on the sidelines enjoying my team’s games and friendship.  The other choice I make is to receive the gift of the sprained ankle.  I see opportunities to try new physical activities and reacquaint myself with quiet things to do at home and work.  I am curious about other places where I need to step back into the sidelines and let others have a turn.

Bob Principles

I have a few friends who go by the name of Bob. They are wise, leaving me with short, simple and meaningful principles to live and experiement with. I have just come across the principles Bob Stilger works with that are worth sharing:

  • Every community is filled with leaders
  • Whatever the problem, community itself has the answers
  • We don’t have to wait for anyone. We have many resources with which to make things better now
  • We need a clear sense of direction AND we need to know the elegant, minimum next step
  • We proceed one step at a time, making the path by walking it
  • Local work evolves to create transformative social change when connected to similar work around the world

These principles are powerful in their simplicity. There is great possibility in our lives and work when we believe and recognize (in both the plural and singular) that:

  • We are leaders
  • We have the needed knowledge
  • We can act now
  • We choose direction
  • We make the path by walking it
  • We learn by connecting our local with the global

The choice:  believe in ourselves or sabotage ourselves.

Here’s a link to more information about Bob and his work: http://resilientcommunities.org/?page_id=48

The Itch

 

My son was asking me last week about what to do about mosquito bites.He was wondering if there was a way to make them stop itching.Ironically, the only way to make a bite stop itching, is to NOT scratch it.For some reason, if you scratch it, it makes it more itchy.

So there is a choice to make, we decided.Leave it alone, as hard as it may be, and it will go away.Stratch it and expect it to get more and more itchy.

The questions I left our conversation with:

  • When would I/WE leave an itch alone?
  • What will I/WE find if I/WE scratch the itch on purpose?

I have been writing here forwhile, as well as in unpublished places. And I am writing to simply scratch and itch with the intention that it WILL get more itchy.It seems to be working.The more I contemplate questions about how I engage with others, and about how WE engage with each other, I can see more and more clearly (and simultaneously less clearly) that I have a growing itch about how humans relate with each other in response to the challenges our communities we face.

I scratch as a means to explore and learn.

Corduroy, Bog and Ice

 

Of all the experiences a person has in 40 years of life, I wonder why a walk on the Cedar Bog Trail in Manitoba’s Bird’s Hill Provincial Park 18 years ago still sits in my mind.The sensation of walking froma hot, humid Manitoba summer day into a dark, cool forest of cedars left its mark deep inside me.

A month ago, after arriving in Winnipeg after a 13 hour drive and an evening of catching up with friends, our conversation shifted to how we were going to spend our time together over the course of our spring break visit.First up: the Cedar Bog Trail.It was calling me back.

The trail starts in aspen poplar forest, shifts to oak trees, then descends to boggy land full of cedar.The change in temperature was startling on a hot early spring day as we moved from the new sun on our bodies into cold and ice in the shade.The shock of cold – so quickly forgotten after a few warm spring days – reminded me of how quickly we acclimatize to new circumstances.I was also reminded of how the world sends us constant reminders of past circumstances, and how the past, the present and future are constantly being juggled.

In the bog, to make it passable, logs have been laid perpendicular to the path – a corduroy road.The quality of the corduroy is aged and suspect at this stage in the path’s life. Frozen, our passage was unhindered; thawed, our passage would have been arduous and messy since the corduroy logs themselves are now few and far between.I was thankful that the path was frozen. Corduroy logs up through the ice on Manitoba's Cedar Bog Trail.  March 28, 2010

Just before we left the bog, we came across an area that was a large expanse of ice.In a few days the passage would be completely underwater.We “skated” on the ice, avoiding the ends of a couple of corduroy logs poking out of the ice and bog. Then we made our way out of the bog, back to the oak and aspen forests and back to Winnipeg, andeventuallyback to Edmonton.And the ends of old corduroy logs keep poking at me, prodding me to further make sense of the Cedar Bog Trail.

When thinking of the inadequate logs sticking through the ice I wrestled with two ways to look at this situation:

  1. When the ice melts there will not be enough logs for the trail to be easily passable.I can see this clearly through the ice.People will be bogged down.
  2. It is passable right now!Just skate over it. Deal with the problem later.

My default is the first.When I see a deeper problem that needs to be addressed I aim to solve it.I find it difficult to notice the things that can not be addressed right now – the things under the ice that just simply can not be solved right now.And don’t even need to be solved right now.And can not be solved right now. There is a time to just let things slip by, and I must ask:

  1. Can and should it be solved now?
  2. Is it my problem to solve?
  3. Is it even a problem?
  4. How can I equip myself appropriately?
  5. Does this path need to be well tended?
  6. Do all paths need to be well tended?

Even when I think I have left the old corduroy road behind, it keeps popping back up. In this trail, it pops up in my memory everytime I explore a forest.And in the road at our family place at the lake, pieces of the 90 year old corduroy road keep popping back up through decades of gravel and tar.

Poking the Bear

 

I was describing to a friend last week about a tough situation in which I found myself recently.In room full of teachers, I told them that they appeared to have shut down on their own learning.Her response:ohhhhhh, you just poked the bear.

I have been wrestling with this bear now for several days.I hold a deep intention to cause no harm to the people with whom I live, work and volunteer.But this intention is not superficial. It is not just about protecting the people around me from harm; it is as much about noticing when I and the people around me may be causing harms to others.And with this in mind, I find myself often telling clients (and other people in my life) things they might not want to hear.

But in the spirit of doing not harm, my intention is to do this in a compassionate and direct way. As my Art of Hosting colleague Toke Moller put it, a dull knife through a tomato is an aggressive and harmful act.A sharp knife through the tomato is compassionate.This isn’t about cutting people up with nasty things to say.It is about providing honest feedback – whether to an individual or a group – that is in some way what they need to hear.What they need to hear, but not necessarily what they want to hear.

So my own personal wrestling with the bear is about being brave enough to be direct and honest, because once I have poked it, I have to be prepared for the consequences – it might take a swipe at me.It is this consideration that makes me think of timing options to poke the bear:

  1. Right then and there – when it needs to be said
  2. Later – when it is a better time
  3. Never – just leave it be

As the bear pins me to the forest floor, I deliberate about what would have happened if nothing was said: nothing would have changed and teachers would teach rather than learn.If something was said later: nothing would have changed and teachers would teach rather than learn.Right then and there – the quality of the work that followed, and commitment to it, was significantly higher.The down side, I realize, is that people’s feelings were hurt because they were told something they didn’t want to hear.Some people were angry with the feedback.Some closed ranks and got defensive.Some said thank you – we needed to hear that.

The bear swiped around to protect itself. And in the end, I ask myself what it is protecting itself against, and the answer is astounding:learning.

I have slipped out from beneath the bear, for now, and I look it in the eyes.I will continue to poke the bear and give it feedback from time to time – always compassionately – because I trust that over time it will be received, constructively and positively, in ways I will never know as it makes its way through the wild world.


The obstacle is not the objective

 

In my acting class last night an interesting parallel to my learning to be a coach.We’ve been exploring the notion of a basic objective in scene work for several weeks.My attention was grabbed yesterday when we stopped to have a conversation as a class about the exercises we have been doing.The simple meaning of our conversation was this: knowing specifically the objective of a scene, and the specific obstacles to that objective that need to be worked through is crucial.But the focus is not the obstacle – it is the objective that pulls me through the scene, but it the obstacle that makes me want to do so.This makes for a good scene.

On the spot as we were digesting our learning, I immediately thought of some meaningful coaching conversations I have had over the last year.The meaningful part being that a coach will offer opportunities for the coachee to explore how to move through obstacles to opportunities and the objective.It is not enough to simply identify obstacles.

In the coaching models I have been exploring, I have been paying particular attention to a continuum where at one end the coach “puts in” to the coachee, and at the other end the coach “pulls out” of the coachee.To be done well, both require heightened listening skills.Specific to the latter, the coach listens intently to the coachee, minimizing the filters and analysis as much as humanly possible.What the coach thinks simply gets in the way of what is wanting to come out of the coachee.While there is a time an place for coaching models that “put in”, there is an unbalance in that respect.People seem to be hardwired to have to tell others what to do.Even in our listening that comes through in the questions we ask.

So what would happen if in conversations we served as guides to wisdom that just sits in us?What if we rest in wonder about what is wanting to come out?

Whether as a coach, facilitator, parent, spouse, manager, that there are times to “put in” and times to “pull out” of the people I am with.I am starting to notice more specifically what I need in this respect.Being skillfull in conversation requires being attentive to your actions, your default patterns, what others need and, of course, having conversations with others around what they need and what you need from each other.

In my work as a community planner, conversation is needed everywhere.Quality conversation to ensure interests are understood and priorities arGovernment, communities, developers, not-for-profit organizations, school and health systems, food production systems, energy systems, are poorly integrated in their thinking and behaviour.Unresolved and deep-seated conflict is everywhere.I don’t imagine for a moment that it is possible to get rid of it.I do imagine, however, that if by identifying what it is we wish to accomplish together, and noticing the objectives that are in our way, we then have a choice to make about where we spend our time: focus on solving the obstacles and fixing he problems, or to focus on moving through them to welcome our objective.To do either, conversation that mover far deeper than the superficial is needed.

To make our desires a reality, we have to simply note the obstacles and move past them.Just as on the theatrical stage, they are not our focus.

I dream of growing and learning in new ways

When planning practitioners reflect on their practice, they notice that their own behaviour is unusual when their communities find success – they seek and embrace challenges, they are aware of strengths and weaknesses in themselves and others, they endlessly seek opportunities and the place trust in others.  There are, indeed, emerging essential non-technical competencies that make a planning practitioner effective.

As an effective individual planning practitioner, the following elements are emerging as essential:

  • Find your passion and spend your time there
  • Be self aware
  • Be open to any communication
  • Be comfortable with being uncomfortable
  • Seek to understand

Further, it is useful to consider what could make a  collective planning practice effective.  The following elements are emerging:

  • Get on the radar vs. duck the radar
  • Be political and get political
  • Build coalitions
  • Generate allies and advocate
  • Step forward

There is a gulf between what we know we ought to do, and what we actually choose to do.  The Greek work for this phenomenon is Akrasia. The leadership challenge for the planning profession is to step through and over the gap – to what is possible for us in service to Alberta communities.  As individuals and as a collective, we will find our voice if we dare to dwell on what we dream.  While the collective voice for planning practitioners is unknown, it will only emerge as we seek our collective leadership capacities.  This is our challenge for 2010.

I dream of growing and learning in new ways.

The full article can be found at  – http://www.aacip.com/public/AACIP_JournalComp_Issue3_Revised.pdf

November Knitting

 

Two media items resonated with me today, starting my November knittings.

The first media item was on CBC Radio’s The Current: a warm up debate to the Munk Debates in Toronto tonight, with debaters George Monbiot and Bjorn Lomborg.The proposition: Be it resolved: climate change is mindind’s defining crisis and demands a commensurate response.A timely debate leading up to the climate negotiations starting next Monday in Copenhagen, to lay the groundwork for a global treaty to cap greenhouse gas emissions and stem climate change.(The debate is about how grave the threat is, and how much needs to be done to fight the threat, and what cost.)

The second media event spurring reflection is Annie Leonard’s new film: The Story of Cap and Trade: Why You Can’t Solve a Problem with the Thinking That Created It (http://storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/)

The bottom line, as I watch this debate, is this.Even the old-school form of debate is not going to convince anyone to do anything different than argue, rather than take action.Monbiot and Lomborg agree that there is a challenge we are facing in climate change.The fact that there is a challenge is not contested.What to do about it is.

While I surmise that no one actually thinks that the Munk Debates this evening will actually solve climate change, the format is indicative of the thinking that created the problem to begin with: state your position and stick to it all costs.The value of the debates is, in fact, in seeing clear positions.We benefit from seeing options as we make our way through the morass of information relating to climate change.

It is time, however, to get to the heart of what is really at issue, and find a way through the mess and seek doable, practical actions that will make a difference.But before I describe what this might look like, there is another consideration that should be raised with respect to climate change.James Lovelock is on to something: this is not about fixing Earth, but rather that we ought to adapt to the change that is occurring.It is the same, old thinking trap if we let ourselves think that climate change is a problem for us to fix, as if fixing Earth is something as simple as a lawnmower for a mechanic.Earth is not a simple system, but is rather dynamic.She has been around a lot longer than us, through many climate changes, and she will look after herself.Our job, then, is to look after ourselves.We don’t have anything to fix, rather we have to focus on what we need to adapt to, and how we will adapt, and, of course, when we will adapt.We might also wish to consider who will adapt.

Exploration of these considerations does not occur through debates about how to fix the problem.This simply merges two simplistic tactics to tackle climate change: debate and fix.

Two opposite approaches?How about ongoing generative dialogue and co-creation?For this, there is a whole new skill set required.We are no longer in an era where it is appropriate to set a goal and action plan and expect it to work.The variables are too variable.We need to be constantly sensing what is happeing in our world through information exchanges and conversation that welcomes diversity of insight.We need to be constantly sensing and noticing what is working in our world and what is not, which means constantly changing and adjusting the “plan”.The world is not longer a place where simple solutions will remotely address dynamic challenges like climate change.

This is the conversation I am hungry for in Alberta.We have at our disposal a prosperity that puts us in a place of responsibility.What can we do with our ingenuity that rests behind old ways of thinking and problem solving?

The place to begin is on the ground, with people practicing new ways of engaging in conversation.This is not about throwing away old ways of doing things, but broadening out our means to learn and adjust.We have the world in Alberta and Canada, and we are in a unique position to offer a wonderful ingenuity to meet the challenges we face.

What is within us that is waiting to be unleashed?