Tag: encouragement

Resilience and The Right Team

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“Children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care that they get.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

I know it’s bad form to brag about your kids. So I’ll ask for your apology in advance. I want to set the expectations appropriately, and then still do exactly what I want to do. Because I was so inspired by my four-year-old that it seems worth passing along.

Two days ago, I saw my son, Mr. D, pull off an incredible feat of resilience. He went to an Aikido class expecting that he could test for his yellow belt. Not only did he expect this, but he’d told his teachers at school, and we’d gotten my mom to come to the class to watch. Plus his favorite person on the planet, his darling older sister, would be there.

But when he did his practice test, he screwed up the forward rolls. The Sensei is a very good teacher and won’t let anyone take the test until they’ve got it down. So, she let him know before his class started that he wouldn’t be able to test that day.

He lined up for class with his bottom lip quivering and he kept glancing at me to commiserate his disappointment. The crestfallen look on his face was enough that I felt like crying myself. But about halfway through the 50-minute class, he took a deep breath in, squared his shoulders, and visibly moved on from the disappointment.

By the end of class, he was fully participating and laughing. When we went home, he kept practicing the move he messed up. He was still only landing on the correct foot about fifty percent of the time.

Then yesterday morning, he popped up out of bed and wanted to show me his rolls. He thought hard about it, and nailed it. After about a half dozen correct ones, he announced he was ready to test. When we went to Aikido class yesterday afternoon, he stepped up and nailed the test.

Expectation, disappointment, then coming back to earn it – kids do these things in such quick succession that they make it look easy. It makes me wonder if as grown-ups we remember these are part of a cycle. We just have to keep rolling to get through it.

One other thing strikes me. Kids have a whole network of people cheering them on. Teachers, coaches, parents, grandparents, and often even random bystanders will jump in to tell them they’re doing great.

Which makes me wonder if adults have the same. Are we cultivating the friends, partners, colleagues, and mentors that help us continue to be resilient? Are we being those people for others? It might make all the difference.

Leadership Lessons From Climbing

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“Great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.” – Mark Twain

We went to Mt. Rainier this weekend and spent two nights at Paradise Inn, one of the historical National Park Lodges first opened in 1917. It’s has no Wi-Fi connectivity: instead it has this fantastic lobby area where guests can hang out by the fireplaces, listen to ranger talks in the evening, find a majestic wood table and play cards, or post a postcard in the “mail stump” – a huge stump next to the registration desk. The rooms are like tiny postage stamps in which you have to be creative about where to hang your wet clothes.

Paradise Inn is at 5,420 feet and is the entry point for most of the guided climbs. There are many routes up the mountain, but this is the route I took for the times I climbed on Mt. Rainier (summit is at 14,410 feet). That sounds like I did a lot, which is not the case – four climbs, two of which we summitted. But I did spend a lot of time doing training hikes on the paths out of Paradise.

Arriving at Paradise was like plugging myself into a higher voltage circuit. I don’t think I stopped grinning all weekend. So, buckle up for some climbing metaphors….

My friend Eric traveled with us this weekend. He did a fair amount of climbing back in the day as well so between the two of us, we have a fair number of climbing stories.

Leading my kids out for a couple of hikes this weekend reminded me of all the good and bad things about hiking with a group. The path up from Paradise starts out paved. But at this time of year, it was still covered with slushy snow.

Eric had a story about a guy he used to climb with named Dave. Dave was 6’3” with size 13 shoes. Apparently, everyone cheered when Dave was leading because he’d kick in the best steps. When the snow is fresh or icy, the person in the lead does the work to kick in solid steps. It’s like doing two or three stomps with each step. It’s exhausting. But for the rest of the team, if the steps kicked in are nicely spaced and solid, it’s a far easier experience, somewhat akin to climbing a set of stairs.

And that’s just one factor in which the person leading can affect the whole group. Going at a steady pace, not too fast and not too slow, and calling breaks at the right time all help everyone settle into a rhythm. Then there’s also the matter of encouragement.

I remember a practice climb on Mt. Rainier I did years ago when I felt totally spent halfway through. My friend encouraged me to take a break to eat and drink before deciding whether I could continue. He was absolutely right – I was totally fine to continue. Great guides are so good at making this call, knowing who needs to take a break and who needs to turn back. It’s not a one-size-fit-all encouragement train.

And climbers have great phrases to encapsulate the down sides, not that they own them by any stretch. There’s “Embrace the suck” to encourage leaning in when the going is tough. And there’s also the acknowledgement that someone has to carry the poop bucket – literally and metaphorically, our stuff goes with us.

Funny that my happy place is one where all those realities, including the suck, are parts of the experience.

Leading my own little team reminded me that life is better when we kick in steps for others, set a sustainable pace, and get a feel for when to encourage and when to walk alongside others when they need to go down to camp.

(featured photo is mine: Mt. Rainier taken from Paradise)

Related climbing metaphor posts:

Frozen Heart

Guides for Transformation

Finding a Rhythm

Climbing Out of My Gunk

Friendship Brownies

The Return Trip

Hurry Scurry Worry

Posted in faithTagged , , , , , , , 38 Comments

“Enough is abundance to the wise.” – Euripides

Of the things I think about, time and love have to be the top two topics. Sometimes they are separate thoughts, but often time they are combined in the same thought. Struggling with how to love and appreciate the moment, and the dear ones I’m with, when I’m often in a hurry.

It doesn’t help that June comes with six birthdays of family, including Cooper the dog, and dear friends, including mine in mid-June. That’s always a reminder of time with a “capital T.”

On a recent Sunday morning, I was deep in the vortex of hurry worry. This year, my mom signed Miss O up for a youth choir in a neighborhood church.  Miss O has a lovely voice and it was a fantastic activity for her. My mom managed all the transportation, and even took Mr. D along for some of the practices. All good.

But on the Sundays the choir performed, it was a struggle to both watch Miss O sing and keep Mr. D entertained throughout the service. So, on the particular Sunday morning in question, I came up with the idea that Mr. D and I would walk to the church to expend a little of the morning energy while Miss O went ahead with my mom.

Mr. D and I left with enough time to walk the eight blocks, but not extra. As we were walking, I was feeling the time pressure to get there. Enough so that it prompted me to remember the meditation practice I’ve been working on to not hurry. I said a prayer.

When I told my mom about this later, she asked, “What did you pray for? That Mr. D wouldn’t find anything interesting along the way?”

“No,” I answered. “I prayed that we’d have enough time. Then I enjoyed the walk without looking at the time and it all worked out.”

It’s funny. We can either pray/hope/wish/focus on everything to go right. Or pray/hope/wish/focus on being okay with how things work out. The latter has worked better for me.

For another way to stretch capital T time please listen to our Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast: Episode 69: All You Have to Do Is Ask with Wynne and Vicki

Vicki Atkinson and I are big believers in the power of story – to connect us, to create intergenerational healing, and to make meaning out of the events of our lives. Each episode of our podcast will start with someone telling a story in each episode.

To listen to the podcast, Search (and subscribe!) for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Pocket Casts. Or subscribe to our YouTube channel to see a video clip of each story: @SharingtheHeartoftheMatter.

A Kind Word

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“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” – Lao Tzu

I received a lovely email from someone this week that was incredibly kind and complimentary. It ended with the sentence, “So, I just thought that was the sort of thing a person ought to hear about themselves.”

Encouragement, defined by Oxford Languages, is “the action of giving someone, support, confidence and hope.” The word origin is from the French from en (make, put in) + corage (heart, daring) from which I draw that encourage could be “make daring” or “put in heart.”

Using either definition, I am always deeply grateful for the people who have and continue to cheer me along. It is a gift that takes just a sentence or two but has a ripple effect that lasts so much longer than a conversation.

I find encouragement to be one of the secret sauces for life – whether it’s in the giving or receiving, everything tastes better. And when properly nourished, it’s so much easier to share the love. In trying to express my gratitude for my friend’s kind words this week, I hope I’ve taken a little bit of heart and passed it on. May we all tell someone just the thing they ought to hear about themselves.

Have you given or received encouragement this week? What does it look like for you?

(featured photo from Pexels)

Wordle as a Metaphor for Life?

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“You can’t win a game 7 without losing three games first. Keep going.” – Shea Serrano

As I having trouble solving Wordle the other day, I realized that I have been unusually focused on the word I used to start the puzzle. I’ve asked my friends that also play it what word they use. I’ve tried a few different ones myself, often using S-T-E-R-N since it represents some of the letters used most frequently used in English.

[For anyone who hasn’t tried to play this game that was recently bought by the NY Times, Wordle is a game where you have six tries to guess a common five letter word. You are not given any information to start with but when you enter a guess, you are told if you have any right letters and they are green if correct in the right spot and yellow if they are used on the word but in the wrong spot. Letters can be repeated. There is one word a day and everyone gets the same word so rest assured, this post doesn’t reveal today’s wordle.]

But as I typed in my word and got the result that the answer had none of those letters, I realized that knowing what isn’t in the word is equally as important.

The absence of a positive result is also informative.

It makes me think of a story about Thomas Edison. As he was trying to invent the light bulb, he tried more than a hundred different types of materials to use for the filament. Someone asked if he got discouraged and he said that he didn’t because each failure told him one more thing that didn’t work.

So Wordle is just the latest reminder that life is best met by continuing attempts to try. Every failure is just another opportunity to see what doesn’t fit. When I feel great resistance to something I’m doing in work or parenting, it presents an opportunity to think about whether I should push harder or try another tactic.

Some of life’s lessons are the hardest because we learn what not to do. But they are also some of the most valuable lessons, especially when we are able to distill the information and heal the trauma.

I did finally get the Wordle on the sixth try – phew! Because there weren’t very many letters left to combine into a common word (letters in dark gray on the keyboard indicate they have been tried and are not used in the word). It reminded me yet again, failure is an excellent source of information. Here it is in case you want to guess.

An Act of Bravery

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“It always seems impossible until it is done.” – Nelson Mandela

This week my almost 6-year-old daughter suggested that we ride bikes to pick up my son from daycare. So last night we did. It’s only about a mile by bike and she is pretty steady on hers. We left with me in the lead and she was following. The first part is slightly downhill in a bike lane on a busy road and we had only gone five blocks when all of a sudden I couldn’t see her behind me. The road curved so I could only see a half block back but she didn’t appear. Then a man in a truck said, “Are you looking for a little girl? She’s way back there.” My heart in my chest, I looped around to find my daughter a block back, up on the sidewalk silently crying. A car had come, maybe turning, it spooked her so she got herself up on the curb and resolved to wait for me.

The rest of the way we changed it so she led and I followed talking to her the whole way. When we got to the daycare, it’s a half a block of steep uphill so I told her we’d walk our bikes but she said, “I can do it, Mama!” and zoomed herself up the hill and right up to the door. On the way back, she started to relax into it so much that she was weaving between cones on a closed section of road.

The whole adventure reminded me how brave we are to live a day of this life. We get up, set our sights on something we are going to do, people we are going to meet or work we have to finish. Then we start on our way only to discover we are scared or confused and need a minute. Whether we continue or not probably depends on the voice we hear in our head. And for us adults, this all happens without us thinking about it. We have forgotten how brave it is to meet the day because we’ve done it so many times before. But it doesn’t make us any less brave.

Watching my daughter when we finally pulled back into the garage with my toddler, she stripped off her top and cheered. She did it! She transported her 45 pounds of bones, muscle and grit a mile and back on a two-wheeled vehicle and moved through time, space and her own doubts. By God, she did it. May we all remember to cheer our bravery as we tackle things today.

The Root of Courage

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“Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow.” – Dan Rather

My mom was joking with me the other day that I’m paying for preschool for my toddler twice. “First you pay a monthly fee for him to attend three days a week,” she laughed “and then you pay again by having to hold him for three days straight after that.” And as it goes with humor, there is a lot of truth in that. As my toddler goes through this third week of being at daycare, I’m exhausted from making breakfast, lunch and dinner with only one arm but hopeful that he is getting a little more comfortable with this new routine. And as soon as we get into this rhythm, it’s going to change again when my 5-year-old gets to go to in-person Kindergarten for the first time.

This pandemic has been hard for me as I try to be everything to everyone – breadwinner, childcare, friend, teacher, janitor, all without much personal space to recharge. But this re-entry is definitely hardest on my kids. Even though there have been times when they were bored at home, all this time has mostly just been basking in their happy space without having to grow their boundaries. It has been all the sweetness of togetherness and not the growth that comes with otherness.

I come from a long line of encouragers but as we face these situations I think most often of my dad. At my dad’s funeral service, he was eulogized so perfectly as a “battery on feet, just looking for someone to jump start.” When working a project or a problem with my dad, I always felt that everything was possible. The word encourage has it’s origins from French – in courage. And to break that down further, courage as in rooted in the heart. So we encourage others by instilling courage, helping them to live from the boldness of their heart. I love this breakdown of the words because it reminds me that courage isn’t going forward without feeling but just the opposite, it is completely rooted in feeling. And to encourage, we help others lean in to all those feelings and do it anyway.

So I’m happy to hold my son for three days after his days at preschool. I give him some of my heart so that he can go forward living fully from his.