I just returned from giving a keynote presentation at a Wellness conference, so wellness is on my mind more than usual. In addition to being a life, leadership, health and wellness coach, I’m a health enthusiast. Some would even call me a health nut. I track food intake, steps, sleep, and heart rate variability, among other things.
I am excited to report that my family is on board with me for embarking on a 7-day challenge that starts tomorrow (June 4) and will last for a week. We’re giving up a lot in the interest of deepening our connections, being more active and mobile, being less distracted and more in tune with each other and our surroundings, and in reaping the benefits of feeding our bodies healthy foods.
We are giving up all television, movies, video games, social networking. We’re giving up cars and transportation, with 3 very limited exceptions (see below image of our family’s signed “contract” for details), and we’re giving up processed foods. We’ll shop only the perimeter of the grocery market to ensure we’re buying and consuming healthy, real foods. We’ll walk and bike everywhere. We’ll spend our free time together biking, hiking, fishing, walking, playing board games and visiting our community’s playgrounds.
Disclaimer: As a matter of fact, we are already an extremely active family, and we’re quite health-conscious. We hike and play outside a lot, and from Monday through Thursday there are no processed foods consumed at our house, and we watch no television or video games from Monday through Thursday. We made all of these changes about 12 months ago. But there is more we can do. We often drive places that are only blocks away. The wheels come off to an unhealthy extent when it comes to “treats” and foods the kids eat on weekends, and we’re all a little too distracted by our screens. So there is much room for improvement, and this challenge will not be easy.
Here is a video that includes bits from me, my husband, and each of our three sons, as we get ready to embark on this 7-day Epic Health Challenge:
Our family’s signed “contract:”
In addition to being a health enthusiast, I’m a voracious reader. Many of the books and articles I read are related to health and wellness. I am very much inspired by Dan Buettner’s Blue Zones work and research. In fact, I highly recommend his latest book, The Blue Zones Solution, Eating and Living Like the World’s Healthiest People. The Blue Zones are the five places in the world where people live the longest, with the least disease and the most vitality. In researching these areas, and in interviewing centenarians, Buettner and his team of experts came up with 9 common denominators – otherwise known as “The Power 9” – that are common in areas where people live the longest, healthiest lives.
The Power 9 are: Move naturally (live in or set up an environment that nudges you to move naturally throughout the day) Purpose (people in the Blue Zones have something to live for beyond their work), Downshift (do things to remove/release stress), 80 percent rule (eat ’til you’re 80% full), Plant Slant (eat mostly plant foods), Wine @ 5 (people in the Blue Zones often drink wine in late afternoon), Right Tribe (the world’s longest-lived people choose social circles with healthy behaviors), Community (research shows that faith-based services are a common facet in Blue Zones communities), and Loved Ones First (successful centenarians put their families first.)
This 7-day Epic Health Challenge we’re embarking upon aims to bring some of the Blue Zones ways to the Johnson household. I will be blogging here about the experiment once it ends, and also for a blog at Barlean’s. I hope you’ll check back to see what we learned from the experiment!
As usual, thank you for your time, and for reading this. I really appreciate it.
I just returned from giving a keynote presentation at the Wyoming Worksite Wellness Conference.
The content for my presentation comes from what I have learned in my mere 46.916 years of various experiences, and in my work, which includes coaching about 100 women and men in some capacity during the last 4-5 years. I have some 30 “life lessons,” but, due to time and our limited attention spans, I usually only feature the top 8-10 in a presentation. One that never makes the final cut is Pack The Right Stuff. And yet I think it’s one of the most important.
When I lead or participate in a wilderness expedition, I always struggle with keeping my load light. I’m an over-packer and this is too bad, since I’m sold on the benefits of packing light, and because I’m always challenging my clients to lighten their loads.
As we organize our loads for an expedition, we go through this exercise where we consider each item and ask, “Will this unnecessarily weigh me down, or will it add to my experience?” This is an effort to inspire people to dare to “strip down” and get to the bare minimum of what they’ll need. Doing so significantly affects the amount of effort it will take to hike uphill and off-trail, at altitude, on rugged trails, with a load on your back.
But the exercise is also worthwhile because it causes us to be intentional about what we decide to carry. And, anything that causes us to be more intentional is a good thing.
My big backpack, with me and a mountain in the background. 🙂
For example, I’ll carry an extra five pounds in chocolate and coffee, but will lose an extra pair of socks or shorts or pants. That’s a reasonable exchange as far as I’m concerned. One of clients may opt to have more fresh clothes and fewer luxurious food items. Recently one of my Epic Women asked about packing a solar shower. 🙂 My husband, bless his heart, will often pack not one knife, but 3. Three knives, you ask?! I guess one to defend against a wild animal, one to clean a trout with and one to slice the cheese?
But this blog is not about removing a knife, or an extra pair of shorts from your load, but rather to consider what you carry every day in your life, and how intentional you are about what you’re carrying. Consider for a moment, what might you shed that is unnecessarily weighing you down or holding you back? What might you add that could enrich your experience?
For example, one item I’m working to shed from my everyday life is self criticism. In its place, I’m adding self compassion. Two months ago, I removed judgment, and added in its place The Beginner’s Mind. And so on… Because changes are hard, and adjusting our load requires attention and consideration, I recommend evaluating one item at a time, and giving each one some time to fit into your load. Maybe consider “sizing up” and adjusting your load on a monthly basis. Think depth not breadth. (BTW, check out this bit on “making smaller circles” by chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, at his The Art of Learning Project. It is fascinating!)
This work of consciously choosing what we’ll carry and what we’ll leave behind is not easy, and yet it’s vital if we are to live our best, most epic life.
Thanks for reading, and I’d love it if you’d share your thoughts on what you’d like to shed from your life, and what you’d like to add.
I am very active. I’m pretty fit. I hike a ton, and I lift heavy things every once in a while.
What I am not, is flexible. So as a new year’s resolution, one of my goals is to be able to touch my nose to my knee (in a hurdlers stretch). Every weekday for 5-10 minutes, I stretch and work at it. I’m not there yet. I’m closer, but not very much closer.
This is a great metaphor for living our best (epic) life. To live an extraordinary life takes stretching and practice. Despite my practice, some days it seems I’ve gone backwards. Like yesterday. My nose was about a foot away, and I couldn’t get it any closer. A week before, I got to within 3 inches. This morning (as proven in this photo), I was within 12 inches, but far from where I was a week ago. Tomorrow could be my best stretch yet. Or not.
Doing my stretching before I go on my morning hike. As you can see, I'm not very flexible.
Even if progress is slow and not linear, it’s happening. But it’s only happening as a result of practice and commitment and a little bit of discomfort. (However, in looking at the photo from today and considering I’ve been trying to reach my nose to my knees for 4 months now and still haven’t done it, I’m realizing I need to practice more than I am!)
Of course I’m stretching in my life in more significant ways. Many more significant ways. (Including but not limited to being a better wife, a better mother, a better daughter, a better sister, a better friend, a better coach, developing another side business, improving my juggling, getting more speaking gigs, creating an online course, submitting stories to get published, trying to be still more, and the list goes on)
But this particular stretch — stretching to become more physically flexible – is one of my most important if for no other reason than it is a daily reminder of what I need to do in order to become more capable and to live my epic life.
Last Monday night, we received the devastating news that Jerry’s dad was not feeling well, and tests indicated his body is full of cancer. The next morning, Jerry got on a plane and has been with him ever since.
Jerry, with his brothers and sisters, and Dad.
It was soon after I met Jerry, late in 1990, that it was obvious to me that his Dad was a hero to him. And, as soon as I met and got to know Harlan, I could see why. Harlan is one of the most generous and noble men I know. I often thank him, in my mind and heart, for the man he raised in Jerry. I have been married to Jerry going on 23 years, and he is my best half. He is the best husband I could ever dream of having, and he’s the most wonderful father to our three sons. While Jerry obviously deserves so much credit for his wonderfulness, there is no doubt that the way his dad raised him has a lot to do with the man I have for a partner and who is the amazing father of our three wonderful sons.
Not knowing how much time we have left with Harlan (he is in hospice care and the cancer is aggressive), I wanted to thank Harlan for Jerry, and for being such a kind, generous and amazing father-in-law to me, Dad to Jerry, and “Pa-Grandpa” to our three sons.
I called Jerry Tuesday night and after talking to him, I got the chance to talk to Harlan and thank him and tell him I love him. It was painful and hard. And it was wonderful that I got to do so.
Our sons, sending a message in real time to their Pa-Grandpa.
I have been talking to Jerry daily, sometimes twice daily for updates and to see how his Dad, and he, and his siblings, are all holding up. Jerry shared that thanks to technology, his dad was able to Facetime with his only brother, Gilbert, back in Omaha. That conversation was heartbreaking – and special and important.
From Omaha, Harlan “winters” in San Diego, with Jerry’s sister, Lisa, and her family. Harlan is a “worker” so while in California during the winter and early spring, he spends his days outside working on projects and putzing around. Because he is not able to do that now, Jerry said that Thursday they moved his dad outside in his wheelchair so Harlan could “supervise” and Jerry and his brothers and sisters could do the work their dad would normally enjoy doing. Afterward, the boys and their dad “passed out” in their respective recliners and proceeded to snore in unison. Another evening, Jerry texted me a photo of he and his Dad drinking beers together.
Jerry and his Dad, drinking beers last night.
Jerry said his dad’s cousin, Betty, stopped by for a visit. They hadn’t seen or talked to each other for a long time. The two reminisced, and Jerry heard stories about his Dad, and his Dad’s youth, that he had never heard before.
When someone we love falls ill, or approaches the end of his or her life, it sure puts things in perspective real quick, doesn’t it? Suddenly, we are absolutely certain of who and what are important.
By the way, during our spring break, we visited Jerry’s Dad – just 3 weeks ago – and all was well. At least we thought it was. Now, especially, we are so very grateful for having made that trip.
We spent a few days of our recent Spring Break in the San Diego area so we could visit Jerry's sister, Lisa, and her family – and to get some time with Jerry's dad, who winters there. We are extra glad that we did that!
Some of my favorite memories of Harlan are the trips he’d make to visit us in Wyoming. We’d take him into our mountains, and we’d fish with him. He, and his brother, our “Uncle Gilbert,” built a treehouse for the boys, and made furniture for us. We also love our annual trips to Omaha because we get to go fishing with him, eat carp with him at Joe Tess’s, go to the Henry Doorly Zoo with he and Gilbert, and other family members. I will also always remember fondly the simple pleasure of sitting with him on the patio in his big and wonderful back yard, under the big trees he takes such good care of, and our boys, and their cousins playing yard games and swinging on his famous tire swing.
You know, for a long time now, I’ve been fascinated by what people who are approaching the end of their life have to say, and to teach us. Near the end of their life, they are in a unique position, and I would guess they place a higher value on each of their days than the rest of us do. In my research, these people always – 100% of the time – reflect most fondly on the people in their lives, on their family and friends. They don’t wish they would have worked harder, and most of their time is not spent reflecting on their work or accomplishments, but rather on their people, and the memories they have shared with them.
While I’m heartbroken for Harlan, and for my husband, and his siblings, and for all of us who love Harlan, I can’t help but be grateful that Jerry, and his siblings, and all of us who love him, have the opportunity to say what we want to say to such a wonderful and generous man. I love you so much, Harlan! And, I thank you! Your wonderful ways continue to live on and be of great influence to, and in, my husband. I see you in Jerry on a daily basis. The way Jerry starts each morning watching and reading the news, the way he makes pancakes for the boys on Saturday morning, the way he can fix things, his work ethic, integrity, loyalty and bravery, and his level of respect for others – and the list goes on.
Jerry, his Dad, and our boys, on the Loop Road about five years ago.
Two years ago, I read the book, Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life. It had a profound effect on me. The author, Eugene O’Kelly, had learned he had terminal brain cancer, and he wrote about his journey from diagnosis to the day he passed and couldn’t write anymore. One of the things that struck me most was his “unwinding” of relationships while he was still alive. He would thank people who meant a lot to him, and he would reflect on shared memories with them. I remember then thinking that it would be good for all of us – not only those with a terminal illness diagnosis, but those of us who are living as if not terminal – to be more conscious about our relationships and the people in our life.
The devastating and heartbreaking call we received last Monday has reinforced my belief that we should not wait to say what we want to say to those who mean so much to us, regardless of the circumstances. We ought to get right on that. Right now. What are we waiting for? We may not get a call.
For now, I hope we get some more Skype calls with Harlan… but just in case we don’t, I say this to him: I love you Harlan Johnson. I will forever be grateful to you, and I – and we – will try to honor you every day. I will remember you for your love of family, your adventurous spirit, your honor, integrity, generosity and humility. I will also continue to love and take care of the wonderful man you raised in Jerry!
Think of the people you love the most. If you could say one last goodbye to them, what would you say? And, when will you say it?…
Another question to ponder, that is worth any amount of time, is are there people you want, or need, to make more room for in your life? And if so, what are you waiting for?
About three weeks ago, I was driving my Prius to a trailhead about 10 miles from town when the “maintenance required” alert came on. It’s still on because I still haven’t taken the car in for its service, or to have it looked at for anything that may need repaired.
Howdy.
Seeing this alert always reminds me of what it feels like when I’m not honoring a value, or when I’m ignoring or avoiding something or someone yearning for my attention.
In my work with others, and in my own life, I emphasize and value the importance of having clarity about who and what are most important, and knowing what our values are. Having this awareness is critical to our well being. The more self awareness and clarity we have, the more we feel it when we ignore these people or things that matter so much to us, or when we fail to honor our values. It’s as if our own “service engine soon”, or “maintenance required” alert comes on.
Is this happening for you right now?
I’m not talking about feelings of guilt, necessarily, but those can also provide constructive signals. I view feelings of guilt as being those twinges (or feelings similar to heavy bricks weighting us down) that we experience when we’re not delivering on others’ expectations of us. Guilt, by the way, isn’t always a negative thing, despite the inconvenience it often causes us.
Brené Brown said it best in a post called Shame v. Guilt: I believe that guilt is adaptive and helpful – it’s holding something we’ve done or failed to do up against our values and feeling psychological discomfort.
I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.
I have grown to sense when I’m not fulfilling a value or relationship in the way I would like to. Some examples: I want to have meaningful connections with each of my three sons on a regular basis – several times each day. I want the same with my husband. I want to carve out time to spend with my mom and my dad, my closest friends, and so on. When I’m not honoring any of these wishes, I sense it. It’s like a signal or an alert. Sometimes it can be many signals going off at once. Usually, for me, these “signals” come in the form of waking in the night and realizing what is out of check.
Another example is writing. I want to write more frequently. This is an important goal of mine. And yet I haven’t been honoring it. (My last post here was March 16!)
Like the “maintenance required” alert that is currently on (and has been for 3 weeks!), when I drive my Prius, when we ignore or fail to honor a relationship or value that’s important to us, we can probably continue to ignore it for a while without major consequence. But sooner or later, if it goes unchecked, it’s also possible that we’ll find ourselves a little (or a lot) broken down on the side of the road.
Thankfully, tending to our people, values and goals – our best, most Epic life – is something we have control over.
I dare you to take a minute – or 5 minutes – right now. Reflect on signals you’re receiving/feeling but ignoring. Address one or more of them TODAY. I think that you’ll find that your life will almost suddenly feel more at ease. You will immediately be happier.
As for me, I wrote this post. I’m also going to reach out to some people I haven’t been making a high enough priority. And, I think I’ll schedule an appointment for my Prius this week – if for no other reason than to get the alert to go away. 🙂
Thank you so much for reading. I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to share about your own “alerts” or anything you’d like to contribute to this topic and post.
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”–Joseph Campbell
Hi there.
If you want to be uncomfortable and exhilarated all at once, enter a deep, dark cave.
I hope you’ll read this post to the end. In it, I’ll cover 3 things: 1) I’ll share about an exciting local caving adventure; 2) I’ll share why I think it’s scary – and important – for us to enter caves; and, 3) I will share thoughts from a blind person that provided discoveries for me that will hopefully serve as insights for you.
GOING CAVING
I live in Lander, Wyoming. Nearby Sinks Canyon State Park is home to many caves. The one I am most familiar with is the Boulder Choke Cave. My family has embarked on the adventure, and I have taken a group of women I was coaching into the cave. Most recently, I’ve been taking turns going with my sons’ classes when they explore the cave as part of their science curriculum. About a month ago, I went along as a helper with our 7th grader son, Hayden, and his classmates and teachers.
To start the caving adventure, we hike from an area called The Rise to what is an unassuming hillside. It is here, in between a few small boulders, that we’ll enter the cave. One by one, we carefully maneuver down through the tight “entrance” of the cave – a series of boulders that are by nature, stacked randomly and vertically. Entering the Boulder Choke Cave is a psychological experience. After all, you go from being above ground, out in the open, illuminated by bright sunshine, to deep underneath it after only a few strategic moves. If not for our headlamps, we’d be in total darkness almost immediately.
Crawling deeper into the cave.
Once in the cave, we start on all fours, crawling for a stretch before we can stand up and walk and examine the cave all around us. A highlight is a section where we swing on a big rope to get down a small chute. Otherwise, this crawling-then-walking-then-crawling continues for most of the one-hour exploration.
For this year’s tour, though, there was new side trip added, which meant not only a belly crawl, but a belly crawl in a very tight tunnel that goes for about 25 yards to a little pool where we were fortunate enough to spy and watch a cave fish. This little side trip was such a tight tunnel that I had to remove my thin backpack or I would have gotten stuck.
As I crawled, my face smashed against the dank dirt of the tunnel’s floor, I imagined I was an inchworm. I used all of my body to scooch myself forward and slightly uphill as I followed a student in front of me, whose feet were pretty much in my face. During this stretch, my breath kept hitching, meaning I kept making little gasps. Aware of my anxiety, I stopped and took some deep breaths and coached myself to calm down. I won’t lie – I was looking forward to getting this part over with. Two things made it even worse: Finding out during this crawl that this was an out-and-back side trip that meant doing this not once but twice, and also, realizing that no matter how uncomfortable this was, I had nowhere to go to get out of it. To make matter worse, I imagined what it would be like if someone above ground decided to lock the cave’s entrance gate, locking us in. Good times…
Why do most of us avoid and fear caves and otherwise tight, dark places? I think it’s because we can’t see, which means there is a lot of unknown territory when we enter a cave. Not only can we not see anything, but the darkness that causes us to not be able to see our surroundings is scary in its own right. We often think of dragons and snakes and bats and spiders and other sneaky, nocturnal creatures. There is also a feeling of not knowing if you’ll be able to find your way out, or even if there is a way out.
When Joseph Campbell said “The cave we fear to enter holds the treasure,” he meant we ought to dare to explore the dark, scary places of our lives. The corners and edges of our beings. And that in doing so, in exchange for our being uncomfortable and brave, we will make a discovery and in fact even be rewarded with a treasure – “the treasure you seek.”
A fan of Joseph Campbell’s work – particularly the Hero’s Journey, which I use as a template for my Epic programs – I often dare the people I coach, who are feeling “stuck,” to identify the caves in their lives. These caves can be a particular relationship or past event, a bad habit, a way of being or coping, a place of pain and heartbreak – anything that would require us to be vulnerable and to enter the unknown for purposes of exploring it and trying to release its hold (and limitations) on our life.
Campbell argued the trips into our caves are worthwhile ones. “The goal of the hero trip down to the jewel point is to find those levels in the psyche that open, open, open, and finally open to the mystery of your Self.” He said, “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life…. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.”
Still, exploring our caves is a tall order. When we enter a cave, sometimes we have to belly crawl through passages to see where they lead. Sometimes we have to slay dragons. But often, it’s just a matter of entering the cave and sitting – being – in its darkness for some time, learning, before exiting and using the experience for the journey ahead that is your life.
Right now, take a minute and try to identify a “cave” in your life. I wouldn’t ask you to do something I’m not willing to do, so I’m thinking about my cave(s) too… Entering our caves is terrifying, but if we really value our life, it’s important that we do the work.
TOTAL DARKNESS
But back to my real life caving field trip. Alas, that little exciting side trip did eventually end, and after returning and regrouping at the “lunchroom” section of the cave, David Lloyd, the 7th grade science teacher, instructed us to turn off our headlamps and to sit in silence.
My favorite part of the caving adventure is this brief moment when we sit in silence and total darkness. Even as a mother of three energetic sons, I am fortunate to experience silence often. But total darkness? If not for these caving adventures, never.
Sitting in total silence and darkness is an experience I can’t find words to describe. All I can say is in this total darkness you cannot even see your hand in front of your face. Your eyes don’t adjust like they do when you’re at home at night and “in the dark.”
After one minute of silence and total darkness, we were instructed to turn our lights back on. After we did this, I could hear Mr. Lloyd and some students talking about the total darkness we had just experienced, and Mr. Lloyd asked, “I wonder if it is like that all of the time for people who are blind?” or something to that effect. It was a great question, and I wondered about it, too. Curious, I made a mental note to reach out to my social networks later in the day to try to connect with someone who is blind in order to ask them that question.
Upon my return from the caving field trip, I logged into Twitter and asked my followers if any of them could connect me with a blind person. Within an hour, a contact from eTourism Summit (Laurie Farr), replied saying she would introduce me to her sister, Wendy Poth, who has been without sight for 52 years.
After an email introduction from Laurie, Wendy and I scheduled a phone call. Once on the phone, I asked Wendy, “As a blind person, do you live in total darkness?”
Her responses to this question, and others, were surprising and fascinating.
“I am without sight, totally blind. I can’t see a bloody thing,” explained Wendy, who is 60. When she was almost eight, a genetic defect that causes others to become near-sighted, caused Wendy to lose her sight.
But just because she can’t see a bloody thing, doesn’t mean she can’t see. Wendy explained, “My camera is broken, but there’s nothing wrong with the film. My visual tape is constantly running. Seeing is really a brain activity. It’s not a virtue of the camera – the eyes – at all. What I cannot do is see nothing. Because my visual cortex is active and alive and firing… I’ve constantly got a picture in my head.”
Wendy added that a person without sight not only does not live in total darkness, he/she will have a harder time experiencing total darkness than those of us who have our sight. Wendy explained that when she walks into an unfamiliar place, “I can hear that the room is tall and long and not that wide, and I hear people standing around talking, and I hear sound bouncing off a chandelier or I can hear people talking at a lower level so I assume they’re sitting down, if there’s three, they’re on a couch… I constantly ‘fill in.'”
Because she’s used to filling in empty spaces, Wendy said she’d have a hard time imagining total darkness. If she were in a cave, she’d be filling in information she senses. “I struggle to see nothing,” she said. “When I want to allow myself to do that drifting… I have trouble giving up my visual cortex.”
Wendy’s generosity and sharing with me provided an insight into people who have no sight – people we refer to as blind. For one, it might be better to refer to people who have no sight as people who have no sight, rather than blind people.
It wasn’t easy for me to reach out and talk for the first time to someone who cannot see, and to dare to ask questions that would fulfill my selfish curiosities. But the treasure of going into that cave was learning, gaining new understanding, and making a new friend.
Near the end of our phone call, Wendy said something that really struck me: “Black is something. If you think about the color spectrum… black is the opposite of what people would intuit. Black is not the absence of all.”
Perhaps this is why when we enter a cave, be it a literal one or one of the emotional caves we fear to enter, we can’t see anything, and yet we can feel that something is there…
Thank you for reading my blog. As usual, I’d love to hear from you below in the comments. Share an experience or ask a question – whatever. I’m just happy to be connected to you. Thanks again.
I don’t know whose words these are, but I love them. How often do we go through events or struggles that frustrate us and make no sense at the time, but then later make all the sense?
I wrote here last time that one of my resolutions for 2015 is to write more frequently. To help me do this, I challenged our two older sons, who also want to write or create more regularly, to join me in a game where we draw a card from our Reverse Charades game every week and whatever word or phrase is on the card is what we have to write about. (The last card/topic was bald eagle.)
This week’s card is basketball. Drawing this card is requiring me to write about something that has been in my “mental queue” for several months now, waiting to be shared.
A short detour first, though. Around the same time I first heard “the years tell us what the days cannot” quote, I was in conversation with the Missoula YMCA to facilitate some leadership development for its leaders. I love Missoula, and it will always be a particularly special place for me. After all, I came of age in Missoula. I received my college degree there, started my first career job there, and I got married there.
But I left Missoula 22 years ago, and I hadn’t thought too much about the town, or my years there. That was, until I heard the “the years tell us what the days cannot” quote and was faced with the prospects of returning to Missoula for some work. These two things caused me to look back and connect the dots of my past in a way I hadn’t previously done. In doing so, I made all kinds of significant realizations, most of which are the result of what was probably my most spectacular failure, which is 100% related the subject of the card we drew for this week, basketball.
As most of you know, I’m an outdoor enthusiast. I hike. A lot. As in, 1,000 miles a year. But during my youth I wasn’t much into the outdoors. Rather, my passion was basketball, and I was pretty good at it. In fact, I received a full ride Division I basketball scholarship to University of Montana in 1986. If you aren’t aware, the University of Montana Lady Griz basketball team is legendary. The Lady Griz coach is also legendary. Robin Selvig is in his 33rd year as coach of the Lady Griz, and has led 22 of his winning teams to the NCAA Division I playoffs. The Lady Griz inspire awe and almost always win. If my research is correct, Lady Griz teams win about 80% of the games they play.
But back to me. So there I was in Fall of 1986, a Lady Griz. Let me try to describe what that was like… For starters, most of the my teammates were very tall, as in 6 feet tall and up. Tall is not a word anyone ever used to describe me. If I round up, I’m 5′ 5″. Every single player was phenomenal, and better than any player I had ever played or practiced with. In the world of basketball, I had arrived. Despite the amazing talent surrounding me, and feeling a little out of my league, I was eager and excited to level up, and to be a part of such a dynasty. I worked really hard, and was optimistic.
Unfortunately, about a month in, I blew my right knee (ACL) out in practice. I was redshirted, and began recovering from ACL reconstructive surgery and rehabilitating my knee. The injury was a setback, but I followed the doctor’s orders, worked as hard as I could, and was determined to make a comeback.
In the end, I didn’t come back fast enough. During my rehab, other point guards were recruited, and the truth of the matter is my ship had sailed. In year 3, Coach Selvig and I had a meeting. I’ll never forget that meeting because it marked the first difficult conversation I had ever had with an adult other than my parents. In that meeting, coach Selvig more or less informed me that there was another player who had walked on, who was performing better than I was, and as such, was more deserving of the scholarship. These were hard words for me to accept. Still, Coach was kind, and encouraged me to stay on the team.
I left the office and never returned to the team. I quit.
I’ll be honest, when I first looked back over all of this, it seemed trivial. I mean, losing a basketball scholarship, in the big picture of life, is not a huge deal. To be sure, things could have been much worse. But I was 20 years old, a long way from home, feeling humiliated and alone, not to mention the path I had been on – the only one I had a map for – was no longer my path.
Remember – the years tell us what the days cannot. During my recent look back at all of this, I realized the things I did in the months following my aforementioned failure not only made a significant difference in my life during that time, but continue to inform my life, and my work. Let me share a little about what those things were/are:
HIKING “In every walk with nature, one receives more than he seeks.” (John Muir)
One of the first things I did once I didn’t have basketball was I started hiking. I hiked to the “M”, located right on the edge of the UM campus. Soon after, I was hiking past the M, and all the way to the top of Mt. Sentinel, sometimes every day of the week. It was the combination of moving under my own power, feeling my heart pumping, letting my mind wander, and the feeling of fresh air and sun on my face that caused me to fall in love with hiking. Add to that, I always felt inspired following my hikes.
Today, one of my biggest passions is long distance day hiking. I view my time walking in nature as one of my competitive advantages – one of the secrets to my happiness and physical and mental health. Hiking is also a significant part of my family’s life, and my work. In November, I returned to Missoula for work with the YMCA, and I got up before sunrise to hike to the top of Mt. Sentinel. What an amazing experience that was, having come as far as I have, and given so much of my epic life started on that very trail 26 years ago. I don’t know what my life would be like if I didn’t have hiking, and the fact is, I did not really start hiking until I no longer played basketball.
SOLITUDE “Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.” (Joseph Campbell)
After I lost my scholarship, I remained friends with the Lady Griz players. But the fact was my world was now different from theirs, and I needed to find my new way. At first, this meant spending a significant amount of time alone. Spending time alone, and in solitude, was a completely new experience for my then-social self. Previously, I had thought of solitude as an activity for the lonely. Wow – how naive and wrong I was.
During time alone, we are available only to our self, and we are able to listen to our thoughts, including the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s a time to take stock, to reflect, to solve problems, to experience our feelings, and to imagine our dreams.
Socrates said “Know thyself.” In my humble opinion, self awareness is our most important pursuit, if we are to be our best, and live our best life. I believe that solitude is the medium for self realization, and that’s why I challenge everyone I work with to incorporate some of it into their life. Until losing my basketball scholarship, I had never invested much time in solitude. It was 26 years ago that I discovered the value of solitude, and I can’t imagine my life without it.
BOOKS “Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.” (Viktor Frankl)
Until the months after losing my scholarship and quitting basketball, I wasn’t much of a reader. Sure, I read books that were assigned in school, but that was about it. I just didn’t love reading. That all changed when one of my journalism school professors, who knew I was having a little bit of a hard time, shared a copy of Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. I was so inspired by Frankl’s story of surviving the Holocaust, and an Auschwitz concentration camp. Frankl’s belief that we get to choose our existence helped me to realize it was up to me how I would respond to my circumstances, and that I had the ability to create meaning in my life. Reading the book also put my struggles in perspective real fast!
Reading Frankl’s work not only provided wisdom and inspiration during a time when I needed it, it also marked the start of my love affair with books, and reading. Today I am a voracious reader. I read 50+ books a year, and find them to be a tremendous source of inspiration and knowledge. I can’t imagine a life without books and a lot of time spent reading.
LEVELING UP “We cannot lower the mountain, therefore we must elevate ourselves.” (Todd Skinner)
People who know me and work with me hear me say, frequently: We can go farther than we think we can. I believe this so much that it could be my personal slogan. Marcus Aurelius, the great emperor of Rome from 161-180, and known for his Meditations on Stoic philosophy, said “We know that deep down we learn and benefit from failure and adversity.” And Benjamin Franklin said “The things which hurt, instruct.”
Playing on the Lady Griz basketball team was one of my first opportunities to level up. Not having what it took caused me to reinvent myself and create a new path for myself at a relatively early age. It caused me to turn trial into triumph. Perhaps, then, it’s no coincidence that my mission is to inspire others to explore their edges, to “sign up for” and try things that are so challenging that the outcome is uncertain – to dare to fail.
There is one more thing I want to mention before writing the conclusion to this post. I am grateful for my time on the Lady Griz team. It was an amazing experience, and I made many good friends who I am still in touch with. It was truly an honor and a privilege to play for coach Selvig, and to be a member of such a great program.
Finally, upon making all of these realizations, I have come to the biggest realization of all, and that is that my spectacular failure was not a failure at all, but rather an opportunity to learn and become more than I was before.
Thank you for reading this blog post. My hope is that it will inspire you to look back on your own life and connect the dots to recall particular struggles and to see the difference they may have made, or continue to make, in your life, and to help you trust that somehow things you’re challenged by in your current life will connect to your future and make sense one day.
And, of course, I’d love it if you’d consider sharing a story in the comments. Thanks again!
Books I recommend that are related to all of the above:
We have three sons. Our oldest, Wolf, 14, is a budding writer. He’s working on his second book and really wants to have it be published. Recently, when our family shared our new year’s resolutions and discussed our family’s goals for 2015, Wolf shared he wants to write more this year.
I’ve also been yearning to do more writing. When we had our first company, I wrote about 100,000 words of copy every year for YellowstonePark.com, Yellowstone Journal, and 99 Things to Do in Yellowstone Country. When we sold the company to Active Interest Media, and I began my personal and professional reinventions, I wrote 200+ blog posts on HaveMediaWillTravel.com. That was between 2009-2013. If you visit my HaveMediaWillTravel blog, you’ll see my last blog was in – gasp – November of 2013.
I have resolved that in 2015, I will write more. I will publish more blog posts here, and I will also return to adventure and travel writing on my HaveMediaWillTravel blog.
About a week ago, Wolf was saying, given his goal to be a writer and to finish his book, he was really disappointed in himself for not writing more. I shared that I was struggling on the same front. I referenced “The Resistance” that Steven Pressfield writes about in The War of Art. I shared the excerpt about procrastination: “Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves, ‘I’m never going to write my symphony.’ Instead we say, ‘I’m going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start it tomorrow.'”
I’m big on intentions and commitments. As a life and leadership coach, I’m always challenging my clients to develop rituals. If we want to be in the best shape of our life, we have to eat the right foods and move our bodies on a regular basis. If we want to be writers, we need to write on a regular basis. If we want to be mindful, we need to practice meditation or mindfulness on a regular basis. These all need to be practices – rituals – if we are to take our goals seriously.
I suggested to Wolf that we pull a card from Reverse Charades (a game our family occasionally plays) and we’ll write for 15 minutes about that topic. (I’m not sure Wolf is on board or not, but I’m guessing he will be – especially if there is extra popcorn or hot chocolate involved.)
The card I drew is bald eagle.
The card I drew for this week's writing topic.
When I drew the card, many memories of bald eagle sightings came to the surface of my recall. But one stands out more than the others.
In 1992, newly married to my awesome husband, Jerry, I was finishing my second year as an advertising consultant at the Missoulian daily newspaper. It was my first career job after graduating from the University of Montana Journalism school and it was a good one! But I was growing a little bored with sales and eager to cut my teeth on the other aspects of publishing.
At the time, my parents were owners or part owners of several community newspapers, including the Winner Advocate in Winner, South Dakota. At that time the newspaper was struggling. If Jerry and I wanted to make a go at it as publishers, the opportunity was ours. (Come to think of it, I have got to be one of the only persons in the world who had a great job in Missoula who chose to move out of Missoula?)
I remember my mom trying to talk us out of it. She knew how much I loved Missoula, and Winner is a lot different from Missoula. But we had made up our mind. Jerry, who’s a teacher, (in his 20th year of teaching), at the time was also eager to try his hand at operating a business.
We moved on Christmas day of 1992. It was the worst Christmas ever! I was throwing up-sick, and literally having to pull our uHaul over every 30 minutes to “get sick.”
As we left the mountains and foothills of Missoula, about 15 miles out of town, a bald eagle swooped down and flew parallel to us. It was a spectacular and unforgettable sight as the eagle stayed with us for what was a significant amount of time.
Bald eagle in flight. (Carole Robertson photo)
Seeing the eagle was a highlight of an otherwise challenging trip, what we me being so sick, and then driving in white out blizzard conditions for much of the way, and I was, as I mentioned, quite ill.
But, after 14 hours, we were finally approaching what would be our new home base, Winner. As we entered the area, a pheasant swooped in front of us.
Pheasant. (Photo by Tom Koerner/USFWS)
It was then that we realized we had traded eagles for pheasants. (There are eagles near Winner, but there are more pheasants. Winner is known for being “the pheasant hunting capital of the world.”) And, for the record, pheasants are also amazing birds. I guess I say we traded eagles for pheasants to say that, at least in our case, we traded a wonderful experience for a learning experience.
We lived in Winner for almost 2 years. It was a challenging experience and I missed the mountains, but the people were wonderful, and it was one of the greatest learning experiences I’ve ever had. Jerry and I both agree that while we wouldn’t want to do it again, we wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I’m curious: What memory or story do you think of when you think of a bald eagle? Or, when was a time when you consciously traded a preferred experience for a challenging one?
If you are looking to change your life, then I’m looking for you.
But first, a quick backstory: I’m 47 years old, and over the years, at various times, I have needed to change my life. Working with a life coach on several occasions has helped me to transform my life.
What is a life coach? That is a great question, and one that I get asked often.
Hi there.
My 7-year-old son, Finis (“Fin”), once explained, “my mom takes people up tall mountains, and also talks to people on the phone at night and makes money while doing it.” Both are true. I guide people up tall mountains when clients sign up for a guided Epic Adventure with me, and, I often have coaching calls with clients in the evening to accommodate their busy schedules, for which I am paid.
Most of all, I do help people climb tall mountains – but they are their mountains, not mine. In the last 5 years, I’ve worked with, and coached, more than 100 individuals in some capacity. I’ve worked with women, men, and leadership teams. I’ve learned a lot from the work, and the people I champion.
Epic Life Offerings...
I describe what I do this way: Someone who wants to, or has to, climb a tall mountain – i.e. make, or endure, a big change in their life – will often enlist me as a coach to help them make the climb. People hire me when they’re thinking about (metaphorically) climbing the mountain, or when they are at the base of said mountain. Often I get “called in” when they’re already en route up the mountain but they hit a particularly difficult patch and they feel they can’t go it alone. They want to stay the course, but could use some help. Rather than bailing and giving up on the climb, they hire me as their coach.
In other words, I’m not a helicopter that gets called in. I’m not in the rescue business. Rather, people hire me to help them lean in and stay and persevere through the hard part(s) of their life. I’m in the championing and “guiding” business.
I’d love to work with you, or your organization. Please check out this brochure or email me to schedule a call.
You have an Epic Life. The question is, are you living it?
We have a golden retriever named Buddy. He is such an awesome dog. He is our constant companion and a vital member of our family.
My Buddy – lying around and waiting...
Do you have a dog? If so, what is he/she doing right now? I know – what an odd question for a blog on this site. But stay with me, I’m getting to the point, and it’s a good one…
I live in Wyoming, in a small mountain town, and we get out a lot. (Our family’s rule is “if our fingernails aren’t dirty, we aren’t having fun.”) This is all to say that Buddy gets out. A. Lot.
But lately I’ve been so busy at my computer and on the phone developing my business and trying to book more clients and work, that days have gone by where Buddy doesn’t get out. When this happens, Buddy’s life is pretty mediocre. Sure, I keep him company. We’re home all day together as I work. I have great intentions… But mostly – and I’m very sad to admit this – Buddy is not paid enough attention when I’m consumed by my work.
So, Buddy moves around from couch to recliner to the floor, just laying there, waiting, and hoping that his master will get her hiking shoes on and motion for him to leave the house to go out and… live.
Seeing Buddy lay there, waiting to be tended to and played with, reminds me of my Epic Life – the times when it’s with me, but I’m not living it. I hope you’re doing better than I am this week! I resolve to do better by Buddy (and my epic life) next week…
Thank you for listening. I would love to hear your thoughts and get some comments and conversation going about this. 🙂
P.S. If you’re interested in life and leadership coaching, a keynote presenter to light a fire for your team or organization, leadership development facilitation, or a guided Epic adventure that’s bundled with life coaching and a training program that will get you in the best shape of your life, please check out this brochure or email me to schedule a call.
