I was talking to my husband recently about his horse training day and he described a time when he and his partner had several horses racing.  The endless hours of training and aftercare, meticulous feed schedules, wraps, cleaning, and high-quality feed.  He said there was almost no time for sleep, but all the horses were doing well in races.  He said people then started to comment on how lucky he and his partner were, to which his training partner said we work extremely hard at being lucky.  Of course, there is such a thing as luck, when the weather or the presence of someone important or a coincidental occurrence happens, and these things bring about a chance occurrence.  However, I think there is also, as was stated in the story, a lot of work that can be part of what sometimes seems to be luck.  A lucky break in a challenge can usually be mostly attributed to the hard work and planning done to researching and dissecting the contributing factors.  A lucky promotion or job offer has a lot to do with the experiences and education that a person has taken advantage of along the way.   Even winning the lottery, which is actually mostly luck, requires buying a ticket at least.  Maybe our complicated lives are very different from horse racing, but one timeless truth holds, winning, at almost anything, usually happens in the unseen hours of training, care, work and planning, not just those moments of victory.  Work hard to be lucky and you just might find luck works hard to find you.

I got the chance to visit Nashville a few weeks ago and it was a tremendous trip of fun with friends.  Of course, we had to visit the Grand Ole Opry and we were delighted by a line up of country singers.  The day before we have visited the Country Music Hall of Fame and that morning we visited the Ryman theatre, so we had some history fresh in our minds.  Whispering Bill Anderson features large in that history, he has been recording since 1957, a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1961, he is 87 years old.  It was like seeing our historic tours come to life on stage.  We saw five musical acts that night.  Bill Anderson sang three songs, and although his musicality and talent was apparent, it was not a strong performance, in fact probably the most lack lustre of the night.  However, only one act got a standing ovation and that was, you guessed it – Bill Anderson.  None of the 3000 plus people in the Opry really cared that his voice has weakened over time, they were applauding his long-term career, his indomitable song writing prowess and all that he is to Country Music History.  I read a book recently that said if you work hard in your early career there will come a time of harvesting and guiding in your later years.  There is no question that the seeds Bill Anderson planted in all these decades have led to a gentle present where he is deeply appreciated.  It is a great goal for all of us.  Age might slow us down, especially at 87 but all that we learned, created, shared and loved in our lifetime up to that will be applauded, Lets get planting and guitar plucking.

I have had the pleasure this week of having lunch on a patio twice, and both times the people I was with remarked that it is such a short time here in our part of Ontario when you can enjoy the patio, we should make the most of it.  It is a commonly understood sentiment that the good weather passes so quickly that we need to embrace it with both hands.  In both cases the atmosphere was perfect, warm sun and a little breeze with an umbrella for shade.  We were able to make that determination because we all know the weather patterns and the rhythm of the year.  I got to thinking though, how often we don’t know what is next, that we can’t say that this could be time limited and therefore we should make the most of it,  in lots of cases, we take much for granted.  Things do wind down to an end, seasons change, people change jobs,  move away, change priorities or sometimes people pass away from our lives.  There is in fact a temporariness to so much, almost all our decisions could be made with a patio rationale.  We should enjoy this now, we may not pass this way again.   Sometimes we talk about the fear of missing out that can make us overextend ourselves, which is true we need to be careful about our time and energy.  I think also though, there are times when we need to engage the patio thinking, yes there is a climate controlled, bug free option, but the chance to enjoy outside is only here for a limited time.  Its all only here for a limited time, lets make choices accordingly, bugs and all.

I had a terrible experience driving to work, I looked north and the lane was clear far into the distance, I looked south and there was a long string of cars heading north.  I turned onto the highway just as a car in the long string moved out to pass. I was 2 metres away from a head on collision and I do not remember engaging my brain or deciding what to do next, I instantly turned onto the shoulder and avoided the crash. It was two weeks ago and I still get shaken to remember it. The thing that I think about is how I did not plan, did not analyze my options, did not even form a thought, I just acted. In this case it probably saved my life. The reflection here also is how much of our experiences and reactions are we controlling and how much do we just automatically react to. Our brain is a wondrous machine that is wired for survival, and we have these responses engrained in our brain that we can draw on in danger- that is a good thing. I think there are many times we have to have a second look, to truly see what we are facing, to challenge our engrained responses and check our bias. We have to move past the auto response to a thought out response that is based on fact more than survival mode thinking. However, like my morning highway entrance, thank heavens we have our well worn response mechanisms- our life can depend on it.

I was part of a panel discussion about leadership and one of the other panelists said that if you can do your job in your sleep, it is probably time to move on.  That you need to stay excited and challenged and just a little stressed to be effective.  I am not sure how I feel about this statement.  I think there are lots of things that we can do with our eyes closed, that is so much in our wheelhouse, that we have done a thousand times.  Does it mean that we are no longer effective?  I think I know what this other leader was saying that there is a thin wedge about stress and that too little is also a detriment, that we need to be motivated and interested and excited to make innovative things happen.  I guess what I am not sure about is whether we need to move on.  I think that if we start to feel like we are in auto pilot mode, there is always something to do to stretch our muscles and gray cells.  A new project, a great idea, something creative, a new skill to learn.  I think that while she indicated that we would need to move on, what I can get behind is the idea that this is up to each of us.  Bored, uninterested, feeling uninspired, we need to call it out for ourselves, name it and devise a plan to move past it and seek the challenge that we need.  The trick here is to know that adding something new, a new challenge will require the stopping of something else as our time and attention resources are not endless.  We may need to move on from some part of our routine or tasks to make room for the new.   I went to a session a few weeks ago that said “ What blows your hair back?” a great phrase for defining what excites you and fills your tank.  Keep a close eye on your feelings about what you are doing, adjust your attention and activities accordingly and find the sweet spot of just enough challenge to blow your hair back so that you can keep on filling your tank with great adventures.

In my volunteer role I help to manage a website that has an info email.  I have the password and username, but I have to admit that there is only ever junk mail there, so I am highly irregular in checking it.  Every time I set my mind to logging on, I have trouble, I follow the instructions, something is not valid, wrong user ID.  I inevitably have to reach out to the web designer, who is ever patient and resets things for me.  And after all that I only find junk mail and spam in the inbox.  So, I have to admit with all this hassle, I had left it for over a year.  I thought of it this past week, went through the usual hassles, and got logged on – 187 messages wanting to sell me web design, marketing, offshore inheritances, and misdirected package deliveries.  However, right in the middle, a real message, a real person that was unhappy about the state of something and asked for an answer last November.  I felt my heart sink, it is my job alone to check these emails and I had let this person down.  How do you send a note saying, hi I got your message when it is six months later?  As it is my fault, I must take ownership and fix it and the only way to do that is to reach out and admit my mistake.  We all I think feel a mistake keenly and it is so much easier to navigate when there is shared responsibility, when we can commiserate, and talk it through, work on the solution with others.  I guess that is one of the strengths of teamwork, shared responsibility when things have gone wrong.  Sometimes though in our roles and goals the responsibility is solely ours and we then have to work it out, we can lean on the expertise of others, but the action steps and responsibility taking is ours. No way around it only through.  The great comfort, I guess is knowing that we all have been there.  Maybe there will be no way to mend this fence in my volunteer role, but I know it is mine to repair.

My daughter woke up in the night and could not see her digital clock.  She assumed that the power was out until she turned and could see the tiny lights on her phone and laptop.  She then, probably as it was the middle of the night, went into a bit of a panic that she had somehow lost part of her sight since she could not see the glowing blue numbers that usually cast the time across the room from her dresser.  Her heart beating in the dark, she tried to scan how she felt, tried to look at other things, her mind just a jumble of panicked thoughts.  Then our cat Jynx jumped down from her dresser to the floor and she could instantly see her clock in the dark room.  In her defence our cat is black and was clearly still and quiet in these few minutes.  Made me think about the old saying that you find what you are looking for, or in this case you find it after the cat moves. If you set out to have a good day, there is a good chance you will.  If you tell yourself day after day that you are overwhelmed, exhausted and bottomed out, there is a good chance what you are looking for to back that up, you will find.  Except my story here involved a cute cat that completely blocked out what was expected.  Does that happen too?  When we decide what we are looking at is a certain way, or jump to conclusion, do we also look for what is getting in our way?  What old patterns, rotating worries, habits and bias might be blocking our view of the full picture.  It takes a degree of curiosity and patience to make sure that your vision is not blocked, or that you are not blocking out that which does not reinforce your preconception.   A cat blocking the time in the middle of the night caused a cascade of worry.  Maybe when we get really sure about where we are, what we must do or how we feel about a person or situation, we could take another few moments to make sure that there is nothing more we could see if we widened the glance, moved any blockages or called out the cat that was in our way.  There may be more to do to unblock the view to the next step that moves us to a bright light in the dark.

I recently went on a group wine tour, at the lunch stop the winery server began to describe that there were a few lunch orders that needed to change, and she was looking for anyone who pre-ordered the fish.  I sat quietly and knew that I had not put in any lunch order.  My mind immediately decided that like lots of details I had missed this instruction, and then I wondered what I was about to get for lunch.  It did not cross my mind that the server was mixed up, in the millisecond after she announced preordered lunch, I just knew I made a mistake. That is until everyone started to squirm in their seats and finally a brave soul shouted out that none of us had pre-ordered lunch. To which the server responded, oh that explains a lot- burgers for everyone. Of course, we all laughed but there is a lot to think about here.  First that all of us for a time thought we had made a mistake in not ordering until one person spoke up and put us all at ease.  Second, that because we were not offered that process, we all got the same thing for lunch. Lunch by design would have involved options ahead, a decision of what we wanted and then some kind of system to identify ourselves in the crowded barn like winery building to get what we ordered.  Sometimes we get a chance to design the next step, to decide on a reboot and we can look carefully at what we like and don’t in our current situation.  What do we own, what can we change and what is the impact on others. Other times we just have to move ahead and take a leap and get what we get, in those circumstances custom lunch may come later, but for now burgers for everyone.

My dad’s cousin has a long drive, massive patio and winding walkway all around his property and all is done in concrete.  As the story goes the person that had the property before was a cement truck driver.  And, as I have come to learn, there are times when there is a bit left in a load that must be removed so the truck can be cleaned out- to stop any cement hardening in the drum.  The person with the property, built forms ahead and any time there was extra, he used the resource and his skill to expand the areas of his property.  The deal here is that he was never sure when there may be extra to off load, he just knew that if he was ready and had the frames built for wherever he was designing more concrete, he would be ready.   One can imagine that sometimes those forms waited weeks or months, and sometimes they would be used in quick succession.  It gets me thinking about how we need to think about a similar process in our day to day.  Somehow, we have to make enough space or have enough time or a level of readiness for what might come our way.  That we cannot always know when an opportunity or new insight could arise but that if we frame our lives in a way that we can pay attention, or that we have built some tools to take advantage of the opportunity, then when it arrives, we can jump to action and build.  Build our experience, add to our knowledge, create a new path or innovate.  The key is the readiness without any knowledge of the timing.  A state of open readiness that will form the foundation on which to build whenever the opportunity presents itself. 

I had the privilege of hearing Jimmy Chapman speak about his collection of artifacts and stories from the two world wars this past week. And while I have spent time with veterans that I have been close to from the WW2 and have some knowledge about the wars. I was completely impressed and engrossed in his talk. It wasn’t a big pile of facts; it was an interwoven presentation of stories. He spoke a lot to his process, that if invited he simply listens, he offers no commentary or judgement. He said again and again that he could understand at least the complexity of war time and it was not his place to decide what was right or wrong in that time. He was also an excellent presenter in that he focused on the human faces of the conflict, of all nationalities and sides. Speaking both with pride in his own grandfather’s tour as a bomber, but acknowledging the lives lost due to those efforts. I love history, but I guess this talk helped me crystalize that while I love me a good old butter churn or pump organ what I really love is the human experience, the stories and the imprints of the lives that interacted with these items of the past. Seek a story today, connect with another person and just listen to what they have to share about their particular journey on this earth. It is a privilege to get to know each.