I am not a creative person. I do not have a creative bone in my body.

These are statements I make to others about myself and also ones the little voice inside my head repeats frequently. After listening to a webinar at an HR Summit recently I learned a new way of thinking about creativity. The speaker talked about different dimensions of creativity and different skills within each of those dimensions. I perked up when they talked about being creative included being good at the selection of the right idea to implement from a list of many ideas. I grinned at the notion that creativity included being good at executing ideas and bringing ideas to life. I nodded  when they described the creativity required to take another person’s idea and use it in a new and innovative way. I laughed out loud when they said the creativity is also demonstrated when you are problem solving through multi-variant complex issues.

I am a really creative person. I was born with lots of creative abilities that I utilise every day. I am just not a traditionally defined creative person. My creativity comes out through the projects I manage and the project management skills that are utilised every day as a solo parent.

Recently The Toad asked me to do something that placed me way outside my comfort zone. I took a big deep breath and asked him to sit down with me for a “grown up conversation.” The Toad understands when I say this I am asking that he bring his most mature, most thoughtful brain to the table and that in turn I will treat him as far beyond his years in giving him honest and candid information. I explained why what he was asking me to do was very difficult and personally felt very risky and frightening to me. He was very thoughtful and empathetic but he also reminded me of the many times I had encouraged him to take baby steps from where he felt safe/secure and the many times he had done that and realised the reward of the great feeling of pride and accomplishment afterwards. I agreed to give it a try and I worked out with him a couple of strategies to get me over any bumps and had an escape plan if needed. We were both clear I would do my very best but that if I gave the signal we would be leaving the situation and there would be no negotiation and no questions asked.

I managed through the situation (with a little support) and was pleased with myself and my performance. I was most pleased however that The Toad has internalised enough of my coaching to help himself and others and that together we can manage anything.

My sister and her husband welcomed a new dog into their world 3 months ago. Dennis is almost 2 years old but was raised  in a kennel/farm/breeder type of environment so never learned about stairs or car rides or household noises like washing machines or TV’s. Dennis also never learned some of the basic commands like sit or come. My sister describes their world as training a puppy who is fully grown! This means some of the normal training techniques, such as gently pushing on their back end as you say “Sit” or picking them up and removing them from the couch saying “OFF!” don’t work and have to be adapted. (Dennis weighs 48 lbs).

This week I invested in a new Chromebook to help me run Tree Toad. I like to think I am a fairly techno-savvy individual but having this new laptop and having to learn a different way of using the track-pad and using google docs and transferring over files has made me feel like an old dog trying to learn new tricks. Everything I try to do is slow and cumbersome and I will admit there were a few times I have been completely stumped even after using the help features. (and yes I have thought of pitching the damn thing out the door on more than one occasion). What I have learned in the last few days is that I learn differently than I used to - it takes me a couple of read-throughs of the steps or in some cases I need to read each step as I complete it. I also recognize that my capacity to learn is different in the morning vs. at night and that I am not at my best if I am feeling a time crunch to learn something new.

The moral of these stories - you have to learn the basics first, sometimes you have to go slow to go faster and lots of loving kindness through any learning goes a very long way.

The definition of currency is “the fact or quality of being generally accepted or in use”.

In ancient times currency took many different forms (for example salt, shells and bamboo) and in early days the First People of our land used whale’s teeth, fur pelts and wampum as currency. In today’s world the almighty dollar is what we chase however I think there are other forms of currency being valued in our world.

I know an organization where the currency is emails. Before meetings and after vacations there is always talk of how many emails you receive in a day, how full your inbox is and how many emails you came back to after your vacation. The more emails and the larger your inbox, the more important you appear and the more deference you are given. No one asks how many emails were relevant or required follow-up.

Another organization I know trades in face time or bum-in-seat currency. If you are in early and stay late clocking hours at your desk your value rises. There is no mention of ineffectiveness or time spent staring at the screen or reading the news. Remember the guy who left his desk staged to make everyone believe he was working but did not actually go to work for 6 years! http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/man-skipped-work-for-6-years_us_56c1d32ae4b0b40245c72512

In my Momma world the currency is kids and extra-curricular activities. If you are ferrying  kid(s) between multiple events, eating in the car in between activities and only cross path with your partner (if you have one) on a Saturday to exchange gear then you are looked at as extraordinary and given both sympathy and kudos.

My friends and I had a conversation a few weeks ago about work/life balance. When asked to name people we knew that did a good job of keeping that balance the three of us were hard pressed to identify three names. I can tell you my name was not on the list. For the record I don’t think I am the worst at keeping my life balanced but that is more a credit to Toad and not really my doing.

Take a look around you. Listen to the words that are used. What currency is driving your world? 

In his 2018 TED Talk How to Speak up for yourself, Adam Galinsky asked the attendees to use their finger to draw an imaginary E on their foreheads. Whether the E was correctly oriented for someone you are speaking with or correctly oriented for you to see demonstrates perspective taking. Galinsky uses this activity as he speaks about using perspective taking to lower your risk when speaking up. By taking others perspectives you are more likely to learn, to be heard and to have your idea or request accepted.

The other tools that Galinsky highlights to lower your risk when speaking up and having your position valued include:

• Advocating for others
• flexibility by offering options/choices
• Having allies (allies can be developed by asking someone for advice)
• Showing your expertise and having solid evidence

Recently I heard a speaker challenge his audience to go out in the world and conduct an experiment. The experiment directions are simple – Sit down with someone and ask them about their passions are. Watch closely what happens to the person – their eyes, facial expression, posture, gestures and tone of voice. Take note too of all these things in yourself. Give it a try!

Marc Effron, author of 8 Steps to High Performance, outlined the use of 2x2 coaching to foster top performance in your people.

This methodology suggests that you make 2 comments about someone’s goals and then follow your comments with 2 feed-forward comments. Feed -forward comments are future focused suggestions for changing behaviours, tactics or strategies that a person might consider using in situations going forward. Unlike feedback which criticizes past performance and is often lost in defensive posturing, feed forward comments challenge the person to be even better and improve on their performance in the future.

Coming from a small agricultural town I am well aware of the term rumination. It refers to the process of cows chewing their cud – a digestive process whereby the cow chews, swallows and regurgitates their food over and over (six times to be exact) before they can digest their meal. Now apply this repeated process to your thought or emotional processing and you get the idea rumination plays in feeding your stress.

In the article, “Wake Up! The Surprising Truth about What Drives Stress and How Leaders Build Resilience”, Nick Petrie identifies a 4 step process to reduce ruminating habits to help alleviate our natural stress responses that are triggered by reliving a negative experience or emotion over and over again.

Petrie’s 4 steps are:

1. Wake up (and stay awake) – recognize that rumination is an issue
2. Control your attention – be present to now and not in the past or the future where rumination sites
3. Detach – get some distance and perspective on the issue
4. Let go – take the learning from the situation and move forward

Easier said than done but with time these skills can be honed and practiced to help replace the habit of rumination.

I was very interested to listen to author Christopher Avery (The Responsibility Process) in a recent podcast explaining that when you feel obligated in a situation you are abdicating all of your own choice, power, and responsibility.  Being 100% responsible means understanding that everything in your life is your design and choosing. He is very clear to say that there are things like natural disasters or personal violence that happens that is not a person’s fault but that they do have responsibility for what they do with the situation going forward. It is a little hard to wrap your mind around the extreme examples but relatively simple to utilize this concept on the more mundane aspects of life.

Avery’s suggestion is to notice your language. When you say (or think) “I should..” or “I have to…” you are in an obligated state. The goal is to catch yourself as early as possible as you are entering the state of obligation and either make a different choice or reframe the situation to find your responsibility. He suggests changing “I have to…” to “I get to….”.  I caught myself saying to the Toad one day – “I can’t play with you right now I have to work!” After I uttered those words I thought about what that message says to a young person – work is more important than you, work is a punishment you must endure, Momma is being oppressed by someone and has no power. The next time the Toad came to ask me to play I pulled him down beside me and showed him what I was working on. I told him that I am working with some great people on a big change and I wanted to finish this piece of work so I didn’t lose my creative thought. I told him about my role on the team and that people were counting on me to do my part and that in 15 minutes I would be able to take a break a play with him for a while. We both left that exchange with a very different demeanor and outlook than the original one.

The book is definitely on my reading list – even though the author warns that once you practice the responsibility model it will change what you are willing to accept from yourself and others.

As I watched the Toad at his Atom hockey evaluation game, I thought about how many times kids get to start again. They start again in a new class, they start again with each new season of sports, and they might start again in a new school or in a new childcare setting. It made me wonder when the last time I started again.

As I pondered my examples of starting again I realized that as an adult not only are the opportunities to start again far less but the circumstances of starting over are often precipitated by a difficult ending. As a kid starting again in a new grade is a positive milestone – very different than starting again after the end of a relationship or being fired from a job.

The Toad is an introvert like his Momma so starting over with new people and new settings are pretty stressful. Watching him, I realized that the skill and comfort of starting again are like a muscle – if you don’t use it you lose it. This “muscle” is also a core feature of resilience, a life skill that is invaluable as you ride the highs and lows of life’s journey.

Over a cup of tea this week, I plan to inventory my world and look for a positive place to flex my start again muscle. Is there somewhere you can start again?