The Challenge Of Change
Maverick: Chapter 27
After I left YMS, Emma and I had spent a month in Mexico. I spent vacation mornings in one of our hotel’s yellow and blue Adirondack chairs, the sandy beach in front of our Mazatlan hotel at my feet. I pored over leadership and self-mastery books until lunch, making copious made notes. Afternoons, I read over my notes, then read a mystery or detective novel. Each morning and late afternoon, I would walk the long beach to the point and back, contemplating pushing a new boulder up the most formidable mountain I had tackled.
Still, I breathed easier than I had before embarking on previous Sisyphean ventures. I felt free from constricting, hypocritical institutions; free to focus on what I wanted to create on my own.
I knew I didn’t have all the skills I needed to be a Free Lance entrepreneur — yet.
But I had enough, as John would have urged, to “Just start.”
On our return to Canmore, I outfitted the large bedroom in our Hospital Hill house as my office. I printed business cards for “Bruce Elkin: Camp Consultant,” then sent them along with a beige, 2-fold promo, flier to Alberta-based camps, and youth organizations — Y’s, Boys and Girls Clubs, Scouts, Guides, 4-H, and religious groups. After six weeks and zero interest, I printed new cards and materials for “Elkin Associates: Leadership Consultants.”
I mailed the new brochure to the same provincial organizations and to Canmore and Banff businesses, organizations, and friends. My heart beat faster as I left the post office. But I almost skipped down Main Street, heading home.
I received responses from several groups who said they would keep me in mind as a potential conference presenter. But none asked about consulting or staff workshops. Feelings of dread nudged aside my excitement and positivity. My chest tightened as I imagined worst-case scenarios — and what they might mean for my Free-Lance future.
Then, one night, in Ziggy’s bar, an acquaintance took a business card. She smiled, said, “The Banff Chamber of Commerce is looking for a consultant to do a staff housing survey.” She sipped her gin and tonic; smiled again. “You should apply.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll look into it.”
The Banff Chamber and Canada Employment sought ideas for reducing staff turnover in the local tourist industry. I had done nothing like what they wanted. But I submitted a proposal, thinking “what the hey?”
My dark cloud of dread dissipated. My chest muscles relaxed and my breathing smoothed with renewed, though tentative hope for a new venture. And income. But night time fears of the opposite outcomes made sleep difficult.
A week later, I got a phone call informing me I was one of three candidates under consideration. Three days later, I presented my approach to committee members in a Banff Centre conference room. My body tingled with the adrenaline triggered by imagining both positive and negative outcomes. I had slept more fitfully than usual the night before.
The following morning, Committee Chair, Peter Green, current head of Banff Centre’s School of Management, called me to his office in one of the Centre’s hillside chalets.
I perched on the edge of a wooden visitor’s chair while Peter flipped through my proposal. I forced myself not to chew on the fists I kept clasped in my lap. When he looked up, his face showed a mix of emotions.
“You got the contract,” he said. “I voted against you because you lack experience. I will, however, help in any way I can. You have 30 days to complete the survey and present recommendations. I expect the highest quality work.”
I left his office, swallowing to moisten my dry mouth.
I drove home to Canmore, tapping my fingers to Eagles’ hits and Linda Ronstadt’s “Willin’” on my steering wheel. I felt lighter than I had during the last two months, though my gut tightened when thought about Peter’s 30-day deadline.
I took me a week to design a questionnaire and get feedback on it. I administered it to 54 individuals, comprising a cross-section of Banff employers and employees. Follow-up interviews with 31 of them took longer than I’d expected. So, I asked Peter for an extension.
“Your contract says 30 days,” he said. “Welcome to the business world, Bruce.”
The week before the report was due, I put in 18 hours each day. I scoffed cheddar cheese chunks and an apple for breakfast and lunch, and microwaved canned soup dinner. Then, at 9 am on April 15 — almost dead on my feet from the trying month and a final all-nighter to write up my report and a “summary of recommendations,” then print, photocopy, and collate them both — I presented myBanff Human Resources Plan to the committee.
I drove home chewing a knuckle and trying to ignore the churning in my gut, hoping for a much-needed nap. Mid-afternoon, a phone call woke me.
“Congratulations,” said Peter. “The committee unanimously accepted your report . I apologize if I misjudged you. Excellent work.”
*
While in Banff, I often lunched with John Amatt. He had done PR for the 1982 Canadian Mount Everest Expedition that put the first Canadians on the summit — then parlayed that experience and into a lucrative career as a speaker and conference presenter.
“We should team up,” he said to me over gourmet burgers in the Rose and Crown pub. “I’d do my slideshow and talk. You’d follow up with ways to apply its lessons in organizations and businesses. What do you think?”
“I’m game,” I said, dipping a French fry in mayonnaise as my stomach quivered.
John and I did three gigs. He was a hit at each. Our first gig, with Manitoba Electric Utility, went well for both of us. The other two? Not so well. My book-learned leadership and organization developmental theories failed to engage participants. After the third presentation, we decided John should go back to doing presentations on his own.
“I still think you have a lot to offer,” he said. “Maybe there will be other opportunities for us to work together.”
I appreciated John’s faith in me, but that dark cloud of dread settled over me again.
I shifted my focus to “Personal Consulting.” Working out of my office, I helped local folk clarify what they wanted in their lives and work, and make plans. I posted fliers and bought a 3-line ad in the local classifieds. I didn’t experience an avalanche of interest, but the trickle I got led to interesting work.
An RCMP member who had fallen out of love with the force sought help to set up a landscaping business — Lawn Order.
I helped a married couple strategize a business plan and create a professional-looking brochure for the wilderness lodge they owned and ran.
I used my Active Listening skills to help a woman decide whether to marry a man she wasn’t sure she loved or move to Jasper. I knew I’d helped her when I received a “Thank You!” card from the northern Park.
Others came to me for help designing and writing resumes.
Personal Consulting income almost covered my monthly expenses. I still craved work that arced my crooked path towards more heart. But, other than a vague feeling, I couldn’t pinpoint what constituted ‘heart?’ What would give me what I most wanted?
*
One morning, over coffee and a date square at Martha’s Muffins coffeeshop, I scanned the notes I’d made in Mazatlan. In them, I found a list of three needs and six actions a psychologist suggested you have to give up if you aspire to be happy.
The list included needs for approval, to impress people, and to be right all the time.
The actions: dwelling on the past, resisting change, holding limiting beliefs, negative self-talk, blaming others, and complaining.
I didn’t dwell on the past. I tried to embrace change. I worked to catch negative self-talk and change nutty beliefs to more rational ones. But in low moments, I complained, blamed others, and sought affirmation from people I considered superior to me.
I also feared I had an unhealthy — prickly? — need to be right.
I also realized I had spent little time and effort clarifying and envisioning success in my life, work, and relationships — other than being able to create and run my own workshops.
But what workshops? Where? When? How?
*
During the spring of 1986 — as a member of the Canadian Everest Light Expedition — Sharon Wood had become the first North American woman to summit the world’s highest peak. She and Dwayne Congdon had fought their way up the final, most difficult stage of the climb and stood on the summit as the sun set.
On her return from Everest, Sharon, too, embarked on a speaking career. Whereas John was outgoing, a natural crowd pleaser, Sharon was shy about sharing her success. She asked me to accompany her to three or four talks in Banff and Calgary. After each, we debriefed. I helped her refine their content and her speaking style.
Sharon was the first person to call me “Coach.”
After several months of working together, we created one- and two-day Climb Your Own Everest workshops based on her presentation and my hopefully improved ‘leadership’ inputs. We ran our first session in the Palliser Hotel in Calgary.
Audiences loved Sharon’s story and slides. My sessions grabbed participants who came for personal reasons. It fell short for those seeking career organizational skills.
During a morning break, a woman asked me not to jiggle the change in my pocket while I spoke.
“Oh! Sorry,” I said. “Too distracting?”
“Yes. But, mostly, it reminds me of my father who jingled change when his anger built and I feared I’d be the target of it.”
I apologized. And never carried change in workshop slacks again.
A telephone company hired Sharon and I to present a half-day session at a company retreat at Jasper Park Lodge. Again, Sharon wowed them. But, as introduced my approach, a couple in the front row got up and walked out.
My face flushed. My hands shook. I locked my jaw and held my breath as I stared at their backs until they exited the back doors.
Onlookers watched, too, and shot glances at me. Some looked as if they felt sorry for me; others seemed to challenge me. Shaken, I carried on, and finished with no more walk outs.
Later, the company’s feedback showed most employees had found my ideas and approach interesting,and personally useful, but they’d failed to see how to apply them in their jobs.
I lost energy, chewed a knuckle raw, and drank more beer. I struggled not to complain or blame others, and worked on negative self-talk in my ABCs journal. I wanted to help people and, I confess, to be revered as a top-notch workshop leader.
But I realized not even I saw the practical applications of my approach to organizations.
I kept doing the workshops, but focused more on personal consulting.
*
On a flight to Montreal to present a three hour “Climb Your Own Everest” mini-workshop at a conference of Big Six accounting firms, Sharon and I luxuriated in our comfy First-Class seats and flight attendants’ friendly attention.
Somewhere over the Great Lakes, Sharon turned to me and said, “So, why didn’t we ever mess around?”
“What?” I said, jerking back. “Was that ever a possibility?”
“Remember when brought the six-pack of Heineken to your duplex?”
“Yeah?”
“That wasn’t just for a friendly chat, dummy. It was an invitation.”
Damn! Locked into my pathetic “no friends” complaints, I’d missed it.
*
In Montreal, conference organizers had scheduled my session before Sharon’s talk, and wouldn’t change it. So, in my three-hour morning session, I explained the mix-up to session participants, then tried to paraphrase Sharon’s Everest story and connect it to leadership lessons.
Six smirking Human Resources guys sat at the back of the room and heckled. Flustered, I struggled to keep my anger under control and the workshop on point.
At one point, I removed my sport coat, rolled up my shirt sleeves, then walked down the aisle toward the hecklers, thinking of my second day at Springbank High School, when I had confronted John about taking his boots off the bookcase.
Quietly, but with my voice shaking, I said, “Look, you guys. I’m trying to make the best of difficult situation here. If you’re not diggin’ it, just leave!”
They shut up for the rest of the morning.
After the session, most participants rated my session as good or very good.
“In every workshop we attend,” a woman told me, “those same men act like know-it-all buffoons; it wasn’t your fault. I enjoyed your talk.”
Still, my heart raced, and my muscles twitched with angry bursts of adrenalin. So much so I could not watch Sharon’s post-lunch presentation. I ducked out of the hall, then went for a walk and a think up in Mount Royal Park.
Looking out over downtown Montreal, I realized it wasn’t just the HR hecklers getting to me. I am NOT climbing my own Everest!
I left the conference early and flew back to Calgary, determined to focus on providing excellent, helpful ‘coaching’ to individuals.
To top up my income, I helped Ken Low develop an Action Studies “Freedom Skills” program. I focused on the skill of “creativity,” but struggled to explain its underlying principles.
Then, one day, I walked by a Calgary bookstore window featuring a pyramid of grey-covered books titled The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz. The title put off the climber in me, but the sub-title — Principles For Creating What You Want To Create — grabbed me.
“Could this be what I’m looking for?”
I bought a copy of the book and read the Introduction and first 66 pages in the coffee shop next door. Not since reading Acclimatization had I been so jazzed about ideas.
“Unseen structures underlie and influence all lives and acts of creation,” Fritz wrote.
He explained structure refers to the way pieces and parts of a whole are connected. A box of bicycle parts can include all necessary components. But, unless you arrange — i.e. structure — them in a proper relationship, you won’t create a rideable bike.
The same principle, Fritz claimed, underlies our lives and creative efforts.
We can have the bits and pieces we need to create results, yet will not bring them into being if we don’t connect them properly. For example, action for many focuses on problems and solutions. Trying to get rid of relief from what they don’t like and don’t want.
Fritz argued that action should be driven by a clear vision of a desired result. Solving problems can be one action in the creating process, but should not drive it.
“Once a structure exists,” Fritz wrote, “energy moves through that structure by the path of least resistance. In other words, energy moves where it is easiest to go.”
Water in streams and electricity in wires all take the path of least resistance. Even climbers on a hard route seek the easiest way up that route.
Fritz stressed three insights:
• We all go through life taking the path of least resistance
• The underlying structure determines the path of least resistance
• We can learn to recognize the structures in play in our lives and change them so that we can create what we really want to create, in life, work, relationships.
I sent for a Technologies For Creating (TFC)@ home study course. It came with cassette tapes and worksheets to help me set up and apply “structural tension.”
I learned tension can mean ‘a tendency to move.’ It can be energizing.
Stretch a thick elastic band with one arm locked above your head and the other loose in front of you. The tension in the band will pull your lower hand upward.
Holding a clear vision of a desired result in mind together with an objective assessment of its relevant current reality generates tension that energizes action — even when motivation fades or fails!
Except for Earthways, I realized had not held clear visions of results I’d wanted to create. Success is a concept, not a vision. As is Free Lance Entrepreneur.
Using the self-study course, I practiced clarifying and envisioning what mattered most, then setting up the creative tension to empower my actions. Fritz’s approach helped me simplify and improve almost everything I did: fitness, finances, health, time management, business, writing, skiing and climbing.
So, I took a TFC Instructor Training course with Fritz in Seattle. In the fall, I attended his Advanced Instructor course in Boston. Three weeks later, I took a five-day Organizational Leadership and Mastery[1] course strongly influenced by Fritz’s approach.
The courses gave me insights and approaches I had lacked in workshops with John and Sharon. More importantly, they gave me practical skills with which to create results, and help others do so, too.
I learned, too, I had often forced results — fought against the path of least resistance. No wonder I had sometimes felt I plodded up my existential mountains shouldereding a pack filled with 70-pounds of rocks.
Applying Fritz's approach, I lost the rocks.
I ended my tumultuous relationship with Maureen, sold my part in our house, and moved to Calgary, seeking a larger pool of personal and organizational coaching clients.
*
I bought a 2-bedroom, shingle-sided cottage in the Killarney district. John cosigned for my mortgage. I used the cottage’s front living room as a reception area. The first bedroom became my office. At the rear of the cottage, through a kitchen, a sunken, well-lit, white plaster and birchwood addition — doubled as living room and workshop space. Off the kitchen, a wood-lined den featured an open fireplace with built-in bookcases on either side, and just enough room for two armchairs in front of it.
That September, I sent out fliers advertising a five-week “Creating What Matters Most” course to 200 Calgary friends, acquaintances, and colleagues, inviting them to a ‘Free Intro’ night.
Eighty-five percent would attend Free Intro nights that year. Ninety individuals took my five week, one-night-a week course. Two dozen opted for follow-up coaching.
Instead of talk-heavy approaches, I coached clients like I had coached skiers and novice climbers.
First, I helped them learn basic skills — vision, current reality, and creative tension — and use them to create small but non-trivial results.
An herb garden. A birdhouse. A first time Leggo model. I did it’s.
Many were pleasantly shocked when focusing on creating a clean well organized closet or basement or garage generated not only the much desired result but a solid sense of their own power to create what mattered — and how to do so.
Next, I helped them use their new skills and structure to envision and stretch for more important results. Fitness, new careers, home businesses, healthy marriages, and works of art, music, writing ….
As their competence and confidence grew, client’s problems began to dissolve.
Shifting from a problem driven ‘quitting smoking’ approach to envisioning themselves as ‘a healthy, fit non-smoker’ worked where other approaches had failed.
Focusing on creating ‘a toned, healthy beach body’ produced better results than ‘lose 20 ugly pounds.’
Shifting from problem-driven to vision-driven approaches empowered clients to make changes they had only longed for before. Even some they had thought impossible.
Psychologist Carl Jung, wrote, “…the greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. …. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.”[2] Describing patients, he said, “This outgrowth … required a new level of consciousness. … It was not solved logically in its own terms but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.”
Fritz showed the urge to create could be a prime mover in people’s lives.
Using his and Ken’s action skills, I helped clients engage that urge and showed them how to use the skills to make visions a reality.
*
I knew I was not an original thinker like Ken, Steve, or Robert.
But I was an excellent adopter; a creative adapter. Over time, I braided theirs and other’s thoughts and approaches into my unique way to help people increase personal mastery, manage experience, and create what mattered most to them.
At the same time as I launched my Calgary coaching business, I collaborated with John Amatt and Dwayne Congdon to create The Challenge Of Change — a series of mountain retreats for executive teams.
John provided the initial cash outlay and clerical help.
Dwayne organized outdoor challenges and supervised guides. (He made me promise to interact with them only through him — especially if he hired Chris Miller). His mountain skills and experience — and pleasing personality — engaged clients who relished being in the presence of an Everest summiteer.
I developed the content and took the lead in workshops. Together with Gerda and Urs Kallen, I created a magazine style brochure the President of Wang Computers told me was, “the best that’s come across my desk.”
Dwayne and I ran four 5-day programs for bank managers, stockbrokers, realtors, and executives of an international training institute. Three retreats took place in Rudi Kranabitter’s Engadine Lodge in the Spray Valley. All included hiking, bouldering, rock climbing, and using creating and experience-management skills to embrace and rise to challenges.
The broker’s program also included an 18-hour overnight solo, beginning in the afternoon and ending the next morning.
After Dwayne and I got the participants set up for their solo near Chester Lake, above the Spray Valley, he and I set up our tent at the back of the meadow above their sites.
When I realized I had forgotten the oranges to break soloists’ fasts in the morning, Dwayne ran out to the van, then to Lodge, and grabbed the oranges. Then he reversed his route, completing in two hours what would take an average person four.
While he was gone — almost exhausted by preparing for and running the program — I fell asleep half in and half out of our tent . When Dwayne returned and woke me up, he seemed animated and talkative. He cooked our dinner over a tiny gas stove. Then we both lay in our bags, half in and half out of the tent. Usually taciturn, Dwaye became chatty. I learned more about him in the next three hours than I had learned in five years with YMS.
The last day of that workshop tested my promise to Dwayne. With Chris Miller, and two other guides, we took 18 brokers on an east-to-west traverse of Mount Yamnuska. All went well until we reached the tricky down-climbing spot. Low-hanging clouds spit rain. Ian, the president of the mountain guide’s association, wanted to keep going up, but Chris argued to go down.
Dwayne called his team together to confer. I stood with clients on a flat plateau 50 feet away, assuring them all was fine. But several nervous participants wanted to go down. I worried their anxiety could be contagious.
So, after 15 minutes watching Chris and Ian argue, I walked over and interrupted them.
“Guys!” I said. “If you can’t make a decision in five minutes, I will make it.”
Chris chirped, “So, it’s decided, then. We’ll go up.”
Dwayne raised a palm to him, then asked each guide, “Up? Or Down?”
All said “up.”
Dwayne turned to Chris and smiled. “Now it’s decided.”
At the day’s debrief, a broker said, “That leadership role play above the cliff was brilliant.” Dwayne and I shared grins.
*
The last retreat we ran before the late 80s recession ended them was for a Ciba-Geigy Canada executive team.[3] We based it out of Emerald Lake Lodge, in Yoho National Park.
Set on a peninsula jutting into the lake, the upscale lodge anchored a dozen newly renovated, rustic looking but luxuriously appointed cabins nestled among tall pine, cedar, and hemlock trees. It boasted a conference centre with meeting rooms, a gourmet restaurant, two bars, and a gift shop.[4]
The 6-person Ciba-Geigy team arrived at the Lodge mid-afternoon on Monday. After a late lunch washed down with several bottles of Cabernet, a two-hour walk around one end of the teal/blue lake tired the jet-lagged group.
After dinner, more wine, and post-prandial Scotch, the group’s Industrial Psychologist convened a leadership theory session. But the short, wispy-haired man in a white shirt and worn brown slacks failed to engage the tipsy team. Or a sober me.
The next day’s 12-mile hike proved a stretch for four of the 45- to 62-year-old men. Drinks, dinner, and more drinks made them drowsy. So, failing to generate discussion, the psychologist cut short a poorly received session on” the Johari Window.”
After a strenuous day outdoors, we all felt the same — Yawn! Still, I felt for the guy.
I realized the psychologist used the same kind of pedantic, theory-based approach that had failed me in my leadership presentations with John and Sharon.
After a strenuous third-day bouldering on cliffs above Lake O’Hara, the weary, booze-fueled team again tried the psychologist’s patience.
As he floundered and grew more agitated, the tall, fit, dapper Brazilian Chief Engineer leaned over and whispered to me that Ciba-Geigy’s corporate culture prized hard drinking, intra-team competition, and individuality.
“None of us like this woo-woo HR crap.”
“Ahh!”
Our final, full-pitch climbing day took place at imposing cliffs across the lake from Chateau Lake Louise. Three local guides assisted Dwayne. The lichen-stained, quartzite cliffs ranged from steep to overhanging. When we arrived at their base, an awed silence fell over the usually chatty execs.
Before the climbing started, I did a short input on creative tension and using it to create results — and hoped the crew didn’t see it as ‘woo, woo.’
As climbs steepened, the rugged individualists had to reach out for support from each other. I reminded them to use creative tension to frame tough challenges. In the afternoon, fear gave way to excitement. Technique improved. Camaraderie grew. I heard the words vision, reality, and tension used frequently.
But, nearing the end of the day, a fatigued 55-year-old Vice-President struggled to make the first move on a 130-foot ‘graduation’ climb. Despite a guide and Dwayne’s coaching, demos, and encouragement, the red-faced exec said, “I’m sorry. I just can’t do it!”
Not wanting him to fail, I slid past the guides and said to the VP, “Yet!”
“What?” he said through pressed lips.
“The reality is you can’t do it yet. I think you’ve locked onto that little ledge you’ve been trying to get your right foot up to. But it’s too big a stretch. And, your frustration is preventing you from seeing other possibilities for your first move. So, try this.
First, envision yourself at the top of the climb, proud, happy, and satisfied.”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to go to the top.”
“Ah! Okay,” I said. “Is there any part of the climb you want to do?”
“Halfway? To that other wide ledge?”
“Sure. Good. Envision yourself up there, proud and happy. Then, step back and assess the terrain in front of you to ensure you see reality clearly. Then hold your vision and reality in mind together and use the energy that arises to make your move.”
He stood back, glanced up at the mid-way ledge, scanned the base of the climb beside him, then closed his eyes. When he opened them, he sucked a breath, slid one foot into a small, vertical crack a foot above the ground, then stepped up to the little ledge he had been trying for.
And kept going.
When he reached the mid-way ledge, he pumped his fist. We all clapped and cheered.
As the VP rappeled down, I relaxed, pleased my input had helped.
Walking along the lakeside trail back to the Chateau, I chatted with the psychologist.
“This was a breakthrough day for the group. I think it’s critical we debrief it.”
“Not a chance,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re already talking about ordering a ‘dozen pitchers’ in that hotel pub. They’ll be drunk before dinner. I’m not doing it.”
“I think you have to.”
“No bloody way!” he said, voice rising.
I caught up with Al Redmond, the fit, silver-haired CEO, and shared my concerns.
“Why don’t you do it,” Al said.
I jerked my head back. Took a breath.
“Really?”
“Yeah. The guys like and respect you.”
“Huh. Okay. But I want to do it in the pub.”
Al grinned. “Good idea!”
*
Dick Turpin’s Pub sat where the Chateau’s laundry had been when I’d supervised the parking lot in the early 60s. As we walked up the gravel path to its main doors, my mind flashed side-by-side images.
Me, 19, struggling to manage five teenage carhops while nursing a hangover..
Me, 44, explaining creative tension to a team of Fortune 500 execs paying $5000 a day.
I chuckled to myself.
Inside the pub, the crew pulled two tables together. The VP flagged down a white-aproned waiter. “A dozen pitchers, please.”
I raised my hand, told the waiter, “Just two for now.”
Then I turned to the group.
“You guys did terrific today. I think it’s important we talk about your experience — today and throughout the week — and work out what you can take away from them.”
For 90 minutes and two more pitchers, they talked about personal results, teamwork, and a growing sense of solidarity.
“Excellent job,” Al said to me, as we walked from the pub to the rented van.
Our final evening, following a grueling 14-hour scramble/climb to the top of Mount Field, the Lodge laid on a feast of fresh grilled salmon, butternut squash, lemon asparagus, and new potatoes.
The guys inhaled four bottles of Dom Perignon. Then, during post-dinner drinks and a final chat in the lounge, they thanked Dwayne and I.
“Best team building we’ve had,” they agreed.
“The ‘yet’ lesson,” the VP said, “was worth whatever this week cost.”
Heads nodded all around.
Al, choking back emotion, looked to Dwayne, then to me.
“You have a gift. Industry needs this. People need this.”
I blinked tears; almost overwhelmed with gratitude.
Near midnight, when I headed to my cabin, Al stepped out of the Lodge with me. A bright moon lit the peaks. Breeze stirred the trees. The air felt crisp and bracing.
“I meant what I said, Bruce,” Al said. “You have a gift. I think you should keep at this. You could offer workshops based on your creating approach — even without the outdoor component.”
“Thank you,” I said, swallowing several times.
I floated back to my cabin, grinning.
“I can do!”
•
In Calgary that fall, winter, and spring, I ran bi-monthly five-week Creating What Matters workshops in my cottage. After each, I got better responses from participants than from the previous workshop. My confidence grew.
I also took Al’s advice and experimented with half and one-day corporate gigs. They also worked much better than my previous ‘leadership’ attempts.
Journaling in my comfy, fire-lit den one evening, I wrote, “I am a Free Lance entrepreneur. Not yet excellent. But working toward it.”
I also wondered if and how I might include ACC and ecology in retreats; help clients harmonize with their ecosystems.
To clarify my thinking, I outlined an article about “Taking A Stand for the Earth.”
Two weeks later, as I sat in the den, warmed by the crackling fire, I surprised myself by wondering, Things are going really well for me. But, is Calgary the best place to take my stand?
[1] With Boston’s Innovation Associates consulting company, cofounded by Fritz, Charles Kiefer, and MIT “Learning Organization” guru, Peter Senge.
[2] Carl Jung, Commentary on “The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life. (1962)
[3] Ciba-Geigy Canada was a branch of a Swiss-based Fortune 500 chemical company focused on pharmaceuticals, vision-enhancing products, and agricultural supplements
[4] The beautiful woodwork in the lodge was done by Eric Sundstrom, a Pooh House founder.