Your Best Success

On a red piece of paper, tacked to my bulletin board is quote by John Wooden that reads

“Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”

I am not sure where I found this inspirational page or how long I have had it. It’s dated May 1997 which leads me to think that I picked up one summer while working as a Coordinator for KW Parks and Recreation.   Regardless of how it came to be in my possession, I know I have had it for some time.  With each new job I would take down my photos and pages from the bulletin board that always was placed above my computer screen, carefully pack the items in a box and transport them to my new office where they would find a new home once again in eye sight just above the top of my monitor.   Each time I might change up the pictures or change the placement of where certain items were tacked however the one constant always seemed to be the bright red page reminding me, that at the end of the day if I had given my best, well that meant success.

There is no question that I had early success professionally.  Since graduating in 2000 I have had 6 different job titles, almost all of them including increased responsibility.   When I accepted a new position I would not limit my duties to the breakdown of the job description but rather would look to find the central purpose of role and then would take the initiative to create and complete projects I felt would best meet that central purpose.  Of the 6 positions I have held, 3 were brand new positions which I was the first to hold and in all jobs it was rare that I would have received an orientation or training to prepare me for my new role and responsibilities.    Although at times challenging to be thrown into a new job with little direction, I am not one who does well with structure.  Consequently, I think allowing me the opportunity to be creative in how I shaped projects and how I spent my time ensure that I produced my best work and ultimately created successful programs for my employer.

Despite my career succession I rarely have a clear idea on where my success might take me.   One of my strengths is my mind for strategy and I feel that it is this strength that helped me advanced, despite a lack of defined career planning.   I listen attentively in conversations to help me identify gaps or concerns.  I watch for opportunities to partner with like minded individuals.  I understand that creating a successful program is not only about what I can bring to the table but also includes making sure the program is be the best fit for the intended audience.   Inevitably through this process I am able to, as one supervisor told me, make the impossible possible and ultimately produce my best work and achieve success.   It was through this success that new professional opportunities would present themselves and often they would include professional advancement, which I would consider, pursue and frequently accept.

In spite of the long hours I can look back at most of my professional career with a huge sense of pride on what I accomplished.  Sure there are failures, embarrassing moments or times where I really screwed up however I could probably count on one hand the big errors that really mattered.   What I can’t count on one hand are the hundreds of students and colleagues that my success has inspired and motivated.   This is personified in the messages I have received since diagnosis from people I have worked with for the last 10 years, like the following from a student leader;

“I want to tell you that your profession had a great impact on me, especially when you were in the front line with students. Whether in listening to you or just seeing you leading/presenting/talking to students in the Leadership Program and many other occasions, you really had a beautiful aura and a strong presence with a powerful, energizing, and of course, contagious effect on us all. I wasn’t aware you spent 50-60 hours a week, but let me tell you, it showed. Your passion to what you were doing and your enthusiasm were evident – and that all what matters. Those little tasks, those little things that probably made the difference between “good” and “best.” For that, I salute you.”

I don’t know what those little tasks were that made the difference to her but I can remember many days I would turn off my computer, briefly glance at the red page and then walk to the bus with an overwhelming sense of pride, that on that day,  I did my best and no matter what my title was, I had achieved success.

I recently had lunch with a colleague from work.   At lunch she asked me about how I was transitioning from my professional work world to my new day to day of personal work.  I told her about how I was keeping active with my gym and nutrition routine.  We talked a little bit about the volunteering that I am currently doing for the Calgary Stampede and the Alberta Cancer Foundation.  We chatted about Yoga and my upcoming meditation course and what I was learning from these new interests.  She responded the way most people do when they find out how I spend my days with “It’s good you are keeping yourself busy.”

I agreed with this statement but then admitted that it is a struggle day in and day out.  I told her how some days I feel really great about what I accomplished while other days I feel that I am filling my day with “make work” activities, trying to give myself some purpose although not finding anything meaningful within it.  I remember telling her that I have always been an ambitious person and now I feel that ambition is creating anxiety.   I discussed how although I have really enjoyed writing, I feel embarrassed by the quality of my website where my writing is published.   I revealed my insecurities around preparing proposals to solicit speaking opportunities and was jealous when she described other cancer survivors she had heard speak.     She listened compassionately and agreed with me that being such an ambitious person it would be natural for me to seek these opportunities.  She offered some great advice and we enjoyed a lovely walk home before we said our goodbyes.

That evening there was something about the conversation that left me uneasy.  Early after my diagnosis a counselor advised me that if I am thinking about something and the thought makes me uncomfortable, I should stop and explore it.  I mentally reviewed the conversation and mindfully made note of the parts where I felt most uncomfortable.   The tipping point was easy to pinpoint and I became aware that I had strange familiarity with the uncomfortable sensation.   When I thought about the colleague agreeing with me that I was ambitious, I felt a strong knot in my stomach, became anxious and my mind began to race.   I was aware that my familiarity with the feeling was because over the past few weeks I had had similar conversations about my ambition, albeit they were private conversations within my own head.  Regardless of whether the conversations were out loud with a friend or private with myself it was the thought of “ambition” that would always take away my peace of mind.

Ambition is defined as the desire for personal achievement.   A person who is described as ambitious seeks to be the best at what they choose to do for attainment, power, or superiority.[1] Looking at the definition I feel it’s easy for people to think of the words success and ambition as synonymous.  Before exploring my uneasiness with my own ambition, I am not sure if I would have made a distinction between these two qualities but my discomfort obviously indicated that I believed they were not equal.   I theorized that although I believe that often successful people are ambitious, I feel that ambition does not always bring success.   I looked for case studies to support my thesis and reflected on my former managers’ sense of ambition and my perception of their success.

Counting back over my career I have had 10 managers, some more than once.   With the exception of 1 or 2, I would unequivocally describe all of them as ambitious however my perception of each’s success varies.   For those managers I might describe as less successful, the characteristic that unites them is their behaviour when faced with a decision that might make them unpopular with people who ultimately influenced their own personal advancement even when these people had no sincere investment in the success of the manager.  For my “less than” managers,  in most of these difficult situations I feel they would choose behaviour to satisfy these people of influence, even if it meant that my manager did something they felt was not the best thing to do.   Although in public they would defend their choice, their actions would always speak louder than words and it would be clear that the only thing their choice was best for was their own personal advancement.

Luckily I have worked for more managers who I would describe as “more than” managers; the managers I feel had great success in their role.   I have been fortunate to see some extraordinary examples of leadership in my short career as I have watched my “more than” managers make very difficult decisions that often would make them extremely unpopular.  I will admit there were even times I would leave meetings with them and be infuriated by a decision that I disagreed with.  Nevertheless time and time again when the dust would settle, new information would arise and I would be able to see clearly the circumstances that influenced their actions.  In that moment I could see that despite outside influences and at times even at the risk of their own careers, they would step up and choose behaviour that they believed would be the best thing to support their team and achieve success.   At times it meant that I watched my “more than” managers be publicly criticized by their superiors and in some cases these extraordinary leaders were even pushed out of the organization (although all have too much integrity to admit that this was the reason why they chose to leave).  Luckily all these managers have moved on to bigger and brighter success.  They taught me that you should never let your ambition influence how you can achieve your best work and if you do your best work, success will inevitably follow.

After reviewing the case studies I could understand more clearly what it was about the thought of “ambition” that made me so uncomfortable.   I reflected on the moment that my colleague had agreed with me that she felt that I was ambitious and I could remember that in her agreement I felt disappointed and embarrassed.   The response I wanted to hear from her was that I was more successful than ambitious.   No doubt she would say that the words ambition and success are the same thing however the reflection of the leaders in my life confirmed my theory that ambition and success are not synonymous.  I realized what separates success and ambition is external recognition of achieving your best work.  What made me uncomfortable when my colleague agreed that I was ambitious was my perception that she felt I would put external recognition of a professional achievement ahead of doing what I felt was best for my team, my colleagues, my work or myself.   Although I believe that she does not feel this way about my professional work, the conversation helped me clarify how I could bring peace of mind in the private conversations I am having about my new personal work.

I appreciate now that in my personal work I have been following the examples of my “less than” managers.  Specifically I was feeling anxiety to improve my website because I thought the organization and length of content would be a barrier to allowing me to get more hits and increase my profile.  I recognized that I felt most motivated to pursue speaking opportunities right after I saw someone on TV talk about their story with cancer or would talk to someone about some the speaking they had recently done.   Just as my “less than” managers had done I was choosing my actions based on my desire for attainment of celebrity, rather than with my desire to do my best work.  This behaviour is completely in congruent with my set of values which is why I could never find peace of mind when I thought about my personal work ambitions.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have the desire for achievement within my personal work however I know that if something feels uncomfortable I need to step back and work it out.   I have desires to share my story but because I feel it is inspiring and that by sharing it I can helpo other  people overcome their challenges, not because I want my 15 minutes of fame.  I recognize though that I can’t force how my story might be shared with the masses.   Bob Dylan once said “Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be”.   Similar to my professional work where I never had an idea of where my success might take me, personally I am comfortable to accept that I have yet to define who I need to be.  But now that I am focused on my best work rather than achievement, I have peace of mind about the journey.

The red page was packed carefully in a box last April and returned to me with other photos and personal items that came home from my office.  It now sits to the right of my monitor and is often where my eyes gaze as I struggle to find success in my to dos of personal work.   With personal work measuring success  I understand now is personal.   It’s the feeling I get when I get back from a great run.  It’s the smile I can release when I have pushed through the last chaturanga in my Yoga class.  It’s the sense of accomplishment I feel when I complete a proposal for an event for Stampede.   It’s the adrenaline rush I feel after I have finished speaking for the Alberta Cancer Foundation.   It’s the sigh of satisfaction I release when I place a period on the last sentence of a new blog entry.  Just like when I would walk to the bus after work, it’s the sense of pride I feel when I am lying in bed, accepting that on this day I did the best I could to become the best I am capable of becoming.   It’s knowing that if I do my best and forget the rest, I will only achieve success.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambition

Resolving to Have Smart Character

At the start of each New Year I go through my annual ritual of buying a new journal and taking some time to create my New Year’s Resolutions.   As a University of Waterloo Recreation Grad, I know how to write “SMART” goals and I ensure that my resolutions are specific, measureable, attainable, realistic/relevant, and time specific.   I lay out elaborate critical paths which describe what I will do every day to achieve my exceptionally smart goals and I write rhetoric like “This year is going to be different” believing that a crisp set of new journal pages will somehow help me accomplish the very elaborate plan I have created to achieve my New Year’s Resolutions.  Like most people, I always have the best intentions but inevitably I fall off track somewhere around January 21^st.  Predictably another New Year begins and I find myself cracking open a new journal to fill with the same smart resolutions and rhetoric.

With the start of a new decade I thought it was time to reevaluate this annual ritual that seems to have only amounted to filling my bookshelf with 8 or 9 half empty journals.  Obviously my resolutions have not been as “SMART” as I thought because I seem to repeat them year in year out.   My Rec training also taught me that even with the best of critical paths and the smartest of goals, success is not always guaranteed.   A critical component in setting smart goals is that they are “relevant”, meaning that the goal relates and supports an overall purpose.   In a professional context smart goals are relevant if they support the organizations’ purpose which is often defined by the organizations’ mission statement.  Resolutions are examples of personal goals, so I guess for my resolutions to be relevant they need support my own personal set of values or more concisely, my character.   Considering the past resolution success I have achieved, I wondered if the reason why I consistently failed was because my resolutions, although seemingly specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time specific, they missed the mark on connecting to my character therefore the resolutions missed the critical smart component of relevance.   I needed to explore this disconnect further.

I opened my standby reference for anything leadership related, Stephen Covey’s 7 Steps of Highly Effective People and reviewed his discussion of Personality Ethic vs Character Ethic.   When someone is centered from a Personality Ethic perspective, they focus on improving their personality, communications, interests and behaviour to influence people and believe that positive thinking is what is required for success, subscribing to mantras like “If you can dream it, you can achieve.”  While Covey (and I) agree that these are important within a professional standpoint, setting personal goals from this perspective means that you are setting goals to potentially please others.  Ergo, if you do not receive external recognition by seeing that you have “pleased someone” even if you achieve your goal, you believe you have failed.

Moreover Covey explains when you create or change behavior based on this Personality Ethic, you may be able to get by in the short term however “eventually, if there isn’t deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and failure will replace short-term success.”[1]

Covey in his discussion of Personality vs Character Ethic largely speaks to how people use the two sets of ethics to influence others rather than how these ethics impact one’s ability to set smart goals.  However when I reviewed the concept, I felt that it provided me strong insight on how I could make my resolutions more relevant.  I needed more character less personality.

I opened up several of the journals I stated in the last decade and reviewed the list of resolutions I had created.  Although the wording was different year to year, the themes were always consistent, with one topic always being top of mind – My Weight.    I have always struggled with body image and I can say that for the first time in my adult life I am not been motivated to eat well or exercise to lose weight.    Nevertheless, in my personal mission statement, written in 2005,  there is a statement that says

“I protect my healthy as my most precious resource.   I know that my body will only be able to support my dreams if I invest into its healthy development every day.”

I can be honest and admit that although I may have written the above statement, I never walked the walk in terms of matching my behaviour to support this thesis.   My behaviour to get to the gym or eat properly was more motivated by weight and even if I ate well and worked out if I didn’t see results on the scale, I felt like I was failing.   I had this preconceived image, that success was measured by hitting a magical number (which sometimes was as unrealistic as 125lbs) so that I could get into a size 6 or so I could confidently wear a bikini on a trip or so people would compliment me on how good I look, all examples of how I looked for external recognition to validate my behaviour.  In my mission statement I show character by articulating that my health is not a number on a scale or a size on a pair of jeans but rather it’s a precious resource that without, all my other dreams fall apart.   Although having a healthy body weight is part of that, it is merely a small piece of how I could be successful in taking care of my health.  I look back and can see in my journals that around the 3 week mark I would make some excuse and my critical path and subsequent weight loss resolutions would go out the window.  Although not articulated in the journal, I know that the change of heart would result after the scale didn’t give me the magic number or I went to get new clothes and could barely get into a size 10 jeans or I wasn’t getting compliments on how great I look.  Because I set the resolutions based on a Personality Ethic, when I didn’t get this external recognition the goal would come crumbling down.   Over the past 8 months I have started walk the walk, and I am proud to say I do live my mission.   What I eat, how I workout, all of it is motivated because I know that I need to invest and protect my health.   Interestingly, as soon as I connected the behavior to my character, the weight came off.   I am fitting into smaller clothes and I am getting daily compliments on how great I look.   My former personal trainer wants me to come back in for a body analysis so I can see how much weight and fat I have lost.  I turned him down because although the results might be interesting, I know that whether I have lost 5% or 20%,  that can’t  measure how effective I have been in changing my behaviour to “protect my health as my most precious resource.”  What matters is that my behaviour supports my character and for the first time I understand that only I can measure the strength of my character.

If there is ever a year where I have had the opportunity to really get to know and understand my character it’s 2009.   As I tried to determine how I would take this new understanding of the role of the Character Ethic in my New Year’s Resolutioning for 2010 I did some research on the tradition of New Year’s resolution itself.

“The tradition of the New Year’s Resolutions goes all the way back to 153 B.C. Janus, a mythical god of early Rome was placed at the head of the calendar….The Romans named the first month of the year after Janus, the god of beginnings and the guardian of doors and entrances. He was always depicted with two faces, one on the front of his head and one on the back. Thus he could look backward and forward at the same time. At midnight on December 31, the Romans imagined Janus looking back at the old year and forward to the new.”[2]

To help inform my process, I interpreted this tradition literally and I opened my 2009 journal to my earliest entry – Jan 3, 09, almost 4 months prior to my diagnosis.  I write;

“Time will past and it’s time I made the most of the present, because the future is always just a day away – too far to hold onto… and the past, well, I let that slip through too quickly, with barely time to hold the present.  Time to really be present in the moment – This moment.”

When I opened my journal back to January I was surprised not to find an extensive fitness plan and extreme weight loss goal.   Although I know that those ideas were top of mind in January I feel that maybe in 2009 I finally realized that I needed to change my perspective from trying to please others to trying to please myself – in a sense shifting my paradigm from a Personality Ethic to a Character Ethic.  I have a huge sense of pride in knowing that even before my cancer diagnosis I understood what a scarce resource time is and that I needed to really value the moments that make up my incredible life.  I reflect back over 2009 and one of the things that brings me the most satisfaction is reviewing the messages I have received from friends, family and strangers that describe how they admire, that even in the face of cancer I have been able to remain positive and that I can stay present on what is important in the here and now.  I have been commended on my ability to use my time wisely to improve my health and how I have made an effort to invest in my relationships by connecting with people through visits, phone calls, and writing.  Although very proud of the strong character I continue to develop, I admit that it is my personality to respond to these compliments with something like “Well it’s easy to have new resolve when you find out you have incurable cancer.”  Giving myself backhanded compliments like this is bad behaviour that I have practiced for years and I know the strong personality ethic I held, made it more comfortable for me to make a joke rather than accept compliments I receive with something like “Thanks, Yeah, I do have a pretty strong character that has allowed me to achieve this goal” or something that allows me to acknowledge my positive behaviour.   Reviewing this entry helped me recognize that I started 2009 with the resolve to let my character rather than my personality shine through.  Although cancer did at times steal the spotlight in 2009 and cancer may help to influence my decisions, the positive and disciplined character I have and continue to develop is not solely attributed to my cancer but rather it is attributed to my strong character ethic.  It may be my personality to modest but I can complement that modesty with a sense of pride that my moment by moment behaviour is what makes me the type of person that people admire.  Learning this character lesson in 2009, I look forward to the new decade, resolving to continue to appreciate each moment and to let my character rather than my personality steal the spotlight.

Journaling is something I am grateful I have done a lot of in 2009.  Consequently I have several sources I can review, to help me understand how I have tried to shift from a personality ethic to a character ethic this year.   I started a new journaling exercise when I began to read Robin Sharma’s[3], Daily Inspirations nightly.   In this book Sharma offers a unique inspiration each day, with monthly themes so that you explore different subjects more fully.   I try to take 10 minutes each night to review the inspiration and then I use the blank space on the page to journal a response.  If an inspiration particularly resonates I flag the page so I can come back and review it later.   I still have about 6 months of entries left to complete but there are quite a few flags (and dogeared pages when I run out of flags), so as I tried to understand my character development in 2009 I thought it appropriate to review the inspirations that most resonated.   October 15^th particularly stood out

“…Too many people spend more time focusing on their weaknesses than developing their strengths.  By concentrating on what they don’t have, they neglect the talents they do have…The greatest people make time to reflect on their core abilities – those special qualities that made them unique – and spend the rest of their lives refining and expanding them.”[4]

My response

“I do need to concentrate on the things I do well and then improve them rather than focusing on what is wrong and focusing all my energy on changing it.” I wrote the word “Coach” on the top of the page and I flagged the page with a note to review the inspiration in the New Year.

I had run out of room on the page for my entry when I wrote “Coach”.  I had thought that a great analogy for Sharma’s point was how a coach selects her athletes to play different positions on a team.  I had the honour of coaching 12 exceptional young men from 2000 – 2003 on a boys elite volleyball team for the K-W Tigers, now K-W Predators Volleyball Club[5].   I remember our first tryouts when the boys (now all in their final years of University) were only 12 – 13 years old.   When they entered the gym my dad (my co-coach) and I put them through the standard volleyball drills to assess their strengths and weaknesses.   Volleyball is a tough sport when you are young as it takes years to develop the type of ball control that older players demonstrate so naturally.  Consequently for these young players their weaknesses largely outnumbered their limited strengths.  Nevertheless, I distinctly remember in our discussions of who would make the team and where they would play, my dad and I focused on the players strengths and some natural gifts (height, shoe size that helped to predict a possible growth spurt upcoming) rather than consider the player for a position because we felt he would be horrible in another.  We would then focus our game plan to highlight these strengths, in some cases combing players strengths in rotations to create a “super player” and we would create practice plans to enhance their individual talents.   Although we would take time to ensure everyone had a strong base level of skills we never expected our middle players to volley as precisely as our setters and conversely our setters never had to develop the blocking speed or stamina that we expected of the middles.  Consequently it meant in certain drills certain players got more time to develop their strengths.  This overall intention was that by enhancing the individual strengths we would minimize our overall team weaknesses and achieve greater success.   Our game plan paid off and in 2003 this team was the 4^th best 16 and under boys team in Eastern Canada.   Our team photo taken at the Championship in Sherbrooke, Quebec sits on my dresser and I consider this team’s success to be one of my life’s greatest accomplishments.

This approach to coaching is by no means unique, in fact most people would read the above example and think, Yeah that’s pretty common sense.   However, when I read the October 15^th inspiration I flagged the entry because although common in the context of coaching, I wondered why I had never thought about it when I was creating resolutions.  Resolutions are effectively a game plan for the new year and the critical paths I created were effectively my practice plans to prepare me for the game.  I flagged the entry so that when I was ready to “pick my team” by setting my New Year’s resolutions I would be reminded to take a more common sense of approach, and choose to set a game plan that highlight my strengths rather than trying to change my weaknesses.   In all my previous “SMART” resolutions endeavours, never once did I start by addressing what strengths already lay within me and develop a plan that would work to refine them.  I remember how my players would inevitably perform worse when I was throwing my clipboard on the sidelines and how things would get better when I was cheering and providing encouragement.   I wonder how I couldn’t see that starting off the year with a list of criticisms rather than encouraging statements would similarly hinder my ability to achieve my resolutions.  The inspiration reminds me that strength of character is better developed by acknowledging and refining one’s inherent strengths rather than critiquing your weaknesses.   It inspires my new resolve to spend more energy developing my many strengths and my resolve to accept that if I reinvest my energy in this way, my weaknesses will inevitably take care of themselves.

The New Year offers a unique opportunity for reflection and renewal.   For me, I have reflected on how my personality might have in the past impeded my ability to fully develop the character I wanted to personify.   I have reflected on 2009, no doubt the most pivotal year of my life, and recognized I have many strengths to be proud of.   Finally, I have renewed resolve to develop my strength of character by creating my game plan for 2010 – which includes the following resolutions;

1. I resolve to appreciate each of my incredible moments and to let my character rather than my personality steal the spotlight.
2. I resolve to spend more energy on developing my strengths and to have confidence that this will allow my weaknesses take care of themselves.

The history and meaning of creating New Year’s Resolutions varies in different cultures and religions.   Going back and reviewing the history of this tradition has helped me to better understand how this tradition can best serve me.   Like in any research project, you take the sources that most resonate but even those you don’t use, you still gain knowledge from.   In the (brief) review I did of New Years traditions, I don’t think its coincidence that my favourite summation comes from my own Ukrainian heritage.

“(Ukrainian) People think that at night on New Year’s eve the old year with all its troubles leaves us forever and the New Year with all our hopes and expectations knocks at our doors.”[6]

As a new decade comes knocking, I am happy, no proud, that I am celebrating the introduction of the “tens” with a new ritual to creating resolutions that includes reviewing the past to inform the future and to also set my resolutions from an position of internal strength like character rather than position of external recognition that my personality sometimes craves.   I have high expectations for 2010; It will be a year to be present, a year to be a great coach, a year to be proud of my strengths and most importantly a year to look forward with expanding hope that the best is yet to come.

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[1] Stephen Covey – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Application for Blackberry – Primary and Secondary Greatness

[2] http://ezinearticles.com/?The-History-of-New-Years-Resolutions&id=245213

[3] http://www.robinsharma.com/personal-development.htm

[4] R. Sharma, Daily Inspirations from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari ( Harpercollins Publishers ltd, 2007). Oct 15

[5] http://kwpredators.org/index.html

[6] http://www.foreigndocuments.com/uk_holidays.html

The Value of a Dollar

With holiday shopping in full swing, it seems that the recession has become the new hot topic.   It is that time of year when people start to open their wallets however in “these tough economic times” it does seem that people are trying to make the most out of every dollar and working hard to manage all their holiday shopping within, potentially, a new limited budget.  I am pretty much done with my Christmas shopping (yep got it done it pretty much one day) but I still watch thrifty shoppers on the news describe how because of the recession they are cutting back and trying to make every last dollar count.  Typically these types of stories never really interested me because fortunately, even when the economy got rough, my personal finances always seemed to weather the storm. This year I find myself more interested in learning what people are doing to make their budgets go further and I find myself relating to having to make adjustments when an unexpected event, like a recession, makes it harder for you to make ends meet.   However, unlike the shopper on TV, it is not the dollars in my wallet I am worrying about stretching, but rather my Brain Dollars that I seem to be running short on.

In late October I went to a Brain Tumour conference where I attended a session on fatigue.  Fatigue is a pretty common topic for cancer related seminars or conferences as 100% of people who go through cancer treatment will experience some form of cancer related fatigue. “Cancer related fatigue is a distressing, persistent, subjective sense of tiredness or exhaustion related to cancer or cancer treatment that is not proportional to recent activity and interferes with usual functioning.”[1] At the time of the conference I debated about whether I needed to attend the fatigue session as I didn’t feel I was really experiencing any symptoms.   However as predicted, over the past few weeks fatigue has started to rear its tired head and I am grateful I made the decision to attend the session rather than go for a coffee.

In the session the speaker explained that most people with brain tumours have to intentionally manage their energy levels.  She referred to energy levels as “energy banks” and moreover she measures her energy levels based on the number of “Brain Dollars” she has in her bank.  She described that everyone (cancer/no cancer, brain tumour/no brain tumour) gets a set amount of brain dollars each day and just like real dollars you can choose to save or spend your brain dollars on activities that you wish or need to complete.   Unfortunately people with brain tumours, especially those on active treatments, have more expenses to cover than an average person, like recovering from surgery and radiation or supporting your body as it utilizes chemo, consequently we have less brain dollars than other people to spend on work, family, recreation or other activities.  As a result we (and our support network) can’t expect to manage the same level of activity we once did.   She analogized that just like with your personal finances when you overspend you go into debt, if you don’t manage your brain dollars effectively you may not be able to do the things you most want or even worse it may lead to exhaustion or impact the effectiveness of your treatment.  One unique difference is that unlike real dollars, brain dollars of people with brain tumours often lose their value at the end of the day making it difficult to save up for something you really want or save your brain dollars to get you through tough economic times.

I have always been an energetic person and pre-cancer there is no doubt I had ample brain dollars in my energy bank.   As long as I can remember I could pack in 48 hours of activity into each 24 hour day. My good friend Paulie from university and one of my co-founders of the UW Superfan club described my energy in a recent message –  “Aly, I just assumed there were hundreds of you running around to be able to take on and crush every challenge.”  Now I think he over exaggerated with the crushing statement but I do admit that I was (am) what you might call a “keener” and involved in everything under the sun. Although I never really appreciated that I was balancing more than the average person.  My level of activity has always been high and I always had brain dollars to spare so my go, go, go routine just felt normal.

Fatigue is part of my new normal and day by day I am trying to find new ways to minimize fatigue’s impact on my quality of life.  My fatigue personifies itself in general feelings of tiredness, difficulty concentrating, increased anxiety and disruptive sleep.  Additionally it takes a lot longer to recover after exercise and I am much more prone to injuries. For example over a month ago I twisted my ankle playing volleyball.  Despite consistent icing and pretty well the complete elimination of high impact exercise it is still swollen and tender which limits the activities that I can participate in.   Last night as I was putting on my coat I pulled my right shoulder and this morning I can’t lift my arm above my head without a little bit of pain.  No doubt this injury resulted from an upper body workout session with my trainer a few days ago.  In the past I could rely on my huge energy banks to push me through however now that I live paycheque to paycheque,  I have to be cautious I don’t overspend which means too often I have to limit the activities that I can taken on.    Although I can still go, it’s frustrating that I can’t go as far as I once was able.

What adds to my frustration is that in my cancer diagnosis I have finally found the motivation to make the most of everyday.  For years I would have energy to spare but sometimes I would find it hard to get motivated to actually use that energy productively.   But now, I finally understand the value of a brain dollar and am compelled to spend them in activities that will reap positive returns for my life and the lives of others.   For the first time I want to get out and run or start training for a race, not because I want to lose weight, but rather because I want to experience the thrill of competition as well as experience the discipline of investing into my health every day.  However I know that my body can’t handle large training so instead I have to go for a walk or choose a low impact exercise to allow me the opportunity to recover.   I have lots of time to volunteer or try out new projects like writing, coaching or speaking but most days I can’t stay focused on the computer for more than a couple of hours to complete a task (consequently why this post took over a month to publish).     Some days I wake up feeling great, I get excited and go, go, go on tons of projects just like my old self but the next day I inevitably wake up exhausted and realize that in my excitement I overdrew my account and now I have to save up for 3 days to get myself back in the black.   Then at times, for no reason, something just robs me blinds and I am left broke even though I haven’t really done anything that day. I have no choice but cancel activities last minute because I don’t have enough brain dollars to even get off the couch.  Although I can tell myself that it’s not my fault, I still feel guilty, lazy and frustrated that I don’t have enough energy and often blame myself that I am not accomplishing more.

It’s rare that I will pass judgement on people however because I was such a healthy person before my diagnosis, at times I find myself looking at someone, mostly strangers, and feeling resentment at the way they get to spend their energy and not have to worry about cancer.  On days when I am feeling particularly fatigued, it’s extremely frustrating to listen to people complain about not having enough energy or even worse, to see someone who, I feel, is really misspending their brain dollars.   Like people who complain about being overweight and they don’t have time to exercise or eat well and then they choose to blow their brain dollars on TV.  Or someone who spends all their energy focused on all the things that are wrong with their life rather than investing those brain dollars into activities that would yield more positive returns for their happiness.    In those moments I find myself wishing they could give me the brain dollars they are wasting so that I could spend them on all the activities I desperately want but I can’t afford to do.

But that judgemental thought quickly fades and I think about myself.  Was it not Matthew 7:1 that says “Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”?  If I am truly honest with myself I know that it’s not these frivolous brain dollar spenders that causes my frustration but rather when I see or hear their comments I realize that it wasn’t too long ago that I was one of these people.  In that moment of judgement I judge my spending habits when I was energy rich and am disappointed at how much I took my energy bank for granted and how I frivolously squandered my brain dollars, investing them in activities that in the big picture didn’t give me any return for the investment.

There were times when I made good investments with my brain dollars and I believe these investments really helped to create my rich energy banks.   I look back at my time in high school and university and can remember fondly what I did with my time.    In high school you could find me, most of the time in the Student Activities Office working on a new event for the school.  If I wasn’t there I was likely in the gym playing on a team and working to organize activities to help us be more successful both on and off the court.  In university I didn’t just participate, I had to lead leadership programs and if there was an activity I wanted to do but there wasn’t a formal program, well I created a club or event to fill the void.   These were smart investment into my development as a leader that I know has helped me find professional success despite lack of formal experience or education.

When I wasn’t involved in leadership, most of my time was spent socializing.  In high school it was chatting between classes and lunch in the Art and Poster room or often playing Euchre in the caf.   At University it was hanging out in the SLC playing spoons, getting in trouble for moving all the furniture and involved in scholarly discussion such as what food items would be better if carbonated.   Most weekends my social calendar was full as I balanced events with numerous different groups of friends, sometimes going to 3 or 4 activities in one day.   Although I probably should have invested some of this energy into studying, this investment into my relationships has returned a huge network of friends that despite time and distance are not only standing beside me, but are opening their wallets to support fundraising efforts that will hopefully find a cure for my cancer.   When I initially made the investments in high school and university, I could never have predicted the phenomenal return I now have realized however I am proud that I took the time early in life to invest in building up my energy bank.

Somewhere along the way I feel I forgot how hard I worked to build up my energy banks and moreover forgot that in order to keep my banks high, I would have to continue to make smart investments with how I spent my brain dollars day in, day out.   In university or high school, despite balancing probably over 100+ hours a week of activity, I can rarely remember ever being tired or feeling overwhelmed because I had too much on my plate.   However as I review old journals post graduation there seems to be very little description of how I would have spent the thousands of brain dollars I must have earned.   Moreover I see a lot of entries that talk about how I was tired of feeling tired, which must mean that somewhere along the journey I must have also drained my huge energy banks that I worked so hard to develop in high school and university.  I read the pages and wonder “What did I spend all my energy on and why do I now have nothing to show for it?”  As I continue to read the pages it becomes obvious.  I squandered my huge budget and savings on two ridiculous expenses – TV and Work.

On February 16^th, 2009, almost 3 month before I was diagnosed I wrote in my journal

“I know too well how I become at peace.  Order, routine progress, achievement of a goal and yet I let the TV take away all that feeling of worth.  Hours lost watching fictitious people live their dreams and reach their greatness by sucking mine from me.”

Now I admire people who say “I don’t watch TV” or people like my brother who doesn’t even own a TV, but I don’t believe that TV is a complete waste of energy.  I have my favourite TV shows (The Office, Top Chef, 30 Rock, 22 minutes) that I watch fairly religiously and if I stuck to a few hours a week, I think I could consider that expenditure a decent investment of brain dollars.   But it was never just a few hours a week on shows I really wanted to see.  Most of the time I spent my brain dollars watching reruns of Friends, Seinfeld, Family Guy, the Simpsons and a myriad of ridiculous reality shows.  On weekends it would not be uncommon for me to turn on the TV for breakfast and then 8 hours later still be on the couch watching reruns of shows I had already watched that morning.   My TV marathons would often start because I needed to take an hour to unwind and relax, but as one show blurred into another, the TV would inevitably keep sucking me in for one more episode, and when I peeled myself off the couch I would inevitably feel worse than I did before I sat down on the couch.   Never once did I feel more relaxed or rejuvenated, yet the next weekend you would find me once again glued to the tube.    There is no doubt that I had (have) a TV addiction but I justified my habit by rationalizing that I had nothing better to do.  I can realize now that I had nothing better to do because all I did was watch TV.

In my pre-cancer journal I spent a lot of time setting goals.   Pages upon pages dedicated to describing the things that I wanted to achieve and I would lay out detailed plans on how I would ultimately achieve success.   Although the plans from entry to entry may be different, despite time between entries, the goals were always pretty well the same.   My journal content is embarrassingly similar and predictable.  It starts with an entry that describes why I was disappointed that I have let myself down by once again not achieving goals I had set out.  In that same entry I will make a declaration that “This Time Is Going to be Different” or something to that effect, and then proceed to rewrite a list of goals I vowed to achieve.  Finally I would create a detailed action plan on how I would achieve the goals and set specific timelines to keep me accountable.  Following this initial motivating entry, there might be a few entries that follow that could describe how I was staying on track, but at most this would last for 2 – 3 days.  Inevitably there would be a huge gap in time between entries and predictably when I would open the journal again, I would repeat the above storyline I had used a thousand times before.   In these redundant entries there was always a consistent excuse I would use to justify why, once again, I had not achieved my goals – Work.    An entry on September 27/08 documented my justification and frustration –

“My life has been about work for way too long – I am not doing my best because my life is only work.  I need more than work….It’s time I started treating myself with respect and putting my all into my life – not just my job.”

When I read these entries it becomes clear where the savings from my rich energy banks went; I squandered them away at the office.  When I could have been investing my brain dollars into education, volunteering, exercising or taking time to invest in my relationship by cooking dinner or completing other household duties, time and time again I chose to invest my brain dollars at the office, a lot of the times alone on evening and weekends.  I remember once when I started my current role, I chose to spend a weekend working instead of going to an important wedding for Jared’s family.   Although everyone said they understood, I know it was challenging for Jared to explain why I had put work ahead of his family.   The most disappointing part, I can’t even remember what I worked on that weekend although I am sure I would have remembered everything about the wedding.

Jared has encouraged me for years to get a hobby.  In recent years there have been a few instances when I was able to get my TV and work addiction under control and I spent energy in activities that I might call a “hobby”.  If I think back to those brief periods, I know that I felt better about myself and more over I was more productive at work, happier in my relationship and inevitably I would have more energy to spend as a result.   Predictably however, an event like a new opportunity or project, a crisis at the office or cold Calgary weather would pop up and I would revert back to comfortable habits.    I would fall back into the vicious cycle of spending all my energy at work and drag myself home to spend my final few brain dollars investing in “relaxing” in front of the TV.  I would invest nothing into things like my health, my mind and my relationships.  Each day I did this, I felt worse and worse and I couldn’t understand why working harder and relaxing wasn’t allowing me to feel better.  Although I would set new goals  to help me overcome these bad habits,  somewhere along the line I feel I just gave up and convinced myself that I just didn’t have enough brain dollars to accomplish all the goals that I routinely set.  Looking back with my current perspective, I know that I had more than enough brain dollars to achieve everything that I wanted but I wasted all my money in poor investments.

Now I can be somewhat objective and realize that maybe with work, my huge investment has resulted in some small returns.  The extra projects and long hours did allow me to progress quickly into a senior position with a strong salary.  Consequently now that I have moved to a reduced monetary budget while on Long Term Disability benefits, I can still manage my expenses without a lot of changes to my lifestyle.  Nevertheless I believe I could have probably realized a similar return with a much smaller investment if I had been smarter on how I spent my brain dollars.

But with TV there is nothing I can show for the amount of energy I invested.  Moreover, I feel that the investment is actually costing me money.   When Jared would encourage me to get a hobby, I would tell him that I didn’t have time.  He would ultimately bring up the amount of time I spent in front of the TV which I would defensively justify that all I was doing was trying to relax.  In the fatigue session I learned that one of the best ways to reduce fatigue is to do things that you really enjoy and to do things where you lose track of time though, like a hobby.  I can see now that pre-cancer my only hobbies were work or TV consequently when I was hit with fatigue recently I had to invest a significant amount of brain dollars trying to figure out what I could do, outside of TV, to lose track of time and ultimately help mitigate my fatigue.    Although spending less time at the office or putting down the remote would probably not have prevented my cancer, had I invested some of pre-cancer brain dollars into developing some interests and hobbies, I might have been able to turn those activities when my fatigue symptoms first started instead of spending the past few weeks trying to figure out what would make a good investment of my limited brain dollars.

I won’t lie when I am fatigued I get really upset and frustrated that I have to accept and live within my new limited brain dollar budget.   Moreover I find myself in a constant mental battle trying to determine if I should spend or save my energy.  I am still trying to find the balance between getting the most out of each day and maintaining a comfortable pace that allows me to keep my energy banks in the black.  Although sometimes TV will get the better of me, now that I am on a strict energy budget I am more aware of the consequences of a bad investment and inevitably if I do misspend I go to bed regretting the way I spent my day and feeling motivated to do a better job tomorrow.  I am proud that I have developed some new hobbies like acting as a life coach to some friends, writing both on my website and in my many journals as well as cooking which Jared also benefits from as dinner is always ready at 6 pm when he gets home.  I have also recently got back in touch with my keener alter ego from high school and university and am volunteering for the Alberta Cancer Foundation as a speaker and fundraiser and have rejoined the Stampede Committee I started volunteering with in November 2008.

Most importantly I am working to adapt to my “new normal” and am trying to implement fatigue fighting strategies to help me make the most of my budget.  Specifically I use a lot of time management tools and I sit down every week to plan my schedule.  However my new normal schedule has lots of space between activities and limits the number of appointments or visits I have on each day so I can relax if I need to.  Additionally through monitoring my expenditures and energy banks, I know that I always feel worse the day after I have spent a lot of time watching TV so I plan my schedule with the goal to keep the TV off between 9 am and 4 pm on weekdays.  In the evenings I become very aware when I stop being entertained by TV and start feeling sick.  When this happens I stop investing in TV and I reinvest into something more productive.  I know that light to moderate exercise will actually earn me some extra credit I can spend later and moreover if I can exercise outside, the fresh air and sunlight always seem to give me some bonus cash.  But I have learned that my previous normal intense workouts are far too expensive for what I can currently afford and that even though I may want to, I can’t push myself at the gym.   I have pulled out old Stephen Covey training and redefined my key life roles and I use these to prioritize how I spend my limited daily budget, intentionally spending on activities that will eventually provide me positive returns.   Most importantly I am documenting how I spend my time as well as my energy levels so that I can watch for patterns and potentially identify which activities add to my energy bank and which activities deplete my savings in order to help me make smart investments with my new reduced brain dollar budget.

Even with all this dedicated management I do know there are going to be times when fatigue is inevitable.  My biggest challenge is trying to find strategies that allow me to accept that no matter how cautiously I spend my budget some days I am just going to be tired and that there is not much physically I can do to change that.    Luckily I have found that the energy I need to be positive comes pretty cheap consequently I even if I am feeling completely drained, I can muster up the energy to do some positive imagery to help me mentally manage my fatigue.   For instance, my symptoms are at their worse during my chemo-therapy days and for the 4 days after I am done treatment.  During these particular days when I get really tired I like to envision that the chemo is literally kickin the crap out my tumour.  I see my four little pills, with tough guy faces, brass knuckles and steel toed boots circling and attacking my tumour like your worst nightmare.  Although I have never kicked the crap out of anything in my life, I imagine that the act of really kickin the crap out of something could tire a person out, especially if you want to do it right.   With this image in my head, I can stop trying to determine what I could have done to avoid being so fatigue and rather take comfort that I am not just being lazy, but rather I am letting my chemo is take care of business.

It shouldn’t have taken a cancer diagnosis to make me realize the value of a brain dollar but if there are any blessings in “incurable cancer”, it is an appreciation of a good investment.  The good news is that like a recession, my fatigue too shall also be temporary and that the value of my brain dollars will eventually rebound.  As I finish treatment, my medical team has told me that I can expect my energy levels to slowly come back up and moreover all the good investments I am making now will help me rebound more quickly once treatment is over.  Although I probably won’t ever be at my previous go, go, go levels, I am relieved to know that my current normal may only be temporary and get excited for the  time when I can reallocate brain dollars from treatment to something else, like a new hobby or back to work.  And although I may never be as rich as I once was, the lessons I have learned from living on a restricted budget will no doubt ensure that no matter how many brain dollars I have, they will be invested wisely.

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[1] NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology V2.2007

The Nature of Fear

I have always found Hallowe’en an intriguing time of year.   We decorate our houses in images of death and terror vying for the most gruesome scene of the block.  Creatures that are synonymous with fear such as spiders, snakes and bats are carefully hung in doorways to attack unsuspecting victims.  It is the one day a year when it is not only appropriate but encouraged to imitate demonic characters and try to scare the pants off of little children looking to score candy from strangers.  It’s the one day a year where you wake up and get excited to confront the things that scare you most.

As Ghosts and goblins started appearing on neighbourhood lawns I started thinking about my own fears.  I think generally I am a pretty timid person.   You put me around a spider and I am going to jump.   If you rent a scary movie, I will spend most of it covering my face in a pillow or behind my hands. The rational side of me says that there is nothing to be afraid of; the spider is surely more scared of me and it’s only a movie;  What are you getting all worked up about?  To which the irrational side defensively responds – Sure it’s not so scary when you put it that way, but where were you when spider bared its teeth?

But what about deeper fears, what are things that day in day out scare me.  It’s not often that I feel afraid and when I reflected further I realized that my fears tend to manifest themselves in anxiety about tasks that I need to complete.   I have always had challenges with anxiety however because I was (or am) such a workaholic I attributed the anxiety to stress from work.  I have been off work for 6 months and the anxiety seems to be persisting.  I know that the anxiety can’t be blamed on work but I still can’t put a finger on why I continue to be anxious.    At the advice of my psychologist I started paying more attention to my inner monologue when I began feeling anxious.  Specifically he encouraged me to try and determine how this inner monologue made me feel about myself.   He wanted me listen to the things I told myself to determine the key themes that may be affecting my anxiety.  He asked me to not just accept the inner monologue but to talk back and challenge potential comments or thoughts that may be unfair.  I thought it was an interesting proposal and left the appointment ready to get to know my inner Alyson.

Over the past few weeks I have been listening to the inner monologue.    If you think “outer Alyson” talks a lot, you don’t want to spend any time with inner Alyson.  She is NON-STOP.   Constantly making lists of things she wants to, things she should be doing, things she needs to do, she even goes over and critiques things she has already done.   At most times the monologue is motivating helping me stay on top of important to dos as well as challenges me to finish tasks that will help me reach specific goals.   Although sometimes I do feel anxiety during these motivating monologues, I can most often relieve this feeling with telling the monologue to quiet down.  Because I know how to manage my anxiety with this “motivator” I don’t think it’s these motivating thoughts that are at the route of my anxiety. 

I paid closer attention and discovered another voice I had never noticed before.   This new monologue contradicts the motivating monologue I first heard.  The newly discovered thoughts would describe all the barriers that stand in my way of completing a task and would actually talk me out of completing a goal that the day before my motivating monologue had gotten me so excited to finish.  For example, there is a conference upcoming at the U of C that a colleague is running.  I believe I would be a great keynote speaker for the conference and decided after the September rush I would follow up to make a proposal.     End of September came and went and for the last month I have contemplated emailing her with some ideas and to have her consider me as a keynote.   A month ago my motivating monologue had me rehearsing my opening remarks and thinking about content  but when it came time to move forward this new monologue interrupted and changed the subject from why I would be a great keynote to why the colleague would never consider me.   A cynical voice explained that they probably already had a speaker, that I don’t have enough experience, it even challenged my work ethic indicating that I would probably leave it to the last minute and do a brutal job so I should spare myself the embarrassment by even suggesting that I should be considered.   All of the cynical comments sent a clear message that this idea of being a keynote was at best, a terrible idea.   The motivating monologues would attempt to challenge back however the cynic just got louder with more reasons not to move forward and would ultimately squash any residual excitement I might have about speaking.  In this moment of conflict between my inner motivator and my inner cynic my anxiety would rise to it’s highest level and I realized that this cynic might be at the route of the problem.   I took my psychologists’ advice and listened to the inner cynic to determine why emailing a colleague was making me so anxious. 

When I stepped back I realized that I was creating barriers for myself to mask that I was actually afraid of two opposing negative outcomes.  First I was afraid of potential rejection.  The colleague was a person I really admired but I wasn’t sure what she thought about me.  I was worried that she would find my request potentially laughable or that when she presented the idea to other colleagues that they might think it was absurd that I thought I could take on such a prominent leadership role.  Conversely I was afraid that she might think that I would be a great speaker and that I would get the gig but that I wouldn’t prepare well enough, would ultimately present poorly at the conference and embarrass myself.   I realized that the cynic was making excuses to hide the real fears that were holding me back; which were that I was ultimately afraid that I wasn’t good enough.  Moreover I was afraid that if I emailed I would put out an opportunity to validate this fear.    My anxiety peaked when I articulated this fear and I knew that I was on to something. 

When I looked at other projects I had on the go it became evident that this underlying fear that “I wasn’t good enough” was holding me back from a lot of things.   Even thinking about confronting this fear would bring up anxiety and discomfort and I would hear the cynic again making excuses to help relieve the knots in my stomach.   However this time the motivator had new arguments.  It started to challenge why I was afraid and moreover told me that the fear was really all in my head.   The motivator reminded me of the type of person that the colleague was and that the only absurdity was that I would think that any of my colleagues would laugh at my leadership skills.   The motivator reminded me that I would have months to prepare and that with all the writing and presenting I am currently doing it would only set this presentation up for success.  Moreover the motivator called me to task to be accountable for my own sense of self worth, to stop looking for external validation and quite frankly, to just get on with it.   That just like my fear of spiders, this fear of inadequacy was not only irrational but just plain silly and it’s was time for me to squash it and move on.     I found the courage to send off the email and of course the response was nothing like I had feared and was everything that I had hoped for. 

Yet there are still some fears that silence both the motivator and the cynic.   I have a lot of new thoughts that come up that revolve around my mortality and none of my voices know quite how to handle these yet.   Most of the time I am confident my treatment will be successful and my prognosis will improve but there are moments where the severity of my diagnosis sets in.  I will remember how my grandfather, who died of a Grade III Astrocytoma, so quickly deteriorated and how my mom and Aunt Carol had to take care of him during his final months.   I remember the woman who was across from me after my surgery and how she could not communicate with her family or nurses what she needed, when she needed it although I knew that she still had good mental capacity to know what it was that she wanted.   I remember what that doctors and statistics have told me that a good survivor rate is 10 – 15 years – which would make me 47 at the tail end of the curve.   With these thoughts there is no inner monologue; just a scary movie playing in my head where the heroine knows that the killer is coming for her, she just doesn’t know when or how.   She races through the field in a desperate attempt to save herself, but she knows that the inevitable is coming.   Typically at this point in a movie I would change the channel for a moment, let the inevitable happen then come back for the next scene, however with the movie inside my head I can’t seem to find the remote.  I play over the images of what is coming and all I can do is hide my head in the pillow to try and avoid my fear of dying.  

Recently this fear of death really gripped me and I started to get pessimistic about my future.   I was focused on all the negative things that I thought were going to happen to me and was stuck on all the things I thought this cancer was going to take away from me.  With my head figuratively in my pillow, I would replay the images of all the things I thought I would never get to do and moreover all the things that I might never get to share with loved ones.   It was a horrible scene that would only get worse each time I watched it.   I needed to change the channel and knew the only way to do that was to take my head out of the pillow and find something to help me confront my deepest fear.  I remembered a part in the book “Anti Cancer“ where the author addressed the fear of dying,  so I went back to that resource and reread his thoughts.  Specifically he shared a quote from Dr David Spiegal who conducts research on how support groups help those with serious illness. Dr Spigel recommends that “What’s most important is to always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.”[1] Further Dr Schreiber(author of Anit-Cancer) indicated that for the most  part people aren’t afraid of dying but rather people are afraid of the things that came along with dying – pain, leaving loved ones unsupported, not saying things that need to be said, or not being able to communicate what you need or want.   With this new perspective I realized that my greatest fear wasn’t of dying but that I was afraid of not being able to die with dignity.  Rereading Dr Spigel`s quote my inner motivator spoke up and told me to drop the pillow and for the first time really articulate what this fear looked like.  I began to journal honestly, with the opening line “I’m facing my mortality head on today and it’s terrifying. ..”

 I took my time and I wrote out all the things that that I need to do to prepare for the worse.   I confronted images of loved ones taking care of me and thought about what I wanted that care to look like.  I allowed myself to be selfish in my requests and for the first time put my needs in front of others.   I allowed the cynic and motivator to talk without judgement and I started thinking about what action I could take to face my greatest fear.

My journaling soon became a list of concrete things I needed to prepare.  Articulating specific tasks helped me deconstruct my fear of death and refocus this energy to things I could control.   On this to do list an interesting idea arose – I wrote

“Create a list of the things that I want to accomplish”

I then crossed out the word “accomplished” and wrote

“Create a list of the things that I want to DO.”

 I had never thought about things I wanted to DO and that idea knocked the fear right out of me.   It was exhilarating.   I grabbed onto the excitement of this idea and grabbed yet another journal.  The opening quote on the journal says

“First it begins inside your heart.  Something moves,  then opens, then frees itself. 

And now you feel a rhythm breaking it’s long silence.  This is going to be good.”

On the first pages I faced my fear that cancer was going to rob me of time and ultimately rob me of experiences I felt I deserved.  However I also articulated that just like my fear of scary movies or my fear of inadequacy, that this fear of loss of time again is also irrational.   Everyone knows that ultimately we are all going to die and no one is guaranteed time on this earth, cancer or no cancer. When I deconstructed my true fear I found the courage to face down this fear and not let it beat me.  I had finished preparing for the worst and was ready to hope for the best.   I wrote

“I can be what I want – enjoy life and all the parts of it, happiness, love, friendship, pain, grief, loss , with an open heart and courage.   Cancer may steal time from me but it can’t steal the time of my life.  My time may be shortened – but my life just got extended.  Here is what I have gotten to do…“

 I made a vow to consider daily, the tasks or events that I do that I never would have done if I hadn’t gotten cancer.    Things like on September 16^th I played cards with my parents and a lifelong friend of my dad, Brian Cowan, and got to hear stories about what they did when they were all my age.   On Sept 13/Sept 20^th I attended a Christening for my friend Amy and a Baby Shower for my friend Mel.  On May 23^rd I had a party in my honour where 174 people came to tell me that they loved me.  “April – Ongoing“  I receive emails, messages, phone calls, gifts from people who tell me that I have positively impacted their lives.   I started the journal on September 13^th and to date I have over 30 entries.   The goal is not to be grateful for this disease but rather to recognize that I can refocus the energy I spend being afraid of what cancer might take from me and turn it into a great opportunity, which is a legacy of memories that will survive me in my friends and family.

It`s human nature to have fears however exceptional people have the self-awareness to understand that most fears are irrational emotions that hold them back from achieving their wildest dreams.  It really is true that  “there is nothing to fear but fear itself”[2] and that  “you gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face“[3]    It is still a daily struggle to confront my fears.   I know I will have good days and bad days. Some days the cynic will win holding me back from taking a chance but I know most days my motivator will find a way to squash the spiders that stand in my way.  Some days I will need to hide in my pillow to protect me from the scary parts of the movie but I now know how to change the channel and take even my darkest challenges and turn them into my brightest opportunities.  I know I will find the courage and strength to look my fears in the face and I know, this is going to be good.   

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[1] Servan-Schrieber, David.  Anti-Cancer  pg 175

[2] http://thinkexist.com/quotation/there_is_nothing_to_fear_but_fear_itself/205789.html

[3] http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2558.html

My Most Important Journal

For Christmas 1997 I bought myself a journal.  I love keeping journals and I often have 3 or 4 different journals, each for a specific, purpose simultaneously on the go.   I start a lot of journals and it’s rare that I actually fill all the pages before a new adventure begins which motivates me to start fresh with new pages and a new journal purchase.   My 1997 journal, however,  is still going strong.

The journal I bought is “The Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude” by Sarah Ban Breathnach.  The specific purpose of the journal is to make time each day to document 5 things that you are thankful for.  The opening quote by John Milton reads “Good, the more communicated, the more abundant grows.”   Each week there are inspirational quotes that accompany blank lines, 5 under each day, which provide an opportunity for “renewal, reflection, and reconnection”[i]  I felt a calmness when I read the authors’ purpose for the journal and imagined myself feeling a sense of calm completing its’ pages.  I purchased the journal and made a New Year’s Resolution to take 5 minutes before going to sleep each night to reflect and document the things I am most grateful for in that moment.

Like most New Year’s Resolution I came out of the gate strong however never quite made the 21 day mark which experts claim is how long it takes for something to truly become a habit.  I made it to about mid month and then my entries were pretty spotty for 1998.  However the journal remained on my night stand as a reminder of my resolution to recognize the gifts that I am given each day.

During the past 12 years the journal has never strayed far from my night stand.   I have moved almost a dozen times and in each move I have looked at the journal and thought “Is it time to move on?  Am I really going to complete this journal?  Does it really matter if I take time each day to silently recognize what I am thankful for”   In those moments I would open the pages, review a few of the entries and I would reconnect with all the things that made my life so incredible.   Inspired, I would close the journal smiling.  I would place the journal intentionally back on my nightstand as a reminder of all I have to be thankful for and would again resolve to a daily commitment to document the abundance that I had been given.

Somewhere along the line, looks like in 2003 or 2004, I realized that I was never going to be someone who every day made the time to formally reflect on what I was grateful for in my journal.  I didn’t give up entirely on it but recognized that if I only made an entry once a week or once a month, it was better than nothing.  Realizing that I wouldn’t make daily entries I started including the year behind the date.  If there were entries already in the pages I would review the entries and try to determine what year I might have made them.  Some were easy, as my entry would document a specific person or event that I could easily pinpoint to a period of time.   However some entries were more ambiguous which made determining an exact timeline sometimes impossible. 

I love when I come across an entry where I can’t pinpoint the year or moreover, when I can’t even pinpoint the specific event that motivated my specific entries of gratitude.  Take July 8^th   , year still unknown, I was grateful for

Pretzels
Great action movies with Seth Green
Cool Cars and Warm Evenings
Gift certificates that were unexpected
Jared’s discipline and will that I admire so much.   

What happened on July 8^th sometime between 1998 – 2003/04?  Did I see the Italian Job?  Did I have one of those soft cinnamon and sugar pretzels that you can get at the movie theatres?  Did Jared not get a pretzel and that is why I admired him?  Was it the night I randomly volunteered for the Classic Car Show in downtown Kitchener and almost got mugged trying to find the volunteer check in?   Maybe, but there is no way to be sure – It’s a mystery.   What I love about this particular mystery is how it reminded me of that crazy night at the Classic Car show and how randomly I volunteered for special events in KW.  It reminds me that I loved going to the movie theatre down by Sportworld in Kitchener, simply to get a deep fried, soft pretzel, covered in white sugar and cinnamon.  (Looking back with my new knowledge of white flour and sugar, maybe not the best choice, but still fun to remember.)     I am reminded that I love the movie the Italian Job and that maybe the unexpected gift certificate was used to purchase the copy we now have in our DVD collection.  The timeline ceases to be important with these mystery entries  but rather what is important is that I develop more understanding that even in the simplest of things, such as going to a movie, I have lot to be grateful for.

Surprisingly it was the task of reviewing all the entries to try and determine timelines that really helped me understand some of the things I value most.    For instance on February 24^th (again year between 1998 – 2003/04)  I was grateful for

My parents who support me
The rationality of Amanda Rose (one of my best friends who I met in Grade 8, she is amazing, google her and see)
My friends who love me
Modern technology
Meditation 

Although these are specific entries there are obvious themes present, specifically relationships (parents, Amanda, friends), Balance (meditation), and Work (Modern Technology).    I can tell you that these specific entries come up again, on different days, for different reasons, throughout my journal as do many other names and common events or activities.   When entries are reviewed individually the themes are difficult to see.   However when you flip through the pages and you review the entries all at once the common themes of gratitude are impossible to miss.   These themes of gratitude highlight what brings you the most abundant happiness and success. More specifically it helps you clarify the things in your life that really matter the most or rather the themes clarify your values.

A common compliment I have received since my diagnosis is that I am a very optimistic person.  It’s not a word that I would have ever used to describe myself.  I think people often use optimism as a synonym for hope consequently people who are optimistic have hope; hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a cure, hope that everything is going to be all right.  Moreover I think people often think of optimistic people as positive people.  It is probably the hope or optimism for a better future, for a cure, that everything is going to be all right, that allows the person to find positivity in even the toughest of challenges.   While I do believe I am an optimistic person it is not hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a cure or hope that everything is going to be all right that keeps me positive.   Aside from hope for a cure, I don’t need to optimistically hope for anything because I know I have been given all the gifts I need for a better future.  I know that everything is going to be all right because I have everything that I need to ensure that I can make it through whatever life throws at me.   I write about these gifts all the time and when I feel like there is nothing to be thankful for I reach for my journal and am reminded of the continued abundance I have in my life.   My positive or optimistic attitude comes from my ability to be sincerely grateful for all I have been given.

It took some time for me to continue writing in my journal during the months immediately following my diagnosis but I still practiced gratitude daily in different ways.    I wrote a lot of thank you notes to loved ones who came to visit me in the hospital or who sent gifts.   When I would explain my diagnosis I would focus on the things I was grateful for, like how close I was to the hospital, the strength of my medical team or the fact that my chemo was oral and I could take it at home rather than focusing on grim statistics or potential hardships I might face.    I would also pray.  I am not a religious person but I have developed a stronger understanding of what it means to have “faith” through this journey.   I remember a specific prayer that I said as I fell asleep on May 1^st in the neuroward after a successful brain surgery.  Surgery was extremely smooth, in fact I was experiencing very little discomfort, I was alert and able to communicate almost immediately after the procedure and the neuro-surgeon said he had removed everything he wanted.   I had no headaches and I felt safe and secure.  I knew that there were still unknowns but I also knew I had made it through the difficult milestone of brain surgery very successfully.   I knew I would make it to tomorrow.   As I closed my eyes to sleep I became overwhelmed with emotion and for the first time in my life I connected spiritually to a higher purpose.   I reflected on the knowledge and skills of my medical team who did such an incredible procedure.  I reflected on all the people that were praying for me, thinking of me and protecting me during the surgery.  I knew it was these gifts of knowledge, skills, love, prayers and strength that carried me through that important milestone safely.     I brought my palms together on my chest and I used two words to encompass all that I felt.  I prayed aloud the words – “Thank You” 

There is no question that although I have new challenges I have an abundant life and I have much to be grateful for.  I have become more consistent in my journal writing and the 2009 entries will most likely outnumber all previous years combined.    Many of the gratitude themes and values remain consistent however 2009 brings a new theme of gratitude that revolves around my medical gifts.  The last three nights for examples I have been grateful for, “my chemo, limited side effects, for no side effects chemo.”  When I review these entries in years to come I will most likely remember that I was actively taking chemo over this Thanksgiving weekend and no doubt be grateful that treatments, like chemo, are a memory.  I will be grateful for my health in that and all moments.     

As I flip the pages to next week I see that 4 of the 7 days are already completed from 06 – 08.  I haven’t read them yet but when I open them next week I will no doubt smile at the entries and remember an event or person or realize something new about what I really value.  No question that with each entry I will gain more positivity from the abundance in my life; As the journal promised that

“Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.”

 

 

 

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[i] Ban Breathnach, Sarah. “The Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude.” 1996.  P 1

You Can Always Come Home

I have lived in Calgary for 6 years but only recently have I started calling Calgary home.  A year ago while working on the Junos, a volunteer asked me “So how long have you lived in Calgary?”  I responded,  “Oh, well I am new to Calgary, been here about 5 years” and she said “That really isn’t new anymore” and I realized that Calgary was now home. 

I love when people ask me what brought me to Calgary.  I smile coyly and say, Love.  I explain how my partner is an optometrist and wanted to practice in Alberta.   I don’t remember exactly what he said when he told me about his post graduation Western plan but I do remember that it wasn’t just about his professional ambitions that made Calgary attractive.  Jared had always pictured his lifestyle to be active and include activities like skiing, biking, hiking and camping.  He had decided to choose a place to live where the life he wanted could be found on his doorstep.  He chose Calgary.

Jared’s concept of choosing a place to have a life and then finding a way to make a living rather than just trying to make a life wherever you can find a job was a completely foreign but very refreshing concept to me.  It is probably the first thing that made me fall in love with him and I still speak about how I admire his clarity of what is really important in life.  Up to that point I had let my work define where I would spend my life and I had settled in to the Kitchener Waterloo (KW) area.  I was content.   I had a great job at the University of Waterloo (UW), I had started coaching and I had a large network of friends and family close by.  It was a good life.   Yet even before I met Jared I knew that at some point I needed to leave KW.  I had grown up in KW.  I completed my degree at UW and then started working at UW just before graduation.   Although KW is a great area and personally and professionally things were very good I felt that I needed to experience life outside KW. I just needed the right reason to leave.  What better reason than love.

My friends and family were nervous when I made the decision.  This was my first serious relationship and Jared and I had been dating just over a year when I officially packed up my life and moved out West.  I took a few steps backwards professionally to make the move and I had no friends or family in Calgary.  My friends and family in KW were nervous that I was giving up too much. That it would be too risky especially if it didn’t work out with Jared.  I wasn’t nervous and would respond to their concerns with “I can always come home.”     But their concern was still; would my life still be there for me to come home to?

When I moved to Calgary I didn’t want to lose touch with my KW life.   I am so blessed to have a large network of close friends and a large family that I would see regularly in KW.   I knew if I wanted to maintain those important relationships, I would have to invest more than just phone calls and email to bridge the gap between the Eastern and Mountain Time Zones.  

I made a commitment not miss any major event if possible.  That first year I flew back 4 times for weddings and once to surprise my parents for their 30^th anniversary.  I remember on one trip I went to a wedding in Toronto area on Saturday then flew to Montreal on Sunday morning to attend another wedding.  Monday morning I caught a flight back to Calgary to be at work for Tuesday.    On each trip home I would make an effort to see friends, have lunch or drinks with former colleagues, spend time with family and reconnect with the life I had when in KW.    I invested a lot of time coordinating plans and would often pack three weekends worth of visiting into two days.   Although I couldn’t spend as much time visiting as I would like, I felt people always appreciated that I at least made the effort to see them.  With each investment of time I felt the distance between Calgary and KW got smaller.  

My work to keep my KW life alive wouldn’t end when I came back to Calgary.   I would constantly look for creative ways invest in my relationships.  The first year I was in Calgary I sent digital scrapbooks back to my parents to highlight all the adventures I was having.    I would send birthday and anniversary cards to friends and family to let them know that I was thinking about them.   For weddings, showers or holiday parties I would miss I always sent a gift.  If I found out that a former friend or colleague had reached a milestone, like when a former professor became the Dean of AHS, I would send a note of congratulations and describe the impact that they had one me.  I was never expecting anything in return; I just genuinely wanted to keep in touch with my KW life.   I remember my financial planner looking at some of my costs for gifts and travel; he told me I could be investing those resources into RRSPs that would give me greater returns later on.  I explained to him that I was investing the resources into relationships that are too valuable for me to lose.  He countered telling me that I just flat out couldn’t afford it.   I stood firm and said “I can’t afford not to.”

On September 26^th, 2009, I hosted my first official fundraising event for the Alberta Cancer Foundation (ACF) and it was fitting that it happened at UW Homecoming.   Initiated by a former student leader Brenda Slomka, my faculty Applied Health Sciences (AHS) dedicated their Fun Run to me and allowed me to fundraise for ACF.   Over 200 people participated in the race, a record for the annual event, and we raised over $6000 for Brain Cancer Research.    All this was achieved with barely 2 hours of work on my part to promote and organize the event.   It was a truly huge return for the very little investment that I felt I put in. 

Although these metrics are incredible what is more powerful are the people who participated, either through attendance at the event or through a donation.  Professors, senior public school classmates, floor mates from first year, high school student council members, colleagues I barely worked with, varsity athletes, res life staff, orientation leaders and of course close friends and family.    Many of these participants I hadn’t seen in over a decade and yet they came; and at the risk of sounding arrogant, they came for me.  Even as I write this over a week after the event has ended, this demonstration of overwhelming support from my former life still brings tears of joy to my face.

I have 5 Basic Principles of Leadership that I try personify day in, day out.   I learned these principles from a mentor Catharine Scott at UW.  One of the principles is “Build and Maintain Constructive Relationships.”  At a party that was held for me in May my friend Nicole who I have known since Grade 1 said “Alyson is a master at making and keeping friends.  She is great at making an effort to get to know everyone who crosses her path, then does a fantastic job at staying in touch.”  It was one of the nicest compliments I have ever received and the first time I ever really acknowledged that I had this strength.   It’s rare that I give myself credit for accomplishments but I think that the huge success we had on September 26^th, as well as the outpouring of support I have been so blessed to receive, is definitely a reflection of the effort I put into building and maintaining my relationships.  

Maintaining relationships takes consistent effort.  It doesn’t have to be hard but it does have to be genuine.    When you build a relationship purely motivated by what the other person can do for you, you lose sight of what you can personally gain by doing for that other person.   Stephen Covey describes this concept as the “Emotional Bank Account”[i] using the analogy that a relationship is like a bank account.  You can’t withdraw funds from a bank account until you make a deposit.  Likewise you can’t expect people to support you unless you support them first. Moreover that making emotional deposits can also act like a savings account giving you investments of support that you can withdraw to use in a time where you may make a big mistake or for something unexpected, like finding out you have incurable brain cancer.   

Now by no means am I so arrogant to think that the unbelievable support I receive can solely be credited to the trips home, cards, gifts or other investments I make to maintain my relationships.  I believe that you are the personification of the company you keep and I have done a very good job of surrounding myself with the best company.  However I do believe that all the actions I have taken to keep in touch with my KW life, especially since I have moved to Calgary, created a huge emotional savings account which allowed me to make an equally huge withdrawal on September 26^th and will continue to provide support I can withdraw when I need it. 

My life is now in Calgary.  The lifestyle Jared wanted when we moved here 6 years ago I am proud to say we are living.   I can honestly say I love living in Calgary, even on this October 4^th morning when I woke up to snow falling.  We have a great network of friends here who have come together to help us through this very difficult period.   I know that these Western friendships will only get stronger over this journey and I know there is no shortage of emotional savings in our Calgary network.    I am very comfortable and happy to call Calgary home.

What I realized recently is that through maintaining such strong relationships I have been able to keep my home alive in KW.  Moreover I have realized that home does not have to be an exclusive term that a person uses to refer only to the physical location in which you chose to make a life.    Home can really be anywhere you have invested into a relationship that is ready to support you.  Home is simply where there are people who will stand up for you when you need them.   I am proud of the life I have spent investing into the relationships which has resulted into homes all over the world that I can always come home to. 

 

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[i] Covey, Stephen. “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”,1989.  p 188 – 199

Woloshyn’s Warriors Tour Officially Launches at UW Homecoming!

My Alma mater is hosting an event at this year’s University of Waterloo Homecoming.  One of the longest Homecoming events is being dedicated to me, in my home faculty of Applied Health Sciences (AHS).  This is a free run however people can collect pledges for the Alberta Cancer Foundation. 

For information about the race and to register please visit – http://www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/alumni/funrun/

If you would like to sponsor me in the run you can make an online donation at http://albertacancer.ca/woloshynwarrior or email me at alysonwoloshyn@gmail.com with your pledge information. 

Here are some of the articles that have been written at UW about this event. 

UW Athletics – http://www.athletics.uwaterloo.ca/xtra/index.html

UW Daily Bulletin – scroll down about half way – http://www.bulletin.uwaterloo.ca/

Happy Birthday to Me

I love September 14^th.  It’s without question, the best day of the year and it’s been that way since 1976 when September 14^th became my birthday.

I was born in KW Hospital, which is now Grand River Hospital, in Kitchener, Ontario;  the first child to two people who were born to be parents, Russ and Donna Woloshyn.   Additionally I was born to 4 loving grandparents and became the 2^nd of 4 grandchildren to Bill and Audrey Little and the 4^th of 12 grandchildren to Tom and Sophie Woloshyn.   23 months after I was born, to the day, I got a great pre-birthday present, in my baby brother Cam.

I have always sought big attention for my birthdays.  I have always believed that your birthday is an important day, as it celebrates the day you became part of the world and well that is a pretty critical personal milestone. 

I have also loved the fact that my birthday was early in September, as it was always right at the beginning of the school year.  People were ready for a party and I always got a chance to throw a big one.  I remember my 7^th birthday.  My parents rented ponies – yes ponies.   They had invited the entire class and I didn’t know that the ponies were coming, but my parents couldn’t wait.   Unfortunately it poured rain that day so instead of pony rides; my dad had to make an emergency trip to the public library to rent a projector to play movies.  We have a picture of my dad suppressing  frustration as he tried to set up the reel to reel while I lead a group of screaming kids around the projector in a game of ring around the daddy.  

In university my birthday always fell during the first week of classes which brought a week of back to school festivities.  My friend Trish said to me a couple years ago “Woloshyn, I don’t actually know when your birthday is as we normally just celebrated for a week.”   I don’t quite have the stamina to go a whole week anymore, but I remember fondly the 5 weeks I spent celebrating my 5 birthdays during my time at UW.

My 19^th birthday was particularly pivotal for me.   I had just moved into residence at the University of Waterloo.  There was a bus trip to a bar downtown and my whole floor piled on the bus after we celebrated with cake in the lounge.   Another floor piled on the front the bus and started singing Happy Birthday.   I jumped up in the back of the bus and yelled “It’s my Birthday too!” and interrupted the new floor.  The birthday boy jumped through the crowd, we hugged and finished the song and I think we probably bought each other a drink then went our separate ways.

6 months later I had been selected as an orientation leader and went to our first leader party.  One of the new leaders also on my team was that birthday boy, Matt Iley.   We laughed about our previous meeting in September and quickly became fast friends.   6 years later, Matt was the person who introduced me to one of the most important people in my life, my partner Jared.   Who knows if we would have had such a strong connection without that fateful night on the bus?   I am looking forward to dinner with Matt this month to celebrate our birthday together for the first time in years.

I celebrated my 30^th birthday in Calgary.  I had just started the job I am currently in as the Director of Integrated Client Services at the University of Calgary.   I was in charge of a new team, that I had only been the leader of for 3 short months and we had just the week before launched our new department.  Unfortunately our launch was anything but smooth.  It was, well, nothing short of a disaster and the team was quite stressed.  I was pretty sure that they weren’t too fond of me because of the less than smooth transition we were experiencing.   I had tried to keep my birthday a secret as I knew there really wasn’t any time to do anything birthday related.  There were far too many problems to solve.   But they found out.  I remember sitting at a service desk, as dozens of students were trying to access our service, many of whom had been waiting far too long for help.   I felt embarrassed but was trying to focus on completing a form for the student in front of me.  The student suddenly looked over my shoulder and smiled and pointed.   I turned around and my team was holding a chocolate cake and a large helium balloon of Mr Incredible that they had all signed.   They sang Happy Birthday and I knew they were standing behind me despite our challenging first few months.  Although I could feel the eyes of all those students staring me down and thinking “Get on with it, I need some help”, I put those feelings aside and let myself be recognized.   I still have that balloon in my office to remind me that you need to recognize the day you came into this world, no matter what.

I have had lots of people asking me what I am doing today for my birthday.  My response has been “I am doing chemo.”   Tonight is my last night of my second round of 5 day chemo (more information about my treatment can be found at http://alysonwoloshyn.com/treatment-updates/).   Although I expected that I would feel good, which I do, I decided to play it low key this year.   My brother, sister in law and aunt joined me on Saturday with my parents for a wonderful dinner and the opening of birthday prizes and   I have dinner  with Matt (the birthday boy) and some other friends from Ontario that I rarely get to celebrate my birthday with, after the big day.   So even though I might not be doing anything special today, as with tradition, I continue to find a way to extend my birthday over the course of a week.

I have always been a big giver of gifts.   I love giving gifts and birthdays give me that opportunity.  I have been told I am a great gift giver and I love watching people open the perfect gift I have selected.   In fact there are few things that make me happier than giving a gift.  Yet, I have felt uncomfortable with people buying me gifts or putting out what I want for a birthday to friends and family.  I have felt that I really don’t need anything and that my wish list is full of silly wants (which of course is the reason for presents). I would much prefer the person’s company or well wishes rather than a tangible present.  I know how hard people work so I felt uncomfortable asking people for things I wanted and maybe didn’t need.  So most often when I asked the question “What can I bring?” to my party, I would reply “Just bring yourself.”

However I do need something on this birthday.   I need my medical team to continue to find ways to keep me healthy and keep me celebrating more and more birthdays.   Additionally I know that I have friends and family who don’t know how to help and are waiting for me to give them a way to make a meaningful impact for me.  I explained to some friends over the long weekend my discomfort in asking them to do a number of things for me (which they did).  My one friend Lisa said “Are you kidding Alyson, if you told me to send you a Red Pepper, I would send you a Red Pepper”.  My friends all agreed that my providing them with a list of ways they could help made them feel empowered, where before they felt powerless trying to figure out how they could help.   They wanted to give me something tangible to help.  This message has been reiterated to me from many friends and family and when I think about it, I know I would feel the same way.   Although it still feels uncomfortable to ask for presents, I thought my birthday would be an easy time for me to work on putting out there, what I really want.

So I have decided to start a new birthday tradition.  In lieu of gifts this year I asked friends and family to consider donating $33 to recognize my birthday at http://albertacancer.ca/woloshynwarrior.    These are truly gifts that keep on giving, as the money raised will support research to help conquer cancer.  The gifts also help me reach my goal to cover the costs (although I don’t have to cover them) of my chemo therapy, which is an important gift I receive today.  Finally these gifts are another reminder of all the people who stand behind me, and I can remind myself that I am not alone in this journey.       

I hope it’s a tradition that will bring me many happy returns.

A Labour Day I Have Always Wanted

Today is the first Labour Day in 14 years that I have had the opportunity to spend it like the majority of Canadians, which is NOT labouring.   While in university I was either an orientation leader or resident advisor and labour day was move in day, so I was busy.  Professionally I have spent the last 9 years working in post secondary institutions with 3 years in residence and orientation.  The other 6 years, although I wasn’t required to work, I did work in student services so I found a way to engage myself to support other departments who had to be open, or by opening my services for students coming back to campus.    I have always felt strongly that when you choose to work in student services at a post – secondary institution your clients are students so Labour Day, is actually a working day not a holiday…..but that is a soap box for another day.

Over the past week the temperature has been falling, the leaves are beginning to change, and the morning air is as crisp and clean as the new dew that covers your car windshield.  It is always my favourite time of year.

This morning I woke up and went outside to grab the paper and I inhaled a perfect fall morning with a smile and excitement for the day to come.  But as I exhaled I became aware of the reason for my excitement, and my smile quickly faded.   The phrase, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, resonated for the first time.   My excitement was anticipation of the energy and rush I got from seeing the students coming back to campus and for the first time in 14 years, I wasn’t going to be a part of that.

It is not a secret that I love working in post-secondary because of the students and students are their best in September.  That first two weeks of school were always my best two weeks, reconnecting with friends, going out dancing, and getting a fresh start.   Assignments aren’t due for another few weeks, and your bank account is full from 4 months of work.   A new chance to start again and to reach the potential you knew you had within you.   The energy on campus is palpable.   It is truly the most wonderful time of the year.

Professionally September has always been an insane time of year for me.  For most of my professional career, September consisted of 10 – 12 hours days at least for the first couple weeks.  Despite this insane schedule, I still always got excited.  It could be 6:30 am and I might be walking in the dark to catch the bus or train to get to work, knowing that it would be dark again by the time I was walking home but with a deep breath, the smell of fall could quickly fill me with excitement to see the students back and feel the energy that I had missed over the past 4 months.

That energy is a rush of optimism that comes flooding back to campuses across North America which I find intoxicating.  Despite the craziness of my professional fall schedule there are always moments when I can stand back and watch the students excitement personify in how they greet their friends, how they organized their binders and just simply hustling between classes.  I try to steal at least a couple minutes every day to watch and it takes me back to the five falls I spent at UW.   In a time before facebook and high speed internet,  I remember how excited I would be to see old friends I hadn’t spoken to in weeks and how optimistic and enthusiastically we would talk about our upcoming classes and activities – Nothing could stop us!  Then I refocus on the new students and see that same optimism personified in front of me.  These students are strangers to me, and it is almost a decade later, but the emotions are still the same.   The emotion is – I can conquer anything and I am excited about doing it.  Who wouldn’t get excited about coming to work and feeling that energy at your busiest most stressful time of year.

Today went slowly for me.  I actually woke up not feeling well at all and have spent most of the day watching various Labour Day marathons on TV.  For years I have dreamt of a Labour Day like today, a day I could sit and relax and not have to worry about the students.  Again, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone and instead of feeling excited for a labour day free of labour, my thoughts went to my friends and colleagues working at Move-In Days across North America and I felt envious of the exciting day ahead of them.  This morning it seemed odd that I woke up ill because I felt great yesterday and it seemed that my malaise attitude came out of nowhere.  As I write this I think I realize that maybe me feeling ill is just my body feeling sad.

Sad that I don’t get to be around the great optimism of strangers that remind me of myself.   

Sad that I am not labouring on this fine Labour Day. 

I can’t wait until September 6^th, 2010.

Finding Purpose in a New Routine

A few weeks ago, I met with my psychiatrist and he alluded to the challenges I may have once radiation was over.  Specifically that many people that go through my treatment find that once radiation is over the day to day becomes a little more depressing since there is no formal structure.  On July 5^th I posted an article from the New York Times called “Losing a Comfortable Ritual:Treatment”  where the author, Dana Jennings, speaks  about her withdrawal from treatment.  In both situations I could relate to the challenges that they spoke of, the loss of structure, loss of connection with people, and a potential loss of purpose. All of these outcomes I could see occurring to people once their radiation routine was completed, however I didn’t expect these outcomes to happen to me, in fact I was really looking forward to my radiation ending as it meant my schedule would be completely my own to structure at my heart’s desire.

Today I wrote to a friend Dwayne Keir. I met Dwayne backpacking almost 5 years ago through mutual friends.  After the trip we became friends through the internet (Facebook) and haven’t spoken much since our post backpack beer in Canmore.  Dwayne is also a cancer survivor and when he heard my news he  reconnected to offer his support.  In the email I sent him today I spoke about my transition from radiation

“Kinda weird trying to get into a new routine where really, you don’t have to accomplish anything today – to get motivated to put down the remote and accomplish stuff”

Later on as I was doing the dishes from dinner, I came back to that statement and realized that maybe I wasn’t making the post radiation transition as smoothly as I thought I would and that I am having problems with my new routine.

It’s a challenging to articulate the uncomfortable feeling I have when I think about my current “day to day”.  I have things that I want to accomplish.  Make the bed, make dinner for Jared, do grocery shopping seem to be the daily agenda items.  Prepare and eat nutritious foods, exercise, and connect with loved ones through facebook/twitter are also top priorities.  Then there are always the random errands that take up my to do list as well as the odd appointment or social date with a friend.  Finally reading and writing are those tasks that I always want to do but too often TV does get the better of me.

These tasks are important, absolutely, but it seems almost selfish that I get all this time to focus on myself.  The majority of these tasks are really only benefitting me and I do often feel uncomfortable talking with pride about everything I “accomplished” with my friends who are working at the daily grind.  There is definitely some guilt that I can do all these things for myself and not have to worry about making time for work the way the rest of the world does. 

A few weeks back I went to my office o do some more transition with my team and to reconnect with friends at work..  The question “Do you miss work?” came up a lot.  It was a challenging question to answer and I typically responded with, “I miss the people, but I don’t miss the work” and I would explain that my lament for the office was difficult to specifically articulate.  I think through writing this, what I have realized is that the guilt I am feeling is more related to a lament for a loss of purpose. 

I have always had a very busy professional schedule.  I have never worked a 35 hour work week.   I knew that I should cut back but if I am honest with myself I have often felt that people who didn’t put in a minimum 50 – 60 hour week, well, weren’t committed enough to their jobs.  Although I would complain to friends and family about how much time I was spending at the office, inside I felt proud that I was working that hard and I could accomplish so much.  Because I was important at work, I had purpose, and I was successful.   I was always very proud of this success and would define my purpose through my professional accomplishments. 

Yet I think back to the hundreds of messages I have received from friends, family and strangers, providing their support and expressing the impact I have made on their lives.  None of them talk about my professional accomplishments.  Some talk about the impact I have made in their lives within the context of a professional role I had, but all the messages speak to the type of person that I am rather than tasks that I accomplished during those extra 15- 25 hours a week I felt were so critical to defining my purpose.    Maybe it never was the things I did during my daily grind routine that really mattered to people?  So if it wasn’t those tasks then what is my purpose in my day to day?

For Christmas 2002, my brother Cam gave my Mom, Dad and myself a very special present.  He wrote poems for each of us,  then typed them (on a typewriter) on linen.  The typing alone must have taken him hours.  All three of us have kept them.  Mine always hung in my office on a bulletin board, now it’s on one at home.  I remember reading it in 2002 and one verse in particular made me stop and think

… and so many people always ask of me – what you’re gonna do next
They are as impressed as I am.

But what about you, where are you gonna go tomorrow.
Let me know, make it fun
And don’t kill all your time on the bosses phone servicing clients desires
Pursue what is yours

I pulled it down and reread that verse today.  I feel ashamed that 7 years ago I read that powerful verse and thought “He’s right, I need to pursue what’s mine” and today I feel purposeless without work to dictate my schedule.  Why is it that I feel without a job description, that the things I accomplish today for myself are not as, or more important, than the things I would have accomplished in the office?

I am currently reading the book “Daily Inspirations” by Robin Sharma which has  a specific inspiration for each day.  Each night I read today’s inspiration and then I journal my response.  Last night there was an especially significant quote. 

“Give the main aim of your life over to far more important pursuits such as discovery of your highest potential, giving of yourself to others and making a difference by living for something more important than yourself. 
Success is fine but significance is the real name of the game.”

Success is fine, but significance is the real name of the game.

Pretty profound statement and it helps me find purpose in my new routine.

My daily tasks are meant to find my highest potential, which includes all the tasks I am doing to help ensure I can beat my cancer and maintain such a high quality of life.  Like eating well, exercising, meditation, naturopath appointments and of course all the medical appointments and tasks.  I have to focus consistently on completing these tasks to ensure I can reach my highest potential as a cancer survivor.

My daily tasks allow me to give myself to others which include all the time I spend responding to messages I receive from people as well as actively connecting with friends, family and strangers who I can help.  Whether it is some words of advice or offering an ear to listen, taking care of my relationships is important.  It also means writing and sharing my experience, which I hope, inspires others to also work towards their highest potential.

My daily tasks are focused on making a difference by living for something more important than myself.  More important than myself is finding a cure for cancer, that would impact over 28 million people. So I will fundraise and unequivocally support this cause.   More important than myself is hope specifically that tomorrow will be brighter.  So I will offer advice from my journey and try to support any person to whom I can offer this hope.   More important than myself is love.  I look around my room and I see pictures, cards, gifts, and other items that remind me of the people who love me, to whom I am significant. Appreciating that enormous gift of love is always every present in all my daily tasks.  That love is what gives me hope of a brighter tomorrow and makes me want to reach my highest potential in order to spend more time with these people who care so much about me.

Tonight as I write this I am having a paradigm shift.  I am shifting from success to significance.  Don’t get me wrong, I am looking forward to the day I am well enough to head back to work and continue to have professional success.   I feel that within work I can still reach my highest potential, give myself to others, and focus on making a difference for something more important than myself – especially working in the public sector, these 3 key goals I can achieve within my “daily grind”.   However I will also take my brothers advice and make my professional life fun and pursue what is mine.  I will for the first time really understand what a persons true purpose is all about, and it’s not about the number of hours that you work or things you check off your professional to do list.   I look forward to going back to work when I can walk to the walk with this new sense of purpose.     

 This morning when I wrote that email to my friend Dwayne, I felt that my tasks for the day were mundane and unimportant.  This evening I spoke to my brother and we chatted about these tasks that I am doing everyday and he said “It is a full time job, taking care of yourself.”  And he was happy that I am making it a full time job to take care of myself.  He sees my daily tasks as anything but mundane or unimportant.    Within the paradigm shift, I can see that my new “daily grind” is not selfish but rather extremely significant to my journey.   My new routine is about doing significant things to bring out my highest potential as a cancer survivor and there is nothing selfish or mundane about that.