The last few weeks in Alberta have been lovely and hot. I say that from the perspective of someone who is comfortable with +30 C weather and no air conditioning! The only issue I have with the heat is running in it. It's then my stamina gets up and goes home, where it waits patiently for my return.
I outsmart it by getting up early and running before it
hits 20 degrees and by making sure I stay hydrated along the way. This past Saturday held all the promise
of a day when every sane person holes up in the air conditioned mall until
the cool of evening descends.
To beat the heat I was up and running by 7:30 a.m. At
the moment I’m running an hour in 10 minute intervals; run 10, walk 1. All was good.
I was into my second run cycle when I felt something
trickle down the back of one knee. This
was odd. My brain launched into
identification mode, “I wonder why the backs of my knees are sweating so much.”
Another trickle, “They don’t generally sweat this
much. I’ve run in hotter weather than
this.”
A trickle down the back of my other knee was followed by an
alarming longer stream that reached the top of my sock and ran down onto my
foot. “Am I peeing a little?!?” (I know
all you women of a certain age have asked yourselves this question at one point
or another…don’t deny it!) Quick
inventory of bladder. “No, all systems
holding steady there.”
Another long trickle into the sock. “Maybe I’m bleeding. Should I stop to check? But my run’s going so well. I don’t want to mess it up by stopping
now. There’s no pain. If I was bleeding there would be pain. I'll keep running.”
Finally the 10 minute run cycle ended and I had a minute to
assess the situation. No urine, no
blood…good. I pulled my water pouch out
of its holster at my back and squeezed it for a drink. Water jetted from a pin-sized hole in the
seam at the bottom of the pouch. Well, I
found the source of the mysterious knee sweat.
Now I had to figure out how to get through the next 40 minutes of my run
without my water draining away.
My minute was up so I got creative. It can’t leak if no water gets to the
hole. I flipped the pouch upside down
and crammed it down into the holster. I
was off and running…literally! Problem
solved.
Problems come our way all the time from places we don’t
understand. We can ignore them and hope
they’ll go away, but that’s like FEELING the water leak out of the pouch and
doing NOTHING about it. Which I tried
for a bit, but if I continued to ignore the problem I wouldn’t have had any
hydration for the remainder of the run and my strength would have leaked away
faster than the water in my pouch.
Occasionally problems are simply opportunities to make
a situation better. But sometimes
they’re bigger and require more effort, more strength, and more time to
solve. Not only that, they’re quite
often associated with lousy communication.
I know very few people who actually welcome the tough
conversations it takes to resolve some of the BIG problems in life. So I thought I’d share a book I read this
spring that helps navigate those tough conversations.
The book is called “Crucial Conversations”. You can find their website at vitalsmarts.com/crucialconversations
.
I’m one that runs from conflict faster than a turkey flees
a Thanksgiving dinner table, but this book helped me identify how I respond in
some of these situations and what I can do when I recognize these responses;
then how to move forward and address the conversation head on.
There are a number of on-line tools for assessment and
practice that can be used in a team setting or individually. We can all get better at problem-solving
through better communication.
There are still a few weeks of summer left. Why not add “Crucial Conversations” to your
summer reading list.
THINGS
TO THINK ABOUT:
What problem or conversation have you been avoiding that you need to address?
Share your thoughts by clicking on “comments” below.
