Who’s Yoh Daddy ... Pete-XR2.2

Salut mon fis et ma fille. Ça marche?

I’ll put today’s post in language that best fits your generation … Pete release dates.

Pete1.0 was launched by Sidney and Ellen Bowyer on Feb. 28, 1955. However, a number of flawed factory settings required that they leave it in a repair shop incubator until the resident geek squad could effect repairs. One month later they brought home Pete1.1. 

Versions 1.2 through 1.16 were launched between 1955 and 1969.
Pete2.0, released in 1969 when a trombone was put in my hand. I had purpose.

Pete-J1, released 1976 when I became a Christian. This was a significant upgrade … my identity was redefined, my purpose strengthened and refocused, and empowerment was introduced into my life (the immediate result was the elimination of a vast number of fears).

P5D5, released 1981 when I first dated Debbie (technically speaking, Debbie4.0) … this upgrade had a dual core.

P5D5 1.0 through 4.22 were released continually through to 2000 to patch cascading critical errors when networked with other units. 

P5D5-4.23, released in Jan.2001, had a catastrophic failure a month later and a back-dated reinstall of Pete-J1 was required until a holistically new operating system could be developed.

Pete-XP, launched in 2004, was an immediate success with a greater capacity and a wider appeal to users. Starting with an air gap to avoid unintentional corruption, the developer introduced controlled network affiliations in vivo, beginning with extensive auto defence / debugging routines. Despite trends in other people, Pete-XP abandoned parallel processing (multitasking) in favour of deeper solutioning and sharper resolutions, while maintaining the advantages of earlier releases Pete-J1 and P5D5.

Following the launch of incrementally sophisticated versions through 2012, Pete-XR1.0 was released when I retired.

The current operational version is Pete-XR2.2.

Clearly, I’m not the Dad that you knew before 2001 … but then, you already knew that. You just might not have known fully how different, or how Pete-XR2.2 fully came to be (don’t you hate it when bad things happen to good sentences?)

Pete-XP series (or Xtra Pete) has been more physically energized, more emotionally connected, more mentally engaged, and more spiritually aligned, than earlier versions. My health is now good, our marriage is now excellent, a great career transitioned into an amazing calling, I am making a difference in the lives of others, and my relationship with the two of you is at an all-life high (so far).

I am more resilient and I have more freedom. I’m free of the minute-to-minute anxiety that used to consume me when I wondered what others thought about me. I’m free of the crippling need to jump through every hoop that everyone puts in front of me. I’m free to put my time into what is important and not just what is urgent. I’m free to coach, mentor, and guide those who want /need it. I’m free to practice the discipline of recovery without guilt and free to do a number of things at a more highly competent level because of the self-imposed constraints, restrictions and limits that once seemed impossible.

I agree with Stephen Covey that the maturity spectrum grows from dependency through independence to interdependence … with the ultimate state being dependable. The emotional states that I assign to each of these ascends from contentment through happiness to joy … with the ultimate emotion being fulfillment. I am fulfilled.

Why are most things better for me now? Because I have a clearer understanding and apprehension of P.I.E. and the glues that hold them together. Because I have put a lot of work into my own personal EM plan … I continue working on personal mitigation, I continue developing my own preparedness plans, I have put some better responses in place, and when I think recovery I always think of it with a mitigative-mindset (how can I recover to a state that is better than where I started?)

God gives us two amazing gifts that I have embraced … gifts which have helped me become effective, productive and fulfilled: choice and process. It took me close to 5 decades to understand the power of these two gifts and where they come from.

The paradox is that the most effective application of choice and process appears to many (most?) to bind us rather than free us. Too few understand Purpose, Identity and Empowerment. Choice and process don’t bind us … they bind the three pillars of P.I.E.

My choice was to make my overarching process like an EM cycle … because it then helps map out everything else.

OK, enough for this week. Let me leave you with a question to ask yourself about your purpose motive. This is an important question that I first learned from Loehr and Schwartz, in their must-read book, “The Power of Full Engagement.”

Do you do what you do because you have a reason to, or do you do what you do because you don’t see a better reason not to?

I’ve learned to do nothing without a reason. This is liberating when I execute it well. I’m miserable when I don’t … and despite what I have learned, I allow vulnerability to continue existing in me and occasionally do things without reason. I’m still a work in progress … but this current release works better than all the previous ones.

I love you guys.

Dad

Sneak peak: Next week starts a new month that I’m calling, “Reel Life Wisdom.”  Each week I’ll choose a different movie title to share powerful bits of enlightenment that shone into my life about a decade ago … providing insights that changed everything for me.

Who’s Yoh Daddy ... EM for Dummies

Mornin’ kidlets.…

I think this is going to be a geeky, didactic post. Get over it.

In 2002 I hired a handful of students to work on a large multi-year project called, “A Climatology of Hurricanes for Canada: Awareness of the Threat.” Three of the “kids” were meteorology students and all did a very good job. The 4^th one was actually a geography student. I think a few people wondered, at first, why I hired her. It became clear to everyone pretty quickly why. Rebecca had a passion for storms and disasters (and as she would joke, “but without the math.”)

She was the one who taught me (in her job interview) that there is a simple equation that relates disasters to hazards. Actually, her passion wasn't on the disaster side of the equation at all, it was on the hazard side. You'll understand when you see the equation, which I've put here in all its glory:

D = H x V

Can you guess what the 3 variables are? The D and H I just mentioned … disaster and hazard. How about the V? Does any V-word come to mind? Any V-word that I might have talked a lot about last week?

Well done, you’re right. Vulnerability. As equations go, they don’t get much simpler.

Ponder this one. Soak it in. Let your mind bathe in the elegance of its message. 

Here’s the interpretation. If you want to make D small (technically speaking, the risk of D), then either you have to make H small or make V small. Pretty simple. Who said Rebecca didn't do math.

Here’s a simple diagram … I think people instinctively understand this … they just don’t live like they do.

If the vulnerability is large then the potential for disaster is also large.

First, let’s get something out of the way. Can we make the hazard smaller or even make it go away? I used to have people call me at the hurricane centre, telling me about their great ideas for making hurricanes disappear. At first it was crackpots, but then I started getting calls from reputable engineering firms with grandiose ideas. Apart from the hubris to think we could actually do that, most of them were ignorant of the fact that hurricanes actually serve a useful purpose to planet earth … they shunt warm air from the tropics towards the poles and even out the temperature differences that naturally build up. Some experts have speculated that if you take away hurricanes the poles would become uninhabitably cold while the tropics would become uninhabitably hot … and earth would become uninhabitable within two centuries.

There’s a better idea. Let’s try to reduce our vulnerability … let’s try to get out of the way of the hurricanes while they do their thing. Or if we can’t get out of the way then let’s build invulnerability into our lives so that despite hurricanes appearing on our doorstep, they can’t do any real damage to us because we’ve mitigated against that.

Have I lost you yet? Are you guys hanging in there? There’s a point to this … seriously, I’m not actually talking about hurricanes or natural disasters, but about life in general. Hang tough for a couple minutes more.

Emergency managers around the world function through a process called the Emergency 

Management Cycle. Here’s my version of that – EM for Dummies.

As you read the following definitions, please see this as a direct metaphor that can be applied to daily living.

Mitigation attempts to prevent hazards from developing into disasters altogether, or to reduce the effects of disasters when they occur. Mitigation focuses on long-term measures for reducing or eliminating risk. Mitigation builds invulnerability into the basic structures.

Preparedness includes the development of specific plans of action for when the hazard strikes. Mitigation may not have been able to create invulnerability so steps must be in        place to deal with the threat of an imminent (potential) disaster.

Response includes the mobilization of the necessary emergency services and first responders into the threat area as the hazard attempts to transform into a disaster. The carrying out of the preparedness plans are part of a successful response.

Recovery attempts to restore the affected area to its previous state. Recovery actions include rebuilding, re-employment, and the repair of other essential infrastructure. Recovery efforts can also look ahead to reduce or eliminate future risks; these can be powerful mitigation efforts towards future resiliency.

Back to me…

My crash ‘n burn left me reeling. It also left me with four burning questions: 1. What had happened to me? 2. Why did it happen?  3. What could I do to get back to the way I was (or better)? 4. What could I do to make sure it never happened again?

George, and his cottage story, helped me understand #1 and a bit of #2.
Rebecca and her EM-mindset, helped me understand the rest of #2, a lot about #3. God and my Christian training helped me immeasurably with #3 and a bit of #4. And most recently, your Mom, with her new training in applied psychology/counselling has come alongside me as a peer-mentor so that we can discuss and practice these things continually and get better, together. She’s helping me a lot with #4.

Let me sign off this week with four important connections that I’ve made.

1. Disaster  What constitutes a disaster in my life?  Actions that are self-limiting, self-defeating or self-destructive. Also, incongruent behaviour … where my beliefs and principles are not being demonstrated by my actions. Interestingly, the Bible already had a word for that: sin.

2. Hazard   What constitutes a hazard in my life? Well, anything that can lead to me living incongruently. Let me call them hijacking forces, or things that lead to self-sabotage. The Bible already had a word for that too: temptation (or evil desires).

3. Vulnerability   What does vulnerability look like in my life?  I think it is any part of my character that is too weak to resist the hijacking forces. And yes, the Bible even already had a word for that: sin-nature. But let’s just call it human weakness.

4. EM for THIS Dummy  I had been sitting on a personal EM-for-Dummies manual my entire adult life, and hadn’t seen it. The Bible. It even tells about this one guy who was just like us (ie: He had our human weakness) yet He was never found to be weak. He lived His life like a perfect Emergency Manager. He even told some great stories about the need to think about mitigation (you might remember the story … a wise man built his house on a rock while a dummy built his house on sand, and then the storm came).

I’m thankful that THAT Guy sent me George, Rebecca and Deb, and a host of others, and showed me how choice and process could turn my life around. So I did. Next week I’ll introduce the new Pete (version XR2.2), and then in April I’ll begin describing the choices and the processes.

I love you guys.

Dad.

Who’s Yoh Daddy ... Vulnerability

C’qui s’passe mes enfants?

Did you guys ever hear me talk about the difference between a hazard and a disaster?

Hurricane Juan in 2003 was our true storm of the century. This is called a hazard (specifically, a natural hazard).

The satellite image shows it approaching Nova Scotia. 

The two pictures showing destroyed boats and downed trees were part of the disaster that resulted when Juan ripped across the province. 

You both remember the mess of Halifax. And Faith, it was fun taking you with me that night when I did CBC National News with Peter Mansbridge and talk about all the damage and answer the question about why people weren't prepared in spite of the excellent warnings (I said something along the lines of, "well, you can't legislate common sense.")

Everyone kept calling Juan a disaster. It wasn’t … it was a hazard. But it turned into a disaster for one reason only. Vulnerability!

You guys know my good career buddy Jim Abraham. Jim often spoke about the great Ice Storm in 1998 which created power outages for close to 25% of Canadians. It was a massive storm … likely the most impactful storm in Canadian history. He liked to tell people how that storm, had it happened in 1850, would have been little more than a mild curiosity. The difference? Vulnerability. Between 1850 and 1998 we Canadians had built our lives to be dependent on hyrdro-electric power, not to mention transportation that depended on carefully cleared roads (and runways). The storm … the hazard … would have been the same in 1850 as it was in 1998. The result, however, was the vulnerability that we had built into our lives … vulnerability that turned the hazard into a disaster in 1998.

What are the vulnerabilities that exist in your life? How about the ones that you have allowed to creep in? Are you guys slowly loading a gun that will someday be triggered by an innocuous event?

Until 2002, my life was one big vulnerability. I didn’t see it until it was too late. It just sort of creeped up on me (I know, I should have said crept). Before that, surely you remember how I was more than 100 lbs overweight … and that I took myself way too seriously … and that I didn’t prioritize family the way I needed to … and that I expended an inordinate amount of energy managing the image of me in the minds of everyone around me … and that I was strict with you, at times beyond reason … and that I was time-obsessed and lived most of my life at a frenetic pace … and that I battled insomnia … and … well, the list goes on.

I lived a life of inattention. I created my own vulnerability by simply not paying attention to little, but important things … things that accumulated … things that loaded the gun.

I discovered that vulnerability loads a gun that eventually ends up in the hands of someone else, or something else, and at a moment that you don’t expect …. BANG! 

I also discovered that this particular gun is always aimed at yourself.

Vulnerability prevents effectiveness from being developed; it keeps freedom from being attained or enjoyed. I believe the two of you are super, but you’re now not, nor will you ever be Superman or Superwoman … you’ll never be physically invulnerable. Yet, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and socially speaking, you can get very close by just paying attention and taking some simple steps.

The two of you have proven to yourselves that you know how to change the physical-you. You took steps and did some things … things that made you better, physically. You made yourself less vulnerable, and in the process, you increased your freedom. And if you think about those steps that you took I bet you’ll discover that they were intricately bound together by purpose, identity and empowerment, which were, in turn, powered by choice and process. 

I hope this makes you go, “hmmmmm!”

I love you guys.

Dad

Sneak peak: Next week you’ll see what I figured out about the vulnerability thing.

Who’s Yoh Daddy ... A Tale of 2 Storms

Hi Guys….

Remember when we first discovered the microphone on our PC and recorded a lot of goofy things together? You were both so young … that’s what made it so much fun. One of my favourite recordings was Christian, in one of his funny voices, saying, “Who’s yoh daddy?”  Remember my recorded response?  “Yoh Daddy, IS yoh daddy!” That still cracks me up thinking about it ... it's a very fun memory for me.

I want you to know yoh Daddy a little better … why I think what I think, do what I do, and say what I say (I think).

Who I am today is best explained by telling you a story. Actually, I need to tell two stories … a Tale of Two Storms.

A Very Personal Storm

I remember the event like it was yesterday. It was around 2pm. The date was Sunday February 25, 2001. It’s still so clear in my mind. A brutal storm hit. It wasn’t the meteorological kind though. An event occurred but it was my mind that was hit by one of the most intense storms that it had ever experienced. My mind couldn't process the event.

The result was an emotional breakdown. My mind collapsed. And when that happened, it seemed like the rest of my dimensions went with it. Not a nervous breakdown, mind you … that’s different … with those you actually do damage to the nervous system. Mine was less severe, but personally incapacitating none-the-less. Maybe a better term is a severe mid-life crisis … or a wicked burnout … or an epic flame-out. The semantics are really less important than the impact … I had a holistic collapse: physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually.

Do you guys remember that at all?  Christian, you were 14. Faith, you were 12.

In the months that followed, my plaintiff mentality directed the blame for my collapse at other individuals rather than assuming any culpability myself. It would take 9 months for the birth of any real healing to take place. It would take a friend’s meteorological insights of another storm before I would fully understand my own.

An Historic Storm (a real weather one)

In November 2001, a beach-front cottage on PEI was destroyed during the oceanic surge of a powerful storm. A newspaper article the following day summarily declared the cottage to be the victim of the storm. Our leading expert at work on storm surges was George Parkes (do you remember him?). George was quick to point out to me that the journalist’s conclusion was a misdiagnosis. “Peter. That’s wrong! That’s wrong! It wasn’t the storm that brought down the cottage; it was thirty years of sea-level rise and coastal erosion and crustal subsidence.” George then amazed me with a series of satellite photos, taken over decades, which showed a gradually advancing coastline, bringing the beach closer and closer to the cottage, putting it in a position of ever-increasing vulnerability. Here's a few shots.

Destroyed cottage

notice the proximity to the water

 

Satellite picture from 1974 … 26 years before the storm. 

The cottage is the one with the dark roof towards the back left. 

Notice how far it is from the water?

26 years later it was beachfront property and very vulnerable.

Quite simply, the storm was nothing more than the proverbial, “final straw.” George described it this way … “it was like pulling the trigger on a gun that was slowly being loaded for more than thirty years.” When the cottage was built it was sufficiently far inland, but the creeping effect of a rising sea level and a coastline being eroded and a subsiding earth crust beneath it had brought the shoreline closer and closer over three decades … until one day it was beachfront property and suddenly vulnerable in a new way. The destiny of that event had been mapped out for decades, however, all that we saw was the catastrophic end to the cottage during the storm.

Lesson? That which loads the gun is seldom what pulls the trigger.

Back to My Personal Storm

When the PEI cottage was destroyed, I had already had nine months to ponder and do a lot of soul-searching to try to figure out how something like that could have happened to me. After all, I was a church elder and a father … I taught other people how to live well. So, in the vulgar words of your generation: WTF? By the time November rolled around I had stopped blaming others for my breakdown and was really open to understanding how this happened and how I could have prevented it. George’s story about the cottage provided my answer; I was just like that cottage. My collapse wasn't simply the result of a sudden massive emotional storm. The event in question was actually quite insignificant in the big scheme of things. But my vulnerability to that event was the result of a gun being slowly loaded over a few decades. Like the cottage, my collapse was ultimately the culmination of too many years of personal neglect as I had ignored rising pressures, moral subsidence and character erosion. My destiny too had been mapped for decades, through a slow creeping effect. People only saw the crash. I knew what pulled the trigger. But it would be a few years before I understood how I had loaded the gun.

George was right … that which loads the gun is seldom what pulls the trigger.

Understanding the details behind the loading of my gun became a personal obsession for about 8 years, and ended up changing my life at home, work and church. It changed me. My thinking had changed. The way I related to Deb and to you guys was changed. The way I related to everybody was changed.

As I mentioned before, at work, I went from being “the hurricane guy,” to being known as “the life balance guy.” Two years later in 2009 I moved from managing the Hurricane Centre to managing the weather service’s Life-balance Initiative, and eventually Environment Canada’s change-management efforts, as well as EC’s people-management training.

Essentially, my career as an applied-scientist shifted to one where they paid me to work in the humanities? How did this happen? I had an emotional breakdown which led to an emotional breakthrough. I'm gonna come back to this notion of a "breakdown breakthrough" in one of the summer blogs.

As you can see, very bad things sometimes have a very good result ... if we let them (that which doesn't kill you doesn't actually always make you stronger, despite the common expression ... I'll revisit this one too under the broad category of @#$#@ my Mom told me).

My personal storm of 2001 marks a defining moment in my life … a watershed if you will, with life being divided into BC and AD (“before crash” and “awakening day”). It is as important to me as when God came into my life in 1976 … as when Debbie came into my life in 1981 … as when each of you were born and came into my life in 1986 and 1988. It marked when I finally came into my own life to take ownership of it. 

I love you guys.

Dad

Next week... I want to look a bit closer at the vulnerability thing and it's connection with disasters, both natural and man-made.