What is your why? Mine has to be family

alyssa and sandra after race

My goal since launching this website early this year has been to post once a week on topics of interest to leaders, aspiring leaders, and human resources professionals tasked with growing and developing leaders in their organizations.  Generally I post on Monday or Tuesday of each week.  Today’s post is a little off topic and a little late (two weeks) because I have been spending time with my family, which is my most important why.  As in why I do what I do in life and work, and why life balance is important.  Thanks for indulging me in sharing a bit more about these most important people in my life.

Last month, my husband and I went camping together and discovered an amazing canyon in southwestern Arizona.  The canyon is appropriately called Palm Canyon and has a stand of palm trees that are indigenous to Arizona.  Now, Arizona has plenty of palm trees – especially date palms at the numerous date farms in the state, and decorative palms at resorts and in residential areas.  But, there are very few native palm trees that were not transplanted to the state.  So,  hiking to these reclusive native palms was somewhat of a pilgrimage.  Our campsite was about 10 miles from the nearest other campers, not to mention civilization!

Then, two weekends ago, I had the pleasure of hanging out with my daughter.  Allow me to brag a bit, my 24-year-old daughter is working on geological research to complete her PhD.  She is an amazingly hard worker, fitness buff, and scientist.  She and I met in Portland, Oregon where we did some sightseeing and ran a half-marathon.  Yes, we enjoyed the accomplishment, but for me the best part was spending the weekend with my daughter who I don’t get to see often enough.

This past weekend, I enjoyed with both my 21-year-old son and my husband (we just celebrated 28 years of marriage!).  We went kayaking on Arizona’s Salt River.  It’s a tame river with one fun rapid and miles of scenic calm just minutes from the bustling Phoenix metropolitan area.  Some highlights of the trip were when my husband rescued a beach ball for a group of people who were floating down the river (he was so so helpful they even offered to pay him a free beer, which he politely declined), and seeing a river otter swimming with us.  I’ve seen plenty of otters in zoos, but this was the first one I had seen in an Arizona river (remember – it’s a desert here and the rivers don’t all have water in them, but this one does).

I’ll get back to writing about leadership and organizational development next week, but for this week I am going to continue savoring my why!

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