By Michelle Formanczyk

On the difference between knowing better and living better.

Hoarding knowledge leads to a very different destination than applying it.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. And when I step back and look at the last couple of years, I find myself smiling at the difference in me.

It’s autumn in Michigan. About 80% of the reason I moved home.

I remember staring across a lake as smooth as glass, asking my elders why pine trees didn’t like naked time, too.

The maples always seemed to be in some kind of competition to see who could bare the most sticks by November 1.

Today, driving home after picking up my child from school, I noticed that most of the treetops had become sticks in the sky overnight.

I’ve always called winter the season of gray skies and twigs. It makes me sad watching all that brilliant color fall away.

But today, with the wind carrying the last of the leaves, I found myself looking at something else.

The skeletons. The structure beneath all that beautiful foliage.

And wouldn’t you know it, that seems rather fitting for this season of my life.

I’m learning to slow down. To savor the now. To stop moving at 100 million miles an hour simply because I know how.

Today, I mailed my completed disability application to my attorney.

What. A. Relief.

Even the rude post office clerk couldn’t steal that moment.

I had asked whether there was any way to get assistance addressing an envelope because I couldn’t write it myself. Apparently, that was an unreasonable question.

There I stood, wearing a cast, with a disability application in front of me, feeling the familiar urge to point out the obvious.

Instead, I looked at his puckered, pouty face and noticed the balloons dancing in the fluorescent lights behind him.

“Good Job!”

“Congratulations!”

I smiled.

I thought of my grandmother, and something in my soul settled a little.

The irony? Earlier this week, I’d publicly praised that very same clerk in a community conversation about our local post office.

Well, how about that?

Let folks be rude. I’ll simply stop singing their praises.

I minded my own hands until it was time to go.

And just like that, I was free of a HUGE burden.

Later, I had a wonderful check-in with my nurse health coach through my insurance company. We’ve worked together for about a year now, and she reminded me of our very first conversation.

We met during a difficult chapter when I was under tremendous duress. Someone in her department had handled something badly at precisely the wrong time.

And I made my displeasure known.

Let’s just say I have a history of being exceptionally effective with sharp words and an even sharper tone.

There was a time and place in my professional life when that approach served me extraordinarily well.

But here’s the thing.

Just because something served us well doesn’t mean it still serves us.

I suspect quite a few Gen X women will recognize themselves in that sentence. And plenty of men, too.

We’ve spent decades earning credibility, developing expertise, building our voices, and learning when to put the pedal to the metal.

Now, at the very moment we’ve earned the authority to use all of it, we’re discovering something rather extraordinary.

There are better ways.

Those three words came to me during one of the hardest chapters of our family’s life.

There are better ways.

Simple words. Enormous implications.

Because wanting answers, even needing answers, doesn’t automatically justify the way we go about getting them.

And finding a better way means learning how to respect everyone involved, through every step of the process.

That’s a big ask.

It’s also the same ask I’ve made of teenagers, management teams, and organizational leaders for decades.

It’s the same standard I held myself to as a quality manager.

And I’ve always said that if you have the audacity to call yourself a leader, then let me see you lead.

Well, here I am.

Looking in the mirror.

All right, Michelle. Let’s see you lead.

Here’s where things get interesting.

Leadership doesn’t always look like having a whole bunch of followers.

Especially when you’re raising teenagers.

Or navigating marriage.

Or learning how to communicate with people who don’t process, respond, or express themselves the same way you do.

I’ve watched this unfold in my own family.

My spouse and I don’t always speak the same emotional language. What feels like communication to one of us doesn’t necessarily register the same way for the other.

But rather than taking that personally, we’re learning to read each other’s language.

And somewhere along the way, we’ve started creating one of our own.

A family vernacular.

How cool is that?

And when you begin witnessing these things, participating in them, and understanding how your family learns together, something changes.

You start asking different questions.

Where does communication break down?

Where do we stop learning?

Where are we spending too much time operating in chaos?

Where’s the waste?

Where are the opportunities to improve the process instead of criticizing the people?

Suddenly, things become far less personal.

And curiosity has room to breathe.

That’s the difference I’ve been noticing in myself.

Not that I suddenly know more than I did two years ago.

I’ve collected knowledge for decades. Professionally, personally, sometimes through circumstances I wouldn’t wish on anybody.

But collecting knowledge and applying it are two entirely different things.

I can know every principle of continuous improvement, communication, leadership, and human behavior there is to know.

None of it matters much if I can’t apply those principles when I’m standing at a post office counter, raising my children, talking with my husband, or facing something that frightens me.

The real test isn’t what I know. It’s what I do with what I know when it matters.

And today, I can see the difference.

I didn’t need to correct the clerk.

I didn’t need to win the interaction.

I didn’t need to explain myself, defend myself, or spend another ounce of energy proving something that was already obvious.

I had something important to accomplish.

And I accomplished it.

Now I’m home, watching the leaves fall, sitting with a little more space in my life and a lot less weight on my shoulders.

I don’t imagine I’ll ever love the season of gray skies and twigs.

But I’m starting to appreciate what those naked trees have been showing me all along.

When everything unnecessary falls away, you finally get a good look at the structure underneath.

And sometimes, that’s where you discover just how much you’ve grown.

For now, I’m content to sit here and watch the sticks in the sky.

There’s no hurry.

Not anymore.