LeaderImpact Podcast
LeaderImpact Podcast
Ep. 89 - Cindy Klassen - An Olympian's Unlikely Path
Life rarely follows our carefully constructed plans, as Olympic speed skater Cindy Klassen discovered when her dream of competing in women's hockey was derailed. What followed instead was an unexpected journey to Olympic glory in a sport she initially resisted trying, as she embraced the challenge, eventually breaking world records and winning six Olympic medals across the 2002 and 2006 Games in speed skating.
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Welcome to the Leader Impact Podcast. We are a community of leaders with a network in over 350 cities around the world, dedicated to optimizing our personal, professional and spiritual lives to have impact. This show is where we have a chance to listen and engage with leaders who are living this out. We love talking with leaders, so if you have any questions, comments or suggestions to make this show even better, please let us know. The best way to stay connected in Canada is through our newsletter at leaderimpactca or on social at Leader Impact, and if you're listening from outside of Canada, check out our website at leaderimpactcom.
Speaker 2:I'm your host, lisa Peters, and our guest today is Cindy Clausen. Cindy was born and raised in Winnipeg, manitoba, and grew up playing a variety of sports. However, it wasn't until she was 18 that she discovered and fell in love with speed skating. In 2002, she qualified for the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City and won a bronze medal in her very first Olympic race. Cindy went on to compete at the 2006 Olympics in Torino, italy, where she won five medals and was given the tremendous honor of being the flagbearer for the closing ceremonies. Cindy is grateful to God for all the opportunities he provided her in sport and she gives all the credit to him. Cindy and her husband have a five-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. She is a stay-at-home mom and so thankful that God has blessed her with such a wonderful family.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the show, cindy. Thank you so much for having me. You know so before we I've been telling everybody like I'm interviewing Cindy Clausen. I'm super excited. So then I, I, I deep, dived on you and it says here you grew up playing a variety of sports. Let's just go back to that, because you didn't just play a variety of sports, my dear you. You competed for Canada in the inline skating in the 1999 Pan Am Games. You were a member of the Canada's National Junior Women's Hockey Team in 1996. And you competed for Canada at the 1994 Commonwealth Games for a member of the women's field lacrosse. You just didn't grow up with a variety, wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I just love playing, playing sports. I played as many sports as I could get my hands on and it was great. My parents were so supportive with that too, and so like school sports as well, like basketball, volleyball I just, I just love playing sports.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you were competitive, though, like you do, you have older brothers or as old as me like what I'm actually the oldest?
Speaker 1:um, but my dad was a drag racer, and so he was always like very competitive and, um, yeah, he raced dragsters and he loved hockey too, and so he got us all into sports and was very competitive all right.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm excited to deep dive with you today. So again, thanks for joining us. It is an honor to have you, it is just an honor. We love hearing about your professional journey and how you got from. You know where you were and where you are today. I'm wondering if you can give us a couple snapshots of the pivotal moments along the journey.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, like as we were talking about, I played a bunch of different sports, but my main sport when I was growing up was hockey, and my parents found out when I was pretty young that women's hockey was going to be in the Olympics for the very first time in 1998. And they thought that would be perfect. My dad loved hockey. I really liked hockey, and my mom did too. She just didn't. She didn't play hockey, but my dad did, and so that quickly became my dream in life to make it to the Olympics in women's hockey in 1998, because I would be 18 at that time, and so it seemed like the perfect age. I'd probably be at the peak of my game, and so that was my dream. I thought that was God's plan for my life too, and when I was younger, there just weren't many girls playing hockey at the time, so I ended up playing with the boys, and I played with the boys until I was 16 years old and I was actually making the top teams. I made double, a, triple A in boys hockey until I was 16. Then the guys were just getting too big for me with the body checking, and so I just couldn't keep up. They're getting too big for me, like with the body checking and um. And so I just couldn't. I couldn't keep up, like they're just too big for me, um. So then I ended up switching to a women's league because there still still weren't enough girls playing hockey to have a league like in my age bracket. So I switched to a women's um league and then in 1997, a year before the 98 olympics, I got a call to go out to Calgary to try out for the women's national team and it was going to be a tryout. They're going to pick five players from across Canada to come play with the team for a few months before the games and then they could try to beat off like one of the players on the team to make it to the to be on the Olympic team. So I went to these tryouts in Calgary. It was like a weekend of tryouts, felt like the tryouts had gone really well, everything was going as planned. And then when I got home I found out that I had been cut from the team or I didn't make one of those five spots, and I was just devastated.
Speaker 1:I was in grade 12 at the time and I was kind of like, like what am I going to do now, like I thought this was, this was my, like the trajectory of my sporting career was to go to the Olympics in the next year. Um, and so I I kind of after a while I had realized like, hey, well, I didn't make it this time, but maybe I can make it for the 2002 Olympics. I'll be four years older, maybe I'll get stronger at the sport. Um, and so I went into my first year of university and I was used to playing hockey, along with all the high school sports like basketball, volleyball, badminton, stuff like that, and now I only had hockey. And so I needed something else to fill my time.
Speaker 1:And my parents were, like, why don't you try speed skating? And my first reaction was like absolutely not, because there was no way I was going to put on one of those tight skin suits and the long blades like they just look funny to me. And they kept pushing me and like they knew one of the coaches at the speed skating club and they said like just give it a try. And I don't know if it was more or less like just to get them off my back or what, but I said, okay, I'll go to a practice and try it. And so I went to my first practice and I thought it would be just like hockey, but faster, because the blades are so long. But I was in for a huge surprise because I stepped onto the ice and the blades because they're longer, they're a lot more awkward to use than a hockey skate and they're also a lot narrower than a hockey blade is. And so there I was, 18 years old, struggling to make my way around the ice surface, hoping that I wasn't going to fall down and like little five year old kids are flying past me. And so it was a very humbling experience.
Speaker 1:When I first started and my parents said I was pretty quiet the first few times I came home from practice and they thought for sure I was just going to give it up. But you know, I kept going, practice after practice, and to me it was like it was a challenge and I thought, like you know, I want to see if I can get better at this sport. And that very first year of speed skating I remember watching the 98 Olympics on TV and I saw our Canadian speed skating team do so well. Katrina LeMay, don, won gold in the 500. And then Susan Ock, who's from Winnipeg, she won silver in that same race and I was just so inspired by them and it was through watching them and just enjoying that challenge of skating that a new dream was planted in my heart of trying to qualify for the Olympics in speed skating Wow.
Speaker 2:You know, I think I have another friend that was a basketball player and never made the university team and the volleyball coach came out and said come play for us. And she ended up playing for the national team, like that's grade 12. She never played volleyball but the coach was like well, hey, come on over here. And isn't that amazing stories? Just you know. But yours is you're still on ice, even though the skates are different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, like being on ice, I think that that helped a lot and but I just I had no idea that, like God had a completely different plan for my life then and and so I just pursued that and and things went really well. You asked for a couple of points. I don't know if you want, and so this is like later way later on. Um, after my speed skating career was like coming to the end. I was hoping to qualify for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi in Russia, and the summer before um we would have our Olympic trials. We were out in line skating and um doing a practice and I and I ended up falling. Somehow. I hit my head on the pavement. I mean, I had helmet on, but I hit it so hard that I didn't. I ended up getting a concussion and that kind of took me out and I tried to get into it to be able to try out for those games, but it just I just couldn't get, like I was just having headaches and I was just having a hard time getting back into training and so because of that, I like I'm getting to the end of my career. It's time to start thinking about what I'm going to do afterwards.
Speaker 1:And so I ended up going back to school, like to finish my degree, which I had started years ago, like back after I finished high school. I went back to school again and then during that time there was a recruiting officer from the Calgary Police service that was doing an info session at the sports center and thought, like you know, I actually, since I was a little kid, I always wanted to be a police officer, but now I was I think I was about 35 at the time and I thought, well, I'm way too old to apply, but it would just be neat to see what they do like, what it is in a life of a police officer is like. So I went to the info session and he's like you're not, you're not too old, you can apply. Why don't you go for a ride along and see what you think? And so I went for my first ride along, actually went for a couple of them, and then I applied. And then it wasn't too long before, um, I ended up becoming a and uh.
Speaker 1:And then I ended up meeting my husband through that. And so, um, I don't know if I would have kept skating. Who knows if I would have met him through that and, uh cause, he was a police officer as well. And now we have two kids and I'm a stay at home mom. I ended up after we had our first. Um, we realized like I wanted to be there with them and I didn't want to be working, and so, um, grateful to God that I can be at home with them and we have a five-year-old and two-year-old and it's such a blessing.
Speaker 2:Wow, did your mom stay home with you? She did, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm so grateful for that. Like it was just, it was so awesome. Like we even like going to school, we live. We walked to our school, our elementary school, so we could come home for lunch in between.
Speaker 2:She was always there, and so I'm so grateful that I can do that for our kids as well. Yeah, I became a stay at home mom, but they moved out, so I think I'm done work. You guys are leaving now. Okay, we talked about our best principles of success, and I'm wondering if you can share one, if you have a story to illustrate that as well.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean I think it's something that my parents always kind of instilled in us as we were growing up. I mean there's the Bible verse, colossians 3.23, like whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as though working for the Lord and not for man, and they always wanted us to do our best in everything that we did, whatever it was. And I mean my parents, I mean they were great role models for us in the way that they work with all of their heart and everything they did. But I do have a story it's more of a fun story but I just remember when I was younger I think I was in about I was about grade six, maybe about 11 or 12 years old, and my parents have a cottage and so we go out to our cottage for the summers and spend most of the time there. And my best friend had come out for a visit and I remember seeing there was like a poster at the local store and it said there's going to be a mountain bike race on the trails at the cottage, like by our cottage, and I thought, wow, I had never seen a mountain bike race. It'd be so cool to go watch this race. And so my friend and I.
Speaker 1:The morning of the big race we got on our bikes and we're kind of like racing each other up and down the hills pretending like we're in a race of our own, and after we had done that for a while probably just like tiring ourselves out we thought, hey, you know what, we're pretty good at this Like why don't we enter the race? And the first problem was that my friend was on a BMX bike and I was on. It was kind of we called it a beach bike at the time. It's kind of like a cruiser, so it's basically a single speed bike. You push it back to brake instead of like the handle brakes, but there's no gears, um, and then, so that was the first issue. And then also, um, we didn't have helmets and helmets were mandatory to race, and so we came up with the bright idea that we would just use my dad's snowmobile helmets, not thinking that they'd be kind of bulky and probably pretty hot, like in the 30 degree weather in Manitoba. But we told my parents and they're like, yeah, let's do it. And so my dad loaded up our bikes into the back of his pickup truck and then we headed off to the races and I think we probably raised a few eyebrows at unloading our bikes with their snowmobile helmets in hand, and but, fortunately for us, there was a couple people who lent us their bike helmets, so we were okay with that.
Speaker 1:But then we um lined up on the start line with other racers around the same age as us and I remember, um, the starter said to us like it's a hot day, it's a really long trail like our race course, make sure you pace yourself. And I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. We didn't even have water bottle holders on our bikes so we didn't have anything to drink while we were racing. But while we were on the line and ready to go, my dad came up to me and whispered in my ear and he said as soon as the gun sounds, go as hard as you can and don't stop the entire race. And then that's what I did I just took off and I didn't slow down and I just went so hard and I remember like my legs are burning, my lungs were screaming at me and it was a super hard race and it was very hot out and there's a kid that was kind of on my tail for about half the race and he ended up passing me, but I was able to hold on to second place and when I finished the, when I crossed the finish line, I just remember being so exhausted and so thirsty.
Speaker 1:I'd never been so thirsty in my life but I was just, uh, it was just kind of like a moment of like yeah, I gave it my all, I did my best and I was just so, um, excited about finishing that race and and even to get second place and so, um, so, just that value of like working your hardest, and that's something that my parents always instilled in us. And also, if you think about if you're doing it with all of your heart for God, it takes off that pressure of that you're not doing it for man, you don't have to do it for, like, any accolades or any position or anything like that. You're doing it for God, and I think that really helps to give you that extra boost and also just takes that pressure off that it's all for him and all for his glory.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love your story. I think of there was nothing getting in your way. You know when I think of even in the work world. Right, we need the perfect tools, we need the right tools to do this job. And you're like I got a snowmobile helmet. I got a bike that I've got to break backwards it didn't matter Like it's a bike.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, I know, sometimes those things can hold us back and, and I think, having that belief in yourself and enjoying the process too because I know it was hard but it was a lot of fun, and I think that when you but it was a lot of fun and I think that when you bring that, enjoyment into it.
Speaker 2:Um, it can just take you to places you never imagined. Yeah, I once uh went running and it was, uh, my friends are running in a half marathon and I went oh, I was going to bike beside them. So I didn't have any undergarments on, like I didn't have a bra on, I was just gonna bike and someone was like you should run. I'm like, why wouldn't I? So I never ran more than 10 kilometers and here I'm running 20 and I ran it in an hour and 55, which isn't great, but still pretty good. Lucky I had runners on.
Speaker 1:But yeah, have you gone on to do any other races? Well, I ran a marathon.
Speaker 2:You did Good for you so. I don't run anymore, but I walk the dog, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's something my sister and I would love to do one day is run race a marathon. Oh, I thought you were going to say walk the dog. Oh, yeah, that too. Run a marathon, okay. Run a marathon, okay. Um, I just feel like I always get injured every time I try to train for it. But maybe one day, maybe.
Speaker 2:I'll walk it. You need a training program because I can see you just thinking you should go out and run 15k one day and it's like you're gonna start a little slower and build up. This is my advice. Talking about that, well, we obviously learn more. We know that we learn more from our failures, our failings and our mistakes than our own successes, and I'm wondering if you would share one of your greatest failings or mistakes and what you learned from it well, this might not sound so much like a failure in my eyes.
Speaker 1:It kind of was. At first, I remember going into the 2006 Olympics it was a big year, or that season was a big year, and I ended up breaking a couple of world records before we went to the Olympics. Everything seemed to be kind of like falling into place. It seemed like I was having the best season of my life and I had those world records in the 1500 and the 3000. And the 1500 meters seemed to be like my top distance, but it was more. I was kind of like a middle distance skater, um, and so we went um to our final world cup before the Olympics in Torino. And this world cup was actually being held in Torino, so it was kind of neat because we had never been there before, um, or we had never skated on that ice surface before. And, um, I and my coach and I decided you know what, why don't we treat this like we're going to the Olympics right now? So it's kind of like just a practice round before we actually get there. And so I mean the plan was, when we got to the Games, that we'd treat every distance individually Like. Once I finished that race, I'd put it behind me and get ready for the next race and just focus on one race at a time, because I was potentially going to be racing five distances at the Olympics. And so we went to this World Cup and it was only three distances at this World Cup that I'd be racing, just the way it was set up and we went into it.
Speaker 1:Everything the prep, everything was the same as the Olympics. And my very first race was a 1500 meter, which is my top distance, I would say at the time. And I went into it and my top competitor, who she had won gold at the last Olympics in the 1500 meter, she ended up beating me. We weren't paired together because you have individual pairs and then they take the fastest time at the end of the day and they have like first, second, third, fourth, all the way down to the last racer. Um, so we weren't paired together, but she ended up beating me and I went into that race and I felt like I had given it everything, like I hadn't. There was nothing that we could change. Like we, I raced it perfectly. It wasn't like I had a misstep or maybe I started off too fast or anything like that, and um, or maybe I started off too fast or anything like that, and she ended up beating me. And it was kind of like, after that race, I remember driving home or going back to the hotel with my coach at that time and just kind of like being kind of stumped, like what could I have done better? Like she beat me and I can't do any better than that and I had to like come to the realization that, like you know what it's, it was her day and she she beat me that day and I did the best that I could and that's all I could do. I couldn't have done any better and I need to be satisfied with that and happy with how I did race. And so I was able to put that behind me and I went into the next day I think it was maybe the 3000 meter, another one of my top races and she beat me again and we weren't paired together, but she beat me again and again I felt like I put the perfect race together.
Speaker 1:But after that race I wasn't. I didn't have the same feelings anymore as that feeling of like, oh no, like what? The like I was hoping to win the race, but I didn't. But I was still. I had that feeling of satisfaction that I had done my best and I actually felt good about this race, even though she beat me again.
Speaker 1:And then the next day was the thousand meter, which I also was one of my, a good race for me and I was expected to do well. And she beat me again in that race. And so she beat me. She won gold in every race in that world cup and I won silver in every race in that world cup. Um, we were never paired together, but, um, she ended up being faster than me and I had to think like, hey, well, this could be, this could be what happens at the Olympics. I need to be prepared for anything. And so we went to the Olympics a couple of months down the road I raced the 3000 meter. She didn't even win a medal at those games or in that, in that race, um, but I ended up getting bronze. But I did my best in that race and I was happy with the bronze.
Speaker 1:And then I went into. I had two other races I think it was the team pursuit and the 1000 meter and I won silver in those metal in those races. And then I was getting to the 1500 meter, and this was basically my last like. I had a 5000 meter race after that as well, but I wasn't as strong in the 5000 meter. I wasn't expected to do as well. But the 1500 meter, this was my race, and if I was ever going to win gold in a race like this would probably be it. And this was kind of like my last chance.
Speaker 1:And so the morning of that race I found out who my pair was, and it was this girl and her name is Annie Freezinger, from Germany. Um, and I was paired with her and I just remember thinking, like this is awesome, like this is, we hadn't been paired together for the last couple of years and so, um, so I think normally I'd probably be kind of nervous going into this race against her, um, but I was just excited. I'm like, yeah, like this is going to be fun. We're racing against each other. She's an amazing athlete and I think it's going to be a really good race. And there's just like a lot of things that ended up happening that day that were were pretty neat to like.
Speaker 1:I remember going to the oval that day. We usually go on the ice a couple of hours before a race just to get a feel for the ice. And I remember them, um, they had opened the doors to the spectators and all these people came in and I saw this kid come running in and he was waving a Canadian flag. And I thought to myself, before I get off the ice, um, to get off and get ready for my race, I'm going to go over and talk to this kid. And so, um, I finished everything I needed to do on the ice and I went over to the corner and and I kind of like motion for him to come down, and he showed me his flag and he had like a bunch of signatures from Canadian athletes and him and his dad had come out from Toronto to come watch the Olympics. And and I just remember just being so inspired by this kid, like I thought like this is so, so cool. He came all the way here to watch the Olympics and I want to go out and just show him how much fun the sport of speed skating is.
Speaker 1:And so I went into that race and just felt like just had so much fun, just so much joy racing. And I got to race against Annie, who is like just a tremendous competitor, and I had the race in my life and I ended up coming out of that race with a gold medal and it was just um, it was just amazing to be able to stand on the podium to sing O Canada. My, my teammate won silver Christina Gross, she got silver in that race. We got to sing O Canada together and and then, after I got my flowers, um, on the podium, I went over to the side to where that kid was kind of in the stands and I could see him up like a ways up and I kind of pointed at him and and I threw the flowers into the crowd and the crowd actually passed it back and handed it back to him, and so it was a pretty neat moment.
Speaker 1:And, to top it off, years later, during the 2014 Olympics, I was in Toronto at the time just visiting a friend. He reached out to me somehow. I don't know how he got ahold of me, but he asked if I would be able to meet up with him and his and his parents, and so we met up. We had a coffee and he still had those flowers that he had brought them home and dried them, and he had that same flag that I had signed it for him, but he had. It was just full of Canadian athletes that had signed the flag and it was just really neat just thinking like he was such an inspiration for me that day, and I hope that I was a little bit of an inspiration for him as well.
Speaker 1:But but yeah, just like going back, like that race in Torino in the world cup, at the beginning it just kind of at first it just felt like, oh no, like I, I didn't, I didn't do what I had hoped to accomplish, but just being satisfied that I had given my best and that's all I could do, and and to be happy with that moment and and it turned out. It was crazy because Annie Friesinger, she didn't she ended up winning gold in the team pursuit, but she didn't win individual medal at all during those Olympics and so which was very surprising because she's just like such a formidable athlete and and so you just never know what's going to happen the day of. But if you give your best, then that's, you can be proud of that and and whatever, wherever you end up, just being proud of doing your best yeah, I just came across a saying yesterday and it applies.
Speaker 2:it's by maya angelou I never lose. I either win or learn. Oh, that is so good. I remember losing. I ran for politics and I lost and I remember saying that, like, this has been the greatest experience. So you know, win or lose, I learned a lot, I gained a lot, and it's winning like losing sucks. I totally. Yes, it does, but I just kept saying like it was the best experience. And what can I learn?
Speaker 1:from it. Yeah, yeah, exactly Like every time. I mean every moment that you have, whether it's a setback or a success. I mean you can learn from those opportunities and I think the most growth that we have is when we do have those failures or we do have those setbacks. I think we grow the most out of those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think when, when you had lost at the um world cup leading up to um, your coach, the the language that came from your coach was it's, you know, was it very similar to yours, and that you know we did our best. We're going to come out tomorrow and do it again and you know cause we think of the people that we surround ourselves with, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, he was absolutely. He was so encouraging and and we also had to think about, okay, tomorrow we're planning, we're going through this like it is the Olympics and so we have to stick to our plan and just focus on tomorrow's race and that's all we can do and get ready for that. And so, yeah, he was very encouraging and just a tremendous coach, so helpful and I learned a ton from him. Yeah, great.
Speaker 2:Our next question is at Leader Impact. We want to go grow professionally, spiritually and personally to increase impact. So would you be willing to share an example of how the spiritual makes, which you sort of have been how the spiritual makes a practical difference in your life as a leader?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think that, um, I mean the spiritual is, is everything that's, uh, that I'm, I'm living for, like living my faith is what, what grounds me? And um, I think that for me, just thinking about how this life is, just this, is just temporary. We have such a short life, um, and living in in light of eternity and um, when I look at my, the medals that I've won have actually have been a great example for me, because when I take them to school visits and I let the kids try them on and and they get to hand them around and stuff like that, I've noticed that, like the ribbons aren't as crisp as they once were, there's some dings in the metals because they've been dropped and the gold metal is actually like pretty tarnished, it's actually getting rusty. And it's such a great reminder to me of that verse in Matthew, chapter six, verses 19 to 21.
Speaker 1:And it says do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also, and so it's such a great reminder to me that all of these things, these things are temporary, like even the metals that I've won. Those are rusting, they're fading. But everything that we do in our life and we do it for God, that's the most important thing and I just, yeah, I just think about how the life that we're living it's so short and just trying to use every opportunity that I can to live it to glorify God and for his kingdom purposes, and so just bringing that into everyday life, like as I raise my kids, as, um, I just go from day to day, just trying to be a light and and use every opportunity for his glory, yeah, and those little eyes, your children.
Speaker 2:They're watching you, you know, and I think of how I was raised, or how you were raised, and we're watching our parents and we want to be like them, you know?
Speaker 1:Um, yes, yes, totally, I know, and and and that's. It's scary too, because I just think like I mean, I know I mistake, I make mistakes all the time, I make mistakes daily, and but having that forgiveness from God and also asking them for forgiveness when I've made mistakes and stuff like that, but but yeah, I just remember as a kid like just always like looking up to my parents, to people who were older than me, like coaches or athletes or anything like that. You're always like looking up to people, and so I'm just trying to be the best example that I can be as Christlike as I can to my kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good Leader Impact is dedicated to leaders having a lasting impact. So, as you continue to move through your own journey in life, I'm wondering if you've considered what you want your faith legacy to be when you leave this world. That's a hard one.
Speaker 1:And I just don't like the word legacy so much because I just like, after I'm gone, like no one's going to remember me, nobody's going to care, like it doesn't. It's like that's gonna remember me, nobody's gonna care. Like it doesn't, like that's not really. That's not my priority, I guess, but it. But then, coming back to my kids, I mean a faith legacy. I just hope that I can instill my faith in them and my prayer is just that they will come to know Christ and that, um, they'll live their lives, um, looking to him and everything they do and so, um, yeah, so for right now, I mean it's mostly my kids.
Speaker 1:That's what I kind of have my eyes on, just trying to to be a good example for them and and yeah, and then also just I hope that somehow in my interactions like with whether it was through sports or just now in day to day life, that my life will just point people to Christ. And yeah, I guess that's what it would be. But but when I think of of life like it's just so, it's like a vapor, right, and and we're going to be forgotten. I mean, I don't even remember who the other people like at the Olympic Games, like who won what, or anything like that, and everything's gonna be forgotten. So I guess, um, uh, yeah, just trying to live my life as Christ-like as possible.
Speaker 2:Well, um, you are like in the record book, so just saying your name, right, like people will remember you. It's it, um, and I just think of we're going to be meeting in um a little bit for a for a conference which I'm going to be moderating, a panel, and you're going to be on the panel and we're talking about defining your legacy, and it made me really think that you know, what am I doing to make happen? You know like we have to make life happen. I know God has control of our lives, but what am I doing to? What are the opportunities that God are putting in front of me that I'm grabbing? And how are people going to remember me? Like, what am I doing versus letting life happen to me? Right, like just sitting back and going, whatever? You know, I'm excited for that conversation That'll be October 2nd.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm excited for that too. That's going to be a lot of fun. Excited to meet you. You too.
Speaker 2:All right, well, my last question is what brings you the greatest joy?
Speaker 1:The greatest joy. You know, it's funny because when I was younger I was just so focused on sports Like I thought eventually I'd probably get married and have kids, but it wasn't really. You know how. I mean mean my daughter, she just loves babies and she loves like taking care of little kids and I know that she's gonna just be so excited to be a mom one day, whereas for me I just I was so focused on sports. I just didn't really I didn't have that in me.
Speaker 1:But then once we did have kids, that was I just can't believe the change that has come about me, where they bring me the greatest joy. Just being around them, seeing them learn things, watching them play sports or just seeing them have joy in whatever they're doing. That brings me the greatest joy and I never in a million years knew that I could feel like this. But yeah, it's, my kids just really bring me the greatest joy and I'm just so grateful to God for them. And my husband and I met later in life and so our first was I was 40 when she was born and our son I think I was about 42. And I wish we could have started earlier because I would have loved to have a bigger family, because I just, yeah, kids are just such a blessing, but I'm so grateful for them and, yeah, they bring me the most joy, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember being eight months pregnant and I had a baby shower for another friend of mine and I was like I don't want to hold your baby, I don't want to hold anybody's baby. And I was like you, I'm like I don't even know why I'm having a baby, but when my baby came, I was. I was mama bear air, don't touch my baby, this is my baby. I just had this complete change.
Speaker 1:Are your children involved in sports? Yeah, we well. So my youngest isn't really old enough to play sports yet, but our five year old she got into tennis and the reason why I put her in tennis was whenever my family, when I was younger, when we would go on vacation, we always ended up playing tennis, and I just love the sport. It was so much fun, and so we put her in tennis and she's really enjoying it. She's doing that right now, and then, um, skating lessons. I'm not sure maybe she'll play a little bit of hockey, I I don't know right now, but uh, just getting her to experience different sports, see what she likes and uh, and who knows, maybe she'll end up wanting to be a musician or something, but right now she loves sports and so I'll just keep at it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's awesome. Well done, Well done, Mama. I want to thank you for just joining us and just sharing some time with us. It's been a pleasure. If anyone wants to reach out to you, reach out to you, find you. Where's the best place to find you?
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm horrible with social media. I am on Twitter but I'm not active on it. But I guess there Twitter, do you have a website? I do have a website, so cindyclaussencom or CA I think both work, so I don't know. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, thank you again, Cindy, for joining us.
Speaker 1:No, thank you so much for having me, lisa. It was just an honor to be a part of your podcast and thanks for having me. All right, thank you.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, if you're part of Leader Impact, you can always discuss or share this podcast with your group. And if you're not yet part of Leader Impact and would like to find out more and grow your leadership, find our podcast page on our website at leaderimpactca. You can also check out our groups available in Canada at leaderimpactca or, if you're listening from anywhere else in Canada, check out leaderimpactcom or get in touch with us by email. Info at leaderimpactca and we will connect you. And if you like this podcast, please leave us a comment, give us a rating or review. This will help other global leaders find our podcast. Thank you for engaging with us and remember impact starts with you.
