Friday Breath: Let It Go

Hello Friday. It's the first Friday in November. Are you kidding? My name is Jane Nichols. I am excited to be here today. I am one of the Cadre contributors, one of the Cadre coaches, and I wear a lot of hats, literally and figuratively in my life. And today on Friday, I'm going to pull out the hat of coach and breath worker. So as we get started, whether you're coming in live or you are replaying later, my invitation is to take a deep, long breath. Pause, exhale. Let's just do two more. Big inhale.

Pause. Exhale. One more inhale. Exhale. Let go. Or say hello to our fearless associate. His name is Major and he says, let go. Hello cadre. Welcome. As I mentioned, my name is Jane Nichols. My sidekick here is Major and on this Friday I wanted to pop in. I usually try to do Friday afternoons. I wanted to pop in and just talk about letting go. Many of us may or may not have to work on Saturday or Sunday, but I simply find something refreshing about the transition of Friday into the weekend. So whether today is an official Friday or maybe a Monday off or Tuesday off instead, it's a day of transition.

So on this afternoon, I like to start it off with a breath because I feel like my whole week I've just been racing to get to the next moment, the next thing. And I've been trying really hard to let go of that sense of urgency, that sense of expectation that is either put on me by work or I put on by myself. I just came off a two-week trip. Yeah, it was roughly two weeks. Ten of those days I was in this country called Bhutan. If you've never heard of it, go check it up. Check it out. It's over by Nepal and Tibet and India.

And it's this beautiful country that is founded and measured on, or it's measured on, not necessarily founded on, measured on the metric of gross national happiness index. Can you imagine? There are nine key elements to measure happiness in this country and I will share more information about this trip over the next few weeks 'cause I'm still processing it. But for 10, 11 days, it was a retreat, an adventure retreat, a cultural experience, a transformative experience in a country where they believe in karma and kindness There is an equal balance between animals and nature and humans and how they move through the world.

And it was beautiful. Again, I'll share more, but what I'm gonna share for today is flying home. So it's great when we can go on retreats or vacation, we can take a time out, but I don't think there's any way to adequately prepare us for reintegrating back into life. So I landed late Monday night and Tuesday, as we know, in the United States, it was election day for midterms. And there was an energy about it, right? Whatever your beliefs are, there's the energy that you feel, the tension that you feel.

And for me, coming off of that experience, it was super overwhelming. So I literally had to shut down everything, no TV, I had to remove myself from a workspace because it was too aggressive and I just felt jarred. And in this moment, in this week, it just felt like there was just so much of that where I went from a space of very much calm, very much disconnected. I could only be on Wi-Fi if I needed to use my phone, which was very sporadic, to a space of that buzz, that energy that we live in all the time.

So when I think about Friday and our breath and letting go, today I'm choosing to let go of all of that anxiousness I've been carrying all week long coming back in. I'm choosing to let go of that busy mindset and maybe I can only do that for the next hour before I go teach another spin class today. Maybe I can hold on to it as I move through this weekend. But really the invitation is to you, what are you holding on to? We already know or maybe we don't know that we can't control the outcome of anything.

What we can do is show up, be present, do our best in that moment, whatever that is defined by. But the outcomes oftentimes aren't something that we can control or hold on to. And we give ourselves that permission to take that pressure off. What's left behind, at least what's left behind for me, is space. Space to process, space to be present, space to not hold on so tight to the outcome. but simply just know being here in this moment, I can be my best in this moment, whatever that is. It doesn't mean 100%.

It doesn't mean 100% all the time. It literally means in this moment, what is that for me? So today, my best is taking a nap because I'm still not acclimated to the time zone changes. My best is taking my dog for an extra walk today because I just wanted to feel the crisp air on my cheeks and in my lungs and remember a week ago hiking through some mountains and what it felt like to be free, to be in a country, in a space where they value harmony more than they value status or other things that we might value here and give myself permission to simply let go of my week and all the tension that I felt in my body and the anxiety I felt trying to catch up on everything.

So today, Friday, to everybody who's dialed in, to everybody who is taking a moment for yourself to be present, My invitation truly is what's one thing that you can let go and take that pressure away for yourself? If you want to type in a chat, you can type. If you simply want to sit with the question, sit with it. And I find for me that when I give myself a few moments to take some really long slow breaths like when we started. Three or five breaths. I feel a shift in my body, a calmness in my mind, and it gives me space to simply check in.

So today on our Friday afternoon, that's my invitation for you. Take a few breaths. The long, slow ones with the pause and the long, slow exhales. And as you exhale, visualize something you are willing to let go. So for me, I am visualizing letting go of the need to race to the next thing. I'll get there. I'll be on time or close to on time. But if I give myself just a little bit of space, 10 minutes to take a breath first, 10 extra minutes to get to where I'm going, it allows me to just be back in my body and feel present again and feel like in that moment I have control over how I can show up in that moment.

So whatever your week was, whatever your day has been, you are here now. And that's my invitation for you. I'm going to schedule some more sessions for next week with a few different topics. So look forward to seeing you all back here soon. And I hope you have a lovely weekend. Get outside and move a little, breathe a little, and simply be in the moment.