What’s In Your Toolbox?

Well, happy Tuesday, Cadre. Hi, Cadre fam. It is Halloween. So your girls, Jill and Mary from girls Mentorship decided to be Ghostbusters, because who are you gonna call girls mentorship? Banana da na na na na banana. Girls mentor show. Jill came into my house shooting up negative thoughts and negative self talk and comparison. All the things. So today we thought, since it is Halloween, that it would be fitting to talk about the importance of infusing a little fun into your life. Because, show of hands, how many of you are dressed up on the other side of this screen?

Come on. Who's dressed up? Come on. On a Tuesday, who's dressed up today? Who are we? First off, why are we dressed like this? A. Because it's Halloween. But my name is Mary. This is my best friend and business partner, Jill, and we own a company called Girls Mentorship. So we teach life and personal development skills to teen and tween girls. What are life and personal development skills? Talk about things like self confidence, how to get over self doubt, how to improve your self image, how to build resilience.

That's a good one. How to overcome challenges, conflict, resolutions. The things that we all wish we needed at a younger age. The things that we still probably wish we had have at an older age. Because I'm not gonna lie, I'm 35 years old, and I still find myself screwing, scrolling on social media, and comparing my chapter one to somebody else's chapter 37. Right. These aren't skills that will go away at any point in time. They're skills that you will constantly work on to refine. So we do that for teen and tween girls, and we're on this platform to do it for you as well.

So we're going to talk about the importance of having fun today, because to be quite honest, I actually wasn't planning on dressing up for Halloween. But I got a text from Jill at about 830 this morning that said, are you down to dress up? Wear khaki pants and a white tank top. And I said, sure. I love it. I love it when other people tell me what to wear so I don't have to think about it. And she shows up in full Ghostbuster. Here we go. We've got the guns. We've got. These are ghost buns. Do you see?

These are little ghosts just with paper towels. And we're not doing anything other than working today. So we're at my house, and we are working on our business. But you know what? You know who's gonna have fun while they're doing that. Us too. That's right. The two of us. Well, and it's important because it's a value of ours. And even if there's just the two of us right now in our business, when we start to hire and grow, because we know that that's. That's where we're headed. This is a part of the fabric of girls mentorship.

This is who we are, the foundation that we want to build our business on. So we look for areas to have fun in everything we do every single day. So why do we stop having fun as adults? It feels like there's literally like a switch that flips at a certain point in time and we, like, turn the fun meter off. Oh, we're now adults. Yeah. We have a mortgage and a car payment, and things can no longer be fun. Right. So, number one, that comes with increased responsibility. Not saying teens and tweens don't have responsibilities.

They do. They just look different than adult responsibilities. So we stop having fun based on increased responsibilities. We also stop having fun because comparison. We start comparing where we're at with where someone else is at, which is what I touched on earlier, my chapter one with somebody else's. Chapter 37. And what is comparison? The thief of Joy. The thief of Joy. The thief of fun. 100%. Well. And you would think driving over to Mary's house today, I'm driving next to all these people at a stop play and I am jamming, having a good time.

People are probably wondering, what the heck is she wearing? And I don't care because at the end of the day, this brings me joy. And comparing what their opinion of me, it doesn't matter. Lastly, I think we stop having so much fun because of our mental load. So we're juggling all of these responsibilities. Yes. But we're also inundated with information on a daily basis. And I don't know if you're watching the same news stations that I'm watching, but there's a lot of bad things going on in this world which can really suck the fun out of absolutely everything that we do.

So this is just a side note. We want to encourage you to check out of the news cycle every once in a while. Give that big, beautiful brain of yours a break. It deserves a break from being constantly inundated with everything going on in the world, which makes me miss childhood a little bit. And this, this is exactly why we're having this conversation, especially as two kids who grew up in the nineties. Like, we didn't have these. We weren't constantly glued to this. This in knowing what was going on all day, every day.

24 7365. So I know it's hard because there is some sort of an addictive quality to it in terms of your endorphins and what's going on in your brain when you tune into the news cycle, but we want to encourage you to tune out of it 100% every once in a while. Every once in a while. Well, and yesterday, I'm not gonna lie, I had just one of those days that I felt like the world was crashing and burning around me, and I needed to pull myself up from that place, phoned her, called her, and had her lift my spirits.

But at the end of the day, I didn't want to take away from what could be a new day. Today was a new day from yesterday and all of the things that we have in our closet. So it's just looking at where you can press pause to infuse a little more joy, a little more fun, and what an opportunity for today to really play with your inner child on Halloween. So look at your. Look at your wardrobe. What can you do? What can. Literally, these really? Just from our wardrobes. This came out of the toy closet hanging around.

Thank God she's a boy. Mom. Super easy. So trust me, even though I had a bad day yesterday, the bad day is slowly melting away because of me being in action and having a different mindset of infusing fun well and holding that standard of your values in your life. Right. It can't be a value if you're not actively seeking to practice it. So, speaking of actionable takeaways and how we can plan for more fun in our life, where are you scheduling? Spontaneity. And I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but if it's not planned, it's not going to happen.

So you don't have to put on your calendar what you're going to do. You can just put in there. This is where I'm going to go. Be spontaneous. What does that look like for you? I don't know. For us, it's a dance break. We could go on a drive. We could do a ton of different things, but you have to. If it's not scheduled, it's not gonna happen. That's a really big rule. You will bulldoze over it. You will find an excuse, you will do something else in place of your fun, and the day will end, and you will not have had an opportunity to actually have fun doing what you are doing.

And I've once heard people do a yes day where if someone texts you and says, hey, let's go for a hike. Yes. Okay. Then afterwards someone else is asking you to go to breakfast. Yes. So just creating that space and being open to it can, I mean, the world really is your oyster. So maybe take, maybe take a little page out of that example. Next up is those micro moments. So exactly what Jo was talking about earlier in the car. She was having her own car concert. I love a good car concert. I also love to sing in the shower.

But what does that look like for you? Is that dancing while cooking dinner? Things that you might not necessarily do because you are an adult now. What are those micro moments that you can infuse into your life to have 2 seconds worth of fun? Micro. It doesn't have to be a whole day. It doesn't have to be a guest day. But what are the small moments that you can actively do or seek out in your day to day activities and parents, if you're tuning into this, what can you do that your kids have? Can you jump on a scooter?

Can you go jump on the trambling for a couple of minutes? Playing with. Play with laser guns. Can you play with laser guns? It doesn't have to be an all day affair. It could literally be a 15 minutes break to put whatever you have going on aside. You can come back to it to just to play, to have a little fun. And that's our third actionable takeaway is revisit childhood. What did you do? What did you love when you were a kid? And why did you stop doing that? Perfect example of this. Whoa. My laser begun all over the place.

I did forensics and drama in middle school and high school. And I was cleaning out my closet the other day and I found this book. It's called the Web Files. And this book, what's in it was part of one of my solo acts in forensics in middle school. And I loved it. So Jill got over here today and I literally read the whole thing to her. And I acted it out just as best as I could remember that I did. And it was so good. Brought me so, so much joy to do that because this was something that I really, really loved.

And you look back on your life and you see that the activities that you got enjoyment from just get shrouded with other things. And you never know that something like you do something and it's going to be the last time that you do it. So getting to remember what I loved doing when I was a kid, not only brings up fun memories for me, but giggles and ways to share stories that also bring about fun memories and could be a catalyst to you having more fun in your day. So, yeah, where, where, where did you, where did you thrive when you were a child?

And how can you resurface that? Watching her read this today was so fun. It, like, made me have fun. I'm like, oh, this is a fun day. Like, we're just keeping the energy alive. It's because we're tapping into that playful side, that child. That child side in us that we probably bury sometimes. And today was the day to have both of those little girls come out and play and remind us that life is still fun. So three actionable takeaways. Schedule spontaneity. Find those micro moments and revisit your childhood.

And we're gonna leave you with a fun challenge we would love if you plan something fun for this week. Yes. It could include today, obviously, October 31, Halloween. And let us know what that is on the community feed. We'll start the feed. And we would love for you to comment on the thing that you have done or are planning on doing that is fun. Because, remember, the goal is not just to survive the roller coaster called life, but to actually enjoy the ride. And more often than not, I am guilty of this.

I also need that reminder that we don't just have to grind it out, that we don't just have to grin and bear it. We're not just born to die. We are born to leave our mark and have fun while doing so. Thanks for the reminder. Yeah. And we can't wait to hear what fun you all are having to inspire us to do the same. And until then, you guys, we'll see you on Happy Halloween episode of Toolbox Tuesday. Bye, everyone. Good.