Exercise Your Influence

Well, happy Thursday, everybody. JC, here live on Cadre. If I've never had the opportunity to spend time with you before, thanks for letting me share space with you. Yeah. Even in a virtual world like this, it truly is a gift to share space with people who choose to share space together. It's kind of one of the beautiful things about Cadre. Well, as I said, my name is JC, and all week long, I've been jumping onto live to talk about influence. In modern culture. There's a term, influencer, that has become pretty popular, and I think influencer means people who have influence.

And if certain people are influencers and have influence, I think it's taught a lot of us to think that we must not have influence, and that's just not the case. So all week long, I've been inviting you to think of ways or offering you ways, and you get to think how you implement these ways into exercising your influence, to share with your people and your passions, all of you. So, on Monday, I invited you to make a list of people that you have influence over. Ooh. To consider the idea that you have influence over other people makes you start to take your influence seriously.

As the week's gone on, we've talked about different things, considering who trusts you and how you honor that trust. Yesterday, we talked about making mistakes on purpose or doing other things on purpose, like quitting on purpose or taking breaks on purpose. So then people who need positive examples of these really human things, like quitting and taking breaks and making mistakes that rhymed, all of a sudden, people go, ooh, that person influenced me, taught me that it was okay to do these things.

Well, today I'm going to invite you to consider the act of quoting yourself. Think about something that you say very much. You. It sounds like you. Someone would imitate you by saying this thing. And if you go, I don't know, start the process of considering the gifts that you have to give to the world. Here's a little story. So I'm a musical theater director. I put on that hat every once in a while, and last night, I had callbacks. So the last stage of the audition process for a new show, a world premiere musical of the children's book dragons love tacos.

I'm music directing. The artistic director, at the beginning of callbacks, played a game with the actors who were in the room, and the game invited them to pick up this imaginary ball and to throw it to someone else in the circle and to say their name while they throw the ball to them so that everybody can learn what each person goes by, what their names are. And as this exercise started, it was really hard to know who each person was throwing the ball to. Think about it, right. It's an imaginary ball.

So the act of getting that person to go, hey, I'm gonna throw something to you when that thing isn't there, let's say I'm throwing the imaginary ball to you. I first have to believe that that ball exists. I have to see it, I have to feel it, I have to hold it. I have to think about what it would be like to create the work to momentum it to you. Second thing I have to do is I have to make contact with you. I have to look you in the eye. I need to give you the moment to realize that I am seeing you right now.

Step three, I have to, without words, go, hey, you. I'm going to give you something right now. Are you ready? Here it comes. Get ready. I have to do those three steps. I have to see value. First, I have to consider getting your attention, making contact with you. And then lastly, I need to do the act, create the momentum to give you the thing that I have to give. At the beginning, these actors were like, they didn't believe that they had something to give. So the people receiving it didn't know that they were being thrown something.

And it was a really underwhelming experience. Then all of a sudden, people started believing, they started being unique and specific. The ball got heavier, the ball got into different shapes, or the ball started moving on its own, or the ball started being blown or flicked across the room. All of a sudden, the people catching it were dropping it or the ball was being thrown over the heads and they had to go run and pick up this imaginary thing and the whole room came to life. How often do we not pick up the ball?

How often do we not go, hey, you, I have something to give to you. Here it comes. How often do we not make sure that they get it, that they see the value of it? So back to my invitation to you today, to quote yourself, to think that you have something that you've created through your observations, through your intellect, through your emotions, through your reality, through your struggles and successes, to say, hey, you know what? Here is something that I have for you. Here's two things that I say quite a bit.

I often say, well, you can't cook a turkey faster than you can cook a turkey. I say it all the time. It's my way of saying, you know what? Some things take time. You can't go ahead and at 05:00 in the morning on thanksgiving, crank the oven up to 1000 degrees and make the turkey cook faster. It doesn't work that way. The turkey takes time to cook, no matter how much you'd want to. You can't cook a turkey faster than you can cook a turkey. Here's another thing that I say. Muddying the field won't make the corn grow any faster.

Kind of the same idea, right? If you want something to happen soon, doing the good stuff more and more and more and more and more probably isn't going to make the result present faster or in a sustainable way. So much a wellness culture is, hey, do this care more, work harder, give up more, grind, fight, show up and suck all these things that I don't believe are very healthy nor bear good fruit. If you want the good things to grow, you have to water the field. You have to allow the sunshine to shine.

You have to trust and believe that the roots are growing and you have to love standing in that field with the sun and the rain and the dirt and the air. Otherwise, why do you care about growing it in the first place? So muddy in the field isn't going to make the corn grow any faster. Now here's the deal. You may go turkeys cooking and corn growing. I don't care about those things. But I believe I have something to give to you within those thoughts that I have spent growing and fortifying in my mind, in the fire of my being.

And all of a sudden that makes me go, ah, I have influence and I'm going to exercise it by quoting myself, by sharing my ideas with a lot of heart for the idea, sure, but more so the heart that I have for you to work through the things you're working through, to grow, to be supported, to feel good, to feel happy, to feel like you aren't broken, like you aren't enough. So I ask you today, Marisa, who's viewing in right now, or any of you who are watching this later on, what is the idea that you have?

What is that invisible ball that you have that you can put into words? Words that are going to be received by the people that you want to receive them in a way that they can understand them? And then can you risk to share those words with people who you believe need them? Exercise your influence, quote yourself, do things on purpose. Ask yourself, where do you have trust with other people? And make that list of people who you know that you have influence over. And all of a sudden you may not have a million followers on Instagram.

I don't. I don't really want to, but I know that I have influence and I'm going to exercise it because I care about people. I care about what they're going through. I care about being a positive element within their lives. And I know that you do, too. , nope, I'm lying. m. Central Standard time. m. Central Standard Time. And then on Sunday, I'm going to provide you with a challenge on how you can exercise your influence to invite people into this Cadre sphere so they can find what you are finding here.

Have a great rest of your day. We'll see you soon. Bye.