What’s In Your Toolbox?

Good morning. Wow. He wanted to say good morning as well. That's Otto, a little furry friendly hello. Happy Tuesday. It's not morning anymore. It is officially noon time. Yeah. Yeah. Our time to go live on this app, which we love doing on a weekly basis. And if you don't know who we are, my name is Mary. This is Jill. I'm Jill. Also known as Jilly Pea, Jelly Bean, you know, Mill, all the nicknames. We got Mary Fran, we got Mf. Come on now, MF. I'm an MF, or I am. My mom gave me that name. We own a company called Girls Mentorship, where we teach life and personal development skills to teen and tween girls.

And if you are not a teen or tween girl, don't go anywhere. Because these messages really pertain to all of us. We just happen to apply them to our younger selves in messages, lessons, teachings that we desperately needed when we were teen and tween girls, but that we still need today. Today. Good afternoon, junk food. Junkie. What's going on? Hi, junk food. How are you, junkie? Long time no chat. We've missed you. Today's message might seem really simple and like common knowledge, but what we love to say around common knowledge is common knowledge doesn't make it common practice.

And oftentimes, as we become an adult, we forget about some of those common practices because we know better or we're too seasoned or we're too old or whatever the excuse is. But this shows up in our lives on a daily basis, especially because of social media. And that message is that when other people are throwing shade or hate or negativity your way, it oftentimes has absolutely nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. So an example of that from my life, our life, our shared Instagram yesterday was my sister's 25th birthday, and it was a sad day for me because we don't have a relationship.

We have a really tumultuous past, something I can get into in another day, in another age. But because of the things that we've been through as a team and now individuals, we don't have an awesome relationship because of it. Now I pray. I'm super hopeful that the doors will open and she will want to strike that relationship up again at some later date. However, I have not let that stop me. I've actually let it fulfill and fuel the passion that we have here at girls mentorship. So yesterday, I made a post about it, and it was an engaging post.

I wanted the community to be interactive, with it, and I wanted it to give somebody else permission to share something that might be living in their closet. Right? We say we've got a lot of skeletons in our closet, and I wanted to give other people the permission to share something that might feel shameful to them or might be really painful in order to connect with others. And overall, the post was really well received and it generated dialogue around the subject that I wanted it to generate dialogue around.

But there was one particular comment that was real negative. It was negative, and we both share the Instagram account, so I was really proud of the message and the vulnerability and really the authenticity, because a lot of times, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, TikTok, any of these platforms are really people's highlight reels. So you don't always get to see the day to day behind the scenes of what it took to actually curate that perfect image or that beautiful reel that like, wow, look at their life.

So I was really excited that Mary got to share a little bit of her personal story and that it resonated with a lot of readers and our community. And one comment in particular didn't seem it that way. And so her perception of how she viewed this post, then she it was different than everybody else's, which is fine, we can all have our own opinions, but I think that's something that we wanted to just bring to this conversation today around, we don't always have to see eye to eye, we don't always have to share the same perspective.

But at the end of the day, I think kindness goes further than anything else. So if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all, because golden rule, right? So there's a few easy reminders within this live stream in terms of just bringing it back to attitudes that we learned when we were in kindergarten. The golden rule, don't project, right? So what we experienced yesterday was all of these incredible comments that said, oh, my gosh, thank you for sharing. I don't feel alone and I too am experiencing this, or it's just right.

It's the bridge to connect people. And that one comment, even though it was one comment, left us feeling like, oh, man, that really sunk because putting yourself out there to feel or to be judged is scary. And I again have to remind Mary that it's not about the one comment if it's about connecting other people to the story, because now her pain has turned into her purpose and why we're on this platform as well, sharing these type of stories. So we just want to bring real experiences of what we're going through and how we're navigating these certain situations, because those comments hurt.

And we also don't want to be the people who walk around being the people who are commenting rude things on social media. It's like if you just don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all. We oftentimes forget that we're real people at the other end of this colorful filled box too, right? So it can be really easy to throw shade at somebody or make an off putting comment because you forget that there's somebody on the other side with real feelings attached to that post. I think social media has done us a giant disservice, and just being able to say whatever the heck we want to say, whenever the heck we want to say it, without repercussions.

And that isn't a way to live either. And I think what this app does, what this community does really well, is live and breathe off of other people's lived experiences. We get to make connections that way. So it's really like peeling back all the layers of what social media has done to us, and it allows us to feel safe in this space of vulnerability. I just. I love the reminder that obviously that post, the way I worded it, the way it was captioned, the way it came off, drummed something up in this woman, and she didn't like what that feeling was, whether she knew it or whether it was subconscious.

And her initial gut reaction was to throw that hurt and that pain at me, which is fine. I'm glad I'm in a place where I've put in a lot of work, and I don't necessarily let what other people say to me, like, get me to my core. It still hurts. Like Jo pointed out, we're still humans. Not that I need everyone to agree with me, as she also said, but a civil discourse, a positive contribution to the conversation. I'm all for feedback. I'm all for somebody not agreeing with what I have to say, but at least allow it to be a healthy debate or a conversation that leads to positivity rather than just throwing stones, because we're all living in glass houses at this point.

So just remember, just remember a the golden rule. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. And even if you have something negative to say, I want to challenge you to turn it into a positive discourse, something where a healthy debate can be made from it and baked simply because somebody is showing throwing shade at your sunshine doesn't mean it has anything at all to do with you. So it serves you better to wish that person well rather than to react in the same negative, low energy way that they responded to.

And that is practice. That is practice. That is practice. So I want to just really quickly call out a visual because it. It helps me, and I know it's helped us and the girls that we coach in terms of, like, thinking through what they're going to say. So if you can imagine a circle, and when we read something like a post, that triggers us. That is one part of someone's day. So there's the circle. That's one part of their day. When you really think about their entire day. There's all sorts of little circles, all sorts of different colors.

A nine by nine. A nine by nine. So what you see is just one of those circles in that moment. So we have to zoom out and be like, hmm, what else happened? What else happened in their day? Like, I can go in and give my opinion or say something, but it's like, yeah, allow you to think about that visual of like, yeah, if I were to take a step back and really assess the whole picture, can I give this person grace? And I think that's a really beautiful thing that all of us can take away today, especially in this very tech driven world, is not hiding behind a screen and your words, but truly practicing responding and not allowing those.

If you are the one, if a recipient of not, you know, always getting kindness back to you, practicing giving the other person the benefit of the doubt. Grace. Grace. Grace. And yourself. Always yourself. Let's see. And you're right. Junk food junkie. With all the social media platforms people can hide behind a keyboard. It makes it really easy to disassociate somebody who is an actual living human being with somebody you're just seeing on the day to day, discounting that they do actually have feelings.

Luke said he's Kate to the party. Luke will start calling. How's it going? And Anna. Thank you. Conflict can be really challenging to handle. We want to make it not easy, but we want to give girls the permission to take a deep breath and not respond if they don't feel like it's worthy of a response. But give that other person the high road. So if somebody decides to go low on you, how do you then decide to see that person with as much grace and love as possible and take the high road in your response?

You don't have to go tit for tat with somebody. And that is the exact opposite of what we've learned and gained from tv, music, movies, celebrities. We always see people pitted against each other and people going for the low blows we're challenging people to instead. Like, I probably had something written out this morning that was like, f you and the horse you rode in on. However, what I chose to say was, I don't see the value that this comment brought. If you'd like to actually contribute in a way that's meaningful, we can have a conversation about it.

But until then, I would encourage you to either ask more questions or keep those thoughts to yourself, as opposed to the first thing that I could have said. But yeah, no. We've advanced so much as a society in the last ten years that we forget our in person tactics of being kind and friendly and having a good civil discourse get thrown out the window when we go online, and that's disconcerting. So thanks for showing up to this platform, because the community here, this is what we're practicing on a daily basis.

We're not asking you to be perfect. We're asking you to just be progressing in your journey. And wherever your journey is, we're meeting you there and we're in it together. Thank you for showing up today. Thanks for listening and being here with us because we're also navigating, practicing what we do, preach, and teach. So you guys are here with us. You're in the right spot, in the right space. And don't forget to check out all of the other incredible creators and contributors that are going live this week.

Because trust me, the more that you can fill up your cup, the more that you can show up in your power. Oh, little Doctor Seussy, there not only are there a ton of live stream opportunities this week, but there are a ton of in person opportunities to connect with the community at Cadre in 2024 as well. You will see events ranging from coast to coast. We have one in Seattle in February as well as one in North Carolina in March. So the more you can plug in, like Jill said, the more you're able to be that lighthouse for the community that you have within reach.

So until next week, next week, same time, same place. We will see you guys on the next episode of Toolbox Talk. Bye everyone. And it. See you later, alligators.