SELK 75

Hey, everybody. Happy Saturday morning. My name is JC Lepold, and this is a live stream about an idea called Selk 75. If we've never shared space or time together before, thanks for taking a few minutes to allow me to offer an idea to hold space for you to invite you some pause in your day. Selk 75. Soft, easy, light, and kind. These are four words that I think of as the opposite of hard. There's a popular fitness life wellness challenge called 75 hard, where for 75 days, you do what they think are some really hard things, like workout twice every day.

Drink a gallon of water every day. Read nonfiction every day. Get 8 hours of sleep every day. Da da da da da da. And if you fail at any of these things, good morning. Speak wonder. If you fail at any of these things, you start over. I look at culture and I think we pretty consistently do hard things. I think culture tells us we need to do hard things again and again and again and again, again. Joe Pajoy. Good morning to you, my coach. So today we're going to look at the l of selk. We've taken some time to talk about speaking softly.

That's the s we've taken some time to talk about taking it easy. That's the e. Today we're going to talk about the l light moving lightly. So if you think about your physical world, your exercise world, think about how we are normally guided or encouraged to move, to work hard, to lift more, to go deeper. All of these things train our bodies to work in one way. Remember, run faster. But hey, it's okay to go slower, lift heavier. Hey, it's okay to lift lighter. Is it really okay to do these things?

Or are we pandering to those people who need a break or need a moment? I think it's pretty clear. So what do we gain from moving lighter? I want to talk about the word grace. I define the word grace as making difficult things seem easy. Think about dancers. It seems like they float like a feather. Think about acrobats or gymnasts who flip and fly through the air. It seems like they are a warm knife through butter. Have you ever tried doing these things? Speak wonder. Joke of joy. Do you like to dance?

Do you consider yourself to be a graceful mover? Speak wonder says. I like to say, every day my best looks different. Yeah, exactly. And that's so hard for people. Speak wonder. If every day your best looks different, then how do you set up these scalable goals of being better every day? And of course, the answer is we aren't better every day we go like this. Speak, wonder. I'm going to take your advice today. Today our best opportunity is to be as good as we are today. So back to grace. I invite you all the next time you exercise, next time you go for a walk, or the next time you lift some weights or do a more traditional workout, I want your ears to be your coach.

Your ears listen to how your body moves. So listen to your feet hitting the ground. Listen to your breath leaving your body. Let's say you're doing a bicep curl. Does your breath sound like this? Or does your breath sound like this? Your ears are going to help your overall complete physical state. Train your grace muscles. Your grace muscles are those muscles that make hard things appear to be easy. Perhaps right now, wherever you are, you stand up and you jump. Now, I have a really old house, so even if I think the house squeaks, but if I use my ears to go, how lightly can I jump?

I think I did better the second time. For me to land lighter, I have to use a lot more muscles that have quieter voices. All of a sudden, I'm working harder by letting my ears train me to be lighter. It's a question of efficiency. It's a question of mindfulness. YouTube a dancer or a gymnast today and watch how it appears like they're not even working hard. And then consider how much they're listening to their breath, to them landing on the ground. They're paying attention to the sound of their pinky finger gracing through the air.

And you may be like, whew, I'm sweating harder. Jada good morning. All of a sudden we realize, I think the true benefit of the selk 75 is you realize that you are doing so much more in this world than you ever give yourself credit for. Not just the hard things, but the soft, easy, light and kind things. So if you want to hear more about the speaking soft or the taking it easy, look back on the last two Saturdays and the next Saturday next year, in 2024, we'll talk about practicing kindness. And as I've raised, yeah, kindness to other people, sure, but more difficultly, more advanced kindness to yourself.

But I hope today you let your ears be your coach and you land lightly in this world. And all of a sudden everyone else starts going, wow, you have a grace about you. And they think that that's easy. And you go, yeah, I've been training my grace muscles and by golly, it's making me sweat. I appreciate your grace this morning, everybody. It truly is a challenge to take time like you are doing right now to consider how you are doing, to consider your wellness, to consider improvement, to consider your enoughness.

So thank you for doing that. Share this Cadre with each other, this special group of people with a special intention who's someone in your world who needs a little bit of this. Pass it on. We'll talk to y'all soon. Have a good weekend.