As Lumiere invites us in Beauty and the Beast, “Try the gray stuff, it’s delicious”, JC will invite us into the midst of black & white wellness culture to consider the gray.
JC: This is a live stream that I like to call try the gray stuff subtitle. The intent of this live stream on Sunday morning is to invite you to wade into the mucky middle. There's some things that are maybe black and white, but most often there are nuances.
So the gray stuff, the mucky middle, the intent of talking about it is personally, as a person who attempts to be an assistant of others. I like to be a listener, an amplifier, an observer. I'm so critical that the gray gets segmented apart.
Bob Greene: We often think about goals or improvement or winning or losing. He says the majority of people at the finish line of a marathon would feel pretty great. Greene: Life is too short to spend so much time beating ourselves up when we don't reach our goals. What experiences are you carrying with you today?
Well, hey, Cadre. Happy Sunday and happy sunny. Happy Sunny Sunday. My name is JC. If we've never shared time together before, thanks for giving me the opportunity to spend a few minutes with you this morning. I am sitting in a gas station parking lot in St. Michael, Minnesota, and this is a live stream that I like to call try the gray stuff subtitle. It's delicious. Of course, if you're a Disney movie fan, this is a line from Lumiere in Beauty and the beast singing be our guest. Try the gray stuff.
It's delicious. The intent of this live stream on Sunday morning is to invite you to wade into the mucky middle in a culture that tries to say that things are very, very black and white. Speak, wonder. Hello. Hello, my friend. I hope you are splendid. There's some things that are maybe black and white, but most often there are nuances. There are realities that help expand the buckets of what may bear value or worth or perspective or opportunities. Growth. Speak, wonder. I knew I could count on you.
Don't believe me? Ask the dishes. Oh, Disney. Oh, Lumiere. Oh, bad french accents on a Sunday morning. What could be better? So the gray stuff, the mucky middle, the intent of talking about it is personally, as a person who attempts to be an assistant of others within my work and within my passion and my vocation, I like to be a helper. I like to be a listener, an amplifier, an observer. And so often I see people who do some pretty remarkable things, but they're wearing the black and white glasses of what is good or what is bad, what is enough, what is not enough.
And so often, they don't see the good in the stuff that they're doing. And that's okay. I'm not a. Everybody should feel good all the time. No, if you know me, I'm quite the opposite. I'm very critical. Like, I'm so critical that the gray gets segmented apart. It gets dissected. Well, I saw that our buddy Luke was on the treadmill last night on his live stream, and it made me think about, as I was preparing for this morning, about marathons or races or activities that we engage in that invite us to think about goals or improvement or winning or losing.
And marathons come to mind because I will see people who, at the finish line of a marathon, they have made it to the end. 2 miles, doing this thing that takes a lot of time and energy, a lot of internal work, that the majority of people, or maybe everybody, and I'm not going to say everybody, because that's very black and white, but the majority of people at a finish line would feel pretty great. You did the thing, you finished your marathon. But I'll tell you, if you ask a hundred people who are standing at the finish line of their marathon.
So how'd it go? Most of them start by going, ah, well. Mmm. I really wanted to. My plan was, my goal was, but then, da ba da ba da ba da da da. Translated, they say, I wanted it to go this way, but it went that way. Oh, well. And they take their medal and they go on their way. It seems like a missed opportunity to me. Shouldn't we be able to find some moment of, like, wow, that's pretty amazing. Maybe it didn't go the way that I wanted it to go, but that's pretty amazing. But in a world where we're supposed to have personal best records and times and plans and those things that set our level of what good enough looks like, so often, the level that we set becomes more important than the actual work that we're doing.
Right? Like, could it be true that we could go, wow, this was a pretty amazing thing that I just did. And I wanted to run a four hour marathon, but I ran a four hour and two minute marathon. And notice in my voice, I'm not shifting from a, ah, I'm a failure, or, ah, I'm not good enough for the not reaching what I thought my goal was. I don't know. I think life is too short to spend so much time beating ourselves up when we don't reach the thing that we thought we were supposed to reach. Because why?
Where do these goals get set from? Most often, they're set by someone else. They're set by someone else's expectation of what is good. You know, I venture in my own life to go, I'm gonna find the good stuff kind of in the middle of the black and the white. And here's why. Because I think at the end of the day, it gets me the farthest. How many people fail at the thing? And then they. And then they give up on everything. The failure is too much weights to bear that they simply stop. Yeah, speak. Wonder says it super well.
We adhere to unbelievable standards, but funny enough, like unbelievable for some, not unbelievable for others, but unattached to something that we actually care about in the first place. I invite you today to a world that makes things seem quite easy. Do this, don't do this. Adhere to this, not to that. This is good, this is bad. These people do this and those people do that and ask the question, what do I want to do? What's going to fill my cup? What's going to make me get to the next day and want to keep going?
What experiences are you putting in your bag to carry with you that maybe others on face value wouldn't see the value of until you show it to them? There's a great song by an old country band, and by old, I mean nineties. The band is called Black Hawk, and the song is just about right. I invite you to listen to that song today. It's lovely. Just about right. Give it a listen, then comment back here in this video. Your thoughts. Have a good one. Talk to you later. Bye.
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