Tactical & Practical Wellness

Well, hey there, Cadre. How are you? It's JC in his automobile. It's one of my favorite places to do live streams here on Cadre. I'll tell you why in a moment, but I want to start by saying thanks for spending a little bit of your Monday with me. If we've never shared time together before, thanks for the opportunity to do so. I hope that you're doing okay, or better than okay to start this week. And if you're not okay, that's okay, too. This is a live stream on tactical and practical wellness. So often things that are really good for us can seem out of touch or confusing or without, you know, an instruction pamphlet.

So on Monday mornings, when we're getting ready to enter our work, to enter our call, to enter our service for the world, to the world, to do the things that we do, it's important that we take care of ourselves as we do the things that we spend our lives doing. So, a little tactical and practical piece of wellness advice for you to start your day place. Sacramental starts at the beginning of your day, and sacramental stops at the end of your day. What's a sacramental start or stop? Well, sacrament is.

I'll define it this way. It's an action that you come to believe has some certain importance or power. It's an action that you go, ah. When I experience this, I know, I feel, I think certain things that set me onto a different course, a different path. During COVID I was hired by a lot of companies to do some virtual caretaking for their. For their workforces. In essence, I was having HR directors call me up and say, hey, JC, our employees, they don't know how to deal with what's going on. They're working from home.

They don't know how to start their day. They don't know how to stop their day. They're working endless hours. They're really, really struggling. Can you help? And of course, I was like, yeah, what a wonderful opportunity to help people. What I quickly came to see is a lot of the things that they were struggling with were they were used to having a routine, a liturgy to their day, right? They would wake up, they'd do their stuff, they would take care of their family, they would get in their car, or however they would transport to work, they would go to work.

Work would begin, there'd be a cadence to work. There'd be people and an architecture around them that said, it is work time. Then they would leave work, they would drive home or use public transportation. They would get home, they would take off their work clothes. All of a sudden, it'd be time to not work anymore. Yeah, we may think that all that pomp and circumstance to start the day and to end the day is secondary, but no, these are those sacramental actions that help us understand that it is time to start or time to stop.

I'm going to take a moment to stop right now to do something that I love doing, and that is saying good morning and hello to my friends. I see speak wonder is here. I see Luke is here. Speak wonder. You're doing something that I've come to really, really appreciate in the Cadre world, and that is to make connections. Speak Wonder says, I was offered a unique opportunity during COVID lockdown just as I was referencing. And Speakwunder says that they had the opportunity to blog from this opportunity.

I love that. Speak wonder, I love your capacity to respond to opportunity, to see where there is help needed. Hey, Marisa from home office. Oh, Marisa, this is for you. So Marisa just said, good morning, sunshine from my home office back to today's tactical and practical wellness tip. Placing sacramental starts at the beginning of your day. Do you ever wake up on a Monday morning and, like, you're laying in bed and going, hmm, hmm. You look at all the things that you have to do, you look at the start line, it's like, wow, all of the week is in front of you, none of the week is behind you.

And you kind of go through all those emotions, the overwhelmness, the despondence that I don't want to do this. I'm really stressed because I know I have to. The guilt that you haven't started yet the morning of the weekend that is no longer there, and all of a sudden you go, it's like you're holding your breath. So sacrament, an action that you believe holds special power, that on the other side of experiencing it, something changes. Well, I will say the sacramental start to my day when I am home is I go downstairs, I open up the treat cabinet, and then all of a sudden, all three of my dogs sit in the exact same place on the floor, and we do three rounds of treats.

The first go round, Hamilton sits, Jefferson sits, willow sits. The second go round, Hamilton shakes. Jefferson shakes. Willow shakes. The third time, Hamilton shakes. Again, Jefferson stands up and Willow poops my hand. After that, my day begins. After that, I then do the next things that start my day. Within this sacrament, I experience something incredibly special. And so do my three pups. They know what's going to happen. And they know once it happens, I give them all a hug, two of them go outside, one of them goes back to sleep, and I go on my day, physiologically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

My body knows it's now time to do the things that happen after we have this sacramental moment. So I mentioned before why. I was gonna say why I love I was gonna say why I love doing live streams from my car. I love doing live streams from my car because it's becoming a sacrament to me, not a sacramental start or finish to my day. But in this act that I believe there is special power, that on the other side, I experience life differently. This moment right here reminds me that I don't have to be on a stage, I don't have to schedule a meeting.

I don't have to get a big group of people together physically. I don't have to do a lot to go ahead and share what's going on the inside with people I care about on the outside. So whenever I know, it's like, gosh, I'm going to be running from one meeting to the next. Da da da da da. In six minutes, I'll be walking into Starbucks over there to my first meeting of the day. , tonight, after finishing up Matilda junior auditions at Stages Theatre company. I know that this moment is going to positively affect the rest of my day.

Another sacrament. So I ask each of you, speak wonder. Marisa Luke, what is this sacrament to start your day? Is it that first cup of coffee? And if it is, I suggest having it in a very specific mug, like have a sacramental first cup of coffee mug. Is your sacramental start the shower? Is it turning on music? Is it lighting a candle? Is it saying hello or good morning or I love you to someone, either in person or through Facebook messenger or through a text message? Is it opening up your back door and standing on your back porch and taking a couple of breaths of the cool or the fresh or the tropical air, wherever you are, is the sacramental start to your day?

Setting your alarm ten minutes earlier so you can enjoy the power of hitting that snooze button and going, you know what? Right now, I'm going to take the moment. Marisa says my Sacramento start is feeding my cats, pouring coffee for me, and leaving a cup in the bathroom for Al. Not only does that sound really nice, Marisa, but also says to me that your body knows on the other side of doing those things that it can go, ha and get to work. So, crew, get to work. We'll talk to you later.