Me Time ✨

Good morning everyone. Happy Sunday. My coworker for today has decided to join and check in to make sure everybody's having a good day. My name is Jean Nichols. This co worker of mine, his name is major and I am excited to be a part of your Sunday morning talking about me time. I'm going to launch in first by just saying how grateful I am that I get to be a part of this community with all of you. And I am not sure if any of you have taken some time to check in with some of the fellow Cadre creators.

I spent time yesterday morning listening into JC is enoughness 101 and I'm gonna start there today as I talk about me time and the reason why is when I joined in good morning, Rebecca. To JC's livestream yesterday about enoughness, I was feeling like I was struggling a little bit and I've known JC for many years. I have followed him for a long time and I loved his talk. But on yesterday's conversation, I started to feel like I wasn't enough. And it wasn't that he had done anything or said anything.

It was a reminder of a feeling that I'd been having and he was able to help me pinpoint what was happening. So if you haven't watched any of the enoughness series that he's done, I recommend doing that as a part of what I'll call me time. But today, if you haven't met me, I'm just really excited to be here. I'm going to continue with a series of me time on Sunday mornings for a little while. And the reason why is I find, and I don't know if any of you are like me, that my days can be a blur and that I will sometimes do and give so much to my clients, whether it's my coaching clients.

I'm also a spin instructor, so I teach a lot of spin classes. I am a Reiki master and sound therapist as well as I do breath work. And so I find that my days, good morning, Jules. Are often consumed by doing or giving to others to help ensure that they get me time to make sure or help that other people take the opportunity for themselves. And I find that I'm coaching that a lot, but I also find that I don't always do a great job of doing that for myself. Jules and Rebecca, good morning. So great to see you on here.

If you find that you are also challenged with me time, I would love to hear that as well. But I'd also love to hear ideas on when you do take time for yourself. So for today, it's a beautiful Sunday in Minneapolis. Well, beautiful is relative. It's cloudy, and for the first time, or one of the few times this winter, it's snowing very, very lightly. So I'm curious to see how today is going to go. But I used to have a habit a long time ago that some Sundays were my unplanned day. And it was the only day of the week that if anybody asked me if I wanted to do something, I would say maybe.

I would always follow up with them. But I would allow myself the opportunity to say no and have today Sundays be completely unscripted. And about seven or eight years ago, I opened up, co opened a spin studio and found fast forward. Sundays got taken away, and not taken away completely. They just became more full, more rich, but again, helping other people move. And I would teach a lot of spin classes on Sundays. And once a month, I host sound baths on a Sunday for other people at a local salt cave.

And so my Sunday practice kind of got taken over. And so I'm claiming it back. And even if that claim back is only for ten or 15 minutes on a Sunday, or an hour on a Sunday, if you think about 145 minutes block of time, it is 4% of your day. They're 1440 minutes in a day. And if you take 45 minutes for yourself, it's simply 4%. So even if you listen to three Cadre episodes on one day, that would be 4% of your day. That is considered me. Time. Investing in yourself, learning for yourself. So today I thought I'd explore a couple of things around me time.

And I specifically wore my sweatshirt that says heavily meditated from a company named righteous souls. They're here in Minnesota and I love them. And I'm going to share a funny story. So when I'm having the day where I feel like I've been doing too much, my nickname growing up from my brother is Dewar. I pull out this sweatshirt and I have a hat, and I wear it specifically because it's a reminder, a physical reminder to breathe. There are many times throughout the day I'll be go, go, go. And I'll get so many things accomplished.

Or if I am thinking about JC's enoughness 101 episode yesterday, maybe I'm feeling depleted because I didn't accomplish enough. And so it's a time for me to take some balance back. And the funny story about the sweatshirt is I wore it into the grocery store probably six months ago, and I had one of those nice little bags that go across the top. And so it covered up part of it. And the cashier started laughing and she goes, haha, me too. And then she started to tell me about all the different medications that she was taking because she thought my sweatshirt said heavily medicated.

And her colleague came over and was mortified. And so I realized that's what happened. And I shifted my purse and she said, oh, meditated. And then she asked, do you meditate? And I said, I'm trying to. I do meditations for other people. I guide them, but it's hard for me sometimes to do it for myself. And then fast forward. Later in the day, I went to go visit my 84 year old mom who lived in long term care and she saw my sweatshirt and she started laughing hysterically and she said, me too. And she also was referencing the fact that she thought my sweatshirt said medicated.

And I said, mom. And I was like, read it again. And she started laughing, eating even harder. So if you've ever been with any elderly person who breaks out in a hysterical laugh, it will actually cause you to laugh as well. And we laughed for a good ten or 15 minutes. I swear my belly hurts. And then she asked me why I was wearing the sweatshirt and I said, well, today, mom, you're part of my me time. And she said, what does that mean? And I was like, well, I go, I don't take a lot of time for myself.

And she's like, I know you're busy all the time. You do this and this and this. And I was like, I know. And so I said, I wear this sweatshirt as a reminder for me to breathe throughout the day and that this is my time. I go, but mom, you're today. Today you're my time. So tell me a funny story. And then we went into our visit. So I think it's really important on, especially Sundays for me, but any day of the week that we allow ourselves the opportunity to take 4% of our day and maybe you chunk it out into 315 minutes increments where you do something selfish.

And now when I say that word, I actually feel my heart start to race a little bit. And Jules and Rebecca, I don't know if you have the same reaction, but when you say to somebody or you ask yourself to be a little selfish, how does that make you feel for me? I go into a little bit of a panic, like, oh, I'm not supposed to be selfish. We're supposed to. And there's that word again. Should, could. Supposed to be not selfish. We're supposed to give, we're supposed to show up for our friends, take our dog for a walk.

Yeah, jewel's guilty, right? We feel guilty when we think about that. And so my invitation on Sunday mornings is how might we break the stigma for ourselves, break the guilt for ourselves and be a little selfish. And maybe what it is is we give ourselves a Persona. So instead of being Jean for 15 minutes, I'm going to be Jasmine. I don't know. I love that name. It's such a pretty name. And so if we think about it that way, I'm going to give Jasmine 15 minutes of time to read a book, or I'm going to give Jasmine 15 minutes of time to take a bath.

It's almost funny and silly when I think about it, that sometimes, good morning, Shannon. Sometimes we have to give ourselves permission to be selfish. Permission to take 15 minutes out of our day to do something for me. So my heavily meditated, I'm making sure that Shannon knows that my sweatshirts is heavily meditated is my reminder for today that I get to take, I get to take 15, 30, 45 minutes, maybe more of time for myself. So I would love to know if you had 15 minutes in your day. Only 15. We can start small.

What would you do for you that would be unabashedly all about you. Now, one of the things I've started to do, I'll actually share two things, and I'm going to dive into gratitude on a different me time day. But I started to find this journal. It's called dear universe. And inside this journal, it gives you these really, really great prompts. Now, I have a stigma around writing in pretty paper because I want to wait until I have the perfect thing to say. So I'm breaking through that perfection. But I was traveling recently and I grabbed a piece of paper and I wrote down what my prompts were for the day.

But taking just a little bit of time for gratitude and setting intention actually has helped give me a little more freedom to explore my own me time possibilities. So inside here, what I love is it says, write yourself a morning invocation. Like, dear universe, may the energy of this day manifest as happiness, abundance and joy for me, like, can you imagine starting your day taking five minutes in your morning when you wake up and just writing a little note to yourself that, wow, today I would love to feel more happiness and then see what happens.

And then taking a few moments to write the things right in the morning of what you're grateful for. Yoga, family, my dog, going for a walk, and then setting an intention. Today, I would like to take a little bit extra me time and just putting it on paper, putting it into the universe and seeing what happens. Shannon, I love that you put in there, stretch my body and that it's hard to take the extra 15 minutes when the workout ends. I 100% agree. I did a workout yesterday afternoon and they're like, hey, stick around for a two minute stretch.

And I bounced because I needed to get to the next thing. So I'm going to simply invite you on this beautiful Sunday. Maybe you write an intention, maybe you take two minutes today and just write for you. But I would love to hear in the chat what you might do for yourself and how we might start to break that stigma of feeling guilty. We don't feel guilty when we show up for our friends when they call. We don't feel guilty when we take our dog for a walk because we know our dog needs exercise. So why?

Why do we need to feel that guilt for ourselves? And Jules, I'm right there with you because I feel like if somebody else calls me and asks me for something that they need, even if it's in the middle of me time, I find that I will take the call and to strap my me time as well. So I'm going to start this journey on Sunday mornings with all of us to find a way for each of us to find some time for us. And today it's starting with how might we write a morning intention, a morning gift of gratitude or possibly an affirmation at the beginning of your day and then at the end of your day, taking two minutes to check in to see how it went.

And it's not about judging how you went, it's about acknowledging today I send intention. That's great. Tonight, before I go to bed, I'm going to express gratitude for all the crazy in my day or whatever showed up on that day. And I'm going to invite all of us on Sundays to allow this one day to be the one opportunity to take a little bit of me time. So, Rebecca, Jules, Shannon, I'm going to invite you in the chat before I sign off for the day. What might be one thing you can do to be heavily meditated or one thing that you might do for you today that will bring your heart joy?

Because if you remember when you get on an airplane, one of the things that they tell you is to put your oxygen mask on first. They tell you that because if you can't breathe, you can't help others breathe. So I'm going to go take a few minutes. I'm going to write in my journal and I'm going to allow that to be part of my me time for today. Thank you for being here this morning. Next week I'm going to really explore more the gift of gratitude inside me time. Take us on that little journey of what that can do to help create a new habit and pattern as we are starting to explore dismantling some of that guilt, allowing ourselves the opportunity to expand, and then seeing what that expansion might create in our day.

So I hope you all have an amazing Sunday. I look forward to seeing you soon. Mondays I'm here on professional development day as well. I'm a certified coach. I'm an executive coach. I do a lot of team building and consulting work. I am starting a series around your strengths and how to discover your strengths so that you can be more active and proactive in your days in recouping some of your energy and putting out more of you into your work. So have a great rest of your day. Check out if you haven't, the thin space with JC that was posted this morning and the other great content that will be out here the rest of the day.

I hope you have an amazing one. Talk to you all soon.