The Art of Being Bold at Work

Happy Monday, everybody. This is Jean Nichols coming into you live into the Cadre system. I'm very excited to be here. It's Monday. I'm jumping in a little early. It's beautiful day here in Minneapolis. If you haven't listened to any of the other live streams today, you should check them out. Luke is always brilliant at kicking off our Monday with some motivation in music, and we have just such a great team. Also, did you have a nice weekend? You had a chance to, like, look back a little bit to.

To see all the beautiful things that happened over the weekend. Some of them may not always feel beautiful, but upon reflection, they might not be so bad. Hi, Jocelyn. Happy Monday. Nice to have you here. Hello, Jules. Nice to see you. Good afternoon to you. So great to be here on this beautiful Monday. Minnesota. I live in Minneapolis. Hey, Zach. What's up? So in this Monday, when we were talking about being bold in the workplace, I would love for you to type in one word about what is bringing you joy.

Or maybe it's a few words, what's bringing you joy this Monday, what were you the most excited for when you woke up this morning? Morning. What has you excited about today? Hello. Chsoaf. I need to. I would try to say that, but I don't think it'll work. So on this Monday, I woke up today. I didn't leap out of bed today. It was very comfortable. However, I was able to meet with somebody on our team and do a little mentoring. So I knew that today, right away. One of the things that I love to do in my job is when I get to talk to somebody about their career.

The birds singing this morning. Oh, thank you for that, Daryl. I love that. So I embracing learning. Thanks, Zach. So I got to meet with one of the people on our team and talk to her about what she wants to do next. I've mentioned before that we own an indoor cycling studio. Zach, that's in here as well, is the co owner with me and partner in all things Jules says. Traveling for work out of the office. Yeah. Isn't that exhilarating? You just need to be out there. So this morning at coffee. Oh, Jules.

Yes. So this morning for coffee, I got to meet with a person on our team, and she is looking to transition into a different career. She's young in her career. She's 24, soon to be 25, and is already thinking forward about what's next for her. So I really look forward to those moments where I get to have that conversation. And what it reminded me to think of is back when each of us were early in our career, we had a goal. We had an idea. Maybe we went to school for something in particular, and maybe we realized that the degree that we got in school or a class that we took, maybe it just didn't resonate.

Maybe it just happened to be our foundation, our starting point. So I started going to school, and in our conversation this morning, I shared with her. I started going to school for chemical engineering because I love math. I'm a geek at heart. I'm a true geek. And then what I realized is I love to solve problems. I love solving complex problems. I love having the freedom to think wild and crazy ideas to solve problems. And as I was going through my degree, I realized that I wasn't able to solve problems fast enough.

I'm not the person that wants to sit in a long period of time for researching details. I like to get there and make forward progress swiftly. And so I shared that as an example with her about how we might start with something and how it might morph into something else. I ended up graduating with a degree in finance, statistics and business computers and was able to quickly apply that. And so when we think about, you know, our future version of ourselves, and I've mentioned this before, the seeds that we plant today are the investment in the future selves.

So we wake up on a Monday and we find a couple of things that we're excited about. We might wake up on a Monday and find a few things that maybe are going to drain us, and we need to have a strategy to work through those. But if we think about planting those seeds and we think about this one phrase, upgrading, and I'm using the phrase upgrading in our conversation today because I'm literally sitting outside the Verizon store and I'm upgrading my phone as we speak. So hopefully the technology doesn't crash as we speak.

But it got me to thinking, how often do we invest in ourselves to upgrade? And how often do we upgrade ourselves based on somebody else's expectations? So thinking about, in the workplace, our managers or our bosses, you know, maybe they're seeing a strength of ours that they perceive as a strength of ours because they see us being really good at it. But maybe we're only good at it because we became the expert and now we're ready to learn something new, but we feel stuck because we have to keep doing the same thing over and over again.

The only person who's going to know if we're ready for an upgrade, we're ready for a new investment is going to be us. We are the only person that knows us well enough to be able to say, I'm ready for an upgrade, I'm ready for a change. And that change can be hard and it requires us to do a couple of things. When I'm working with my coaching clients, I often ask them to make a list of all the activities that they did in the last week or two, write down what it was that they were doing, be really specific and then highlight or star the activities that energize them.

And then let's find what the common themes, the common patterns are. Because when we look at a job description, we look at a future possibility. There's only going to be a few things in a long list of those activities that we're really going to resonate with. So we want those to be the items that we spend the majority of our time on. So if you are someone who is a high learner, you are curious about everything. You are the first to go read the book. You need to be in a position where you can learn frequently.

And sometimes when you get into those jobs where you become stagnant or you are doing things on repetition all of the time, it's time for an upgrade. So how might you ask your manager, supervisor or boss for a new opportunity? How might you talk to your peers, the people you work with on a day to day basis, to see what maybe they might need help with that you might be curious about. And then maybe you offer in a little extra time to help them out. Because then you learn something new and you, you can take that back to the team.

You can take that back to your manager. So as we are thinking about the changing of the seasons, it's April in Minnesota, soon to be May. It's springtime time where we clean out our closets, clean out our gunk. How might we think about one or two activities or themes of work that we enjoy, that we can invest a little bit more in so we can reshape our future and maybe get that upgrade. Now. An upgrade in my mind today is what's a class? Maybe you can take what is an audiobook you can listen to or an actual book you can listen, read that.

You might learn something new that you can apply right away and share that. So as we continue to clean out the things that don't bring us joy, clean out the activities that drain us, we need to be really particular about what we fill back into our cup because we only have so much space in our container. So if we're thinking also about planting future seeds to grow. We think about letting go of some of the activities that drain us. We think about what we need to invest in for ourselves to become stronger employees, become more creative in our days and our jobs.

What are the things that we're the most curious about? So, for me, I. Jules, I love this. My great Auntie Emma used to tell me, knowledge is power, and knowledge is the only thing that nobody can take away from you. Exactly. And I'll add to that, Jules, what you're excited about to learn, I might not be. So if you dive into your curiosities and then we come together and have a conversation, I can learn from something you're passionate about. So it's really important that we are looking to see what we are instinctually drawn to.

So I. Jean, I'm really curious about personality inventories. So I have been scoping out another certification. I have a list of them. I don't always even talk about them because I'm just curious, and I want to learn what I want to learn because I want to apply it. And this one is talking about brain science. It's around neuroscience. So I'm listening to podcasts. Mel Robbins is a really great podcaster who I've really enjoyed learning from. And what was great about that is I learned more about something new, neuroscience related and.

And how we can manifest through our brains and how it is grounded in neuroscience. Brain science. Right. I'm already geeking out. I could go on about this for a while. I will share in one of my next recorded recordings and in some comments about some of the things that I'm learning around habits and neuroscience and manifesting. But those are my curiosities. Those are the things that, when I learn about those, I am going to take more information away and store it in my brain so that I can share it with everybody, because that's what we do.

And we learn, and we upgrade our knowledge, we upgrade our skills. We are able to quickly share and apply, and then not only do we win because we're have more excited about the work that we do, our whole team wins because we are excited. We will lift up the team. So I'm going to ask you to type in the chat. Is there something that you're curious about right now? Something that you're choosing to listen to? Choosing to maybe take a course on? If? Yes, maybe type that in the chat and share with all of us.

And if you're listening on replay, I would love to hear how you feel about the upgrade. Type in the chat. And I will make sure to always answer any comments and respond to what you're saying. Zach, I know you're a curious brain. What might you be listening to right now? Dale? Or is there anything that you're hot into? Or Jocelyn. So on this Monday and we're thinking about being bold in our workplace sign language. Fascinating. Zach is also learning sign language. I love that you're learning that.

I would love to hear why you chose sign language. What about that drives you? So on this Monday, when we're thinking about being bold in the workplace, it doesn't have to just be bold at work. We can bring our whole selves to the workplace simply by diving more into our curiosities, understanding more about what are the common themes about the activities that really excite me on a week. And then how might I plant some seeds. Now, if you think about planting, if we have any gardeners that listen in, we throw a hundred seeds into our garden, but we only get maybe five or six really great plants.

That is exactly what's going to happen when we start to think about upgrading ourselves, investing in education. Investing. And when I say education, it can be as simple as investing in a book. Audiobook, going to the library. Ooh, that sounds fun. It could be reaching out to a mentor and sharing with them. Gosh, I have this an idea of where I think I want to go. How might you get there? What my ideas might you have? So those upgrades can come in all different kinds of forms. So the final question I'll ask you for today to type in the chat and if you're on replay, type in as well.

What is the upgrade that you're working on next? What is the seed of your future self you want to invest in? Daryl, thank you for that. I love the term investing in yourself. We think about investing in everything else. Our four hundred one k, the stock market. We invest in our children. We invest our jobs. If we don't start with ourselves first, we don't have much left to offer because we give it all away. So yeah, I love to use that language and investing in ourselves. So thank you. Currently, my personal mindset.

Jules, I love that. If you want to have a conversation about that, let me know. I love to learn more about where you're going. There's actually a really great book. I'll get a photo of it. I'll post it in the comments called mindset. I have it at home and it is one of my favorite books that I've been reading in the last like six months. If you love books or audiobooks, you might enjoy it as well. It's a white book with blue writing on the COVID and I'll make sure to post that also. So on this Monday, I'm going to finish my phone upgrade.

My investment for today is to continue listening to this podcast that just came up with Mel Robbins, and I will also post the link to her podcast. This one in particular was with Doctor Tara. She talks about habits and manifesting, so if it's something you're curious about, then I'll offer that up to you as well. If nothing else, if you have any questions, post them in the chat. But I hope you all have a fantastic Monday joining the National Speaker association. Ooh, I love that one group that maybe you haven't heard of before is also toastmasters.

That is also a good foundational organization if you're looking to practice more public speaking. So I hope you all have a beautiful, amazing Monday. Make sure to get outside, get some non screen time, get some real light today. Take even five minutes just for you. Reset your mind, do a little research on something. Oh, I love it Daryl. Now you're upgrading and I hope you all have an amazing rest of your day. We'll see you next time. I'm here on Sundays, 1230 for me time Mondays for professional development and we have a great lineup that's following me today.

So set your reminders and we'll see you soon.