Explore your environment ✨

Hello everybody. Happy Sunday. My name is Jean Nichols. I'm really excited to be here with you on self care Sunday, talking about in this series exploring our environment as part of our self care habits. I don't know if any of you have pets. I do. My dog's name is major. He is officially sitting here with me almost every single live stream. If he if I'm at home, he is most likely nearby. And it's a lovely memorial day weekend. It's not great weather here. It's not bad though. It's just a little chilly, not so sunny yet.

And I'm guessing that many of you, if you listen to the sun replay or out and about for your day, for your holiday weekend, possibly traveling and taking some trips, maybe tuning out of technology for the weekend, which isn't a bad thing either. So on this Sunday, on every Sunday, hello, speak wonder. How are you today? I popped in a little early so that my administrative assistant, my coworker, my supervisor could get positioned appropriately for the live stream today. He is definitely with me on almost every single one.

Hello Cadre fam. If you are dialing in on replay, say hello. If you have a furry friend, give them a shout out. I find that pets can be very therapeutic. So as I consider and explore the topic of exploring our environment on self care Sundays, I wanted to talk about just a couple of things. One, you know, I've been practicing recently when I am at dinner with friends and when I'm out on walks with my dog. Now I have to walk him a few times a day because we live in an apartment and so he doesn't have like a backyard to go out and run in.

But what I've been doing, especially now that it's nicer weather, is leaving my earbuds. And at home I'm in the anticipatory state of waiting for grandchildren to grandchild people. Oh, that's so exciting. Congratulations. Do you know if it's a boy or a girl? So as I've been out exploring and as I get to take my dog out on several walks, I've been trying to do a couple of things. The first is at least one walk is just a longer walk and oh, baby Gracie. Hello for baby Gracie. Hi, Jules. Happy Sunday.

So as I head out on my at least one of my walks with my dog, I try to see if I have at least enough time. So if I have 30 minutes or so to do this, what I do is I've been leaving my earbuds at home and I've been leaving my phone either at home, if I can, or otherwise I am putting it in airplane mode and just having it with in case I need anything. And the reason I say that is because my dog knows where various coffee shops are in the neighborhood, and they all have dog treats. So if I happen to get taken on a path, I'll explain that where we end up at a coffee shop, then I always want to have my apple wallet with.

I suppose I should. I could take cash too. Habits. We have new habits now, but I've been working really hard to have at least one walk a day where I'm not really connected to anything. And what I do is, because I have the luxury of having a large dog, is I kind of follow his lead and I just kind of try to see where he's gonna take me. I'll start the direction of a path, so I'll come out the door. I might go left or right or straight, and. And then I just start walking. And I know we have an amount of time, so I can kind of guesstimate what that will look like, or when we need to head back, or if I have my phone in my pocket, that's when I might check the time to just make sure I don't miss anything I need to be back for.

And I let him lead. And he, the other day, walked me to a coffee shop. And while we were there, I just observed everything. I observed how people reacted to my dog. He's a golden retriever. I took him to a lot of my mom's long term care facility when she was still alive. And he would spend time with elderly people and he would just naturally walk up to them. And I would be curious who he would walk up to. So right now, while we're on our walks, I just let him lead and see where he goes. The other day, he took us over by where there's a waterfall in Minneapolis on the Mississippi river.

And he just hung out there for a while. And so I just took some breaths and I actually bent down to the height that he is and I tried to see what it was that he sees. And I did the same thing when we walked into the coffee shop that day. I wanted to see what the world looked like from his. His perspective, his angle as he's sitting down 3ft from off the floor, looking around to see what I might observe differently about people around us or the space that we walk into or what's in nature. You know, if you have a dog and you walk them, sometimes you have to be a little bit more aware of what's ahead of you.

Otherwise they might grab the cheeseburger that's laying on the ground or a french fry or something that you might not want them to get into. And so when I think about exploring my environment, it doesn't have to be big things. Sometimes I just will sit on the floor with my dog and look around and see what he sees down at that lens in his space. The other thing that I've been working really hard at is when I'm at dinner or coffee with friends, is putting my phone in my bag and putting it in airplane mode.

You know, I think we get so. We've been so conditioned, remember where we. There was a point in time where we weren't conditioned to be on technology, and maybe we rebelled Apple pay, or we rebelled text messaging or insert whatever it was that we had a natural resistance to. And now it's just become so much a part of our days. So when I look around and I go on these walks where I have my phone in my pocket and I don't have any earbuds, sometimes I just look and observe to see who sees me as we're walking towards them versus having their heads down.

And I try hard to just smile at people because I don't know that we look up enough anymore and take that time to look up and look around. Jules says, in here, my friends and I do cell phone towers when we are together. Yes. So it's like trying to find new ways to just continue to connect and disconnect and being more present in the moment. So when I think about exploring the spaces that I'm in, you know, I really just like to disconnect. Technologies can keep us angsty often because we get that little vibration on our apple watches or something where it alerts us that someone wants to connect with us.

And then all of a sudden, we get a dopamine rush in our brain that is almost like we got a shot of caffeine that says, oh, somebody wants to talk to me. I need to talk to them immediately. We don't. Unless it's an emergency. Someone's having an emergency. Our time is still our time. And even in the case of an emergency, and I don't want to belittle emergencies, because, Jules, I know you do a lot of work with people that are having traumas in fast mode, but if we're just taking a walk, if an emergency happens, I'm not going to get home faster.

I'm not going to be able to solve the problem any quicker. Right. And so, giving ourself a little space and grace to be present in a moment for ourselves, to allow ourselves to break that connection, as if we're stopping drinking caffeine, we might go through a withdrawal period. And so if we stop the constant interaction with a technology or the constant need to respond to a text message or an instant message on WhatsApp or at work, right. If we're on teams or something, we get a DM in our inbox.

I love this speak wonder. You also put in here you have a friend who mindfully uses no screens on Sundays. Yeah. So it's a way for us to break that habit, similar to breaking a caffeine habit. Or I like hot tamales, so hot tamale, candies habit, whatever that is, that we're trying to replace it with something new. It requires us to create a disconnection. And somehow, whatever that habit was, it feeds something. It feeds our ego. It feeds our mind. It feeds something in our bodies and our brains and our energy spaces.

And so it will require us to be really intentional. So many studies say it takes 21 days to create a new habit. So while I might be taking one walk a day where I'm really trying hard to not have any technology, not even listening to a podcast or music, and I love both, but just really listening to the birds, seeing what my dog sees, just trying to embrace the moment, embrace the people that I see, and the birds I might see, or the trees and how they're blooming or evolving, smelling something new.

It's my big journey. The second thing I wanted to share is I am starting this weekend marathon training. And while I'm not always a huge marathon runner, I know JC has run several, several marathons. He also did the world six. That's what my goal is, is to run the world six marathons for fundraisers. Jay Z Lippel did the same. Why I share with that is that I. My very first marathon I ran is when I moved to Minneapolis from a northern city in Minnesota. Minnesota. And I didn't know the city. I didn't know any people that lived here.

I knew very few. I had some work friends, and I joined a rung club. And it was in Minneapolis or in St. Louis Park, Minneapolis, just outside of Minneapolis. And I didn't know. I'd never joined a run club before. I play a lot of sports, but I wasn't really considered. I didn't consider myself a runner. I just knew that I wanted to try some new things. And it was really fascinating when I joined that group because we ran on trails all the time. And I got to see and learn about Minneapolis, not by driving on streets or Google mapping anything.

I got to learn about the city through the lens of my fellow runners and see different things. Like, we ran across donut shops in neighborhoods, and if we were on a long run, sometimes we'd stop. Or different restaurants, or like Minnehaha Falls, which is so beautiful in Minneapolis. And it's all these places that I might not have seen had I been just popping in a car and driving from point a to point b. And so whether or not you're a runner, maybe you like to walk. Maybe you like to rollerblade, roller skate, ride a bicycle.

Or maybe you want to just get in a car and look on Facebook to see what events are happening near you. Or go out on eventbrite. Or there's another tool called meetup. And every city has these, and they post different events. So my challenge this week is twofold. And I'll start sharing a little more about my marathon training experience soon on self care Sundays, because that's where I'll have my biggest training days. But when I think about getting out and really appreciating more, but reconnecting inside for myself, I find that that can happen in a couple of ways.

You know, the first for me, because I have a dog, is doing a walk of some sort without any technology and allowing myself to be fully present, breathing in the air, smelling the smells, hearing the birds, looking through the lens of my dog. Now, maybe you don't have a dog. Maybe you don't like dogs. Maybe instead, it's you find that you go on a coffee shop journey, and maybe you decide that you love coffee. And every week for the next four weeks, you're going to try to find one new coffee shop on a Sunday or any day.

My second outlet for exploring the environment is movement. And that will be a series that I'll do on is more movement. But for me, that's like marathon training and discovering different places. I can run to see and learn new neighborhoods. And there's lots of groups in every city that will do something active. So if you even did, like a Google search on Facebook or maybe on Eventbrite or meetups and look for, like, hiking, hiking groups, you can find something like that. Speak. Wonder says we need more high touch in a high tech world.

Yes, exactly. More touch, more connection, more human connection. Which is why I feel so grateful every time you guys pop into the chats and you type in the chats because it helps us on the other side to feel like we're even more connected to you. And so my invitation to you on this beautiful Sunday, on self care Sundays, is to identify one or two new ways that you can create human connection. Or one or two new ways you can find a new connection to the space that you live. This guy says hello all the time, but new ways for you to find a connection back into yourself, refuel yourself, find a new way to connect into your environment.

If you're a speed walker, a biker, whatever that is for you, how might you do that just a little differently? Tack down, eyes up, spirit open, and experience the world around you in whatever way feels great for you. I'm going to leave you with this one last thing and then I'm going to share. What? Speak. Wonder wrote one of my mentors, but she's also my acupuncturist, said that once a month she takes herself up for dinner. She's married, she has a couple of kids, she goes to a restaurant. She doesn't take a book.

She doesn't take her phone. She keeps it face down or in her purse. And she has a meal by herself. All by herself. Now, when you say that to someone, that can be really daunting, like going to a movie by yourself can be very daunting. But she said the reason that she does that is she wants to just experience the space. She wants to experience the restaurant. And by not having a book with her or something to read on her phone or her computer, she explained to me that she can taste the food more. She eats a little bit slower.

She's really intentional on eating the food or really intentional about experiencing the space. So whether you go for a walk without any technology, you go for a bike ride, you go to Facebook, and you find a new event that you've never experienced or eventbrite, and you sign up for something today that you've never done before. I just simply invite you to technology, peace out, and be present in that moment. See what you experience. Maybe you'll like it. Maybe you won't like it. Speak wonder says the quote that they posted on their fridge.

Your fridge. I wish I could give credit to who said it. Yeah, the quote is, we need more high touch in a high tech world. So with that, I'll send you some love. I'll send you the wish of a beautiful holiday weekend. And I look forward to seeing you again next Sunday as we have self care Sunday together. Have a great rest of your day.