Explore your environment ✨

Hello, everybody. I'm Jean Mitchells. Very excited to be here with you today. Just gonna hang out here for a hot second. I am traveling today. I'm calling you from Nashville, Tennessee. And I found a cute little park area outside of this place that I went to do a morning workout. Hopefully, it works out okay. And it's not too noisy in the background. I don't know if any of you have been to Nashville. Hi, Jules. How you doing? Hi, Jackie. Welcome. Welcome. My name is Gina. Jules, as I mentioned, I am traveling today to Nashville.

And I was in Boston this morning, and I landed in Nashville a few hours ago. So when I looked at my calendar, it tied to one time zone, and then my live stream was actually at a different time. So I'm trying again for today to discuss exploring our environment live from Nashville. Oh, amazing. Did you like it? Fun fact. Nashville, I think, is either the number one or number two bachelorette party city in America. Charleston, South Carolina, is the other. So one or two, I can't tell you which one.

I don't remember, but it's a. It's kind of fun. I have friends that live down here, and I do some work down here sometimes, so it's nice to pop in. I went and did a little workout at one of my favorite places so I could wake up a little bit. And now here we are. So I kind of flipped our Sunday conversations from me time to exploring our environment. And I did that intentionally because I was finding that even though I was taking time on Sundays, I was still kind of doing the same patterns, the same.

Same things that I would normally do. And what I really am trying to do is break out of that regular habit and discover more, to open up more, open up my mind, reconnect to the earth, to the ground, to my spaces, and be more intentional with spaces. And so I found this cute little space this morning. So behind me, there's, like, an open space area that people like to sit. There's a little waterfall that's, like, back here a little farther. And so I thought it'd be nice to just sit here for a second and just observe people.

There's a mother and a little baby with their friends out having coffee. There's some people over laughing on the side. And so it just got me thinking again. As I was driving to the airport this morning, it was early, and I had an Uber driver yesterday. I went to a graduation, and on my way back, I had this Uber driver, and it was this beautiful lady, and she's a mom. And we got into a conversation because she had never been to the area of Salem, Massachusetts, that I was in. So graduation was in Beverly, Massachusetts, and we went and had lunch after graduation in Salem, and then I was staying in another suburb of Boston, but they're all kind of really close together.

So this lady, when she picked me up, she was like, first thing she said as I got in the car was like, wow. And she looked around, and she's like, I've never been to this neighborhood before. And I was like, oh, well, how long have you lived in this area? And she's like, many, many years. Like, 1015 years, so a long time. And it just reminded me that we so often get in these habits or patterns of places that we go to get a coffee, if we drink coffee, or common places that if somebody asks you where should you meet for lunch or coffee or to go for a walk, I find I will pick the same places over and over because I know where it's at, it's convenient.

I don't have to think. I can just do it quick, and then I can show up. And so I asked this lady a few more questions, and I said, you know, tell me more about being an Uber driver. And she said that she used to work in retail. She was a manager of people. She said, I love driving Uber, and not everybody will tell you the same thing. And she said, I worked in retail. And then COVID hit, and it forced her to obviously be at home. And she has a daughter who is now 14. She shared a lot with me, let's be clear.

And she has a daughter who's 14. And she said, I think driving Uber is perfect for moms because I spend so much time with my daughter. She can go to school. I can go drive Uber. And she said, then what she said next is what really got me is she said, I see places I've never been to. And then when I pick up my daughter, I can say, hey, let's go have pancakes at this one place. Name, whatever random name. Or she comes up with all of these new things that she can go do with her daughter because it's places that she had never been before in the city in which she lives.

And so it really just fascinated me, because we get on those paths, right? We drive down those same roads every single day. We know if we're going to the grocery store, we have our path mapped out. We know if we're going to dog and people and laughing. Sorry if that's too noisy. But I find I just thought that the whole conversation was fascinating. It gave me a new perspective because she looks at driving as an Uber. One, for simplicity. She doesn't have a boss. I like that. Right? Two, she gets to explore her own city from a different lens and then learn about places that people, most often times are tourists who went out onto Yelp and read some reviews and decided to go somewhere.

And she then gets to learn something new that she can go explore with her daughter. Now, I'm not saying we should all go become Uber drivers, if that's your thing. That is amazing. I actually did consider it after the conversation. I don't know when I'd have time, but it was something to consider. So when I think about exploring your environment, it doesn't matter where we are. Like, I'm in Nashville right now, and anywhere I go right now is going to be something new. But I'm here seeing friends, and so I want to offer something to them that maybe they haven't checked out before.

And when I'm at home, I'm really trying to be mindful of if I want to go for a hike, maybe going out to the all trails map and finding a trail that I haven't done before at home and packing up my dog and going there and checking it out or exploring what's around the city. I teach a lot of spin classes, and so we have a big community. So I always ask on Fridays when I teach, what is everybody doing this weekend? Because inevitably we all have different things that we really enjoy. And I almost always hear something that I'm curious about, and I try to add that into maybe my weekend adventure.

So I'm gonna take a pause and I'm gonna ask Jackie, Jules, anyone listening on replay, what have you experienced lately that was brand new? Where you live? And Jackie, I don't think I know where you live. So if you don't mind sharing where you're located right now, that would be fantastic. I know when I. And I'll keep talking while you guys consider typing something. My favorite thing to do when I travel is to pack my running shoes. Now, it doesn't matter if you run or walk, but I like to get out and go do some exercise outside and safety.

Right. But I like to go check out a new place. Because most often what happens is when I'm on a run, I'm gonna see something that I never saw before. Or maybe I might see a place that I might want to go check out where if I get in an uber every time to go from a to b, I miss so much when I first moved to Minneapolis from northern Minnesota. Not all the way up north, but St. Cloud. I joined a run club, and I wasn't training for a marathon yet. They convinced me to do one. But when I did join that run club, it was cool, because after, after we did run club, they would pick different places to go do brunch.

And the places that we ran were different neighborhoods that they had mapped out. And it was all new to me. So it was a really neat way for me to meet new people, but also excited, explore Minneapolis in a different way. And that was through all the trails that are there. So it really helped me to open up a little bit more. And so I'm just trying to think through on days like self day is taking time for you, what might be some possibilities or some ideas for you to explore your environment in just a new way and discover something beautiful, something that might bring you some calm.

Sometimes I'll pack a notebook in my backpack. I have a little bag that I carry with me, a little pen, literal pen and paper. There's something about the tactile nature of writing. Jewell says that she lives in a very small rural town. And so when you go to the cities for work, you explore, when you go there, beautiful. And it doesn't mean that every single day that you're going to find something new or discover something new. But maybe it's as simple as, even if you live in that rural town, maybe it's as simple as going for a walk on a different path and looking down and looking up and looking at the trees to see what is inside of the trees, touching them, touching the leaves.

Maybe it's as simple as sitting outside of the coffee shop. Maybe that you went to and just watching people and seeing, like, are they smiling? Are they happy? And just trying to catch a different perspective. I like to think a lot in terms of perspectives because it helps me to just expand my mind, but it also allows me to dream a little. Or parking down on a blanket on a cloudy or semi partly sunny day and just looking up at the clouds. How often do we spend looking up at the clouds and seeing all those little graphics that maybe form like we did when we were a kid?

So simple little things that we can do to just explore our possibilities, explore our space, find something new that maybe we hadn't seen before that could bring us joy or just shift our perspective and get us out of our heads for a little while, racing through our days and racing through our space and environment. So today, on this beautiful Sunday in Nashville, it's gonna get up to 80. I'm hanging out in this little park for another few minutes, waiting for a girlfriend to come sit with me. And we're going to catch up.

So a little me time with some friends and then I'm going to just walk back to my friend's place and see what maybe I discover that they don't know is in their neighborhood. So I hope you all have a fantastic day. I invite you today, whatever you do, to just look around and see something different. Find a new perspective on what is around you. And when you see it, observe it, feel it, take a deep breath in. Take a long, slow breath out and just really see the vibrancy of life that is circulating around you.

I hope you have an amazing day. Jules, if you're working today, take time for you. Take a breath. Jackie, it was lovely to have you on here today. Thank you for joining. I hope to see you again and learn from you as well. And if you're dialing in later on replay, it's great to have you here. I'll be here on Monday. We'll talk about some professional development leading with authenticity. And there are tons of really great contributors out here. And we've just added some more new faces. So take a look, check them out.

I also posted some live videos this past week, week around retreats. So go check those out as well. I took those while I was in Sedona, actually at a retreat and doing some hikes, exploring some new spaces there too. Have a great rest of your day. I'll talk to you soon.