The Thin Space

Well, hey there, everybody. Happy, happy Sunday morning. In the Cadre sphere, Sundays are all about self care, which may sound to some of you, like, ah, what a great thing. To others of you, it may sound like a big challenge, right? It may sound like something that you get stressed out. Bye. Or you may feel guilty about or shameful about, because taking care of yourself is either something you don't do easily, you don't do well, or it's like a muscle that you need to learn to flex. It's something that maybe you haven't spent a lot of time doing.

So, as you log into the live stream now, or whether you're checking in later, I'll introduce myself. My name is JC Lippold and I am extremely grateful to have some time with you. And if we haven't shared time and space together before, by golly, thank you for the opportunity. Hey, Jules. Good morning. I want to encourage you to do something that my friend Jules here does really well. Jules says, hey, jewel says hello or good morning. It's amazing how when you place yourself in the moment that you are in, that moment gets brighter and fuller and richer.

And that's what this live stream is all about. Thin space is the space in between everything that has happened and everything that will happen. It's the space in between day and night, between beginnings and ends, between seasons. It's that space that we are in. Why is this a concept or why is this a thing? Well, it's so easy to spend all of our time either in the past or in the future. And there's magic in the space that you are in right now. And I don't mean magic like woo, but there's things that feel, that fill, that fuel so many good f words there.

Things that feel and fill and fuel you. And they're right now. So that's what we talk about here. To kick off Sundays on Cadre. A couple hours, you're gonna see Jean log in for a live stream, and then you'll have Daryl this afternoon. And then Tiffany brings a little bit of light and levity and real and comedy and all of the things to wrap up our Sunday. But let's talk about thin space. So they did a study as to why it's so hard to commit to doing good things for yourself in essence, right? If we think, like, self improvement has great benefit, why is it so hard for people to stay committed to doing good things for themselves?

Here's what they found. Because we so often focus on, wow, if we do the good thing now, it's going to make us into a person that we're going to appreciate more in the future. I think that is supposed to make sense to us, and maybe it makes sense to you. Here's what they found when they did a little bit of brain study. The way that we look at our future self is the same way we look at a stranger or a celebrity. We don't look at our future self the way that we look at us today. We look at our future self the way that we look at somebody else.

You think about your future self the same way you think about Brad Pitt or Meryl Streep. And you may go, oh, I love Brad Pitt. No, no, no. But what I'm saying is that your future self is not who you are today in the way that your brain thinks about people. So at the end of the day, why do we fall away from giving ourselves the support and the time and the care that we need? Because at the end of the day, our future self is another. Is another stranger. It's another person. It's a person we do not know yet.

And we don't care about that person the same way that we innately care about ourselves. So what does that tell us? Being in the thin space is really, really important. If you want to take care of yourself, being where you are right now is the most important thing you can do to make yourself better in the future. Not focusing on the future self, but focusing on the now self, the self that is here. So with that being said, here's a little game that you can play with yourself today. Did you ever play?

Or maybe you still do if you have children or if you have a childlike spirit. Did you ever play I spy? Right now, I'm sitting in my car in a speedway parking lot over in the corner. It's kind of one of the big speedways where semi trucks can come and get filled up as well. So I'm kind of sitting all by myself in my car in the far part of the parking lot, and I see an orange cone in front of me, and I see some nice trees and bushes over on the right hand side. It's very, very green. In Minnesota right now, we've had more rain than we've had in a long time.

The sky is blue. There's white, puffy clouds. I feel kind of warm air on my skin. It's pretty hot during the days, but right now it's still pretty comfortable for me to say these things for me to. I spy orange cone. I spy something orange. I spy something green. I spy something that feels good on my skin. This game is a great way to place yourself into the present moment, Jules says. I still play with my kids on road trips. They're 1213 and 15 years old. Jules, you just raised it up. It's a reason why road trips stick with us for so long, because we do things in the moment that attach us to the moment.

I can still hear Jan and Dean's songs and beach boy songs and carpenter's songs and Harry Chapin songs that we listened to when we drove to the cabin 35 years ago. Playing I spy with yourself today is a really great way to focus on you now, which is the heart of thin space. And in doing so, guess what? You're going to benefit from that exercise forever. Jules, your 1213 and 15 year old will remember the I spy moments well after this moment is in the past. So, everybody, no matter where you are, no matter what's going on right now, is a really good moment to be in.

Have a good one.