Monday Motivation: Beauty Is All Around You

Live. So here we go. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. We'll give it a minute here while people arrive. Having a little sip of my coffee here. I'm with JC. Hey, everybody. Hope everybody's having a good day thus far. Like I said, we'll give it a minute here while the live notification clicks. When two Minnesotans sit on a bench in Minnesota, you know, we have talk about weather. Yep, it's a beautiful day, y'all. It's like, it's like a forest. Forest Gump right now. Good morning, everybody. Good morning.

Good morning. Good morning. Oh, my gosh. Look at all those faces hopping in. There's JC. Hope everybody's having a great day. And I hope everybody had a good weekend. No matter what it was. Mine was very relaxing, and I'm actually going to share a story about it here in a minute. Oh, junk food junkie. Amazing. Heidi, Nicole. Oh, gosh, I love you. You're a wonderful, wonderful human being. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. All right, JC is going to take. Oh, there he, there he is. Junk food junkie, my guy.

All right, hold on 1 second. JC is going to take it from here. The flip is up. Where's the flip now? That's not going. Oh, there we go. Good morning, everybody. Hope everybody had a wonderful weekend. I wanted to share a perspective with a story that happened to me over the weekend, and it made me really think. And actually, my wife and I talked about this for about 3 hours on Saturday. So we got, I don't know where you guys are located around, but we got hit with some severe storms. Some severe storms came in on Saturday and Sunday here in Minnesota, albeit brief, they were pretty severe.

Right. You know, a lot of rain and short amount of time, and my wife and I were sitting, so I'm gonna set the stage. So if you come through our house, we have this little sitting area, and then over to the right is like a screened in porch, right? So there's this screened in porch, and in that screened in porch, you can open up the windows. And this downpour of rain was coming in, and the kids were kind of like, watching and looking. And Emma and I said, let's just take a minute and sit out here.

Let's just take a minute and just sit out in this screen porch. And we sat in that screen porch, and I looked over at my wife, and she, like, had her eyes closed, and she was like, truly meditating. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna try this, too. And so I sat right next to her on the couch, and we were sitting there together, both eyes closed, just taking in these rain sounds that were happening, like. So I was hitting the screen porch, which was kind of loud, and. And then all of this was happening around us.

And you could just hear the rain, hear a little bit of the thunder that was rolling through. And I was thinking to myself, our world spends legitimately billions. Yes, you heard that right? Billions of dollars for that moment. Like, whether it's all the different apps, all the different things that exist, YouTube. I mean, Google, Google, Mike Michael Seeley rain sounds and see how many hits that has on YouTube. And I think sometimes we forget that this beauty is happening right around us all the time.

It could be sunset, it could be a sunrise. It could be this beautiful downpour rain that actually gives you the real. Yes, you heard it. The real moment of time that. That you're seeing and listening and feeling this downpour. And you can meditate right during it, and you can. You can take in the natural, the beauty of the world and just take in this reign and just feel it and just see how that makes you feel. And I couldn't have felt more one, for lack of better words, with nature, myself, my wife.

And there was no intimacy. We were literally just sitting next to each other, taking in this meditative state. And it was just insanely beautiful. So what I. What I'm. My message today that I want to share with you is wherever you're located, northern Minnesota, east coast, southwest Phoenix, northwest Seattle, southeast Florida. We have people all over the country that's on the Cadre sphere, located all over the place. There is all of these natural moments of time, of beauty, that are happening right in front of you.

And I encourage you to maybe leave YouTube alone this week. Maybe leave some of these apps alone and find the natural beauty that exists in our world and take it in. See how that makes you feel. Right now, JC and I are sitting here in a park in downtown St. Paul, connecting with one another. The birds are chirping, the grass is beautiful, the flowers are blooming, and we're just talking about life. How are you doing? How are you doing mentally? Where are you at when it comes to spiritual? How's things going with your partner, your significant other?

Let's just talk and let's just connect. And I encourage you to find ways to do the same, because what I think would end up happening is the connection that I had not only with myself. This home that's relatively new for us since October. My wife was at a fever pitch for a moment, and that was really beautiful. So go have a remarkable, remarkable week with you, your loved ones, the people you care about around you, junk food junkies. Like, like I've said before during my morning walks, I love the beauty and nature coming to life, that is, birds starting to send, squirrels scampering around, etcetera.

It really is a gorgeous thing. Junk food junkie. So, all right, I leave you with this. This week is another great week at Cadre. I want you to think about something, though, about Cadre and how we're showing up. Whether you need Cadre every single day, whether you need Cadre once a week, whether you need Cadre once a month, or whether you need Cadre once a year, we are here for you. The current existence of an eap system that currently exists is a. Here, here's a 1800 number. Good luck to you. Here's something you should try to reach out to.

Here's a pamphlet, here's a PDF, here's something. And what we're saying at Cadre is, you know what? We're going to modernize this. We're going to modernize approach to employee assistance programs. And what exactly is that? Is we're going to come and talk about all the things from being a caregiver, trauma, grief, loss, mental health, substance abuse, motivation, depression, anxiety. We're going to talk about all of it from individuals that are peers, professionals, you name it. And we hope this is something so much better for you.

And you feel that than a one to 800 number, that you feel a connection, that you feel that something relatable between us and all of our contributors, that we show up different. And so our hope is that we are that modern eap for you. We believe that to be true, but we also just want to set expectations. Like, you might only need us once a year, you might only need us once a month, you might only need us once every couple weeks, or you might need us every day. But regardless, that's how we're showing up and why we're showing up.

So you all have the best week. Take care of yourselves. Lift people up around you. And remember to take in the beauty that is in our world all the time. It's right around you. Don't let it pass you by. And JC and I are signing off, saying, have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your week. You guys take care. Okay, bye bye now. Taking the beauty of our world, that's what we do.