Me Time ✨

Hello, everybody. Happy Sunday. I hope you're all having an amazing, beautiful, gorgeous day. My name is Jean Mitchells. I am coming in hot, literally hot, from Minneapolis, Minnesota. We had some crazy, crazy thunderstorms last night. It's humid. It's gonna get up to 90 today. Not gonna lie. I love the hot, so I am here for it, wherever you're at. I'm sure we all have days that we really love the weather and then days that we would appreciate different weather or different cities weather. But today, I'm really just excited here in Minneapolis because I love the sun, I love the heat, the humidity.

Take it or leave it. Hello, Kran. How are you today? Where are you phoning in from? My name is Jean Nichols. I'm really excited to be here on this awesome Sunday. I'm gonna now move. I'm sitting outside and I'll explain what I'm doing. But right now, I'm shifting so that I don't get flooded with noise. So today, on me time, I am coming into literally sweaty, sweaty. I am training for two marathons this year, and I am a new Lululemon ambassador. Hi, Tara. How you doing today? And today on Sundays, where I've really designated as kind of like, my day, my day to be unscheduled, unscripted, jump in and do some things that maybe are different, do some things that are maybe comforting, but allowing myself to feel whatever I feel that day.

Trying to block the wind so it's not so windy. So today I needed to do a long run for my training. So I'm up to 11 miles. It doesn't matter what you call it as a run. It could be a slow jog, it could be a speed walk. It's just about putting in the miles and doing the distance, but. Hi, Jules. But today, I allowed myself to just sleep in a little longer than I normally would because my body needed some more rest. And so that meant that I didn't get on my run until about an hour later than I had hoped for.

So today I needed to do 11 miles, but I also really wanted to do this really fun workout. And it's gonna sound crazy, but at the Lululemon in Minnesota, at the mall of America, they do this thing called a summer series. Oh, congratulations. Joel's nice work. They do this thing called the Summer series. So every weekend for there's like twelve or 13 weekends throughout the summer, they do a workout on the rooftop of the four seasons in Minneapolis. And every year, one of the weekends, I get to do a sound bath.

But usually I'm either at the very beginning of summer or the end of summer because you don't want the people laying there baking. But today, I decided to go do something that would make me totally uncomfortable. Like, I'm not great at yoga, but I can do yoga, and I can lift weights, and I can do, like, a hiit training, but this one was called turn it up dance. I don't know how to dance very well. It's so intimidating to me to watch all these beautiful bodies move in a way that is, like, doesn't look like anything I can do, but I ran part of my long run before I got there, hydrated up, and then I just did this dance class.

And after we get done this morning, I'll go finish the rest of my run. But I made it a point that I was gonna go to this class today, even though I know that dancing is. I like to dance and just move when it's unscripted. But following along, I'm horrible. And I literally laughed for 45 minutes while I was trying to figure out how to do what they were doing. Now, walking into a space on a rooftop on a beautiful, sunny day with 70 other people on a rooftop trying to dance, you know that there's going to be some people that can dance really well, that probably take these classes all the time, and, you know there's going to be people that are going to be like me, that are going to be like, what am I doing here?

But I think you can see it on my face. I literally was just so happy, and it was so uncomfortable for me to do this. But I knew some people there, and they know that I teach fitness classes. So I put on myself this expectation that I have to be a really good dancer. And I put on myself this story in my head that, well, because I'm in fitness, I have to and then finish whatever the sentence is. And what I love about this, and I love about the people that are at Lululemon that hosts a series from the mall of America, is that you just show up as you are, and the space is so welcoming.

All of the instructors are just happy that people show up to move their body, and people just laughed. And I saw some people I knew, and we laughed together. And it was just one of those moments where I literally felt so insecure. Like, we all do, right? We try something new, or we get it in our head that we're supposed to show up a particular way, and. And then we just do the thing. But how many times have we gotten to the door. And the story that we've said to ourselves has been so overwhelming that instead of pulling that door handle open, we let our hand not even touch the door handle.

We turned around and we walked away, and we got back in our car, or we headed back home. I know that I've done that. I know that when I was a little kid, I would get to go to these summer camps. I would get little scholarships to go to certain camps, and my dad would drive me to the camp, and I loved going to, because I love that time in the car with my dad. But then we get closer and closer to the camp, and I would start to feel more dread. It's not even because I'm not social. It's just I. I don't know.

We all just get a little insecure, right? We walk into a new space. We don't know anybody that's gonna be there. We aren't sure of our own skills, our own talents. We just start to question ourselves. Imposter syndrome is super, super real. And I just remember every time I would cry when my dad would shove me out of the car. And he didn't literally shove me out of the car. He'd just be like, scoot, scoot. And then I would go do the camp, and he'd be like, I'll be here. If you don't like it, you can call me, I'll drive back.

I'll come get you. And inevitably, I would find somebody that I met, or I would try an activity that I didn't know if I'd like. And then I had fun, and I laughed. And next thing you know, it's the end of the weekend, and my dad is picking me up, and I'm telling him all the stories about the weekend. So when we think about the things that we do on a day to day basis, we create so many habits. Maybe every Sunday, this is exactly what we do. We get up, brush our teeth, we go to brunch, we walk the dog, whatever it is.

But I simply invite you to. To give yourself permission to do something that seems out of character. Do something that seems like it's maybe a little scary, and you could phone a friend, and I'm sure somebody will go with you. Or if nobody will, what's the worst that would happen? If you did it by yourself, maybe you liked it. Maybe you'd leave halfway through. I went to a movie by myself once, and I didn't like the movie, and I gave myself permission to leave, and I did, and I felt great. So giving it taking that time for yourself, taking that time to explore something unknown, sometimes can be the best gift that you can give yourself, because you never know who you're going to meet.

You never know what you're going to experience. You never know what emotion might be elicited from you. Right? There's the new despicable me two movie. I don't know. It's not despicable me. It's called, oh, geez, I should know this movie. It's the movie about feelings, and it's cartoon characters. Now I'm forgetting the name of the movie. I'm gonna call it post dance brain. But there's a version two that's out right now, and I'll get the name of the movie unless somebody gets it first. But if you watch that movie, it talks about all the different emotions.

And the emotions that it goes through right now are the emotions that we learn. So the first movie that was out is the emotions that you're born with or that are innate to you. And this movie is about the emotions that you learned. And three of them are not happy emotions, and one of them is joy. And I find that really fascinating, that we learn a lot of negative inside out. Thank you, Jules. Yeah. So the movie's inside out. There's a version one, and now there's a part two that's out. And this movie has joy in there.

And if we think about how we go through our days, right, what are the emotions that we feel on a day to day basis? And on Sundays, like, there's been a lot of Sundays, I felt like staying on the couch, watching a movie and crying just because, you know, we go through grief. I've been grieving for a long time. I think I'm on the outside part of that, on the cusp of being through all of that emotion. But it'll catch you in weird moments, give ourselves permission to feel, then we can start to really understand and connect these different emotions.

And so today, going to this dance class, one, it was outside. So can't go wrong with being outside. Right? And then the instructor said something that really was a gift. And she said, nobody's paying money to be here today to watch you try to dance. And if they are, that's a little weird. And I laughed out loud when she said that, because it's true. Right? We go to these things, and we think everybody's watching us. But if there's 70 people there and 70 people are worried, if somebody else is watching them, then they sure as heck aren't watching anybody else, unless they're admiring or appreciating their moves or trying to follow along with them.

So my purpose for today, and right before I head out onto the rest of my run, which I'm gonna go slow because it's hot, I'm tired, is, you know, what are the things that you can do that maybe are super different for you? Maybe it's doing a five k distance and maybe you haven't done that in forever. Maybe it's going to see this inside out movie or watching version one at home and going to seeing version two. I know adults going to see cartoons. Maybe it's going and trying a dance class or watching on an Instagram reel these little dance moves and then trying to mimic it in your living room alone with your dog.

Can't say I've never done that before. Okay, I have. But finding an opportunity for you to just find some pure joy and remember what that feeling is, that feeling of lightness and remembering that the moment we start to get into our head and we reach for that door handle for that new and we decide we're going to hold the door and open it and walk through what is behind that door has yet to be discovered. But what we carry in our mind can taint which direction that discovery might go. So my invitation today is to find something that will bring you pure joy.

Don't overthink it. Maybe just find something that is going to make you uncomfortable and take a friend with and you can laugh about it later. Go to brunch, go to dinner, go to breakfast afterwards, and just laugh about your experience together and know that you just have a human experience. Or go by yourself and, and maybe you are next to somebody who maybe feels as awkward as you do or as excited as you do. And you can feed off of that energy together. So I hope today, on this beautiful Sunday, wherever you're located, that you can at the very least do a little research around.

One thing maybe you can do that might make you slightly uncomfortable. But at the end of it, you either have a really good story, you've made a new friend, or maybe you've discovered something new that you want to give a try for a little while. There's so many possibilities out there in our cities, each of our cities, surrounding areas for us to discover something new. So why not? And when you decide what that's going to be, if you're listening to it now live or you're dialing in later on chat, then pop in here into the comments what you did and then also maybe pop in what you felt as you went through it.

So I hope you have a great day. Enjoy your Sunday. I'll see you tomorrow for some professional development time. And I just get out and move. Have a great one.