Comedy Through The Chaos

Hello friends. Hello and welcome to the Cadre sphere. I'm Ms. Shannon Paul. Happy to be joining you on this Thursday, our Caregiver Thursdays here on Cadre. Hopefully a few of you join us because I'm running a couple minutes late and I hope that you did not presume that I had left you adrift on Caregiver Thursday. Just reminding you other than I'm the person that is talking to you currently from her kitchen. I'm Ms. Shannon Paul and I'm a comedian, corporate speaker, voice actor, event emcee and benefit auctioneer.

Hubbing here and hello agents and thanks for joining us. As I saying, I was hubbing here from the great state of Minnesota and also primarily I am the mother of an adorable 16 year old boy who also happens to be on the autism spectrum. So he is my heart and I adore him. Even though teenagers can be a lot of work. So we appreciate you joining us anytime. We have events going on here in the Cadre sphere as we continue to build this community talking about mental wellness and hopefully from a different perspective than what historically was given to us.

And so today I thought it was interesting about talking about opportunities and leveling your life is what I thought I'd talk about today on Comedy through the Chaos because this time of year is a very robust time of year as far as what my career goes by and as and doing a lot of events and trying to do all the things and I believe the word leveling in your life intentionally because it's very difficult. We talk about balance, we talk about, you know, blending all those things. I like many of you probably have to every once in a while get out my personal level and see why do you feel like off?

Like what feels off and what is making you doing that and allowing myself time to get that level and set it down and go, this is what I want to get back to is this particular level and my version of balance and my version of balance can still be a little diagonal and go, okay, I can handle that for a while. But how long can you handle being a little out of balance before you eventually tip over? So I have a, a real life example that I'm going to use today and we'll hopefully we don't back up the live stream as I move from my wi Fi to my phone.

So one of my, I'm very fortunate that one of my clients is the Little Free Library organization. So you probably have heard of Little Free Library and maybe you have some in your community and they look like this. If you wonder. They look like that. And this is my front yard. And until about three hours ago, I did not have a little free library in my yard. I was very fortunate that, as the one of their voice actors, I was like, you know, I'll put one in my yard now that I know how you get them. And what do you do?

I'll put one in. So that's what I spent this morning doing. I had a friend come over, shout out to my friend Buffy that came over and helped me do it. And back to the concept of leveling. Not only did we have to figure out how to put this lovely, adorable little free library together, that was kind of easy, like, putting it together. Excuse me. The instructions, they're pretty clear. We figured out, I have tools, I have a drill, got it all worked out. We figured out how to put it together. I was very proud that we got this on and it looked good.

And then when it came to putting in this post so that it could stay up in my yard, this is one of the posts that you just screw into the ground. And we put it in and. And we got to a point that we're like, does that look right? Because it looked a little diagonal. Do you like the visual? Yeah, it looked a little diagonal. We're like, okay. So I got out my level and we put it down there, and we were able to see like, nope, we're right. It was diagonal. And it was diagonal to the point that we're like, maybe this will throw off the integrity of this little free library, and eventually it won't be standing up.

It'll actually just fall down into my yard. So what we ended up doing was just going in, screwing in a little bit. At first, I had to actually screw it out of the ground a little bit. So back up a little bit, and then put it back in again so that it could be less askew and more level. And it's the kind of thing where you're like, okay, you don't always want to take the time to do that. You just want to be done right. All I wanted to do was be able to see it in my yard and have it be put up, but going, no, it was worth it to take the time to make sure that it was as level as possible before we went on to the next step, because look how cute that is.

The last thing I would love, hate for it to do is for me to have not put it in, have it not be level. And because of that rushing, because of not taking that extra time, having it Tip over into the yard or having a tip over onto a person, which would actually be worse. And that's what I wanted to encourage you to do, is take a few minutes out of your time to make sure that you are as level as possible and not perfectly level. Like, honestly, that little bubble in the level, it was still a little bit off.

It wasn't exactly in the center, but it was pretty gosh darn close. And it was much better than it was before. We had taken the time to see where we were. And I have to really use that in my life a lot, is taking the time to see where I'm at, because it's much easier for me. I'm gonna go back in my kitchen. It's much easier for me. Just kind of keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, running, running, running, running, run and go. Everything seems fine. And if it's not fine, I'll handle it later.

And I can tell you from experience that my plan of handling it later has often in the past come back to bite me. So as someone who doesn't want to always continue to make the same mistakes that did not serve me in the past, that was something I had to learn, that it was okay to go. You don't have to handle it later. How about you handle this now? Like, take the time to do this now before it gets worse, before you are so misaligned that you fall over, before you get to the point that you are so out of whack that you fall down and it's so much harder to get back up.

And so that is what I encourage you to do this week, is figure out how you can go ahead and level set a few things in your life that might mean that you have to take a few screws out and then redo part of it, which sounds like, oh, I already did that. It's like, yeah, but sometimes it's okay to redo it and make sure that it's done properly. Maybe it's. You need to take a little bit of time to just kind of back up and go, will this serve me? Maybe it's checking out the landscape where you are doing your digging.

Like, we are making sure that that was a space where I wasn't going to hit any, like, gas lines or power lines or anything that might be buried in my yard. Like, maybe there was a surprise hornet's nest. I don't know. I don't dig up the yard that often. Maybe there's something in your life that you don't dig up that often. There might be something hiding underneath it that will make it so that you will be less likely to be level in your life. And if it's, what does your level look like for you? You know?

Yes, it's a. You know, the level that I'm talking about in this project is a tangible, physical thing. It's a thing that I can set down and then it will give me a gauge on whether this is, you know, level or not. But I think we all have internal things that are like that. I think that we all have things that are in our personal toolkit that can be that level. Maybe it's running an idea or a concept or a situation past a friend or a loved one. Maybe it's part of your mindfulness practice. Maybe it's just letting yourself sit there and actually go, all right, what are the next steps in this process?

And where will this actually get me? And thinking about that instead of just going, well, I gotta get this done right now, so get your a little bit time to see how level you are and then be comfortable with how level you can actually be. I get by pretty often being misaligned. And then eventually I'm like, ah, I should have fixed that because the next thing know, something fell over. So how level can you be in your life? Think about that over the next week. If you need help figuring out some other tools to find out where you're at.

We have lots of resources here in the Cadre sphere. We have lots of contributors that are always talking about how to check in with yourself. And this is part of that journey is checking with yourself to see where you are at and really giving yourself time to go. All right, it would behoove me to go ahead and give myself a little more space to get this done properly for myself than to rush through and get it done in a way that eventually might fall down. So if you are joining us for the first time, we appreciate all of you.

If you're somebody that checks in with us every single day, we appreciate you as well. Feel free to tell all the people in your circle that we are here at the Cadre Sphere. Please feel free to also bounce around. If you like me, you're going to love some of my friends. And we are all here talking about a variety of content and giving you a variety of resources. So please check them out as well. And if there's something in particular you would like us to cover here in the Cadre sphere, we are always open to your suggestions.

You can drop them in the chat, you can email all of us, and we would be happy to try and support you in whatever way you need to be supported. So I will see you back here again next Thursday for another comedy through the chaos here on our caregiver Thursday in the Cadre sphere. And everybody, I. I appreciate you enjoy the rest of your week.