Cadre Today Interview with Jean Nitchals

Sa. Well, good morning, Cadre. How are we doing this morning? Gene and I hope you are doing great, but if you're not, know that that is okay too, as I just gave it away. Right. You see two faces this morning. This is a special Cadre today because it is an interview, Right? So we have our friend Gene here. I'm extra lucky because I got to spend earlier this morning with Gene at Cycle Bar Uptown, which Jean owns and fosters and creates magical space for people day in and day out. Jean, how are you doing this morning?

I am doing fantastic this morning. I feel so much love, feel so much gratitude, and I got to spend the morning with you in person, live, doing one of the many things we love to do, which is move. So I feel grateful. Yeah, it's so great. And it was such a good reminder that we can actually run into each other in person. Cadre sphere. It may not happen super often, but I want you to think about this morning. You may be walking down the street and someone may pass your way that you spend time with right here.

You may not know them by name or face, but by their screen name. So remember, you are always a part of this Cadre sphere. Let me do some good mornings. Hey, Luke. Speak, wonder Jules. 1% better. How are y'all doing? Oh, Phil, Margo, how are you doing, my friend? Nice to see you. So, as we enter these conversations in interview format with our contributors, we always have a similar format. Why? Because we want to empower you, whether you're here the first time or the hundredth time to know. So what is this conversation going to look like?

There's three parts, and the first part starts with a wonderful introduction, because if this is your first time, you may go, who are these people? It would be short sighted of us. It would be an inward facing click as opposed to an outward facing click that you can walk into. So, Jean, our first question, as always, who are you? What do you do? And when you're asked these questions, how does it make you feel? Wow. Okay, so let's start with how do these questions make me feel on the spot? So who am I?

My name is Jean Mitchells. Like all of us, we're so many things, right? I am a daughter, a sister. I'm a coach, I'm a spin instructor, a business owner. I am a lover of life, and I'm a Gemini. I think that will say it all. I also do sound baths and meditation therapy and have help people move. Move Energy. Go ahead. Well, no, I was just gonna say, like, being in Your space this morning. Often we think about movement as a physical act, but you have a wonderful solubility on people's ears to go, hey, we can be moved physically, cognitively, emotionally, energetically, all of these things.

And I think where these things often live, on the high shelf, I out of touch. Or where some people go, ooh, what does that mean? Or that seems like something I need to have a better understanding or a better comfort with. You have such a great way of inviting people to feel what they're feeling and move in the way that they want to be moved. Thank you. How do you, like, as you think about who you are and what do you do? How do you harness that ability to bring people into a greater awareness of themselves?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I'm going to flip quick to the do fun fact. I just remembered this. When I was young, my brother nicknamed me Doer. And he would be like, doer, doer, doer. Jeannie is a doer. And I would scream at the top of my lungs, I was so mad. And as I started to get older, I realized that he was 100% right. I learned by doing, I move by doing. I grieve by doing all of the things. So I. What do you do? I do like, I literally just do. But, you know, when you think about moving people in space, for me personally, whether I'm coaching my teams or clients, whether I'm leading a sound bath, meditation, or teaching a spin class, for me, I try to see the whole.

The whole self. Right. So not only am I connecting with your physical presence, helping you to move your body or feel into your body or your skin, but for me, it's like there's always the layer that's within that is probably the layer that. That doesn't always get seen. And so in all of the elements, I always want people to feel seen. Whether you're a leader at a company, whether you're listening in on Cadre, whether you are taking my spin class or sitting in a meditation, there is the essence of who our being is that is equally as important to me as the movement that we make with our physical container.

Yeah, I mean, you're. Yes, you are a doer, but you're also a reflector. You know, I often raise the quote by Edith Wharton where she says, you know, light is shared in two ways, from the candle and from the mirror. I think one of the. One of the gifts that. That. That you have, and I've seen a lot of you, too, in the Cadre sphere is that you're so good at reflecting, you're so good at putting back what others are putting out that people can often forget. So that's a wonderful invitation for those of you who are tuning in live right now, or if you're watching this on replay later, throw your comments, throw your questions, you know, speak Wonder shares an affinity for sound baths 1% better says, what a great thing to be called a doer, you know, and again, even to the point, you know, like Gene, you are a doer, but also you are a beer.

You're a reflector. You're like, we are multifaceted beings, right? Human doers without intention, without mindfulness often work down a certain pathway. Or human, human reflectors or human, you know, criticizers, or human, you know, what, what, whatever the thing is, too much of one thing often creates a deficiency in another. So yes, your brother's correct in the early observation of doing, but you do and be and see so much. So thank you. So these conversations really grow out of the synapse of the brain.

You know, I always just ask a contributor, it's like, hey, what would you want to talk about? And when we scheduled this live on early January, you know, Gene, throughout the topic of finding calm in the storm, and now we are 40 days later, and Gene may go, huh, why was that in my mind? Or why was that the topic? But you get to see people being and doing in real time. So, Gene, this topic of finding calm in the storm, why is or was this a front of mind conversation for you? Honestly, you know, I think it, it will continue to be a topic of conversation for a long time.

I don't think it, I think it supersedes time because at any given point in time, my calm could be your storm. Right. And, and there's never, there's never an ending to the calm and there's never an ending to the story. There's the, the synthesis of. As we evolve and as we move forward, we become more centered inside so we can see the swirl around us and we can respond differently. Because now as we continue to move through each storm, we have new sets of tools. And I find that when I'm inside that storm today versus the gene of a month ago, my ability to approach that, that same storm is just slightly different because between then and now, I've already expanded.

Yeah. And, and I think it's, it's remembering and, and why I think this is important. It's, it's. How might we remember when we were in a different storm and how we walk through that and how we observed what was happening around us to help us lean in and push through or who, who walked through the one pathway inside that tornado and they gave us their hand and they pulled us out the other side. Who might we do that for? So I think the storm is, is a metaphor for the evolution and the infinite possibility of life movement.

And, and also I think, you know, like, you just, you just hit me with a realization, you know, that the way that we view, without specificity or without attachment, what a storm is. I mean, how often do we go, oh my gosh, how are you doing? And people will go, I'm actually doing pretty great. And we go, oh my gosh, you're so strong. And all of a sudden almost forces people off of their, their grounding because they go, actually what you're perceiving as me being in a rough time is actually me being in a, in an oasis or me being in a calm.

But you perceive storm where I like, again, I like I wrote down my calm could be your storm. How often do we place our own, our own experience, our own reality into what someone else's perceived struggle or, or success looks like? A couple comments. Jewel says, hey Gene, you taught me how to slow down and be okay with doing so. T nor it says so true 1% better the infinite ability of life movement. Wow. Yeah. I mean like, like Gene, you, you have, you have a way of expanding the aperture of how people perceive the thing.

But, but let's, let's, let's go ahead and you know, throw some, some morsels of, of your magic at, at, at. At individuals. Let's say someone is in what they consider to be a storm. Yeah. What is the process of. Or what, what hand could you offer up if they're wanting or craving calm in the midst of that? Yeah. So it's, it's a great question. And, and it's also a really hard question. Right. Because we, you and I, JC both, we coach people and we've both taken StrengthsFinder as an example, and there's 1 in 33 million chance that you and anyone else are gonna be the same and how we approach something.

So when I think about giving nuggets of approaches for the storms, it has to take into consideration, like, who are you in the center? Who are you at the core first? So whatever that storm is, if we forget who we are and if we forget, you know, what our passions are, what our purpose is, what our vision and mission are, I say start there. Because inside that storm, we are always grounded in who we are. But sometimes the storm is rocking us to forget. And it's so funny. We're doing this on a full moon and I'm a mooney and I talked about this in class today.

But the snow, full moon, which is the moon literally right now. So if everybody looks up in the sky and they sees the moon, we have a full moon at its finest. And this is the full moon. About self love so in the week of the Hallmark holiday, it is the day of self love. And if we start here, and we always start here, and we remember, even on our darkest days, the deepest, darkest days, where we have the most doubt and frustration with ourselves, if we can find one tiny glimmer of who we were as a five year old doer or whatever that name is, or we can find that one spark that we gave someone else or that one phrase, that letter that we kept in a box in a drawer because it meant something.

If we can go back and find that, then we can start by feeling into ourselves first. And that storm is the storm that we can observe or it's the storm that we can create. So my, my recommendation is how might we go inside to find that spark of magic that's always there that we can rely on or that somebody saw and they reminded us and, and from there then I say pull out a clean piece of paper, maybe it's a brand new notebook. And I say get off the gadget. And I say find an actual physical piece of paper with a colored pencil, a pen or a crayon.

Because CR is the number one or number three scent that our brain always remembers. Most of the time something happy, not all the time, but it flashes the memory of youth. And use that and write one word or one phrase that is right now. And then do a mind map around that. Draw a picture, draw something, but make it on a clean state. Because anytime we're inside a storm and we can find that clean piece of paper that is empty and we start to put an idea or a thought or a phrase or a mantra or an affirmation, that is where we put the sword and the stake in the ground.

And then that's how we can, what we can hold on to as we move forward. My opinion. Long answer to short question. No, but, but, but an answer to a question that, that is, you know, like we always say in the Cadre sphere, we are, we are yelling and shouting with all of our breath at the world that there are many ways to being. Well, so we, we aren't going to give you an answer why? First of all, there isn't one. So anytime you have someone saying, here is the answer, here is the pathway, that may be a pathway.

It may be a pathway that that person is really excited by. But at the end of the day, you know, like, even, even if we again expand the apple trend, what you just shared, finding blank space for you to acknowledge where you are and where you're going to. You know, I always love saying things like in the middle of people challenging themselves in community, I always remind them that, that this is, this is your fault, in other words. And I say it because there's, that there's often an adverse reaction.

But I go, no, like, you are placing yourselves here amidst other people, placing themselves here. And what you choose is going to be different than what others choose. If you are really listening to what, what your body, spirit, all the intangibles are asking for, you know, like, like, like even to this morning, you know, Gene in class shared with everybody because I was the, I was the, the non regular in class. And Gene was like, hey. As Gene's getting ready to run Tokyo marathon in a couple weeks, Gene said, like, hey, jcs, Lacey's run a lot of marathons.

And for those of you at home who don't know, like, I've been going through my chronic illness chapter of life in the last 16 to 18 months has been pretty awful, and I don't get to run anymore. And the funny thing is, people go, wow, how do you run marathons? I go. Marathoning is the easiest thing that I do. Why? Because the whole world sets up for me to be successful. It is so easy for me to run a marathon because everybody is focused on my success in that moment. We don't clap for the person holding the water.

We don't clap for the city who shuts down and organizes the ability for me to do the thing. I started running marathons when I was a youth director, and I would always say, I'm like, this is the four and a half hours that I don't have to do anything else. Like, I don't have to work, I don't have to answer. I don't have to. To be present for anything other than me relishing gluttonously within this moment that's all about me. Other people go, it's like, oh, my gosh, that's so hard. You just did this amazing thing.

And I go, I think it's. In a lot of ways, I think it's the least amazing thing because my storm is the Rest of life. My calm is being on the road amidst other people. You know, speak, wonder. Here I carry a note in my wallet. It means something to me. After decades of wear, it is wrinkled and tattered. The words mean everything to me. So again that, that, that clean piece of paper that, that, that continues to live on as the reminder of so good. These little moments of conversation, everybody, they're meant to be.

That they're meant to be. These little pokes and little reminders. So we've spent the last 18 minutes poking and reminding. Gene, if you were going to offer something that's hit you that, that you've shared as a take home prize for people to place on that note in their wallet, something that can get wrinkled and tattered for all of today until they enter the Cadre sphere again, what would be that take home prize you'd give people? Just one, one is enough. Right now I have like 17. No, I'm just kidding.

Let's go do it. Here's, here's my thing is everything you have is already inside of you. You are already enough. You are already love. You are already a miracle. You are already grace and kindness. So the more we can remember that we are, the more, the stronger our toolkit becomes. When we hit those moments when we start to doubt whether we are or we aren't. You are already everybody. What a wonderful way to enter this full moon, this dark time of the year, this cold, this loud, this feeling. I will leave with this thought that came to mind.

Gene, you referenced Hallmark. So when I put on my corporate hat, I spent about six months helping Hallmark Media redesign their organization. All around the initial vision that the hall brothers had when they started Hallmark, you know, a long time ago. And watching them struggle and be vulnerable and be honest, it reminded me that our intention is always so wonderful because often we look at Valentine's Day and we go, ah, this is like, like, like a corporate holiday. And, and I go. Valentine's is, is was born of a couple of things.

A, a way to make money for a business, but also a way to really foster this idea of love. But if we don't start in our calm or our storm, how quickly does it lose its magic? And Gene, I think you offered everybody the reminder of our magic this morning. So Jean, when can people find you in the Cadre sphere and how else in the world? So in the Cadre sphere, you can find me on Sunday mornings at 11:00am Is it 11 or 10? I think it's 11. I think it's 11. We moved. You can find me there from me time.

You can find me on Mondays at 9am for leading with authenticity out in the world. You can find me on Instagram at dream big 30 and see everything else from there. Cool. Awesome. Gene, thank you so much for holding space for me this morning and holding space for everybody here right now. T North, you get the last comment. Everything I need right now is already enough. That's the reflection. Everybody have a great day. We will see you later. Bye.