Me Time ✨

Hello, everybody. Happy Sunday. Jean Nicholls here on this beautiful, beautiful Sunday here in Minneapolis. Hello, Jules. I owe you a response. Just so you know. How's your day going today? It's Sunday. We're here. It's beautiful. I have my trusted advisor out here with me as well. Hey, Jer. Can you say hi? Hello. He says, world, here I am. The joys that dogs bring us cats too. So it's an amazing Sunday. It's beautiful here in Minneapolis. You can tell I'm just wearing a vest today. Still have my hat and mittens, but it felt kind of nice to just be in a vest.

Major is very happy today. He likes to be out. Good, Jules. I'm glad that you're doing better today. I promise to respond shortly to your texts. So today, on me time. Just want to take a second to breathe. If you were to smile right now, how would that feel in your body? Major is smiling, wants to hold my hand. But in all seriousness, today is my last Sunday here in Minneapolis. Tuesday I fly out. I am headed to Tokyo, Japan. Next Sunday, I'll be running the marathon in Tokyo. It's my fourth in the series of the six world majors, and I'm doing all of them for charity in honor of my mom and dad.

So today I am a whole bundle of a lot of things. I'm nervous. I am mysteriously making up aches and pains in my body that probably don't even exist because I'm just getting anxious and nervous if I'm prepared enough. Winter training was not easy for me. It's probably not easy for anybody. So I'm not trying to be any different than anybody else. But I. I got really heady in the training program this year for this particular marathon because some days it would be really cold, like less than 20 out running and long distances.

So knowing how to have the right shoes and how to dress appropriately and hydrate, I didn't really, because I get cold really easy. And so hydration was really hard because I didn't want to drink cold things and put more cold in my system. So I ran super dehydrated this training season and feel like I can't catch that up. I don't know what I'm gonna wear. The temperatures are gonna be somewhere between 40 and 60. And by. By this point in marathon training, most people kind of. They know the things.

They know what shoes they're wear. They're going to know what clothes they're going to wear because they've trained in them. So they've picked out that outfit. And they know. But the clothes that I've trained in, not taking any of those because I won't need them. I don't need wool under leggings and thick pants and five layers and hats and gloves. So it's just different. So today on me time, I'm really just trying to be outside and walk around with my dog so that I can try to get out of my head because I'm super, super anxious about taking this trip.

I have people traveling over there with me and I don't want to disappoint them by showing up and me having a really horrible race and just not feeling good, you know, because I, I don't know if I trained well enough. But I am going to come back to our friend and fellow contributor, JC because he is the one person who has done this race, he has done hard things as well. He's ran way more marathons than I ever will consider because I like doing them. I just don't always know if I will do many, many more.

But he reminds me that showing up is the thing that I need to do the most. And I will be there. I will show up, I will do the race, I will start, I will have a time, I will finish whatever I think that needs to be, may or may not be. And at the end of the day, my ultimate goal is to raise money for a nonprofit, which I've done. And my ultimate second goal is to honor my mom and dad who have passed. So all of the things that are going on in my head, about my body, about my outfit, what to wear, what to pack, which shoes to wear, all of those things, those are small, tiny decisions.

I'll take exactly what I need. I'll wear exactly whatever I'll wear. And I will start and I will stop and whatever my time will be, my time will be. Now. Do I have goals? Obviously, yes. Do I have a hope of how that goes in the race? Yes. But you know, sometimes we just need to recognize what are the spirals that we have in our own minds and what's causing those. And taking time out in nature. For me, I'm looking for things to do in nature while I'm there before the race. So I'm probably going to book one of those little touristy trips that's going to take me on a hike because that is the, the single handed, most beneficial.

I don't even know if that sentence makes sense. So let me try again. Single handedly. That is the activity that I can do that will help me feel the most Grounded. And on days when I'm feeling like I'm spiraling so much in my mind about my shoulds, how should my body feel, how should have my training have gone? I know all the things that I need to do. We always do. We choose to do them or we choose not to for a whole variety of reasons. For example, I could have done more indoor running, but I teach a lot of indoor cycling classes and I've been really stressed lately.

And when I am stressed, I don't eat very much. And between working out too much, not eating enough, and definitely not hydrating enough, I would just get really tired and kind of crabby. It happens. So. So I could should myself into next year if I want to, about all the things that I could have done differently for this training season. Hi, Olson. But I didn't. I'm here right now, today, and I know that, that the space I'm in today, the physical shape that I'm in today, I will be able to start and finish this race.

Will I meet my expectations? Maybe, maybe not. But am I setting unrealistic expectations for what I can accomplish? I don't know. We'll see. All I know is what is today? And today is a day that I am choosing to invest in trying to get out of my head. Because those thought spirals are real. And Sundays, I usually like to leave them a little more unstructured. But because I leave on Tuesday and I'm going to be gone for nine days, it's important that I get some things done. So my Sunday that, I usually do my meditations or sit around and watch a TV show or read a book or hang out with my dog more or insert, whatever.

I have a lot of plans today and I need to just be okay with that, right? So sometimes we need to make exceptions to our boundaries, to our rules, and be okay with what it is that we're doing. So, you know, where are you at today? Like, what's going through your head today? What are your journeys of the week? Jules? I know about yours. Anyone else dialing in or on replay? What's your story right now? And is it a story that is causing you to spiral up or down or just be expansive for me? There's a book out there by Ben Zander, the Art of Possibility.

If you haven't read it, it's a very short book. It's yellow, bright yellow, sunshine yellow, and has white writing on the front cover. And the book is a fantastic book, especially as it relates to me time, because it helps us to consider Possibilities, thinking. But in there, he talks about upward spirals and downward spirals. And when we're in an upward spiral, a lot of times that's us kind of tooting our own horn, or, you know, sometimes we're in an upward spiral. And because we're upward spiraling ourselves, we're downward spiraling someone else.

We could be over talking to someone. We could be boosting our own ego, which is causing someone else to go down. But when we think about an expanded possibility, it's not about spiraling up or spiraling down. It's about what are the possibilities in this moment that we can expand. And maybe that's expanding our mindset, maybe that's expanding our breath, maybe that's expanding our bodies. Maybe it's expanding a friendship or relationship. So when we think about things in terms of possibilities, our spirals start to go away.

Maybe it requires us to think differently about a circumstance. So for me, if I think about the marathon I'm about to run and the downward spiral I've been on about not having trained enough, not being enough for that particular race that's coming up. If I were to change that and think more expansively, I might consider thinking about the fact that I'm able to get on a plane and I'm able to travel to Tokyo to go to a space that my brother's dad was stationed for a long period of time, and the fact that, you know, there'll be an exploration of some of the places or stories that maybe he shared, or maybe there's a spiritual connection that might expand me while I'm there and connect me to my dad in a different way.

So while, yes, my intention is to go to this beautiful city to do a marathon, there's so much more beyond that. There are all the people that are going to be out there. There's a whole culture that puts together a marathon that is so different than how we schedule and organize marathons in the United States. There's a whole culture that is focused on keeping their city clean. A whole culture focused on that. What if we focused on that? So if I allow myself to sit in a downward spiral, of all the ways in which I could have trained better, done more to be in this moment that I should feel maybe more prepared for.

See, there's that word again. Should. And instead, what if I said, I am proud of how prepared I am, and today I'm going to do the things that I have planned since I'm leaving and set myself up for the most success possible this week and Next weekend. So on this day of beauty and Major is now officially taking a nap in the sun. Gotta love him. How might we use our time to recognize when we're an upward or downward spiral? And I'll post a photo when I get back from the walk of Ben Sanders book. Check it out if you've read it.

I'd love to hear what you think about it. But taking this time, taking today, taking other days, Mondays, and taking the pause to recognize, are we in a downward spiral? What is the story that we're telling ourselves today? And is it a fair story? Is it an accurate story? Or do we have the possibility to look at this moment and expand on it and think about it slightly differently now, yes, I am a rosy colored glasses person or a Pollyanna. However, I do believe that our mind has the ability to take us wherever we need to be on this journey.

And if we fill our mind with all kinds of downward spirals, then sometimes that's the story that we create. And you know, there's a lot of complicated things around that very big statement right there. You know, we could be suffering from grief. I've been going through that for a couple of years now. We could be going through our own depressions, anxieties, caretaking, all of it. So there are so many realities in life that could put us into a downward spiral. So my invitation on Sundays in me time is to recognize when we're in that, allow ourselves to be there if that's where we need to be right now, taking that pause, that breath.

And then when we're ready, how might we think expansively, how might we stop the spiral, recognize it for what it is, and breathe into a possibility, a possibilities mindset that says I am exactly where I am right now and that is okay. And what comes tomorrow, I don't know yet because it's not here. But I have everything in my toolkit that I need to be my best self tomorrow to run my best race, whatever that best looks like on that day. So just some things that are in my head for today. Thanks for spiraling with me.

Thanks for expanding with me. Somebody hasn't told you today yet or this week or this month that they're proud of you. Let me be that person to tell you I am proud of you. I'm proud of you for showing up. I'm proud of you for leaning in. I'm proud of you for taking these moments of time with myself or any other of the Cadre contributors to do that for you. I'm here on Mondays So I'll be back Tomorrow morning at 9am Talking about leading with authenticity City considering passion and purpose. And I will wish you all the best day.

We'll see you soon. Thank you.