Me Time ✨

Happy Sunday. Cadre Jean Mitchells here, popping in just a little bit early saying hello. Hello on this beautiful Sunday. I don't know where you are, but it's raining here today and it's chilly. Welcome to spring. Enjoying the rain though. It's a nice remembering of transition, of change. I hope you are all having a great day. If you're listening in on repeat. Hi, Robert. Happy Sunday, Robert, where are you calling in from today? If you're listening on replay or you're just joining in and you're not driving a car, I would love to know where you're calling in from today.

That would be my first question. And my second question would be, how do you feel in this moment on this beautiful Sunday? So I am calling in from Minneapolis. I hope that you can hear me. Okay. Oh, hello, Robert from Minneapolis. I'm in Uptown, currently sitting in the parking lot of McDonald's after teaching a spin class here in Uptown. And I am feeling fresh. And I'll explain that I'm not fresh because I haven't showered after my spin class, so I'm still a little sweaty, but fresh. As in perspective, it's a changing of a season.

We have the end of eclipse season. So yesterday was a new moon. And so today on me time, what I want to bring in the invitation to our conversation is planting seeds. Planting seeds in our garden. And so here's what I mean by that, metaphorically, we are in the spring season. It was a new moon over the weekend. I'm into moonology and crystals. I'm a Reiki master. I teach spin classes, run marathons, and I'm a corporate coach and consultant. So I do a lot of things, we all do a lot of things, and we all have a lot of curiosities.

But what I wanted to share was the concept of planting seeds in our garden. So with a new moon energy, it's a really great time to write down some intentions, write down some dreams, things that we want to create and bring into our life. And since it's the springtime, typically, I'd say I don't even know what a normal winter is anymore because it's been so long since we've had like a true, true winter, I think. But historically, in the winter, this time of year is when the ice would melt off the river.

And if you grew up by the Mississippi and it would freeze in the winter, you would start to see the bottom, things that were sitting at the bottom of the river rise up to the top as it would wash away. So it's almost like that natural form of cleansing that would happen in the spring, but it's also that time or that season to plant the seeds in our garden. And not just the seeds that you would plant in your flower garden, but literally the seeds that we would plant for ourselves. So when I think about that, I think about now energetically being the time where we invest in us.

We do a lot of things for everybody else. And so Sundays, I call this me time because that's exactly what it's about. Reminding ourselves that we need to put our oxygen mask on first. And when we do that, everything else around us can become stronger. If we are stronger for ourselves, we can invoke that in the space around us. And by using the vision of planting seeds, what that invitation provides is us the opportunity to say, I have a bag of dreams. I have. I have a bag of goals. I have a bag of to dos.

We can check in with the to dos to see if it's really about us or if we're adding it, because we should be doing something different conversation, different day. But we can plant those seeds in our garden. And if you take those little packages of seeds and you just put them all down on that soil, not every seed in the entire packet is going to grow. We are going to water our soil. We're going to give it food, plant food, right? We have to feed ourselves. We need to weed our garden. So if you think about that metaphor for us as humans, we plant the seeds of our goals or our dreams.

We do that with intention and purpose. We then have to nurture them. A dream doesn't become a reality because we just think it to be true. It takes something. It requires us to get out of our own way, get out of our path. It requires us to till the soil. What does that mean for a human? It means what is the stuff in our backpack that we're carrying around that's that we don't need. What are the stories that we are telling ourselves that don't allow us to grow, that keep us stuck? So if I think about it, for me, Jean, I'll use an example.

Some of the things that I'm creating, I'm creating a series of workshops and events. I like bringing people together, but I need to make sure that those events are truly aligned with my purpose. I used to do events that were networking events for a really long time, and I had to stop it because it wasn't fueling my soul anymore. And if I'm the organizer and I don't feel fueled by it then the people that are going to attend are going to feel the same energy. They're not going to feel that. That excitement anymore either.

And so as I'm creating these events, I go through this series of one, imposter syndrome. Who am I to create these? And why would people come? And two, I need to get out of my own way. I have to till the soil. And for me, what that looks like is I have to kill the stories in my head that tell me I'm not enough to be able to host these events. Now what's interesting is the events that I've put together, I've been very lucky that they've sold out and I get a lot of people that attend them. So historically, I've created really good events, but I still have this.

I'm creating something new. Nobody's gonna come, you know, somebody else is doing something better. All those stories, and those are the weeds that are in my garden. And so for me to clear those out and to keep them from turning, I actually have to invest time in why I'm thinking this way. So what's happening with me that is causing me to doubt myself? What possibly even for me personally, like, what grief am I going through that is causing me to want to hibernate and pull back from doing something that normally I would lean in and go big with.

So it's really important that we can name and identify. Hi, Nettie, how you doing today? It's important that we identify what are the weeds in our garden that are holding us back from having a beautiful garden. So if you think about what happens with a seed when we plant it, after we've watered it for a while, it has to crack out of its shell, and then it has to start to grow roots. And then as it grows roots, it starts to sprout up through the top. So what we see is when the plant starts to come through the soil, but it takes effort to come out of that soil to break free.

So for us, as the metaphor of the garden and planting that seeds in the garden, what work or effort is it taking for us to allow that idea to come to life? We need to maybe create a plan. If you're a planner, maybe you need to bounce your ideas off of people that you trust to get more feedback. If you're someone that likes to collect input, maybe you need to just try the first step in. In this example, it's an event. So maybe I just need to do the first event with people that I trust and then get their feedback, because my Process is idea to action.

So once I have the idea, I need to test it, and then I can refine it. That's me breaking through the soil. And as I keep refining it, that's when my plant starts to grow. And let's pretend it's a flower. That's when my flower can start to bloom because I've invested in it, and now I can start to see my idea coming to life. But the part that we often miss in the analogy is the roots. So when we plant seeds in our garden, those seeds in our garden are our manifestations. Those are our ideas, the things that we want to bring into our life, the things that we want to create more of in our life.

We do the work to nurture the soil, we pull out the weeds, the things that are holding us back from accomplishing those goals. We give it the sunshine, we give it our breath, the breath of life. So we need to give it food. We have to invest and nurture into that plant, into that idea, into that dream, into that concept, for it really to come to life and stick. But what we are focused on right now is everything that's above the soil. But in order for our plants to be healthy, to be strong, we have to understand what's happening in the roots.

A tree becomes a strong tree because its roots have grown deep and long and spread far and wide. A tree. There's a great book out there about trees. The Life of Trees, I think is what it's called. I'll check for sure. But it talks about how the roots of the trees talk to one another. It gives energy to one another. So if we focus on our own ideas and dreams and our goals, and those are the plants, the seeds that we're planting, the plants that will grow, that we invest in, what are we putting into our roots?

So what would that look like in our analogy? Our roots are our core, our roots are our thought. It's. Are we fueling our bodies? Are we fueling our minds? What are the stories that we're telling ourselves? Because our ideas can't grow, our dreams can't become reality. If we aren't choosing that time. We get to be that architect. We get to be the architect of our destiny. But that doesn't mean that we just approach it willy nilly, right? So for me, Jean, if I go back to my own analogy of creating a series of, of events, things that would be weeds for me could be, you know, maybe there are financial barriers, maybe there are people in my life that telling me my ideas are crazy.

And that happens a lot. I don't listen always. Sometimes I do. They could be people that have their own fears, that are projecting their fears onto us, and we can choose to listen to them or not. But when I think about the roots, that hits home, that goes deep. So if I am not taking care of myself, if I'm not nourishing myself, if I am not nurturing the relationships of the people that will support my ideas, then I'm not focusing on the whole. A plant isn't just the plant at the top. The dream isn't just the outcome of the dream.

It's everything that goes into it. And that investment is an investment in ourselves. So I. Jean, full transparency. I'm training for some marathons. I have the next one coming up, and I have some new ideas for work that I want to create. I have a certification that I'm trying to do, and my body is telling me I'm not. Like, I will take a bath, and I'll get out of the bath and I'll faint. Like, I'm. My body is literally just exhausted, which means that my mind is also exhausted. And so in order for me to continue with my dream and the dream that I'm working on right now, there are two.

One is to finish a series of six marathons called the World Majors, and they're around different places in the country, in the world. I just did Tokyo. I have London coming up at the end of April. This will be the fifth of sixth. And I've ran five of these marathons in different cities and countries. The first one was November of 2022. I did two in 2023. I'll do. Sorry, it was. The first is November of 2023. That was New York. I ran two in 2024 in September and October, back to back, two weeks apart.

And I just did the fourth last a few weeks ago, just this last month in Tokyo. And I have London in four weeks. And my body has just hit a point where I'm exhausted. So think about the roots. Right now, my roots aren't getting nourished. I've had to change my eating plan. I've had to eat better. I am now needing to focus on my hydration because I'm not hydrating enough, and I need to get more rest. My body is just saying rest, even though my brain is telling me I have to finish my training. I have training runs that I should be doing today, but my body's saying, you can't do it.

And here's the deal. I'm Going to start and I'm going to hopefully finish and whatever my time is, my time is. But my roots right now are telling me that they need nourishment. So all the ideas that I have for the events that I want to create, I don't have the emotional capacity to do them just yet because my roots are saying I need to go inward, I need to take a rest and take a pause. So I kind of did like a little bit of an all over journey with this today. I'm sometimes more scripted than this.

So if you're new to me, I'm gonna go backwards to go forward. We started today talking about how we feel. I said I felt fresh. I feel fresh with energy because I just had a really great class. But I feel fresh in my mind because I have a new perspective on what I need to do to nurture myself. And then we started talking about the season. So this season is the time of tilling the soil in our garden. It's the time to plant the seeds. It's what farmers do. So we're preparing for that season where we actually are time to plant physically in our gardens.

Trees, flowers, plants, beans, pumpkin seeds, all of it, right? Corn. It's time to plant the seeds in our garden physically, emotionally and energetically, human wise. We also have a garden to plant so energetically. It is the season for us to till the soil. It's the time for us to check to see if the soil is nourished. The bed is soiled, the bed is the soil. Is it nourished? Is it ready for more seeds, more ideas, more dreams? Are there weeds in our garden? It could be old ideas that we never invested in and they just got sticky, they got yucky.

It could be old relationships that don't support our future selves, our future ideas, our dreams, the new version of ourselves that we're creating and recreating. We think about the seed itself. It needs to fight to get up above the soil. So those dreams that we have, those goals that we have, we have to do work to get them to come to life. And once those ideas come to life, we need to make sure that we're looking at the roots. Because the strongest trees, the healthiest plants, the plants with the best fruit, have the best roots.

So what is happening below the surface? What's happening inside? Are we feeling fresh? Are we feeling healthy? Are we feeling nourished mentally, physically, emotionally? Because it requires all of that for our dreams to come true, for our ideas to come to life, for our goals to become accomplished. Sometimes our goals, we can get there fast. Sometimes we have to slow down and take a pause. So right now, today, I'm slowing down to take that pause. So I hope for you, if any of this resonated for you, I'd love to know in the chat, either now or later.

What seeds are you planting in your garden right now? What are you choosing to invest in for yourself right now? What dreams, what goals? Let's put them out there. Let's write them out together. Let's put them in the universe. And then what effort will it take for you to bring that to life? It could be something small right now. It could be something down the road. But you are the greatest investment. And at the end of the day, you are the seed, you are the roots, you are the flower. You're all of it.

So how might we just continue to plant in our garden and really take care of our garden, take care of ourselves? So I hope you have the best day. Robert in Minneapolis, it's great to have you here, Nettie. Thank you for joining and everybody that listens in on replay, thank you so much for being here. And if somebody hasn't told you lately that they are proud of you, just know that I am. All of us on Cadre, we are all proud of you for showing up for yourselves, for showing up to these live streams, listening into the videos, posting in the comments.

We're proud of you for showing up for you. So I hope you have the best day. I'll be here tomorrow, Monday for Professional Development Day. I'll post the topic of that conversation later today to give you some insight as to what you can expect. Have the best day. We'll see you soon.