Monday Motivation: 12 Hour Walk

Let's give it a minute here till everybody starts arriving. I love it. I'm seeing all the names. I hope this takes somebody else back to the late 90s. The verve, bittersweet Symphony. It's about as good as it gets. What a phenomenal track. Good morning, everybody. Hope everybody's having a great start to your week. I always love Mondays. Mondays are the best. I just love coming here and checking in with y'all. First, I just want to say we had an incredible event for World Teen Mental Wellness Day.

It's kind of a mouthful, but in conjunction with Blue Cross Blue Shield, in conjunction with Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the Twin Cities, phenomenal event, Great turnout. And most importantly, just learned a lot from our youth about what they're being faced with, what they're dealing with. And myself as an individual that has a 16 year old, a 12 year old, a 10 year old and an 8 year old learning so much about the generation in the late teens, early 20s now, what they've been faced with through social media or otherwise, to just really try to figure out what can we do to support and help better and educate our parents, including, but not limited to myself.

So phenomenal event, phenomenal weekend. It was as good as it gets. So the next Cadre event that's coming up, all I'm going to say is you guys want to be involved, you want to be a part of it. It's going to be world class. So it was, like I said, as good as it gets. I want to transition to in Minnesota, I should say, in the better part of call it like St. Louis, Missouri and up. You know, we have, you know, springtime, right? And springtime's coming and you know, the weather starts changing and you know, it's almost like a rebirth, which is really glorious on all accounts.

But one thing that I did about two years ago was I went on a 12 hour walk. Yes, you heard that right, 12 hour walk. And I just continued to walk around. And you guys have heard me talk about White Bear Lake a lot, a lot. 91 miles around. And I just, I started walking and I started walking and I kept walking. And there's this book by Colin O'Reilly that is called the 12 Hour Walk. And he writes about it and he writes about experience with this walk. And what I will tell you is I learned three things on this walk.

It's not a physical endurance walk. Yes, it sounds like a lot with 12 hours, don't get me wrong. But at the end of the day, it's more about your mind than anything physically. So what you start doing is you start in, you get your first mile down, you get your second mile down. And again, I encourage you. No podcasts, no music, no nothing. Just you and your mind and you walk and of course having lots of hydration and maybe even some things to eat along the way. But what I found was three things. First, 12 hours goes by really fast, 12 hours goes by really, really fast.

And you start to identify things in your life that really matter and you start to ask yourself questions. So the first thing is that 12 hours go by really fast and you start to like, ask yourself a lot of questions while on your walk. That's number one. Number two, you go through like this insane gratitude practice, right? So when I'm walking, I'm just looking and I'm going, wow, look at the nature, look at those sounds, look at the lake, look at the beautiful house. I can't imagine how long that must took to build that.

You just start being really curious and you just again start, you're grateful and curious. You're grateful and curious. And then you turn to what it calls like problem solving mode, where you again, you go for like this mindset of here to here to here. And then when you're at this spot, when you're in mile like 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, not mile, but hour. 8, 9, 10, 11,. 12, the amount of clarity that you see in your life, what you want and why you want it through pure silence and walking is there's, there's nothing short of like it's miraculous.

And I'm not telling everybody here that you have to do a 12 hour walk. That's what the book is by this Colin O'Reilly. He's got this amazing book, the 12 Hour Walk. I already told you that 12 hours, I think is there's something special about the amount of time. If it's six for you, if it's three for you, if it's eight for you, all good. But I just, I really encourage you to sit with yourself, sit in silence. No music, no podcasts, just you and your thoughts. 12 straight. You might want to put in what I do.

Sometimes I put my nose, my nose, my noise canceling headphones in sometimes just so I can think deeper. And that might be something you want to do, but regardless, I encourage you to find a time and put it on the calendar. Put it on the calendar. May or June, right? Try to wrap something up this quarter yet. Get in on the calendar and Say this is the weekend, this is the day that I'm going to do my 12 hour walk. And once you do, I would love to hear how it goes. My email is L Wendolent. L Wendolent.

W E N D L A N D T at Cadre. C A D R E I O. I would love to know about your experience. I think you're gonna find it incredibly spiritual. It'll be awakening on every level. And like I said, the three things that I learned, most importantly is finding clarity with gratitude. Practice asking a lot of questions and the time just flies by. The times fly by and you're going to not only rack up a ton of steps that day, which is great. It's good for you physically, mentally, emotionally, all the things.

But the clarity that you seek and you will continue to seek in your life and the answers that you're looking for will present themselves in weird ways. And I know this kind of like sounds spiritual, and the reality was it was probably one of the most spiritual awakenings that I've ever had was that 12 hour silent walk. So with that, put it on your calendar, Put it on your calendar, get it on your calendar and go make a big walk happen this year. Okay? Hope everybody has a wonderful week. Take care of yourself.

Real quick, the comments. Jules, good morning. Good morning to you. Be Zobitz. Beth, you're the best. Sue, Amazing Speak Wonder. The flirtatious sun is making appearance, basking in the glow. Haiku for the Cadre. You're the best. And Beezobit says White Bear Lake is the best place to walk. It sure is. And if somebody else wants to participate and maybe go two, three or four people, I'd sign up for that. Do I need to train for this walk? Depending if you can walk. If you can do a one hour walk on a treadmill at three miles an hour, I'm fairly confident you can do it for a while.

So let's try that first. Go maybe three miles an hour for an hour and just see how that makes you feel. And then just ask yourself, could I do this 12 more times? And I'm not saying it's going to be easy. That's not what I'm here to say at all. I think there will be something like, your body will hurt, your bones will hurt, your muscles will hurt. There's no way, like getting around 12 straight hours of movement. I've completed a few 5Ks. 1 miles. I think you should be fine. But you're gonna want to probably prep yourself and have a couple trial runs.

So something to think about. But at any rate, I encourage you all to get that scheduled on the books and I can't wait to hear about how it goes. Everybody have a great week. Lift somebody up. And remember that our youth are struggling right now with their mental health and it's all of our jobs to talk about it, to be open about it and to share ways in which we can support our teens as they continue to develop and grow in a very difficult time for them. Okay, so that's what I learned yesterday and we just need to be open to have deep, real, raw, authentic conversations.

And I'm definitely going to do a 12 hour walk this quarter coming up and I hope you all do too. Take care everybody have a great week. Lift somebody up. Never forget that. Lift somebody up. Bye.