Comedy Through The Chaos

Foreign hello friends. Happy Thursday to you. Cadre sphere. I am Ms. Shannon. Happy to be joining you. I'll give everybody a second to pop in. I'm so far just settling into this come this slightly quiet surroundings that I am right now. If you're wondering who I am, if how you popped along past Comedy through the chaos. I am Ms. Shannon Paul and I am a comedian and a corporate speaker and a voice actor, an event emcee and a bunch of things that are word related. And I am also the proud parent of an adorable kiddo who happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum.

Hello Junk Food Junkie. I see you in here in the chat. Thank you for joining us. I know somebody else popped in as well. Feel free to just say hi in the chat and I'll shout you out as well. I'm just doing my hellos to the Cadre Sphere. Hello Rick Cram. Good to see you, Junk Food Junkie. I appreciate your screen name. Good afternoon. I normally am coming to you from the great state of Minnesota, but this week I'm on a business trip. C. so I'm going to get to this week's Comedy through the Chaos where I tell you about how I was coming here.

But I want to tell you a quick story about last week. I mean about last night. So I am here in Washington with one of my corporate clients. They have a conference and I'm very happy to be joining them for the second year in a row for this conference. So I was here this time last year. And the thing that I want to talk about today is the concept of reflection to help you remove yourself from expecting perfection. So we're going to talk about reflection today. C. it was right after things had really went from a very tumultuous time in my life for me and my kiddo to this big shift.

Because just before this trip came we went from him still visiting his other parent to just a bunch of stuff happen. And then by the time this trip came along, he was with me full time. And this was a big cultural shift for my son and I. It was like tectonic plate type shift in our house. Even though it was something that was for good, it still came really unexpectedly and we're still trying to figure out how to navigate those roles of him being with me full time. C. i'll be honest with you. Last year, my sister, who was the salt of the earth and a fabulous auntie, she was watching my son last year.

But I mean, full transparency. I had to come on this trip, but I was not ready. You know, I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to think that they were okay. I was concerned pretty much the whole time I was on this trip. It was very difficult to stay present here in dc, Although I really appreciate the client that I'm here with, working with and. But it was hard. It was hard because I was just concerned because I didn't have time to prepare. So flash forward to this trip and now we've had a full year under our belts of my kiddo being with me full time.

Time. I've had more space to create space, and that's something you have to do. You have to have space sometimes to create space. But I've been able to figure out a way to do that over the last year. Thank you. Yeah, it does sound like. Yeah, it's. It, it is. Year after year, same day. Yeah. There are some things. You're right. Junk food. You're right. But the thing that, you know, when you go through that Groundhog Day, if you remember that movie, there were things that kind of, you're like, well, this is a trigger.

And then what you're trying to do is change your response to what happened around these things. And that's the thing I think is always interested, is that that character would try and do something different so you can get a different outcome. And of course, that didn't really work in the movie. But fortunately for me, where it is different and diverts from what happened in that film, my actions were able to create a different outcome than before. And that different outcome is that I am a calmer human being this year at the conference than I was last year because that's.

I knew what I was getting into. I've had time to build up the supports for me and for my kid. So instead of my sister watching him continuously for the, the three days that I've been gone, I've been able to find other supporters that could come in and hang out with my kiddo for a while. I had more time even in, like, just the prep, the silly things. I. A few weeks ago, I was talking about how my kiddo's favorite food right now is pretty much Trader Joe's pancakes. So maybe they have Trader Joe's where you at?

Where you live? If they're not, these are some gluten Free dairy, free toaster pancakes that he has been just quite enamored with lately. And he can wax a box of these pancakes in a sitting if left to his own devices. And so as part of my preparation for coming on this trip, I made sure that I bought, I budgeted out a box and a half of pancakes for each day that I was gone. And I made sure I went to Trader Joe's and I bought it ahead of time and I filled it in the deep freezer because I didn't want him stressing Auntie out asking for something that we can't get delivered.

You know, I made sure that there were some other groceries that I knew he liked that were delivered. I pre bought some comfort items for him that are. That I was like, I told my sister, in case of emergency, these are some cars and some stuff he likes. You can go get them out of my room. Go do that. So that part, I do appreciate the fact that I was able to change the storyline by changing my actions from last year to this year. Because a lot of times that's what we need, is we need that time to go, well, what can I do to take that anxiety bridge out of this activity?

Instead of going, well, every time I do it, it has to cause this highly anxious moment or what can I do to give myself a little bit more space to actually feel comfortable? And I do want to get to the point eventually where I'm one of those people that, you know, I know he's set up, I trust everything's going to be great and I can go on these trips and on these adventures and not feel any like to know, like to have more trust that things are going to be great. I will be honest with you, full transparency.

I am not there yet, but I was a lot closer to that, to the point that I was able to be a lot more present with the other attendees at this conference. C. and making connections and adulting, you know, which is something we also need to do sometimes as caregivers, is figure out that way that we can, although we are continually tethered to the person that we give care to and how much we love them, we want to make sure they are supported, but sometimes you also need to go, how can I continue to give myself more space to actually be a fully functioning human being while you are still providing that wonderful care that you do for the people that are important to you?

And so that I'm giving myself a little mom pat on the back for is being able to do the pre planning to fall in alignment with my high functioning anxiety to go. You know, you did the best you could and you tried to think it through. You wanted to make sure he was comfortable. You wanted to make sure his temporary caregivers right now, now were also comfortable. And then I had to just kind of trust and I am so happy that I had more room to trust this year versus last year. So although it's not always easy to have those milestones, like I know it's a, it's, it's slightly an anomaly like junk food Junkie.

You know, it might be an anomaly for you to be able to have those things on your calendar that you can look back to, but I do encourage you to find that something like this, something that you can go, well, how much ground have we really covered since last year? What are the little things that added up to a big change where we can say, hey, this is better or this is more peaceful or there is less anxiety dealing with this or you know, I have more things in my toolkit because I can remember going through this last year, last week, last month, and it was much more difficult when I did it before and now look at me, I'm handling it like a champ.

So if you have something less like that, maybe you can't go back a whole year, but I encourage you to look for those signposts and say, hey, the last time this happened, here's how it worked. And now that I'm doing it again, this is great. So I always encourage you to check in with us here at the Cadre Sphere. You can always let us know what you want us to talk about. I'm going to run back into my conference just in case the speaker wraps early. But I appreciate all of you have a great week and I will see you back here soon.

Thank you so much for joining me, Cadre Spirit. I'll talk to you soon. Thank you, Junk food Junkie. That is perfect and a wonderful way for us to close today. I'll see you soon.