Me Time ✨ In Person Connection

Hello, everybody. Happy, happy Sunday. Jane Mitchell's here. I feel like I've been out here for a while, sitting outside on a beautiful Sunday. I'm gonna give everybody just a few seconds to come on in. As we settle in and we take a breath together in the background, I have a beautiful park. It is Pride in Minnesota. Hello, Elise. Hello, T. Brown. Happy Sunday. How are y' all doing? As you pop on in here, I'm gonna invite you to type one thing that is bringing you joy today or this weekend. So a consideration of something that's bringing you joy.

Hello, Rick. How we doing today? Happy Sunday. My invitation today as you dial in, is to type in the chat something that is bringing you joy today. I will share a few things that are bringing me joy today. If you're in Minnesota, you're in Minneapolis sunshine. I love that it is Pride weekend. So today is the last day, the last few hours of the Pride celebration. Elise says time of family and friends. Love that. So this morning has been all day has been a Pride day. Did a 5k run this morning for the Pride Run, and I have raced many races.

I've ran many runs. But today was my first run where I was a guide for someone who is legally blind to run 5K. And it brought my heart so much joy to be trusted in that way with this individual. So that brought me a lot of joy seeing them come across the finish line and knowing that the whole time, they didn't stop, they just kept going. We slowed down, but we did what we needed. And also it's bringing me joy is being at this Pride Festival. So behind me is this park called Lorney park, and there are vendor booth after vendor booth.

Like, you can get lost in a maze in there. But it's all people coming together to celebrate love. In whatever way, shape, or form, love shows up. So that is bringing me joy today. Now, I have in here that today is about me time, personal connection. And I wanted to share this random story. I wore my hat that says heavily meditated. So if you think of om meditation, not medicated, there's a difference and a fun story in here. So I remember a while back that I wore this hat and a connection came in a really random way.

I actually didn't have the hat on. I had a sweatshirt that has it on. And you'll see that I have a strap across. This is like my little purse, or whatever you want to call it, little bag. And I was at the grocery store, and I was getting flowers to go take to my mom and she at the time, was living in long term care. And so I went to the grocery store to get her some flowers because I was in a pinch, and I didn't have time to make it to the farmer's market. And I was in the store. I was in the line.

I have my bag of stuff. She also always wanted Werther's candy, so I'd get her candy. And she always wanted plain M&MS. So I'd get her M&MS. And I'm in line and I'm paying, and my bag is over the cross my top. And the lady that was checking me out, she started laughing. And the girl that was doing the bags started looking at her like, what are you laughing about? And the lady said, oh, I'm heavily medicated also. And I had a pause because I was like, wait, why did. Why did she just tell me that?

And the girl that was bagging the groceries looked at me, and her eyes, like, her face just went ghost white. And the lady that was a cashier started telling me about all these different medications her doctors have been putting her on. And I think she was out of a prescription or something like that. And I was like, why is this happening right now? And then I glanced on at my sweatshirt, and I was like, oh. And so I just adjusted my little bag a little, and she saw that it said meditated. And she started laughing out loud.

She goes, oh, I thought it said medicated. So in that moment, just by a simple sweatshirt or a phrase, this individual found an opportunity to have a human connection, A real in person connection. So, fun fact, fast forward. I go to my mom, and I still have the same bag, same sweatshirt on. And I started packing her stuff, and my mom cackled. My mom had a really great laugh, so loud. And I was like, what? She's like, jean, I'm medicated, too. And I was like, oh, my God. I didn't even correct her.

I just. I just rolled with it and handed her some Werther's candies. And we just did our Sunday thing. But isn't that what it's about? Finding that balance of introversion versus extra extroversion? Right? But finding that human connection that says, I see you, or I can relate to you and I can trust you, or I can tell you a story or tell me about your day. I found that for so long, you know, we went through this period of time where we were withdrawn from people. Rightfully so, right? We live through a pandemic.

Not many people can ever say that. That's happened. But we went through a space and time where everything was withdrawn and everything pulled back and the only way that we could connect would be similar ish to how we're connecting here. We log into a call or a zoom call or a FaceTime insert, whatever, and there's something to be said about the relatability of a person in person connection. Last weekend I was in California, and I didn't have a plan or agenda. I just knew that there were people I wanted to see and I didn't want to pack it in so much so that I could have the time for us to just be together as long as we were going to be together.

So I randomly met up with a girlfriend. She didn't even know I was coming into town until the night before. And we met up for dinner and then we walked around this cute little city for a little while and we just laughed and talked about things we hadn't talked about. I didn't seen her in six months. And then I went the next day to a meditation session with a group of friends of mine, and I didn't tell them I was coming. I just showed up, I registered and came, and they were all surprised. And we laughed and we hugged and we shared stories and caught up on the things that we hadn't caught up for a while because they live in California, I live in Minneapolis.

And it's great sometimes to text back and forth, but there's so much richness when you come together and you can share stories in person, you can hug, you can hold hands, you can lean against one another physically. So it's making that time. I've mentioned many times that I try to keep Sundays as unscheduled as possible because I like the spontaneousness of what can come. The possibility of someone giving me that random call or me giving someone that random call that says, let's go hang out. I love coordinating things.

So for the 5k the 6 morning, I tried to create a team. It worked okay, but it didn't work great because I didn't have a way to email everybody. But I got to see all these different people that might take my spin classes or are part of a Lululemon ambassador program that I'm a part of. And we got to be in person together celebrating something beautiful. I got to see Elise, who's on this right now, in person with her friends and her daughter, and meet people that bring her so much joy. So sometimes we can do all the connecting that we want through Instagram, through Facetime, through text messages, emails, But I find that I crave that human connection more now than than maybe I did a couple years ago.

Because I feel like it's time that people are ready to come together again, to celebrate in person, together again. And my way of doing that is to create experiences, whether it's a run club or teaching a spin class or a sound bath, maybe a mini retreat. I love to bring people that I know and love to together and have that in person connection. I've also recently been a part of an event and I'll kind of end with this story because I create a lot of things, but sometimes it's nice to just attend and be a participant.

So recently I was invited to this women's circle that was for a birthday. And it was beautiful because this person didn't want to go to a big crazy dinner. They didn't want to go have a happy hour. They wanted all their friends to come together at another friend's house. And everybody brought something potluck style. And we did a meditation together. I did a little sound bath for everybody. And we did a cacao ceremony, which is a heart opening ceremony that allows you to get a little vulnerable and do shares.

And in that circle, like we literally sat on a floor, all of us in a circle, and we did this cacao ceremony. And I'll do a little video on cacao ceremony in case you're curious to learn more about it. It's really just a bitter, bitter chocolate. But it's a very ancient ritual and there are lots of medicinal benefits to cacao, as well as emotional and spiritual. But what was beautiful is we did three rounds of shares, which is typical in a ceremony. In the first round, everybody shared something they were grateful for.

In the second round, everyone shared a birthday wish for the birthday girl. And in the last round, everyone shared something that they're looking forward to doing in the future or something that they're looking to create more of in the future. And everybody did their share. There were 12 of us around a circle and it was the most beautiful human connection. A few people cried, some people laughed, some people held hands. And at the very end, we all held hands and we just took a breath and we celebrated how beautiful it was to just be together.

So my invitation to you this week, my challenge to you this week, how might you reach out to someone you haven't had a personal connection with in a while and not just schedule a FaceTime? And if they're not in the same city, maybe that's what you have. But if they're in the same city as you, how might you meet up to do something that you don't always do? Maybe you go for a walk, maybe you attend a museum together, maybe you go to lunch at a new restaurant that neither of you have been to. Because what that allows for is a shared experience and a human personal connection and just different way.

So if you have any examples that you'd love to share about human connections, feel free to type in the chat. If you're listening in on replay, please type replay and share your insights. Your comments as well. And I hope you all have a heavily meditated, relaxing rest of your evening and I look forward to seeing you again. Monday is our professional development day so I'll come in with some leadership and ways to lead with authenticity and tomorrow our conversation is going to be about leading by letting go.

So I hope you have the best rest of your day and I'll talk to you all soon and just know and remember that you are loved. Have a great day.