Rules Of Engagement

Good morning, Cadre. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Hello from Silver Spring, Maryland. I hope that everybody is having a great week so far. It is Tuesday. We are heading toward the end of summer. Labor Day is like next Monday. That is so hard for me to believe. It is very mild here in Maryland, which is unusual for August. Usually it's just a hot summer sunny swamp until at least the beginning of September. But here we are. Here we are. I am not going to the Minnesota State Fair this year.

I try and go every year, but this year, a week from Saturday, I am officiating a wedding in Minnesota. And so I did not want to go back. I didn't want to go for like 10 days. And going back and back just didn't make sense. So I did go to the Montgomery County Fair, which was like a pocket fair, a bite sized fair, which was great. Good morning, Nikki. No, it's just my hair's up in clips. That's all that's happening here. It's not wet this week. Full disclosure, I am on HRT and I got a pellet yesterday, which means I can't.

I couldn't do my orangetheory workout today just given how the pellet works. They do a little incision and she didn't want me to do that for a couple days. So instead I just went for a run on the treadmill in the gym in my building, which means my hair doesn't have to be like super wet. So. Welcome to my hair and clips, everybody. This week's topic. Did I already say I'm officiating a wedding? Yes. This week's topic is savoring. Is the. The theme for August, which I love in part because it has highlighted that I don't have a lot in my oeuvre and my Betsy lists about savoring things.

I think the fact that I don't is a cousin of the fact that I loathe. This is not going to reflect well on me, but I loathe the concept of mindfulness. There are other ways to talk about mindfulness that are fine, but I do not want to be mindful. Isn't that terrible? But I don't. That's just the love. That's the God's honest truth to me just wandering around, I don't know, noticing my thoughts or sitting still. Noticing my thoughts is a certain sort of purgatory that I just eventually decided I didn't have to participate in.

I'm gonna adjust my thing here a little that I did not have to fully participate in. If I didn't want to, so I don't do that. Sorry for the disorienting switch of my camera, but I was disoriented by my camera. But savoring is good. And, you know, I have found out that I'm better at it than I think or better at it than I feared. And it's good to do so savoring in general. But this week is savoring transitions. And I just love that so much. And it turns out I have a lot of rules of engagement about savage savoring transitions, which means not losing your mind during change.

I've had to. I've had to go through a few of those in my lifetime. I think we all have. So I promised in the app on Cadre itself that I would have a prop. And I do have a prop. It is a book. It is the book Transitions by Willie Bridges. It was recommended to me by my husband, Gary Cunningham, for those of you who may know him. After I lost my bid for reelection for mayor, I was in a transition period. He said, this book is really great. And he was right. You can see I use these brass book, you know, these book tabs.

And I underlined things. I mean, I did both, right? So this book is underlined. Mostly I use the book tabs now, but it's underlined and it's tabbed. I think I read it twice, and I recommend it. Transitions by William Bridges. It is one of a few books that I recommend the most to people. This one and the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks are probably the two books I have recommended most to people or just by recommended, I mean, I send them to you and encourage you strongly to read them. Yeah. I am an interactive reader.

I am an interactive reader. Here's what I love about transitions, like in. And there's many things in this book, but here's what I remember, even years later, that there's an image he gives of going from one side of the side, one side of the street to the other. You're trying to cross the street, you're trying to get from curb to curb, and lots of people run across the street. And we feel like we're dodging traffic or whatever. But, you know, a transition. The transition trough. The idea of a transition trough has also been one of the most important concepts in my life, because somehow I knew about a transition trough or could engage in that idea when I got sober.

The transition trough is you're going along, you make the change, and you're going to dip into a difficult period before you get to the other side. And some people don't make it. You go back to the comfort zone of where you started, but if you can navigate the transition trough, the other side is better. And I knew when I got sober that if I could withstand a high degree of discomfort for a relatively short period of time, that afterwards, anything was going to be possible for me, but that if I wasn't willing to navigate that transition, I was going to stay where I was forever.

What I did not understand as an addict was that it was just going to get worse and worse. Not just would I stand still, but it was just gonna get worse and worse, right? Because drinking kills you, so alcoholism, like, kills you a lot. Addiction kills so many people all the time. And I was right. I took that bet and I navigated that transition trough, and I was right. And William Bridges really put a lot of meat on that bone because he said that space, it's not just a negative space. That space between stepping off one curb and getting to the next curb, you know, getting across that street is an incredibly rich, creative, important time.

And if we. If we. If we speed through it, we're going to miss some of the best parts. Savor the transition. That's what he's saying. Savor the transition. Savor the change. That there is an amount of just creativity, possibility, imagination that is ripe in the transition phase that is not as ripe. When we start something new. We have an imagination for that thing. Maybe if you get a new job or whatever. But there's a unique aspect to the transition state that we get to enjoy. Not just dread, that we get to farm, not just burn to the ground, right?

That we. We get to sow the creativity from that. No, not sow it. Reap the creativity from, you know, the. So it. What the change is sowing. It's amazing. And I don't love change more than, you know, it's not like I'm some sort of change maven, although, is that true? I do a lot of changing because growth is change. And I do my best to be growing all the time. Healing is change. And so I am changing all the time. Maybe I am. Maybe I am a change maven. Right? If I've decided that that's the change that I want, or if I've decided to make the best of a change that has happened whether I wanted it or not.

Right? I guess that's another way of saying savor the change. If there is a change happening in your life that you didn't want, wring from it every bit of Growth, healing, change, possibility that you can. And if you have decided on a change in your life, if you have decided to go from A to B, if you have decided to grow, which is another way of saying transition, well, then ring that for every good thing you can, every lesson you can. What does that look like in my life, I guess is one of the questions you might have.

I journal so much. Can you even see the pile of notebooks? Let's see. It's hard to see, but that right there is like a pile of notebooks and calendars and various things. That's where I sit in the morning when I do my spiritual time. And I. I have one journal that I use to journal. Journal like ideas. Right now I have prompts from a mindset plan I put together from AI for those of you who are interested. It's one of the ways I use ChatGPT and AI is to put together mindset plans for myself. Like, I have struggles around earning money.

You don't go into government if you're like all about earning money. But letting myself earn as much money as I'm worth in the marketplace is another way to say that. So I have this mindset plan. So I journal about that because it has prompts in it. I do that and then I am in recovery. And one of my pieces of my 12 step work is every morning. And I believe in a higher power. Your mileage may vary. I am not trying to put this on you. I'm just trying to tell you how I use my journal and the most recent round of steps I did.

This is my step 12 practice. For those of you who don't know, step 12 is having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. We tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. And I realized I had resistance to practicing these principles in all my affairs, which included because others of the steps talk about. I got to define what my higher power is and what I believed about my higher power. And so this is my 12 step. But now I have to live like that's true, which I was not happy about even after 35 at that point, years of sobriety.

So my 12 step practice is I write every day. I am allowing myself to act like I believe in the God I believe in today. This means. And then I write what does that mean today? Today it means doing my best to enjoy the various things that I do. And it also means creating or thinking about creating a post about a new concept I'm launching into the World, my seven Seas concept. So stay tuned for that. If you follow me on social media at all, if you join me on LinkedIn, wherever, stay tuned for that.

But that's one journal. I have another journal where I write down my desires. Like what, what do I. I don't like the word want, but what are things I would choose for myself? Many of them. It's really good for me to know what those things are. And so I try and down what is it that I desire? What do I want? What would I choose for myself? And I write those things down in part because my wanter got a little off kilter, got a little broken, given some things that happened to me in my young life. And so I'm.

I do that. That's an area of growth and change for me. And then I have a journal, I have a meditation journal because I don't like to sit, you know, see for example, the beginning of this live stream. I do not like to sit still and meditate. But I do value the meditation. And for me, I want to hear from my higher power. So I have a back and forth writing meditation between. It's a back and forth conversation between me and my higher power that has been life changing in all the ways I savor that transition, that meditation time, that finally really being able to get some clarity about what I'm hearing from my higher power.

I do my best to savor that. It is not always fun. My higher power is very cheeky and points me in directions I don't want to go. But that's part of the reason my life is going so much better savoring that transition. Part of the reason to savor transition in the form of growth and healing is that your life gets bigger and better and fuller and more connected and more fun and more joyous. If it doesn't, I'm not sure that's growth and healing. Now part of growth and healing is I have to feel old feelings, I have to go through old stuff so that I can, you know, drew some wrong conclusions about the world from the icky things that happened to me in my life.

I have to change those conclusions. And to do that I have to feel the feelings that go along with the old conclusions. And that is not always fun and joyous, etc. Etc. But it does help my life go better. It does expand my mind. So sometimes it's just recasting the transition to understand that it's in my best interest, that it's in my better interest. Most of the transitions in my life at this point I've chosen. I didn't choose to lose my job in 2017, and that was no fun. But 2018, my main goal for the year 2018 was to leave it.

Not a bundle of resentment. 2017 was a very difficult year. A lot of things happened that year inside and outside of my political life, and whoo. I just didn't want to be a ball of resentment because that'll lead me to drink as well as just be miserable in my own brain. And I consider that a success. I was not a bundle of resentment going into 2019, and that's great. But I did the work. I did that work, right? That was a choice that I did not make. And I did my best to enjoy. You know, that was a transition I didn't want to make at that time.

I knew I'd have to make it someday, but I didn't want to make it then. And I did my best to make the most of it. So I did the work to not be resentful all the time. I did the work to love what I could love about the change. I ended up at Harvard for a semester in my own little apartment. And I had so many fun adventures. Not being in office anymore meant that no one knew where I was. I went a couple months into Harvard, and I had a weekend where a friend was supposed to come from New York, and she didn't.

And so I had the whole weekend unplanned. And I was like, well, I'm gonna. I better leave the apartment. So I went to the. I took the train to Kendall Square and I went to see a movie. And then I said, you know, no one knows where I am right now. I could, no, I don't have to go back home. So I turned around, I went in, and I saw a second movie. And when that movie was done, I came out and I was going to head home. I was hungry. I wanted dinner or whatever. It was like five, six o' clock or something.

And I said, you know, nobody knows where I am right now. And this was one of those movie theaters that serves sort of food, food. So I got vegetarian egg rolls and I think popcorn or something. And I said, I'm gonna see a third movie. And I did. That's called savoring a transition. So I will leave you with that. That is one of the ways I savored that transition. I also went to see a comedian who, if I had gone to see him as mayor, might have made the newspaper his. I find him hilarious. But it was nobody's business that I find him hilarious.

And that might have been been difficult for them. So I bought one ticket and I went into Boston and sat in the balcony and saw this great comedian. If you want to know who it is, you should DM me on the app. So, Brianna, welcome. I didn't quite see that you had joined. I'm glad you're here. Welcome. But I've gone over. I've gone over. Turns out I do know how to savor transitions. I may not know how to savor some other things, but savoring transitions, that's something I can do because, like, you know, I didn't even say my rules of engagement.

So I'll say them quickly. Number 15, allow. My rule of engagement. Number 15 is just allow. And to me, that means in this instance, allow the world to be what it is. Allow the world to be as it is and make a decision about who I want to be in relationship to it. Number 21, visualize positive outcomes. You know, you know, think that something will turn out well, but also think that it could turn out well. Savor a good thing about what I'm going through, not just a difficult thing. And finally, number 24, rule of engagement.

Feelings are a data point. They're not a great guide to action. If you don't like the change that's happening, it doesn't mean you need to make some other fussy change. It means it's a good data point. It's good to know if you're really unhappy. It's good to know because you may need to adjust some things to. But it's a data point. It's not a guide to action. All right, go off and savor your transitions because we're about to be in one. We're transitioning to fall Minnesotans. It may be happening already.

I don't quite know. As I said at the beginning, here in Maryland, it's actually been quite mild. So I'm going to enjoy that today. I will see you all next week after Labor Day, and it's a new month, new topic. And I look forward to seeing you all then. Enjoy your week. Savor your week. Savor your transition into fall.