Rules Of Engagement

Hello Cadre. Good morning. Welcome to Rules of Engagement. I hope that you are doing well. I was supposed to be on vacation this week. We were gonna go on a road trip but we ramped back to a staycation and then just did a day trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania which is only about hour and a half, two hour drive. Hello, Janet Lee. Which is only about an hour and a half Gettysburg, two hour drive from where we live here in Silver Spring, Maryland. And I love the Gettysburg Address, the speech 273 words Lincoln gave at the site of the battle of Gettysburg when they were doing the cemetery there.

So we went, we got a guide, you can pay 150 bucks and get a guide who will walk you around for two hours or three hours or one hour or whatever you want. Ours was a guy named Jim Jeff Wolf, who is amazing. And the battlefield is huge, right? It's this little city, but it's all this pasture land and wheat fields and peach orchards and all these places around. And he walked us through day one of the battle and then moved us to another place day two so we could see all around. Day three. It was really great.

It was on my fun list for the year. I do a fun list every year. This year it's 25 things to do in 2025 that are fun. And going to Gettysburg was on there. Good morning, Shannon. Going to Gettysburg was on there. So I am always an advocate for a fun list. If you're like me, having a list helps checking things off sort of fun. But. And also from the corner of my eyes, I didn't even have this on my fun list. But when we moved here a few months ago, we have a balcony, we're on the 16th floor and the cats really like bird feeders, which we couldn't have at our last place.

So I got a bird feeder that we put on the screen on the sliding door, the sliding glass door on the outside and then the cat tree is on the inside and they just watch. And then there's. I have little feeder trays and there are crows around here and I wanted the crows to come, so I put peanuts. I talked to the people at the wild bird store about all this and put a little feeder and put some peanuts in it. And they love to take the peanuts away and do, you know, try and eat them. And today I looked all this up.

I rolled up a ball of aluminum foil into the size of, they said a walnut, but a chestnut, it's gone. They have taken it so out of the corner of my eye every once in A while I see a crow swooping down to the balcony, which is on the other side of the apartment, which is very exciting to me. Topic savoring. The topic for August is savoring. That is the invitation to us as contributors is to talk about savoring. And this is how I learned that. I know that savoring is important, and there are some things that I do savor, but it is not my natural inclination.

And part of the reason I found that out is because when I go over my rules of engagement, there aren't a lot about savior savoring there, though that's a. That's a little bit of a hit and a miss on there. And this week the invitation is savoring in relationship. And I don't. I have some things that are kind of about that, but the number, the rule of engagement that I think most applies to savoring in relationship is protecting your peace, which is my number 13. And I know that seems odd when it comes to savoring a relationship, but those moments where things are and it does it not, doesn't have to be primary relationship.

But this I, you know, these moments where things are humming along well in a primary relationship are to be savored. Right? Because, you know, I'm married. This is my second marriage. I've learned a thing or two about marriage, both from being in one that wasn't working and being in one that is and. Or one that was working and then didn't and one that is working. A whole lot of protecting my peace is not setting boundaries so I don't have people around me. It is managing what's going on in my head so I can be present with the other person and kind and compassionate with the other person.

So protecting my peace is sometimes. That's rule of engagement number 13. Protecting my peace is really sometimes making sure that my relationship with myself is right so that I can show up with other people. Right. And, you know, with acquaintances or colleagues or such, it's easier to have that distance between what's going on inside and what's going on outside. It is harder to do that with someone in my home. And we move to a place that is smaller. And now we both work from home in a way that we didn't used to a few years ago.

So the opportunities to protect my peace are much bigger. Good morning, Jules. Good morning, Nikki. Welcome, everybody. We are talking about rule of engagement number 13, protect your peace. As it comes to savoring being in relationship with people and the actual connection with other people is so great that I don't want what's going on in my head to get in the way of it. And anxiety very much is not protecting my peace. Because it's nice to see you too, Nikki. My anxiety is not protecting my peace.

And there are so many. I've talked about it here before. I have so many bumpers in the gutters of my bowling lane. Right. That my ball can just keep moving forward. Right. And so the next horizon that's inside me, I've done it. I feel very pleased with the results of all the work I've put in over the last three or four years to really have a new relationship with my anxiety. And it has been great. I go for longer and longer periods of time where I don't have the mean voices in my head. They are less loud when they do show up.

They are less. They're here for shorter times when they show up. Like written up there. You can't see it, but written up there. My goal is to feel pretty good most of the time. And that means that the mean voices are less loud, less frequent, and less lengthy. And that I am consistently engaged in upward trend activities of my choosing. I'm not in freeze mode. I'm not in freeze mode. The opposite of freeze mode to me. The opposite of freeze mode to me is consistently engaged in upward trend activities of my choosing.

I'm not just scrolling. I'm not hiding out. Reading is an upward trend activity for me until it's not. You know what I mean? Like, once I'm using reading to escape, I read a lot, which is fine, but sometimes. But that's a dicey one, you know, that I keep an eye out for. But the next horizon of this feeling pretty good most of the time. And protecting my peace is making sure I'm in right relationship with the people in my life. My father, I live in Maryland now. My father lives in Minnesota. I go back pretty frequently.

There's stuff about his life that I take care of. And my brothers were in cahoots. You know, we're in complete partnership around making sure my dad's life is going well. Which if you took me to a time machine even 20 years ago, I would have said that was not possible. But now we all really work together. Well, Nikki says learning to protect my peace is always a learning process for me. Oh, yeah, absolutely. The universe is very cooperative, I find. And if I'm working on protecting my peace, it will just keep giving me ways to learn how to do it.

So once I have this internal peace, which Is much better than taking that show on the road with the people in my life, including my dad. You know, making sure I'm taking care, doing what I said I would do protects my peace integrity, protects my peace a great deal. The things that haunt me are the things I say I'll do that I don't do, even if I just say them to myself, right? That's when it becomes difficult. And, you know, at home, it's easier to savor these great moments with my husband. Eating a meal together, going on a walk together.

I love watching TV together. We watch the sunset together from our balcony. You know, the crows sometimes want to be out there when we want to be out there. Too bad it's our balcony. Crows. Enjoy your little balled up aluminum foil that I give you to protect that peace. I have to get a handle on where I want. I choose to act in a loving way rather than respond from. I don't deal well with other people's urgency. I don't. Which I got a lot of practice at as an elected official. I learned a lot how to in the world with strangers who would walk up to me in the grocery store and want me to fix something very urgently.

I actually learned how to have a lot of compassion and a lot of whatever. But when I'm home, that was my safe space, you know, my space to like, unwind, relax, have some space to think, to do my own work. But of course, I have someone else who lives in this space with me and sometimes he wants to chat. He is a much chattier person than I am, especially in the mornings. And we sort of work that out. I get up before he does so that I can have my hour before I talk to anybody. I like to get up early and I like to be quiet for an hour.

And if we get up at the same time, it is. I have not eased into my day enough to be gracious about it. I think that's a very good way to put it. It's a very kind, to myself way to put it. I would love to wake up zesty and eager for the day and eager to engage with everybody in the whole world. I do not wake up that way. I do not. There's reasons for it. If you knew everything that I know about my traumatic background, you would sit, oh, yeah, probably makes sense. She doesn't like wake up in a good mood.

That is not something I'm working to change about myself, actually. That is just something I'm working to accommodate in my life. So I get up earlier than My husband as often as possible so that by the time we interact, I can be like, good morning, nice to see you. Hello. Here's your coffee. If I'm by the coffee maker beforehand, whatever it is that's part of protecting my peace is just accommodating the ways where I am not at peace. I'm not gonna be at peace and working around it, you know, like Neo dodging the bullets in the matrix, just working around those bullets.

Right. But some of those bullets or whatever metaphor you want to use that doesn't have a gun in it, I guess some of them just happen. Like this morning. It's so funny that just before I was doing this, I was sitting. I was doing some quiet time, I was doing some posting, thinking I was sitting in our living room area instead of my office doing that. My husband came out and asked me about a chore that I'm responsible for around the house. And I was not gracious about that question. It's a chore that I like to take my time with.

It has to happen in stages. And I know that he would prefer that it was already done. And I feel bad about it. And so I reacted a little defensively. So I get to make an amendment for that later so that I can protect my peace and protect the peace, savor that peace in the relationship so that we can have more positive times than negative times. So I think that's what I have to say about savoring in relationship is how, you know, protecting my peace. What. What did I. Is there a summary for what I just talked about?

Yes, there is. Protecting my peace is sometimes my own internal peace makes it very much easier for me to walk out into the world with peace. Savoring that in relationships, protecting my peace sometimes means understanding where I'm just not good at being peaceful and working around it. For me, that would be the hour after I wake up in the morning. It's not that I need coffee. I don't use caffeine. I just need to readjust to being awake and protecting my peace by fostering the love, you know, by fostering love.

So doing the internal work is great. And then taking that show on the road and practicing those skills I have around my anxiety or handling things that I, you know, that I don't want to handle, you know, taking that show on the road, what would be a good new practice to savor that relation? You know, being. Savor the relationships I have in my life. That's my take on savoring in relationships. This week, Kadram let me know in the app you'll see me. Always see me in the app. Let me know. Oh, and if you're around tonight, I think it's at 6 Central.

Two great contributors are going to be doing something about savoring relationships without alcohol, which you want your life to zoom upwards. Savor relationships without alcohol. I say this as a sober person, your mileage may vary, but being fully present has helped me be fully present. So have a great. Have a great week, Cadre. I'll see you here next week. I think I'm on again next week. And let me know in the app what you think about savoring your relationships and I'll let you know how things go with the crows.

I see them flying. Let's see how many of the peanuts they've taken today.