Self Care Sunday ✨ You Are Your Greatest Investment

Hello, Cadre family. How are we tuned today? My name is Jean Nicholls. I'm excited to be here. Taking a minute. I apologize, I am popping in late. I was in traffic trying to get to a place that I could stop my car because I didn't quite make it home. Hello, Speak. Wonder how are you today? Your little grandson is adorable. It was so cute to see him as a part of your story. Hi, Kelly, how are we doing today? Nice to have you here. My name is Jean Nicholls. Hello, Chris, how are you? As you are popping in to Cadre today, my invitation to you for two things at this start.

One, take a deep breath. I always find that when I arrive, if I'm just racing in, this simple act of taking an active breath, a breath that I am focusing on, a breath that I'm taking intentionally can really help me reset, be present, feel a different energy as I bound in. My second invitation to you today is if you're not driving your car, type in the chat what's brought you joy this week or this weekend. Is there something that's happened or happening that has brought you joy? Type it in the chat for me.

Friday night I had smoked much joy seeing Terry, who drove up from Iowa to be a part of our World Mental Health Day event. We had panel speakers, had some art therapy kits for everybody. We had some snacks, we did a sound bath and a beautiful discussion around mental wellness and the impacts of that in our society today and our families and our dynamics. So it really brought me joy to be the host of that event. So today, embracing ourselves, recognizing that we are our greatest investment. So I had done this time as me time for a really long time and I thought I'd shake it up a little bit and kind of go with the self Care Sunday theme and recognizing that you are your greatest investment when I say those words, if you have perspectives or thoughts, type in the chat what that means to you.

And if you're listening on replay, what does it mean if you hear the phrase you are your greatest investment, do you believe that to be true? Do you have some resistance in your body when you hear that? What's interesting about it is oftentimes when we hear phrases or words that we either resonate or we don't, before we even think the thoughts about our reaction to it, we feel something in our bodies. It's really fascinating how our bodies are so tied to our histories, to our lived experiences. And so when we think about that and we start to feel it in our bodies, we can start to connect to things Phrases, ideas, concepts, even more going to joy Speak Wonder says harvesting memories that bring more gratitude, less of sense of loss.

Thank you for sharing that. I'll also have to share tomorrow the new book that I'm reading for our this October book club. I kind of have made up a book club. We don't really have one, but I'd like to have one. But I'll post in the channel what book I'm reading and and I'll share some insights from it. But Major loves car rides by the way, and if you're new to me, I have a dog. He's a golden retriever. He's not in my car because currently my backseat is full of supplies. I'm a certified sound therapist and breath worker and I have a breath work session with a group this afternoon.

So Major's not in the car today, but he'll be here tomorrow. But when we think about going back to us being our greatest investment so I'm a life coach, also an executive coach, and I work a lot with personality, image and concepts that are based on the science of appreciative inquiry and positive psychology. And so when we think about investing in ourselves, how many times have you thought about taking a class but you didn't sign up for it because maybe somebody else needed you more? Or how often did you schedule a massage and have to cancel or reschedule because somebody else needed something else from you?

I find that hygiene run that way often. I will do a really great job of thinking about investing in my physical self care. I had been training for a number of marathons. I have a very lofty goal to run a series of them for charity in honor of my mom and dad as part of my grief process. And so investing in myself means getting massage, scheduling a chiropractor appointment, scheduling an appointment with my acupuncturist. It means holding myself accountable to doing my gratitude ceremony every day.

And if I'm being honest, something happened in our community and it caused me to take a pause on my gratitude ceremony because I wasn't feeling it and it didn't feel authentic. It felt forced. And what's interesting about that is when we think about investing in ourselves, we need it the most, probably when we are feeling at our lowest. But we often think about investing ourselves when we are on our high, right when we're happy, we're feeling joy, we're feeling like our life is on track so we can do the things for ourselves.

I hit a bump and I fell off my gratitude ceremony. And this week is the week that I've decided that I'm going to restart it. So self care, investing in ourselves, thinking about ourselves as an investment, we think about planning for our future, Investing in our 401k, our SEP accounts, we think about all kinds of other types of investments. But when it comes to investing in education for ourselves, we don't think about it as the same. We don't think about it in the same way. And my question to you would be, why not?

So if we're gonna put all this energy out into this world and we're going to give to the people that we care take, we give to our jobs, we give to our communities, to our families, and the list goes on. If we don't take the time to invest in ourselves, things happen. We get sick, we get burnout, we get tired, exhausted. So physiologically, when we are running on empty cylinders, an empty gas tank, and we forget to take on self care, we forget to invest in ourselves and prioritize ourselves physiologically.

Different things can happen with us in our bodies. So I'll go back to me again and just share as a story and as example, I, as I mentioned, I've been running on all cylinders. I've been training for these marathons, I teach a bunch of sing classes, we have a team of people that we support and my body has just been tired. It's been saying I need a timeout. Instead, I've been charging ahead. And I charged ahead enough that I, I got a hip injury and I couldn't really actually take a step without it hurting for two weeks.

So it was my body's way of saying, hey, you need to pause. And because I work with a lot of energy as a Reiki master and as an energy worker, I also know that hip energy or hips, when you feel hip pains, energetically speaking, it's because you're putting out too much. You're giving too much to everybody around you and you're not receiving, you're not giving back. So not only is it literal, it's also physical and energetic. So when I think about that investment in self, I can break it down into a couple of different categories.

The first category, are you investing in your sleep? Are you prioritizing your sleep? If you're looking for a device or a tool, I wore a whoop. It's actually called a whoop W H O O P. It requires a membership, so there is a little bit of an investment there. But I wore it for a year so I could understand my sleep patterns and what was happening. With my sleep, when I worked out, when I ate, when I was hydrated or not hydrated. So investment in ourselves. My first tip for us is get sleep. Now, what's interesting is we're transitioning into fall season.

So depending on the state that you live in, you might feel it differently. But I live in Minneapolis. And what happens in this season is the energy of the trees. The nutrients of the trees goes into the center core of its root base. It happens with all of the plants. You look at animals. Animals start to curate food so that they can hibernate. So their systems mirror what is happening with the plants. That's why we have some of the transition with the leaves. So the energy of a tree comes inside more because it knows that it's time for it to rest.

So our bodies, naturally, in the season of fall, need more rest. The question is, are we listening? I am horrible at taking naps, but I find that I take a pseudo nap. I might give myself the opportunity to just kind of lay on the couch and veg out. And I don't use my phone during that time, and I just kind of lay there, and maybe I fall asleep, maybe I don't, but at least it's allowing my body a chance to rest and my brain to rest. So that's tip number one for investing in ourselves. Tip number two.

Hydration. Water. Our bodies need a ton of water. Electrolytes count. Coffee is a liquid, tea is a liquid. But our bodies literally need just pure water. Or maybe you put fruit in your water and that's okay because a fruit will have natural elements that will fuel your body. So investing in yourselves. If you're starting to feel some brain fog, oftentimes it's an outcome of lack of sleep and dehydration. Most adults run dehydrated, and especially as you age, you drink less water. Why? Because you have to go to the bathroom more.

So hydration is really important. There are studies around what happens to the impact of your ability to think when you don't have enough water in your system. So get the eight to 10 glasses of water, or if you work out, get some electrolytes back in your system. So sleep and hydration. I could go down the rabbit hole in nutrition, but I'm gonna not do that one right now. The other investment in yourself is what moving your body. How do you move? Maybe you're a gardener, Maybe you don't like going to a gym.

It's okay. A walk is free. Stretching. Your body is free. They do studies on people that live to the age of 100 or older. And part of the reason why they can live so long is they have mobility. They sit down on yoga mats and then they have to stand up. It's a leg muscle that they're keeping the strength in. They're keeping flexibility in their hips. So mobility movements, not just walking, but stretching and looking for mobility exercises. I'm actually going to do a video in the next couple weeks that is just going to be about mobility exercises to just help you see what some simple exercises can look like that you can do every day for mobility.

So that's my number three, move your body. So sleep, hydration, mobility, all three of those are investments in yourself. And they don't take a lot of time and they don't require any dollars right now. If you're having sleep issues, that's a different consideration. So I'm going to just table that for right now. And then my fourth thing that I'm going to give you for today, investment in your mind. So what are you doing to invest in your mind, in yourself? Are you reading books? Are you listening to audiobooks?

I personally set aside a certain budget every year, and I use that budget so I can take classes. So if I find something that I'm curious about, I wait until I see it the third time, maybe I get the third email because I can be spontaneous. And then I sit with it to see, okay, where in this life does it make sense for me to learn about this? And sometimes I'll just learn things on a whim. Master's class is incredible. It is a membership, but you get access to so much content throughout the year. And it's.

If you work for a company, a lot of companies would actually reimburse you for that because there's different categories of what you can learn out there. But I set that budget aside so that I can do that. And I. I took a run coach certification because I started a run club. And I think it's really important for me to understand more about the mechanics of movement if I'm going to lead people through movement. I took a coaching certification this year. I have that coming up in November. Because in my day job, I'm an executive coach, so I always want to learn new things.

This one is based on neuroscience. So finding something that you're curious about that will help you expand to think differently, that is really purely for you. And then do it. Show up to the class, show up to the work. So those are my four big things. So when I think about you being an investment These are things that I think are really important for you to consider as an investment in you. If you have something on your list that you think is really important to invest into, you type it in the chat.

Because it sounds selfish when we say I'm going to invest in me. However, for us to be our best selves and to give the most to the people around us, it requires us to be a little selfish. Because we aren't fulfilled, we aren't healthy, grounded, centered. Then we really can't show up for everybody else at our best self. So take care of you, invest in you, and tell me what your ideas are. Can't wait to see what we come up with. I hope you all have a great Sunday. Enjoy your day. Whatever you're feeling today, it's what you feel right now.

And that's okay. It's okay to be not okay. And I'm just gonna send you all the love I can and I'll see you here on Monday. Girls trips. Girls trips. Meditating. I love it. All of it. Have a great day.