Comedy Through The Chaos W/Miss Shannan

Hello, hello, hello. And happy Thursday to you, Cadre Sphere. If you are watching on a Thursday, potentially you're watching in the future somewhere else on some other day. So happy whatever day it is to you wherever you are in the Cadre sphere. I am Ms. Shannon Paul. I'm a comedian, corporate speaker, voice actor, event MC and benefit auctioneer who helps out of the great state of Minnesota. Hello. Speak Wonder. Always wonderful to see you. Speak Wonder. I appreciate you. I sound a little congested, which will bring me to the conversation that we're having today.

But I feel well, I feel well, I sound worse than I feel, but it's good to see you. Speak Wonder. I think you were getting over something the last couple of days or recently as well. So happy to be upright and yeah, happy Thursday to you as well. Happy to be upright and moving around today and joining you here in the Cadre Sphere. I am calling this even though I am working, my laptop is right over here off the screen. Even though I am doing some things today, I'm calling it a rest day and I'm considering us.

Very grateful to be able to have that because my kiddo has not been feeling well. So he stayed home yesterday and then go to school. I kept him home today as well. He's a lot perkier today than he was yesterday. Yesterday was pretty much just prone to. He was just laying down the whole time and slept most of the day. But he's up and moving a little bit better today and it's one of those things that I thought I share with you all here, especially since it is caregiver Thursday here. So we talk about a variety of things from the perspective of being a caregiver and it's so much of that preemptively trying to get in front of it and just thinking about how hard it is to get yourself and the people that you care for to rest.

Because that is a word that we have a very complex relationship with in our house. Like I'm definitely one of those high functioning anxiety type A type people that is always doing and not very good at holding still at a bad cold. Yeah, I think now, I think that's something like it that we have going on here. He wasn't in the best of spirits on Tuesday. Everything's blending together. He wasn't in the best of spirits on Tuesday. They actually text me and asked me to pick him up early from school and he didn't have a temperature or anything, but he could tell you could see that something was coming.

So he went to bed kind of early on Tuesday and woke up on Wednesday and you could see that it really settled in and he was quite congested and obviously very run down and, and just made me think about how much we put off rest when we could feel something coming and how important it is to be able to go, I'm going to lean into this now because I remember feeling a little bit tired over the weekend and going, it's nothing, it's just your schedule, it's that. And instead of going, well, maybe what I should do is rest.

The first thing I thought about is, well, what supplements can I start taking? How can I start, you know, super dosing my vitamin C? How can I do some of these other things that again, I think are a great value to make sure that we don't get as sick as we possibly can get sometimes. But I'll be honest with you, it never occurred to me or slow down and rest. It was more the opposite that I was starting to think about. It's like, oh, no, you have to work on Wednesday or you have these things, you have to go down, you can't get sick, you can't slow down, you have all this stuff you need to be working on or that you want to get done.

Instead of going, well, you know what, you might be able to get that stuff done more efficiently and more effectively if you give yourself some time to rest. So I've really been giving myself time to really think on that concept over the last day. Like watching my son and realizing that, you know, when he was little, it was really one of those, if I gave him some medicine, you could tell that he started to feel a little bit better. So immediately he would be up and running around and bouncing off the walls.

And you can, as a parent or a caregiver tell that it wasn't real, that he felt better, he just felt better at comparison and that the medicine was, was kicking in. But what I still want him to do when he was younger was to rest. So yesterday, the fact that it was, hey, he wasn't feeling well and he just went and laid down and chilled out and then I just brought him beverages. That's one of the best things about caring for somebody that's a little older. When he was little also, that was the time that he wanted to hang out with me and, and get the most snuggles because he didn't feel good.

Thank you. Thank you. Very matchy matchy today. It's actually called Water Hydra. So I think that's a good name. I was like, I am here for the name of Water Hydra. So I think it's funny, when he was a kid and I would give him some medicine, like some. Some Tylenol, some or something, then he feel better, then he would start bouncing again, which would always. And it would rebound, and then he would feel worse or be more down later when instead I feel like yesterday, because he did just rest. That's why he's starting to feel better today.

And he's actually, you know, recovering faster because he gave himself time to chill out. And how often do we do that? How often do we extend our pain or extend our illness or extend how tired we are because we don't just sit there and go, you know what? I feel this coming. And what I should do is rest now so that I can be productive later. Instead, we power through, we push on, we soldier up, we do all of those things that sound like great ideas and makes it sound like we're incredibly tough when if we probably just slowed down a little bit and gave ourselves time to rest, we would actually end up benefiting from it so much more efficiently than what we end up doing to ourselves.

And I'm a great example of not practicing what I preach, trying to make sure that I get better about that. But I had a friend mentioned this way, like, if you're. If you're prone to being busy, sometime resting feels like torture or like a punishment because your brain doesn't allow you to sit there and look like it's a benefit, or you don't allow yourself to sit there and go, this is productive. You know, the fact that I'm working from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, that's not always sustainable.

But actually allowing myself to rest and adding this into our practice is something that actually will help us be more productive for a longer period of time and to be more efficient as. As human beings. And that's something that I'm, you know, that's where I'm at today is reminding myself to do that and go, all right, well, next time you start to feel this way, yeah, go ahead, take all your vitamin C. Have the super fancy, you know, vitamin C, you know, liposomal this, that, the other thing, yeah, do your zycam.

Do all of those things so that your symptoms are lessened, you know, and that's all right. But then also go, you know, what should be part of the regime? Some rest, a little bit of downtime, you know, a reevaluation of what you're doing with your energy. Because part of it might be, you know what? I'm not going to expend that energy right now. I'm going to pull that back so that I have time to recover and take care of myself. So I encourage us to do that. I'm glad that you are feeling better. Speak, wonder.

I know how that is when you're, like, in the midst of. When is this going to get better? Yeah, it. Thank you very much. Yeah. Rest equals better productivity. And that's one of those things that I know, and then I have to remind myself. And it's something that I've had to get more accomplished at practicing so that it comes to the front of my mind more rapidly than it used to, because it used to be something that I never would consider an option that's like, you know what you should do? Rest. Never would think about that.

But now at least it is in the mix. And there's something that occurs to me. It's like, oh, you're starting to feel a little bit down. Then maybe you should clear some things off your calendar. Maybe you should go, all right, what of these things? Rapture absolutely has to get done. And what are these things? Are things that you could put off or you'd like to get done, but it's not an absolute right now. It's something that. It'll be there. It'll be there. So I'm being very intentional with my. It'll be there.

I'm glad to be able to hang out with you. There's some projects that I'm like, yeah, I was gonna go and do, and now I'm like, I'll wait. I'll wait. The time will be there, but it definitely will not if I don't time some time to throttle down. So I'm gonna go check on him. He's been down in the basement today. I don't know why he was down there. I went down there. I made some suggestions on things that I thought might feel make him feel better. Like, let's go take shower. Maybe the warm water will do better.

But he is not prepared to listen to any of my suggestions right now. Time management. We should have a conversation about that. I've gotten better at it because I had to, but there are some wonderful tools that I added up using into my toolkit about that. And then I love the concept of time management, but it's also mind management is what I think it is. I think time management and mind management have to go together because sometimes, really, your mind is what's making it difficult to manage Your time.

And sometimes your mind is distorting the time that you have. When you're doing a good job, you are managing your time as best as you can. But maybe your mind made you think you could do more stuff that you could. That's one of the things that I'm guilty of often, but also it's making you feel like you've done less than you have. So have a little conversation with your mind and see if it's playing some tricks on you. Speak Wonder. That would be part of the suggestion that I'll do and that, that I would suggest to you.

Yeah, mind management is so much of what it is. And I, and I spend more time doing that. And then the time comes, the time, the time comes because I was like, oh wait, this thing that was taking up so much space, you know, emotionally taking a bandwidth, taking up mental bandwidth, emotional bandwidth, all of those things. Sometimes if you can put a name on that and free up that space, then you'd be amazed how much some of the other time actually turns, you know, turns into something that's in your favor because your brain was taking up some space and making it very difficult to get anything done.

So maybe think about that. I mean, I'm not guaranteeing that that's how your brain work. That's just that I have found. So maybe that might be part of the lesson for you as well. So in the meantime, I have my kiddo's fancy cup. I don't know if I showed this to you. We're a fancy lid cup family. So this is his next collection of hydration that I'm about to go Take him downstairs and try and make sure that he's hydrated and check and see how he's doing. Maybe encourage him to. Once again, I'm like, I think a, a warm shower would be a good idea.

But all I could do is put him in the path of things that might make him feel better. I cannot make him feel better about any of this stuff. But what I can also do, it is very snazzy. I have one that is, that is blue hued as well. Because I'm like, we might as well be super fancy in our hydration because, hey, it's all about attitude some days. So I'm gonna go check on my kiddo. I will be back here on Stage Saturday at 10am Central and always happy to have any suggestions that you want us to cover.

Speak Wonder. I will go and check you in the replay. It's always good to see you hang out here. I had the opportunity to see Andy Mack in person last evening. He came to a storytelling show that I was a part of. So it's always nice to see everybody in real life. So one of these days, you and I will have to get together. If nothing else, we'll do a little zoom so we can be face to face instead of face to text. Because I appreciate you, friend. So off I go to the other things. In the meantime, please take care of yourself.

Always. Always. I want to remind you, you know, I hope that the day is treating you well. Thank you. I hope that the day is treating you well. If it is not, shame on it. Not shame on you. And thank you for joining us here in the Cadre Sphere. We will see you back here very soon. Be cold.