Cadre Today: Through > To

Get up every morning with a smile on your face and show the world all the love in your heart. Then people gonna treat you better. You're gonna find yes, you will. That you're beautiful as you feel. Good morning. One percent better. Hey, Christy. Waiting at the station when the workday window T north. Good morning. Happy Tuesday. Don't see the showing. Why do I? We'll finish right here. You got to get up every morning with a smile on your face and show the world all the love in your heart. I'll hit pause right there.

That's a little Carole King. King, beautiful. To welcome you into Cadre today. Today, Carol says you gotta wake up every morning. Chris Fortman. With a smile on your face and show the world all the love in your heart. That's what Carole King says. I love Carole King, and I love that song. But I will say you do not have to wake up every morning with a smile on your face. In Carol's world, that's what Carol had to do to get through the day. Carol figured out Carol's pathway, and still figuring out Carol's pathway to do the amazing things that Carol can like.

I say Carol's one of my favorite humans ever to exist on the planet, and Beautiful is one of my favorite songs ever to exist on the planet. And yet I strongly disagree that you have to wake up every morning with a smile on your face. Why? That's what we say here at the Cadre Sphere. We are a bunch of people showing all the people that there are many ways to be well, through our peerness and our professionalness, through our experiences, we're going, you know what? This may be something that makes sense to somebody else, and even if it doesn't, like, I disagree with Carol that you have to wake up every morning with a smile on your face.

But I agree with the second part of that statement, that showing the whole world that there's love and stuff going inside of you, you need to figure out how to translate that to people, because that's how you're going to go ahead and change the world. Discomfort initiates change, Matthew. And I'll say, sometimes comfort initiates change. We live in a world where we think that discomfort is always the pathway forward. And I'll say, I think comfort zones rock. I think we don't spend enough time in our comfort zones on purpose, loudly, because we're trained to think that comfort is not a fertile ground.

That's the reality, right? If anytime someone tries to sell you the here's the thing that's gonna make everything better. Here's the one thing to always do. Run everything potentially has some really, really great opportunity to change you, to ground you, to heal you, to nourish you, to remind you, to all the things that you need at different times. So my name is JC if we've never shared time and space together before, thank you for the opportunity to spend some time right now with you in the Cadre sphere.

I got my little Cadre fidget here. I love me a good fidget. And hey, guess what? I'm glad that I'm here. I'm glad that you're here. I know what I know and I care about you. I kick off most mornings right here in the Cadre sphere or sneak in at another time of the day to remind you exactly what we're doing. That is this inviting people who do not know each other yet, that's what I like to call strangers, to spend some time considering what they know, what they've experienced, what they feel, what they're currently feeling, and then how they take that to move in a direction of feeling, maybe better or more in control or more aware.

So thank you for the opportunity to let me spend some time with you today. I want to talk about two words, through and to. A lot of times we are sold the idea that life is happening to us and in reality, the ball. Use sports analogy for a moment. The ball is very rarely in our control, right? Meaning we're playing the game without being able to go, here's how it's going to happen. The game's happening around us. So we may feel that we don't have any power. We may feel as if things are happening to us rather than through us.

That does not mean that we don't have some influence or some fight or some creativity that can change the course of action, which is why I like the word through instead. I spend a lot of my time, a lot of my life, in the seat of teacher or facilitator or coach. Either one on one in kind of executive coaching or vocal storytelling education space, or one on many in speaking and teaching to the classroom, the cast, the organization, so on and so forth. And so often, whenever I get ready to facilitate, you can see people go like this.

And they sit back in their chairs and they go, okay, I'm going to take it. This person's going to do something to me. And I'm supposed to sit here and have it happen to me. And I always say, hey, everybody, you're taking time out of your day, hopefully with the intent of Having this be beneficial for you, or if you're mandated to be here because your boss said, this is a continuing education or this is a lunch and learn, or this is the thing and you need to go to it, it's mandatory. I always remind them of this.

If you actually want to get the most potential something out of this time together, have this happen through you rather than to you. I'll say it again. When you have to experience something, when you have to sit in the seat, when you have to go to the meeting, when you have to wait in traffic, when you have to have the hard conversation, the easy conversation, rather than simply having it to you as this empty vessel being handed around, mess it up. Change the course of time and have it happen through you.

Be the person in the meeting who goes, that doesn't make sense to me, or I see it a different way, or hey, I'd love to know what this person's thinking about. Or could we approach it this way? Or this is how I'm hearing what you're saying is that, what do you think about that? Whenever we have things happen through us, a couple of things happen. Number one, you change everybody else's course of action. But maybe more important, and more importantly, as I always talk about the power of doing selfish things, it changes the course of your pathway.

I don't much anymore, but I spent a good chapter in my life facilitating movement. You can think of me as a glorified fitness coach back in the day, trying to change the systems of how we approach our physical body and physical state. Like Matthew said, the discomfort initiates change. Those types of things send me off, right? Because I go, yeah, we've lived in a world that says, if you're not getting uncomfortable, you're not growing. And I go, bull poo. By golly. People who walk into the gym and never miss a Monday and always show up and give everything they got and these types of things, the number one thing that they need is comfort.

The number one thing that they need is slowing down, stopping, taking the complimentary pathway to allow all the things to be full. Because we're full beings, we need all of the things. So some of the things. One of the things I would often say in the fitness space is I would, with joy and smiles on my face, I would shout out to everybody in the room, remember, this is all your fault. They would kind of look at me and they would go. I go, no. What I mean by that is anything that's happening here is a choice that you're making.

So if right now you are pushing, when your body's saying don't, or when you're not pushing and your body's saying, let's fly, let's dance, let's play, let's challenge, like, all those things are choices by that person. Here's the deal. It's a great analogy for life. The fitness coach is the one at the microphone, the one who apparently has the power in the room, who's saying, I'm gonna do all these things to you, in reality, it's a fallacy. The people who are perceived to have power don't have any more power than the power that's given to them in the space.

So if all of a sudden we go, hey, that's right. If the fitness coach goes, here's a heavier set of weights. Do you want to pick them up? I always start. I always love saying, no, no, I don't. 1 more, I always smile to them. I go, I'm not giving you anything. I'm not here for you. I'm here for me. And sometimes they go. And I go, am I wrong? Like, am I supposed to be here for you, or am I supposed to be here for me? Because I'll tell you the people who inspire me the most, if you really are wanting to inspire others, do the thing that serves you best, because it'll teach them to do the same.

If you want to inspire others, make the big mistake in the middle of the meeting and then move on without feeling bad about it. Because you'll teach other people that the mistake is not the thing that should slow you down or stop you. Y' all let life happen through you rather than to you and see what happens. Because even though you got to get up every morning with a smile on your face and show the world, you don't have to get up every morning to smile on your face. You can wake up with weight and smile and bags under your eyes and still positively impact everything that's going on through you, around you, in you, outside of you.

And yet still glean those wonderful little moments. Because as Carol says, you're gonna find that you're beautiful just as you feel. And I agree with that. How about you? I'll see you tomorrow. I have often asked myself the reason for the sadness.