Monday Motivation

Happy Monday, Cadre crew. Gosh, I apologize. My first live didn't work out exactly how I want planned this morning, so here I am for round two. So excited to be here this Monday afternoon here at Cadre and excited to share a story with you today. So I'm just waiting for the notification to go that shows that we're all live here and showing up accordingly. There we go. And boom, we are live. So I wanted to share a story today with you that really just kind of gave me a whole new sense of purpose and meaning today that I hope that you can take with you and drive some sort of internal inspiration, motivation, or even particularly change.

Happy Monday to you, too, Risa. So I hope everybody had an amazing thanksgiving. I had the privilege to head up north, which is in northern Minnesota on the Iron Range, to visit my ailing father in law. And my ailing father in law has been suffering. He was diagnosed with MS in his late twenties, and unfortunately, the disease is getting the best of him today, and he's currently at the nursing home. And so the kids and myself and my wife, you know, had an opportunity to, you know, go up and visit him and spend some amazing quality time with him.

And we got some. We played uno. We did the puzzles. We did all of it. And it was just such a joy. He's really such a mentor for me, is hey to you, too, Nick. He's just. He's such a mentor to me, as well as an inspiration. Reaching your goals and leading as some of our friends in this space, the motivational space. Talk about being those inspirational billionaires and inspirational leaders, and he's every part of that. As a probation officer for years and years and years, he really showed up and led his family in ways that I can only hope to someday as well.

But this is a story that I wanted to share with you specifically. M had already left with the kids. I stayed back one more additional day to hang out with him and just talk and have some really good heart to heart conversations that were deeper than sometimes what happens in surface level with the kids. He asked me some hard questions, and I asked him some hard questions. Where it went and where led the conversation to, ultimately, was. He was talking about, you know, the death sentence that, you know, he was under in the nursing home, and, you know, that was his verbiage was.

Was the death sentence. And he said how that. How he used key word, how he used to look at it, right. How he used to look at it was, you know, through that. That death sentence eyes and how you know, he, he had the opportunity kind of like live into that for a week or two weeks while he was early on at the nursing home of living into that death sentence. And he said, I just, I can't, I can't continue to live with this as my mindset in the nursing home. And so he changed his mindset. And so what he said is this, I'm going to learn something new every single day.

Although my, my physical, my legs are failing me, my body's failing me physically, mentally, I'm still so strong, and I'm going to push myself mentally to learn something new every single day. He's as smart as it gets. He has three amazing children that he's raised with his wife that lead off of, definitely feed off of his energy and seeing how he is taking this stage of his life as an incredible learning opportunity each and every day, you know, as he does, you know, near the end of his life, I just can't think.

Is anything more admirable to see your grandchildren show up? And, you know, we played this game where we go around and everybody has to say a word, right? So I would say train and my son would say track and the next one would say caboose. And you always had to keep it going. He had 3 seconds, and then it would just keep going around and around and around. But to see, you know, how just smart is a tack that he's, you know, how quick he is and how fast he is still to do that and to learn and read through all of his books, and I just can't help but to think, like, you know, how are you writing your story?

You know, how are you showing up for your story? You know, are you, are you calling some of your things, whatever those might be that show up in your life a death sentence, are you churning your mindset to, you know, maybe I'm going to learn through this or maybe this is an opportunity for growth. If you take a look at somebody who's at the end stage of their life, fighting through Ms and all the battles that that might mean for them and taking it as each day as a growth opportunity of learning and personal development and, you know, using that mindset to finish out one's life, and here we are in our twenties and thirties and forties and fifties, and I just can't help but to think, like, how are you showing up with some of your things where your mindset is?

And if I think that if we only had the opportunity to review each one of ourselves and ask, like, his name is Primo, that's his nickname is Primo. And now you have that for the rest of your life. But can we have some primo in all of us? Can we show up from that spiritual side of growth and learning and development? And I think if we could all do that in some of our deepest and darkest and toughest times, I think this world would be a different place. So, yeah, it's just, it was one of those things, this.

This last few days that, you know, really hit me in a different way. And, you know, I'm just so proud of him, and I'm so proud that he's, you know, the grandparent, one of the grandparents to my children, and that that's how they can see their grandpa in a nursing home and how he's showing up, not only for them, but for each other and us. I think it means so much to those kids, and it's how they're always going to remember him, is that grandpa showed up in a different way. And I think we can all take something from this today and figure out how you're going to show up to some of those dark.

Maybe it's the best moments, and maybe it's the toughest of moments, but always think about that story. And so, again, taking a death sense and turning into a learning opportunity. Take care. Y'all have the best Monday. Don't let a minute go. And how are you going to frame your story? Take care of each other. All right. Bye, one another. Love you all here at Kadre. Bye.