What’s In Your Toolbox?

You are live. Hi, everyone. It's Tuesday. It blows my mind how quickly Tuesdays roll around. Yesterday was Monday. Well, President's day. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. So most of us had some time off. I know my kids did. We worked. But I used it as a really great marketing technique, though, because that's true if you don't know us. Hi. My name is Mary. This is Jill, also known as Jilly P. Jill Peterson. Yep. And we own a company called Girls Mentorship. We teach life and personal development skills to teen and tween girls, and we have summer camp.

So yesterday during President's day. Hi. Hi, Risa. Hi, junk food junkie. During president's day, I said, I'm sure your kids are home, and if you don't want this to be your reality come summer, you better get them signed up for our summer camp so straight. It was brilliant. Any hooser? Just real life. I want to clear something really quick. Cause I feel like I see it in my face. I had a friend lose an animal, Risa. You know who I'm talking about? And that animal was, like, my fourth. I have three dogs of my own.

He was, like, my fourth fur child. And the news came very heavy and very quickly, and my eyes get really puffy when I cry. So I just. I want to be open about that, because this is our lived experience. The last 24 hours have been really difficult for me in that. And we all go through stuff, and we're human, and it's nice to share it with other people who are going through things on the other side of the screen, too, so. And just because it's an animal doesn't make it any easier. I know that sometimes if you don't have kids, your kids become your pets and the ones that you love the most.

So, yeah, it's never easy to lose anything that you love, and. Yeah, and I. My fur nephew. Baby, that's a good. My fur nephew. Well, and I reached out to Mary just knowing that she was very deeply connected to this animal, and she was like, I just am sad. And I'm like, I want you to be sad because it's part of the grieving process. It's part of healing and not pretending like, oh, gosh, it's just a dog. It's okay. No, I want you to be sad, and it's okay to have sad and bad days. We are human. And just giving her the space to process and sit with all of the emotions that come with news like that.

And I feel so grateful to be a part of Cadre and the Cadre sphere because people like Jill and Jungkook, junkie, Risa, everyone else that's on here because I literally got a text from Jill yesterday at, like, 630 that was like, I haven't wanted to bug you, but I wanted to check in and I wanted to order you some dinner. But the restaurant that I chose doesn't come to you. It's like I'm in the boonies. I'm not. I'm just a little farther away from where she is. Next time, I'll choose a different restaurant.

But she sent me a $25 venmo just to go get dinner and, you know, a sweet treat or whatever. It's people like that, like her and people like all of you that are in this community that care about humanity and whether it's little to me or big to somebody else, like, we care about each other's well being. And I'm not sure that I'm part of another community that cares this deeply about people. And that is 100% why I feel like it's okay to be as vulnerable as I am right now and just showcasing sadness and a couple of tears.

So thank you all for giving me the space and the grace. And thank you, Jill. I hope you guys have jills in your life. It's really something special, because not only do we get to really support one another in the sad times, we get to do life together, period. That includes what she just said in terms of the highs and the lows. And outside of what happened yesterday or the news that I found out yesterday, we're riding this. This crazy train called summer camp in girls mentorship. And it has us reflecting on one little word called capacity.

Capacity. And that really just means your ability to take on more. How are you handling things? How are you recovering from things? How are you rebounding from things? And we've noticed in ourselves that our capacity has completely expanded over the last three years. And it's been a really cool call out from two girls who started a summer camp in the summer of 2022, which was two half days. It was a Wednesday, nine to one and a Thursday, nine to one. And we did it for six weeks. Separate sessions.

We were exhausted. We were. We were half days. Half days. And then we had days in between to break, to break and recover, to come back and do it again. But I think what was cool about that specific year was that we did it. We proved it. We proved it. We did it, and we proved it. And from that first year, we got better the second year. Last year, we did three weeks instead of six weeks, but we did full days. m. m. We got there from like 730 and left between 430 and five some days. And we did that for an entire week.

And we repeated that for three weeks. And we built in weeks in between to rest because we learned. Skip week. Skip week. We learned. So this year, we're like, okay, we did it. We were exhausted, of course. But now as we're building out this year's summer camp, 2024, we're gonna do six weeks full weeks. And we know that we don't wanna do summer camp alone. And, risa, you who are watching us right now, we're a big piece of summer camp. Year one and year two of building and creating and the culture of what it is today.

Junk food junkie. Just say it. You were walking zombies. We were not only walking zombies, we were like, super sensitive walking zombies as well. Very much so. Week two really tested us with the campers that came in, and we sat out in the parking lot one afternoon, I think it was the Wednesday, and cried together. We were like, do you think they would know if we just didn't come back? Cause these kids tested us. And lo and behold, luckily, we didn't do that. We're women of our word. We came back on Thursday and we finished out the week really strong.

The kids really did come around after a couple of very vulnerable exercises that we had them do. So, yes, we were absolutely walking zombies, 100%. I don't think I moved for, like, two weeks after we completed. I literally couldn't move. But as Jo was just saying, like, our capacity has completely expanded. And our question, or the reason we're talking this through and why it's so cool is you'll never know what your capacity can expand to if you're not willing to push the bounds of what's comfortable for you.

Yes, that can be considered your comfort zone, but you also don't know what your comfort zone is unless you know what your comfort zone is. We had no idea what throwing a summer camp would lead to, and it's led to this. We are beside ourselves with the families that are signing up. You guys, fun fact, this will forever go down in girls mentorship history. As a fun fact, we didn't sell our first ticket for summer camp last year until February 27. That's another week. Ticket sales didn't go on sale for another week.

We've sold 20 tickets already, and it's incredible that word has gotten around. People are talking about the experience that we've created and cultivated for their girls and just reading the questionnaire. When people buy a ticket, we have questions for them and reading, we were a referral from this family. They said it was magical last year, or my daughter loved it this year. She hasn't stopped talking about coming back. Like, those type of things are really cool. And we wouldn't have ever known that if we didn't take the leap of faith to expand our capacity with that very first year.

And I think what we're trying in us sharing our experience with you, it for you to look within, at yourself to say, okay, what am I celebrating within my own capacity? Maybe it's in your health journey, maybe for you. You haven't ever worked out, let's say, for most of your life. And really this past year, you've gotten into health and wellness for you. So for you to look back to say, man, I started at nothing, and now look at where I'm at. Your capacity has grown, or maybe in your relationships or maybe in your job, or maybe it's within your spirituality or your faith.

Capacity is such a beautiful thing. And sometimes capacity is also tied, in my opinion, it's tied into overwhelm. Overwhelm is, in my opinion, again, it's very neutral. You can take overwhelm to be, like, healthy, where you're like, oh, my gosh, there's a lot of energy going, and I'm juggling and doing a lot of things. Or it can be unhealthy where it takes you down. You get resentful, you're exhausted, you're frustrated. So I think, too, as you're growing and stretching in all of these areas of your life, check in with how you're feeling.

Is the overwhelm serving you? And can you look at it as a positive? If it is, if it is a positive? Because for me, we are overwhelmed with a lot of things to do. But again, if this was us last year, it might feel overwhelming in a negative way this year, because of our capacity, this overwhelm, and our experience is energizing. And we're like, oh, my gosh, we are doing things. We're doing things. We're moving the needle forward, and it feels really exciting. Well, and to your point, junk food junkie, we have looked inside ourselves and said, we've had that really difficult conversation, looking in the mirror and saying, I can do this.

I can do this. And honestly, one of the questions that we love the most is, what's the worst that could happen. Right. We in our human nature, love to go to the worst case scenario, and we would challenge you to say those things out loud, like, get to the nitty gritty. What is the absolute worst, worst, worst thing that could happen? Am I going to end up homeless? Am I going to end up friendless? Right? Like, there's all of these possibilities that our mind conjures up. And realistically, when you say them out loud, they're kind of silly because none of those things are actually going to happen.

Right. Especially if you put the fail safes in place. There's reassurances that you can give yourself to make sure, like, the. If this, then that. Like, be prepared. We're not saying just go out there and test your capacity without actually preparing yourself. We prepared ourselves by doing one little step at a time. And that. That's the point. We often look at our goals and they're these huge things, but we forget that to get to those huge accomplishments, you have to take one little piece of action.

And maybe that little piece of action isn't exactly a step forward. Maybe it's a lateral step. Maybe one day you took three steps back. All of that is okay as long as your eyes are still on the prize in terms of what it looks like to reach new levels of capacity. And that's subjective, right? That's not an objective thing. Our capacity looks a lot different than your capacity. And that is okay. Absolutely. There is no comparison in sitting across the screen from one another being like, man, I wish I had what they had, or I want that, but I can't do it.

You know, it's not in a comparison. It's an empowerment to just say, where do you want to grow your capacity? Because you're capable, you're able of to do so. And the fact that we are still living and breathing and enjoying these days as they come is such a gift. So utilizing each day as a gift to be better, to go after your goals, and to live a life that you truly love. And the worst case scenario is failure, but. Right. We have a podcast called what's the lesson? Wtl for short, where we take our WTf moments would.

Which could stand for what the failure. Oh, it could. What the failure. And turn them into our lessons because we don't learn anything unless we failed. Right. And it's really not a failure. It's either a win or a lesson. Right. We need to take where we've stumbled, where we've fallen and learned something from that, or else we'll keep failing in the same way. Life will keep presenting the same situation in different forms for you to be able to learn the lesson and move past it. I often compare it to a game of Mario, right?

You have to beat the different levels in order to get to the next best level and eventually win the game. Whatever. When the game looks like to you, you still have to move up levels to get there well. And think of, like, a. What the failure? What the failure? What the failure? I'm thinking of, like, of the game Mario, too. You know, there's like the little mushrooms or the little things that you know. And think of those as people that can support you in. In your journey. Right? You know, step on a mushroom, you grow two times bigger.

Or you go faster. You go faster. I mean, there's so many things. I love this analogy. Love a good analogy. Loved Mario. Perfect. Hundred percent. Well, you guys, thanks for hanging with us. And don't forget, there's incredible creators coming on all the time to meet you where you are in your wellness journey. So plug in this week when you need some inspiration or you want to connect with the Cadre sphere. We got you. And we're excited to hear more of your goals, what you guys are working on. So drop, drop in.

Drop in. Let us know in the community feed. Let us know how we can best support one another, because we are on this journey together. We are on this journey together. We will see you guys on the next episode of Toolbox Tuesday. Bye, everyone. Have a great day. Oh, goodbye.