Leading With Love 💕

Hello, Cadre sphere. Anila here. Wednesday evening. Wednesday night, bedtime. I am finding that I am much more tired this time of year. And our whole house is asleep already. Hi, Rachel. I missed someone else that just joined, but it's good to see you. Hope you're tucked in bed. I'm gonna head up to bed soon. My name is Anila, and I have been hanging out in the Cadre sphere. Hi, Jules. Good to see you Hanging out in the Cadre sphere For a few months now. I feel like it might be six months. And here I am on an attempt to lead with love.

Hi, Colleen. So last week I didn't make it because I had to put myself first. I was feeling exhausted, I think ever since this, like, the time change and it getting so dark so early here in Minneapolis. I'm sure in other places the same thing is happening. My body's just feeling so much more tired by this time of day and been super stressed about trying to get everything done between Thanksgiving and this Christmas holiday coming up. And just like those last. These last three weeks have just been, like, so compressed, but so much stuff trying to get done that I was just completely wiped out last week.

And I had to choose myself. I had to take rest. Good evening. Speak, Wonder. How are you? Must be dark there too, in Pennsylvania. Cold. Hopefully you're finding some warmth. So right now I. Well, I'm coming to you with my lived experience on a journey through my. On a journey through my own mental health healing, spiritual healing, physical healing, and also as an entrepreneur and a tech founder helping people with a specific mental health condition that I've suffered from for a very long time called trichotillomania, which is the compulsion to pull out hair.

Speak, Wonder. Dark, cold, Foggy. Yep, I'm right there with you. That's kind of how I feel. It's like the outside here in Minneapolis. It's been gloomy, gray, little chilly, some beautiful, like, dustings of snow, which has been really nice. But tomorrow I think we're gonna get some weird, weird, weird weather. I don't know, we're gonna see tomorrow if school is open, basically. And so as it relates to leading with love, I feel like as children, we are taught that, oh, our parents love us, oh, our loved ones love us, but sometimes we don't actually, like, feel that.

And so leading with love first is about redefining and reconnecting with what love actually is. So, like, even last week, as an example, I felt pressure to. I've committed to this. I need to do this. I need to show up for my people here in the Cadre sphere. But then I flipped it and said, well, I need to also learn how to put myself first because part of my problem is I don't. And then I run myself into the ground and by taking that moment to say, you know what, I'm just not going to do this this week because I just can't.

My body is telling me I cannot. That is leading with love. And this idea of redefining what love is, I'm getting somewhere with this. I'm currently reading this book called how to Change. It's by Katie Milkman, if I remember the name correctly. She's a researcher scientist who also worked with Angela Duckworth, who is the person that brought us the book Grit and talked about fixed mindsets versus growth mindset and how people can change or not depending on their thinking and their belief systems.

And so Katie Milkman's book is also about how to change. And there's different key things that you need to kind of check the boxes on in order to actually have real lasting change. The chapters that I've read so far are about forgetting or the flip of that, which is reminding. And so as I said before, I have a mental health condition called hair pulling. It's a very subconscious condition. It's a self soothing mechanism rooted here in our reptile brain. And because we don't have control, because we don't realize it's happening, we can sit and pull for hours and hours and hours, people like me and have massive bald spots at the end of it.

It feels good in the moment, but it doesn't feel good after. And so what I've invented is a smart bracelet that brings awareness, using gesture detection and vibration to alert someone to when the behavior is happening. So that idea of forgetting it's happening, not realizing it's happening to, oh, now I'm being reminded, now I'm being, being made aware, beginning to train my own awareness, my own ability to notice that then you can make change. Then the second chapter that I just finished reading was about laziness and it was interesting because she sort of said laziness is, I mean we can all probably see in our own lives that like, oh, I do want to go to the gym, but I just don't want to get out of bed, right?

So laziness is a huge part of as an obstacle to behavior change. But she also gave some examples of laziness as a positive for behavior change. One of the ones that she shared was this idea of for 401ks for employees to actually have them opt out of that direct deposit into their 401k instead of opting in. And by having them opt out again, that creates friction to like check the box or fill out the forms to opt out. That people are like, ah, whatever. And so they're lazy. But it works for them in a positive way because it increases their ability to save for the future.

And this is what I wanted to talk to you about for real. So sorry for long winded way of getting here. When she was talking about laziness, she brought up the story Aesop's fable of the ant and the grasshopper. And if you don't know it, the ant is busy collecting food. A hundred percent speak wonder. I think there's, I think the word lazy has a lot of heaviness to it. And it's not, it's exactly what you're saying there that like lazy can mean so many different things to so many different people and not actually mean lazy.

And also lazy is like from the outside, someone looking in might be like, oh, that person is lazy. But not know that that person has a chronic fatigue, you know, health condition that makes it very difficult for them to do certain things right. And so 100%. Like when she's talking about lazy, I think it really is the lazy in the sense of like the person has the capability but chooses not to because they don't want to spend the energy, but not necessarily because they can't. Right? So the ant and the grasshopper, you know this story, but the ant in the fall is getting ready, getting food from here and there, the berries, the nuts, whatever, the trees, the seeds and making his little nest of food, getting prepared for the winter while the grasshoppers just dancing around, hanging out, having fun.

And know this story is meant to be a lesson of when you're productive, you are rewarded with, you know, in our society, the more you do, the more you are rewarded with financial reward, with recognition, yada, yada. And when you're just being, when you're just focused in kind of that joyful state, you get less of that, right? And it's, it's. And I feel like the lesson when we were growing up hearing the Ant and the grass opera, it was be prepared, it was be productive, it was be doing. But now as I'm on my spiritual journey and as I'm learning to lead with love, well, first I want to know like, which one are you?

Are you the ant? Go, go, go. Or are you the grasshopper who's Striving to just be love to know in the comments before I keep going with what I'm about to say. So I'll tell you as you answer in the comments. I'm an ant. I have been go, go, go my entire life, like, just doing a lot of different things. And I think a lot of it stems from core negative beliefs around not being worthy and trying to prove myself. But, you know, even in ad agency land. Grasshopper over here. I love it. Jules. Totally an ant.

Say more. Say more. What makes you a grasshopper? Speak Wonder. I know I listen to your sessions and I hear lots about just I can hear it in your voice sometimes, too, that, like, super mellow, chill vibe from you. But what I. What? But I'm definitely an ant. Like, I, when I worked in advertising, like, I would do my job, plus the job of, you know, the three other people around me that are on my team just to get stuff done so that we can move faster. Right. That was kind of how I was. And I'm still a lot like that.

I have stacks and stacks of sheets of paper of things I need to do, but I could thrive in chaos. I like that. This morning I had so much housework, sat down and wrote a poem. Awesome. This is exactly where I'm going, is that the ant is one spectrum of, you know, how to be of how to live. And the grasshopper is this other spectrum of how to live and to lead with love is to find that balance in between. Right. Sort of. Speak. Wonder how you're saying that even though you know you need to get something done, you're also so overwhelmed that you want to just take that moment for you to reset before you go and tackle the day.

Right. Instead of pushing through and then maybe burning out later. And so when we lead with love, I think it's really important for us to identify what state of mind we are in in that moment, whether it's the ant mode or the grasshopper mode, and try to find that balance throughout the day so that we don't. And it's getting chilly in here, so I'm going to turn my heater on. So hopefully that noise doesn't get you. But that when we lead with love, we find that middle ground and we don't allow ourselves to always be go, go, go.

And to always be so head in the clouds that we're not preparing for the. The next thing, for the future. For dinner that night. Speak. Wonder says, last night I invited a friend for a visit. Didn't apologize for the mess and lovely gift exchange. 100%. Like, just keep going, enjoy being. Living life without that feeling of, you know, fear of, oh, what are they gonna say? Are they gonna think I'm lazy for not cleaning up for them? Right. Like all these different things. But when you have such a strong bond with someone, none of that matters.

Like, we have some good friends in our neighborhood. That it's just when it's happy hour, it's happy hour. It doesn't matter if the kids toys are all over the house. It's just time to have fun together, right? So that was kind of what I wanted to share today. I was listening to the book in the car this morning, and the ant and the grasshopper really got to me. After I read, listened to the book. Then during my writing session, I do like a one hour writing in community online. This is what I chose to write about was this idea of, should we be the ant?

Should we be the grasshopper? And as I was kind of writing, the pros and cons of each came to this conclusion of we should be neither. We need to find the. The place in the middle that helps us create a life of a mix of doing and being so that ultimately we have balance. And that is the way to leading a life filled with love. Because it means that you are taking care of yourself. You are putting yourself first. You are creating moments of joy for yourself and for others. And all of that just means more love, right?

And also on that other side, it gives you space to say, I don't want to do that. I'm not gonna do that right now. I don't have to go, go, go, go, go, go. I can take time for me, that flip side. And I really think that the story that we're told and we're taught as children of produce, be productive, you know, be the ant, is a falsity. And really the true lesson in that story is to be neither one of those. Because in one situation, you're the one that overworked yourself. And then now you feel so like, you know, like you've put so much effort in that you don't want to share with someone else who may need, right?

And then on the other side, you don't pay enough attention to the real world and to the reality of your needs that you are not preparing yourself for what you need because your head's so in the clouds and so you can't be there either. You need to be in the middle and find that balance between doing and being. And when you do, it helps you live a life filled with love. And so that's what I take away from, from that story. Excuse me. And just helping process it right now as I'm talking with you, that is my goal is to spend 2025 refocusing, sticking to my values.

You know, I keep kind of bouncing in and out of these, these, these opportunities to do more. And I need to kind of keep myself back, getting back to that center spectrum to stay in a place of leading with love and serenity and peace and joy. So I hope that my rambling just now has inspired you to think a little bit more about whether you're the ant or the grasshopper and where you can choose in your life to kind of meet in the middle between the two. And looking forward to next week when I'll see you again or I think it might be Christmas so maybe I won't, I don't know, decide.

We'll decide next week. Have a good night. Stay warm out there and happy holidays. Bye.