Prepare Your Leadership

Hello. Happy Monday. Give it a minute here. Wait for some folks to join. I'm a little, little down today after the Vikings game last night. Pretty, pretty disappointing outcome. Just give it about one more minute. Hello, Jen, Welcome. Happy Monday. Sit up. Yeah. First Monday of the year. Crazy to think. Jules, welcome. Hi. Okay, let's start today. Let's start this live, how I always start every live stream with the three things of three. So just reflect on what are three things that you are feeling right now?

Could be emotions, sensations. Any of these thoughts may be racing through your head. What are three things that you are noticing, feeling, recognizing right now? Just a way to ground ourselves halfway through the day today on a Monday, kind of allowing this time to be a reset of our day so we can attack the second half of our day. You'll be up in Duluth Jewels exciting next week. Awesome. Hopefully be warmer. It's been about zero degrees past week, so hopefully be a little bit warmer when you, when you come up.

Okay, so three things that we are feeling then what are three intentions that we have for the rest of the day today? What are three intentions? Could be a goal that you want to get, could be a feeling that we want to feel. Could be anything. What are three intentions that we have for the rest of the day? Maybe it's to reconnect with somebody. What are three intentions that you have? And lastly, what are three gratitudes that you have? Could be from the weekend, could be from morning or going forward this week.

What are three things that you are grateful for? Okay, awesome. Kind of use this time to reset and just listen. Today I'll be sharing an article from last year, 2024 from some German psychologists, Koch, Nasher, Shoshen and Volker and Sonentag. It's about exercising after work and being able to have that motivation to go and exercise after a stressful day. So the study explores a phenomenon called the recovery paradox, where even though that physical exercise is essential for reducing stress and helping with well being, you know, a source of recovery, employees are less likely to engage in exercise after a stressful workday.

So why is that? You know, so why is that? They looked at two potential, two types of stress that people face during work, which is workload. So having a lot of things to do or then not control, like having to control yourself all day, like not telling your annoying colleague to do, to do something, you know, having to control yourself, not, you know, just emotion regulation, dealing with the stress. So having to control everything all day so you know, the actual workload and then the Stress of losing, you know, the cognitive resources we've talked about before.

So what did they find was the major key for employees to be able to go and work out after work? And it's that detachment. So it's not about. They didn't find it. It doesn't matter how stressed you are, but it's whether you can mentally switch off from work to not work right after work. So if you still think about that, like annoying email or maybe a tomorrow's presentation, you know, not that you have to get it done, but just, you know, stress that it's coming up, you're less likely to go and exercise.

So it kind of goes a stressful day, can't stop thinking about work, then you're less likely to go and exercise. So what is this? So exercise and detachment, you know, positively help reduce fatigue, but since we feel stressed out, we're less likely to go and do it. And actually found kind of a sub interesting fact they found was that in the short term, actually you might be a little bit more tired the next morning if you go and work out when you're stressed from work. But long term, you're actually going to have more energy and heightened, well, being from working out.

So what does this really all mean for you? If you want to get, you know, not skip the gym and go, to be able to go work out consistently and get that routine after work, it's all about detaching from the work itself and being able to turn that off. So maybe you could do changing out of your work clothes, taking a different route home, listen to a music or podcast. It's kind of some ways that maybe you can switch off that work mode into, you know, turning it off and going to be able to go and exercise.

So basically doing anything to help you mentally clock out from work. And then if you're a manager of somebody, you can try avoiding giving tasks at the end of the day so your employees can detach from their work and are more likely to go and exercise. Or I'm kind of saying exercise as any sort of recovery thing. So maybe that's just gardening for you. So yeah, so maybe. So it's not giving that task at the end of the day and then encouraging activities to promote that detachment, like flexible work hour boundaries and relaxation breaks.

So just at the end of the day, you're not lazy for struggling to exercise after a stressful day. It's not a lazy thing for you to do. You just need to turn off that detachment. It's that detachment from the work and the stress that has been shown to promote exercise. So while, you know, it was thought before that exercise can help detach from work, it's kind of a full circle effect where you need to be able to detach from work to exercise to help recover better in the long term. So that's just an important part of detachment, going back to mindfulness that connects to letting go and those ideas.

So it's all a practice on, you know, controlling attention and focus, you know, foundations of mindfulness. I'll read your comments now. I kind of, I saw them pop up, but I didn't address them. Thank you. Speak Wonder. Yes. There's a great conversation. I enjoyed it. I think we should, we should have some more of those going forward here in 2025. That's exactly what I did. Hectic, stressful day. Exactly. Yeah. Working out prior. I do that too. Except sometimes it's tough getting up, getting up early.

But I think it's a great way to accomplish something good at the beginning of the day. But yeah, and then if you do skip that, you know, afternoon workout, just remember it's not because of you lazy, it's just being able to turn off the stress from work. Coffee, coffee, coffee. Yes, exactly. Caffeine early in the day gets me up too. So yeah, that's all I've got here for Monday, January 6th. First Cadre of the of 2025 for me. So I hope to see you next Monday. Check out all of the live streams going on today.

You can click on the little calendar app. I know Nick Hansen always follows me up at 2 with take a walk with Nick. So stay on Cadre. Stay connected. Have a great rest of your week. I'll see you next Monday. Thanks for joining everyone. Bye.