Leading With love 💕 Take 3!

Okay, happy 2025, Anila. Here in the Cadre sphere. Oh, we're starting with some rhymes today. This is take three because I had some technical difficulties. Well, if you've never hung out with me. I am Anila. I live in Minneapolis. I am seeing some friends speaking, Wonder and Jules, and a couple of names that just jumped by and I couldn't read so fast. So if you got the chat going, give me a wave. Good evening. Good evening. Hey, hey, hey. I am Anila. I live with many mental health monsters. This is a friend's shirt from the.

From the Instagrams. And she back during 2020, during COVID days, took time to kind of design all these different monsters to represent different mental health conditions. And I don't know, I see depression here. I see trichotillomania. I got that one. Trying to read some of these other ones. Isolation, another depression. Hard to read upside down. Substance use. Yep, Been there, done that. You know who else? There's lots of other ones. But it's basically when you know you have one, you probably have other mental health conditions.

And I am here speaking from lived experience. One of them that I mentioned is trichotillomania. That's the main one that kind of ruled my life, and that is compulsive hair pulling. And I used to pull from my eyebrows and my eyelashes. And then a couple of years ago, I took control and I created a smart bracelet that helps people with that condition and started a company called Habit Aware. So now I'm a mental health tech entrepreneur as well, and I am in the Cadre sphere coming to you with my lived experience of all of the Alphabet soups of mental health conditions, but also coming from a place of hope and healing and knowing that recovery is possible.

I have been all the way down and. And I have found my way out of that hole, and I want to help others do the same. And I'm excited to see you all in this new year because good things are coming. I just know it. I have to trust in it. And when you lead with love, it just happens. So today, little story time. It is actually the first day back for my husband and I. We work together to be back full time at work after the holidays because my kids school was closed for like a whole month and a half. I don't know, it was insane.

We spent some time here in Minneapolis to do Christmasy stuff, and then we went to Orlando to go to Kennedy Space center and Universal Studios and Harry Potter World, which is really, really fun. But my kids darn School didn't start until today, so we were back to work today. And quite frankly, you know, it's our company. We work together, we're always working. So even during vacation, my husband was getting some, getting an application in that was due on Monday. And I was also working on some other things that were due very quick into the year.

And so today I snuck out on work and this was my leading with love moment today. Because what I did and I'm gonna show you here is here in Minneapolis, there is an artist, her name is Lael, and she has a studio in northeast Minneapolis, which is a huge art hub. And my kids and I have been going to her for probably two or three years. And she's into this polymer clay. And it is just amazing the detail and the level of intricacy she creates in her designs. I'm trying to see if I can get it to focus on this.

And. Ah, there we go. So there you can see is this is one of Lael's pieces of polymer clay where she created that little ladybug inside there. And this is my son trying to do a watermelon. So, you know, you can kind of just see the level of detail and where you start out. And every month she hosts with her buddy next door at the Flux Arts Building, who is a clay tile maker, they host this thing called. Oh, I'm actually forgetting what it's called. It's called Squish and squash or something like that because they're both, you know, clay medium.

And so this was the first time that I finally said, you know what? I am taking my lunch hour from 12 to 1 and I'm going to this thing. And it is leading with love. Because this is really one of the first times in my life or in my working life where I said, the work can wait. I'm gonna go do something fun for my child self, for my inner child and something joyous. And. And that's what Leading with Love is all about. I think even in. In my mental health community, the trichotillomania community, which is that's like just one of these conditions is hair pulling.

But then there's also skin picking, which is called dermatillomania, and nail biting and lots of others. And so the umbrella term is body focus behaviors. So just like the Kaju sphere is an amazing loving community of people trying to just lift each other up. We too at Habitaware have a community just for people with body focused, repetitive behaviors. And this January, we're doing a monthly challenge with all of them. And it's been incredible just to see how people berate themselves and put themselves down and, and fill their plate and kind of almost torture.

We torture ourselves with this idea of I get up from when I get up to when I go to sleep, I have to be productive and it has to be perfect. And taking a cue, right? Like I can't tell my community, well, don't do that. If I'm doing it right, I can't say, well, you know, give yourself grace and don't, you know, if you got 10 things on your plate, normally only do five when I'm putting 12 things on my plate in a day, right? So this was me beating to a different drum. This was me putting my money where my mouth is.

I don't know, you tell me in the comments. Another way of saying it, one of those idioms or sayings, right? This was me. If I want my people, the people that I care about in my community to take their plate and say, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, and just leave what's truly important to them and also make sure that on that plate is themself, right? I have to do it too. I have to lead by example. I have to practice these same things so that I can understand, well, how do you actually do it, right?

It's easy to say, oh, just don't do the 10 things. But as we know, listening to folks like Shannon and Speak wonder and you know, tons of other folks here that, well, there's a lot of other people relying on us and how can we just like walk away from, from those things? And so it's, it's really, really important to, to somehow figure out how to make that space for yourself so that you have energy, so that you have joy filling you up. Even in my world of body focus, repetitive behaviors, you know, we do coaching calls and I was on a call with someone yesterday and you know, we were talking about, oh, using fidget toys and stuff to kind of block these behaviors, right?

Like if you're playing with something, then you can't be pulling, you can't be skin picking, you can't be nail biting. And with this person, I was talking about great fidgets is a good in the moment strategy, right? Like your hands start messing around, boom, grab your fidget, play with it. But there's also these lifestyle changes that if you make these lifestyle changes, then your hands never get to this point of needing to self soothe, right? And so today this was a lifestyle change saying, I'm gonna first, I'm gonna take a lunch break and then second, I'm gonna take a lunch break and I'm gonna do something that I know my inner child's gonna love to do.

Gonna feed my soul right now. I'm gonna show myself love. And with that, then came back to my desk. First of all, in the morning, I was so productive because I knew I was gonna cut out for that hour. And then in the afternoon, I was so productive because I had just fueled myself up. And even when I got home, I got like a couple quick things done and found room to get one big thing that was on my plate that I knew my teammate was waiting on me for while my kids were at taekwondo. So I kind of, you know, made up the time elsewhere.

And that's kind of the dance we need to do, but we really, really, really need to figure out how to. Leading with love means leading with us first. Us as in like the you or the me? Like first, if that makes sense. And so this was me leading with love today. This was me finding. Finding time to go and mess around and smush around some clay and meet some new people and hear some stories about the Minneapolis Institute of Art here in town. Someone was talking about, like, I was actually present. Pleasantly surprised at how many people came to this event.

Right. Because it's a Wednesday afternoon. You know, it was pretty cool. There's like 10 people there and one person was a clay pottering teacher and she was saying that she was glad to be there and didn't have class that day to teach and that kind of thing. And so. Yeah. So my challenge to you tomorrow is what's your snack and squish? Where are you gonna find time for your childlike self? Where are you gonna find time to feed your soul and to fuel yourself so that the mental health monsters are kept at bay?

And yup, Shannon. Yep. It doesn't take hours, doesn't take days. It doesn't take money. You know, we are definitely, definitely, definitely fed this story that self care is massages and fancy nails getting done or. But self care can literally just be sitting in your car, hearing a song that you love and turning up the volume and singing with it, you know, like nobody's watching dance. Like nobody's watching or. And I gotta tell you, I really, really am blessed to have a seven year old son that just wants to play non stop.

My older son, who's 11, just wanted to read non stop and has wanted to read non stop since he was a baby. But my seven year, my younger son just always wants to play and he's like that leading with love lesson non stop of. You know, he was. He got upset today because he was like, my brother's got his book. Papa's making dinner. Whoa, my lights just went out. Hang on timers. There we go. Timers and motion sensors for you. And, you know, and I was, like, about to open my computer to check one email, and he's like, and you're on your computer.

And I was like, okay, fine. Give me two minutes to, you know, take the dog out, and by the time I'm back, have a game on the table. And we played, and it was awesome. And I don't know why I didn't allow myself the opportunity to do that before, but I'm not gonna look back. I'm gonna make up for lost time. I'm gonna lead with love. I'm gonna find time for me and my kids to fuel our souls together. So we'll be back at Lael's January 25, and if anyone's in Minneapolis and wants to come meet us, shoot me a message and I will get you the details.

It was good to see you and I'm wishing you love, strength and awareness, peace.