She says she approaches the mental health space from a peer space, from a person living life space. Listen to that fateful tale of the person who found that movement was their magic medicine. They're going to seem less magical, less sexy, but will keep you growing and going.
Steph IRWIN: On Wednesdays, we talk about that big old bucket of mental health well being. She says she approaches the mental health space from a peer space, from a person living life space. Andi Mack: Two years later and I just sneezed on Cadre for the first time.
Exercise is good for all parts of our being, for our physicality, our mentality, our spirituality, our emotionality. And yet I want to tell you a story, and this is a story that I could tell with three different main characters. Anything that sounds simple is normally something we should be quite cautious of.
Listen to that fateful tale of the person who found that movement was their magic medicine. Now let's do the things day in, day out that are going to change. They're going to seem less magical, less sexy, but will keep you growing and going. Have a great Wednesday ahead.
Well, hey, hey. Good morning, Cadre. How are we doing? I hope you are great. Normally I plop you on my steering wheel like this, but the sun is shining, so you're getting a different view of the Mazda this morning. It almost looks like I have a sunroof. I don't. I don't know what that is. Oh, I know what it is. It's the. Was that fun? It's like, oh, look, JC's sunroof. No, it's the, the visor. It is 7:00am on Wednesday morning. Sea Mercer, 900. How are doing? How's everybody on this Wednesday? Mel, good morning.
Good morning. You know, I hope that you're doing well today. I am on my way down south. Steph IRWIN. Not Savannah, Georgia south, but Medford, Minnesota South. 1% better. Nice to see you. Heading down to Medford to hold space for a group of people who work together to consider some big ideas. It's one of the hats I wear. I bring people together around the work that they do to consider how they do it and the ideas that they share in being able to do it in the way that they want to do it. Kind of sounds like what we talk about on Tuesdays, about how do we build communities and move people together.
Also kind of sounds like some professional development work, right? Things we talk about off and on. On Mondays, at the end of the day, in order to do things together. Andi Mack. We often have to consider how we're doing things internally as, as an individual first, which is what we often talk about on Saturdays. But on Wednesdays, we talk about that big old bucket of mental health well being whatever words you attach to it, but how you exist in support. I'm gonna sneeze. Maybe I won't. Maybe I will.
Oh, here it comes. I sneezed on the cod. I don't think I've ever sneezed on Cadre before. Two years later and I just sneezed on Cadre for the first time. There's always a first. But on Wednesdays when we talk about that big bucket of mental health, you'll see a lot of clinicians and therapists, counselors, professionals. But I approach the mental health space even though I live in it quite a bit from a peer space, from a person living life space, which is one of the things that makes Cadre really unique.
You hear from professionals and peers before we jump on in. I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad you're here. I know what I know and I care about you. Those 17 words I think are the perfect recipe for some really cool connections here every single day. So as we dive in, if you looked at the title of today's live stream, you may have noticed it said exercise as medicine, question mark. And you may be going, yeah, exercise. Exercise is medicine. You may be going, wait, why Is there a question mark? Or wait, no, I don't think that exercise is.
I left it vague on purpose because at the end of the day, anything that sounds simple is normally something we should be quite cautious of. Not that there isn't truth in it, but that the simplification may be diluting that truth. Movement is really good for all parts of our being, for our physicality, our mentality, our spirituality, our emotionality, all of the things. And yet I want to tell you a story, and this is a story that I could tell with three different main characters. And the story is exactly the same.
A person. I'll give you some context, construct. This person is between 40 and 60 years old. They are a male identifying human. They are white. They are former athletes in their high school college days. They're all cisgendered, straight married husbands who all have at least one child, 40 to 60 years old. And that's where the story begins. They ask if I can get a cup of coffee with them. So we go to the coffee shop. Once we're there, they start telling a story that sounds like this. JC I was in my 40s-60s and I wanted to make a change.
So I went to the boutique fitness place in the neighborhood or the country club fitness gym place in my neighborhood. And I started moving my body and it felt good. I started seeing changes and feeling changes that I wanted to see and feel. I started building a community of people who knew me and saw me and really loved when I would show up every day within the way that this fitness boutique or country club would gauge success and gamify movement. I started doing good. I started winning challenges, I started moving up leaderboards.
I started performing well and increasing speed and weight and output. I became someone that this community of people who appreciated, saw as someone who was, who was winning, who was doing the thing and progressing day after day because they were showing up. And then their body started saying, hey, we need a day off. Hey, we need to rest. Hey, we need to take it easy. Hey, we need to do less. Hey, we need to take a different option. And even though I was hearing that, I'm like, ah, maybe I just need to push through.
I just need to keep going. I just need to remember the mind Will give up before the body will. I just need to remember that pain is weakness leaving the body. I just need to. So they kept going. And as they kept going things got better. And then things went back to that place like ah, we need, we need to do something different. We need to listen, we need to take it easy. We play the long game, but we don't listen. We didn't listen. And the reason we didn't listen is because people had expectations of us.
Because we knew that innately movement was good. Movement was where we were finding ourselves. Movement was the beginning of our renaissance and our comeback story. And then one day the pain, the voice got loud enough that we had to stop. We had to go to the doctor, we had to learn what was going on. And we found out that we're hurt and we have to stop now. We have to take six weeks off, eight weeks off. We have to be in a stress boot. We have to go ahead and get surgery. We have to. So then we go, ah, we go to the gym with our head hung low and we say we need to put our membership on hold, that we're not going to be here for a bit.
And then we get procedure done and we start going through our rehab and all of a sudden we start gaining weight, we start getting depressed and we start returning to a place that we don't want to be. And then we move into cycles of humiliation, isolation and shame and we disappear from the community in the world in which we found ourselves again. So I'm sitting at the coffee shop with this person and they start crying again. This is a situation I could put three different people into. This happened to me three times so far.
I'm not surprised. And it will happen again. That these white masculine men who used to be athletes and then had life happen and then weren't athletes anymore, but then found themselves to be again. And then they didn't listen because movement is medicine. And every day show up, yada, yada, yada, then they hurt themselves and then they fell out of the system, got highly depressed and ended up worse off than they were in the first place. There's nothing about that story that is surprising. And it happens.
I have three people who randomly, on their own accord, asked me to get coffee because they knew that I kind of exist in this space. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have this exact same story. Why? Because simple sounding solutions to complex problems are the root of all shame, guilt, humiliation, isolation, all the things. Movement is good. Addiction to anything is bad. That's why whenever I hear movement is medicine. I go, yeah, and you can overdose on medicine pretty quick. We hear things like drink a gallon of water a day.
And there are countless stories of people who have over saturated their bodies, literally killing themselves by sitting with their water bottle and drowning by drinking too much water. Anything, or too much of anything can be bad. Thinking that there is the magic pill is going to lead you to a place where you realize there isn't. But the beautiful thing is all three of these people who I sat down with, who I referenced in this story, through a longer pathway than was needed, found themselves to a place of movement in moderation can bring joy.
Anything that brings goodness within the context of when it is serving us is wonderful. But if you find your worth within this over commitment to something, sooner or later you're going to find that you placed your worth outside of yourself and in this magical thing. And you will come probably crashing down or you'll have to make compromises in order to hold on to that thing holding the magic. Here's the deal. You're magical. Here's the deal. The thing that you are experiencing is not on the outside, but it's in you.
It's easier to think that the thing over there is the magical pen chant or, you know, Rabbit's foot, that's, that's, that's carrying you through. But no, I will always be that reminder voice here and Cadre will be amplifying it that you are enough, that you have the magical point potion in you and it's going to move so matter where you are, no matter what's going on today. Listen to that fateful tale of the person who found that movement was their magic medicine and that they all overdosed on it and that they all came crashing down.
Yet on the other side, they're like, huh? Okay, lesson learned. Now let's do the things day in, day out that are going to change. They're going to seem less magical, less sexy, that are going to keep you growing and going. Y' all have a great Wednesday ahead. I will be back tomorrow morning. Speak, Wonder Nikki Amar. Nice to see you bopping on in here today as well. Have a good one, y'. All. Peace.
