Leading With Authenticity ✨ Reconnect

Hey Monday, how we doing today? Thought I'd pull a JC and have some music in the background to get started this afternoon on this beautiful Monday. We haven't hung out before, my name is Jean Nichels, I'm excited to be here. Always always excited. If you ever just find that song that when you hear it, it just makes you move and do the music, it makes you feel just a little bit lighter, just a little bit more free. This song is one of those songs for me, it's actually called Hope. Hello hello Hallease, how you doing today?

Happy Monday. Quick heads up, Kali's teaching my class tomorrow but you'll see me in the morning anyway. A little back twinge, I hope you guys are having a good Monday. Welcome back to a new week, a new start, a fresh day. As I mentioned, music is something that truly inspires me, so I use music often as a way to reconnect to myself. The song that I was listening to when I was logging in here is called Hope. It's by this group called Camel Fat, P-H-A-T, it's kind of a funny name, and Max Milner, but together they have a unique way to create a flow of energy, so sharing that with you.

When I think about reconnecting, there's two directions or paths that I want to go in our conversation for today. The first is reconnecting with ourselves. So my question for you is, what do you do to connect to yourself? And do you actively try to do that? I'm listening to an audio book and I'll post a photo of the book in the chat, but it really is just about that, connecting into the world, connecting into space, connecting to your breath, connecting to the trees that are around you and the bird sounds that you hear.

So when I started, I did the post and put it in the comments, reconnecting, it 's about connecting with people that make you feel safe, make you feel comfort, maybe a mentor or friend. But I look at reconnecting in both ways, and here's why I say this, "Hey Cam, how you doing today? Happy Monday." Here's why I'm saying one, reconnect with yourself and two, reconnect with others and why both are really important. So I tweaked my back, and the last time I hurt my back was when I fell out full horse versus we were racing down a trail many years ago.

But I was teaching a class last week. I teach indoor cycling classes if you don't know who I am, and a couple of songs into the class I could feel one of the discs in my back go out. And I went through the class and I taught through it anyway, and rested, got adjusted by my chiropractor, and then on Friday morning, a really fun, amazing class. Third song in, it happened again, and I've never had it happen before in what a week, and the last time it happened was about a year ago. So why this is important is when I was at my chiropractor today, she knows me quite well, and she's said to me, "Gene, you have a really high passion for finishing something you've started."

She's like, "I've watched you do things that would be hard for most people on a regular day, but you've done them injured, and you've done them well." So I have an innate ability to push through so that I can create the experience for other people or to accomplish a goal. But what she said to me is stuck, and it was interesting that she said this to me about an hour ago, is she said, "You have to take two days off of teaching, which is really hard for me to do, because I love what I do, so I'm really going to take one and a half off."

But she said, "In that time, you need to spend time reconnecting back into your own body and really feeling what's going on, because some of what is happening with your back is energetic." And that resonates with me because I'm a Reiki master and energy worker, and it ties into the book that I'm listening to, which I'm going to post in the feed, so I 'm not going to tell you on here, I'm just going to post it in the feed, and it's all about connecting into the world and the spaces around you. So it made me pause because I had said this topic a couple of weeks ago for today, and I find it always curious and fascinating how the universe or whatever you believe, when you listen, you pay attention, it sends you information that you need just in time.

So reconnecting to ourselves, reconnecting to our own energy source, our own bodies, our own heart, can be just as valuable as connecting with someone that inspires you. So I wanted to do a minor plot twist in our conversation today. To really offer up the invitation, are you listening to yourself? Are you listening to your body? Are you listening to your energy? Are you listening to the stories that you're telling yourself in your mind? And I've said this many times, and I'll repeat it if you're new to me.

Our heart is the mediator between our head and our hands, and energetically this is science. The megahertz energy of our heart is higher than that of our brain. So that tells us our energy epicenter truly is in our heart. And I find that when I stop listening to my body and I forge ahead to achieve the thing or support everybody else around me, which I'm really been told I'm a good at. So therefore I'll say that I'm good at it because I've gotten a lot of feedback that way. I'm not saying it from a place of ego, just saying it from a place of feedback that I've received, that I have an innate ability to be able to hold space for people.

But what I find is I oftentimes will forget in the stressful times to hold space for me. So I offer that imitation for you as well. So as you're thinking about reconnecting, how might you, in the transition of seasons, fall season, a season to harvest, a season to slow down and pause and reflect and celebrate how far we've come, this month of September, a month of nine, which is a month of abundance, to take that pause to reconnect to yourself. Now the original intention for today's conversation was about reconnecting with people that lift us up, that inspires us.

So I'm going to ask if you're not driving or using some sort of machinery, type in the chat, either a name or the role that they played in your life. Who is someone in your life that at one time inspired you, that you've lost track of? Who's that person or that group of people, somebody that you really love and love having in your life, but somewhere along the way you've lost connection. So I have three people that mean a ton to me. They're more than just three, but these three have gone through some really big things with me.

And none of them, oh, I lied. One of them lives here in Minneapolis with me. The other two live out of state, one lives in Florida, one lives in Nashville, and each of them are people that when I'm with them, I feel lighter, I feel free to simply be exactly who I am, and I can verbally vomit everything that I'm carrying in my heart or on my shoulders, and they won't judge me, they'll just hold space and we'll be there together. And it's funny because I texted one of them today and all I said is I miss you, I love you, and I can't wait to connect with you.

And then they always respond, and then we sort of chat. But the significant part of that is right now I'm sitting in our cycle bar studio and our front lobby, and I needed to just stop and quick and drop something off. And here's what's cool. So we just celebrated or in the process of celebrating our non-year anniversary . There's that magic number again. And when I think back over the nine years of our story as a studio, we are still alive after COVID. We are in the heart of where the George Floyd Revolution happened, he speak wonder.

So there was a lot that caused a shift in the neighborhood of which our studio is. And by all intensive thoughts and full vulnerability and honesty, we didn't know that we would be able to stay open. So the fact that we made it to a nine year anniversary, a year of abundance, the number nine is truly a blessing. But when I think back, I think back to people that wrote with us before the pandemic, people who rented bikes from us during the pandemic, the team and the instructors and the staff that we had.

So here's what I did over the weekend. Over the weekend, because it's a year of nine, a year of an abundance and nine is my favorite number, I sent out nine videos or voice texts to people who were part of the story that I haven't talked to in years, some of them. Two girls were really great friends and they were on our team and they live in different cities now and are doing such amazing things, but they were part of our story and I sent them a video together on a text together because they know that they also haven 't connected in a long time.

I sent a video to a group of seven people who used to ride at the studio and every Wednesday night for three years, we would go to happy hour after my Wednesday night class . And I, in fact, have officiated two of the weddings of people in that chat. And so it's just been a journey. And so when I think about reconnecting with people who at one time were super important in our life, that's what I did over the weekend. And so finding that way, finding a fond memory of a group that was once really important to you, that maybe you outgrew or maybe the world changed around you and caused a shift, not a break, just a shift.

People's lives plot twist all the time. And so what I tell people often is right now we have this moment together. Whoever joins in on this call, we have this moment. This is our lived moment together. And I tell this to the team at the studio and the people that ride at the studio. This is our collective shared moment. And my hope is a year from now, two years from now, five years from now, that when people look back on this moment in time, the moment they shared with this community or this group or collective of people, that they look back and they remember something fond.

They remember maybe a transformation or that best friend that they met and how they met was because their story started here or maybe they learned to evolve a skill or a talent. They didn't know that they had because we invested in their learning. Whatever it is, we have these moments in time. Just like nine years ago, we had the start of a story. So my invitation to you is whether you wrote in the chat or not, somebody you want to reconnect with, my invitation to you is to think back. Think back to that first job.

Think back to five years ago, a year ago, an old trainer, an old teacher, an old mentor. How might you reestablish that connection? And at the very least, how might you reach out to that connection to let them know how you inspired, they inspired you and made an impact in your future self, which is your today self because the seeds we plant are what we invest in. So those connections, they invested in us. We invested in them. And those stories have grown, they've grown through the dirt, they've cracked through a shell, they've cracked through the surface.

They found a light and they started to blast them and grow. So as I started today, playing this song called Hope, I'm spotify by a group called Camel Fat and Max Milner, I want to end with that hope. Hope for that reconnection, hope for that future version of ourselves. Think about the people that are sharing this moment with you right now. How might we plant some seeds so that nine years from now or a month from now, they look back and they cherish that moment in time. So two tracks today, finding the opportunity to reconnect with ourselves and investing in ourselves and reconnecting with those people who helped us become who we are today in this moment, this lived moment.

And maybe just letting them know they made a difference. You never know what might come back from them. I hope you all have a great day. I love being here with you, spending time with you. Just know that you are loved and that we are here, that cadre sphere will be here to support you in so many different ways. And look for me to post in the cadre sphere feed, the name of the book that I'm listening to on audiobook, and I'll post a couple of things that I've loved about it so far. Have the best day.