Your Resilience Coaching Studio

Hello, Cadre Sphere. Good evening, I'm Rick Cram and welcome to your Resilience coaching studio. I'm coming to you from Metro West Boston, about half an hour outside of Boston, if there is no traffic. And it's good to be with you. This. Here we are mid October and there are 79 days left in 2025. What we're going to talk about is how consistency, celebrating consistency builds consistency. And I've got a question for you. Since we're here to talk about, to encourage and to find ways of strengthening each of our own unique ways of being resilient, how would you rate your resilience in this moment?

A scale of 1 to 10. 10 would mean your resilience is really flowing, it's strong, it's there, you're aware of it and you can tap into it. Hopefully no one's going to be down around 1, but if you are at 1, if your resilience is low, you're right where you belong. Hello again, everyone. So glad that you're here. And if I may go ahead and share the number, how would you rate your consistency, your resiliency, on a scale of 1 to 10, how strong is it right now? And where in the world are you? I'm in the town of Natick, about half an hour west of Boston, and hello, Speak Wonder.

Hello, Kathy. I'm glad you're here. And it's, it's a two. Thank you very much for sharing that. I'd like to pledge to you that what we're going to experience is an acknowledgement of that. Maybe we, and maybe you in particular will understand why it's a 2. Knowing you as I do, you already do. But we'll see it increase by some measure during our time together, primarily because we're going to celebrate our. What we do. We're going to celebrate the consistency of being resilient, because when we celebrate it, it's creating more and more of a pattern that ends up building consistency.

You're going to be able to tap into it. And so let me ask you, Jules. Hello, Northern Minnesota, right at the Canadian border. Wow. I used to fly into Minneapolis twice a month for a couple of years when I was making business trips there from Chicago. And I loved seeing all the lakes when I was coming in for a landing. Those 10,000 lakes, it's such beautiful country and all the people there, you're all wonderful. So I'm glad that you're here. And the question for us now is how would you rate your resiliency in this moment.

If it's low, go ahead and be honest. If it's feeling high, as high as a 10, please go ahead and acknowledge that and celebrate it. What we're going to take a look at and I'll share with you, Kathy, if I may. And Jules, if you care to share, what is your, what is your. How would you rate your resilience? Anyone else's who might be joining us? Even if you don't share the number, give some thought as to why is it what it is? Here's how my day has gone. I Woke up around 4:30 this morning, couldn't get back to sleep, and about 10 minutes later I had a blast of pain in my left knee.

Perhaps you've seen some of the blasts that I have when I'm on here. This one was something that's familiar, but it was also different. I haven't had this particular kind of pain. It felt like lightning vertically going through the left side, the outside of my left knee. And this is all stemming from the damage done during the seventh surgery to the left knee in 2019. And it was, it was beyond a 10. I literally screamed for and it kept going, kept going in waves for only maybe four or five seconds.

But I probably screamed three or four times during that and it rocked me. And so this day has been a day of progressing, feeling as though I had no resilience. I know what it's like to feel that one or that two or even a zero and to be in the pit. One of the things that I experienced through the course of the day in preparing for our time together today was thinking about what it means to me to celebrate the consistency in my own resiliency. And that's what I'd like to encourage you. I invite you to think in terms of how have you been, what have you done lately to fuel your resiliency and to celebrate it.

Growth begins by tuning in and that's our first step in the three steps of resilience. Let me catch up on your wonderful messages. Over here in Canada is to the north of Lake Erie. That's right. Not all that far. Yes. The initial injury was in my senior year of high school football, the very last game. With about two minutes to go in the game, I was a running back on offense, small enough school so that I could play both defense and offense. Coach had just signaled in, we've got two minutes to go.

We're winning handily. I'd already scored two touchdowns, ran 20, 28 times for 146 yards and coach said You've got to the varsity, those of us. You've got two plays left. In this next play, they gave me a play where I'm running the ball around to the right and a very angry player on the opposite team, actually a fellow, a friend of mine, a competitive friend of mine. We also ran track against each other. He tackled me very angrily, flipped me over backwards, and my knee whiplashed into the ground.

Three surgeries over the course of the next two and a half to three years, three more surgeries in my late 30s. And in 2019, the surgery seven was a partial revision of a total knee replacement. I'm going to change the subject because honestly, based on the kind of day I've had, and basically I've had, this is the kind of day I have had virtually every day for almost. Well, it's been. It'll be on the 23rd, will be the sixth anniversary of the surgery. It's not easy to talk about when I have a blast of pain like that, where it really rocks me.

I spend part of the day nurturing, caring for what hurts. And I believe that even when you see me have a blast of pain and I bounce right back, that's authentic. I'm bouncing back because I'm owning the moment. I'm on with you. But there is always that time when I need to afterwards, have time, silent time, to care for what's going on up here and in here. There's no getting through this. There's no being resilient without caring for the mental journey with this, the emotional journey which is part of the mix, including celebrating consistency with my resilience, celebrating your consistency and that celebrating is something that can look like whatever works for you.

Just as you have your own unique resilience. The way you celebrate and honor your being resilient and being consistent is something that feeds you. Here's the thought for you. We can't necessarily force or choose the time of harvest, but we can choose the seeds that fuel the soil of harvesting our resilience, such as hope, such as patience, such as giving ourselves grace when we giving others grace. So the 3 to 4 resilience for resilience. Thank you for that, Jules. Let me just read. You're starting a new job.

Started a new job yesterday after 20 years in your other job. That is a world of change that you're navigating right now. Feeling excited but yet. Yes, I get it. Guilty for ex workers that you know are covering your position. Ouch. Kathy. That's, that's, that's very Fair. That's very accurate. That's not easy. And you made a tough, tough decision. You made an important decision, Jules, and I want to congratulate you for that. Sometimes making the choices that we make aren't easy. I'm like, knowing you as I do, it was the right decision to make.

And there's something worth celebrating about that. Even though you're navigating the difficulties that come along with that decision. And, Jules, you had your second gel injection yesterday for a torn meniscus injury. I see you, my friend. I know how it is and how it did the injection go? How is it feeling now? I've only had one injection in my knee, and this was actually before the total knee replacement. I had torn meniscus on both sides. All the meniscus was torn, all of it removed between the first and three surgeries.

When I had the injection, when I was going through surgeries four and five, it locked up the knee and actually didn't help. I hope you're experiencing the relief from this that it was. Is intended. Excuse me. I'm down with a common cold and laryngitis. Kathy, I'm sorry. And I hope you feel a real better real soon. Just curious. Hot tea, lemon and honey. What is your recipe for that? What gives you some comfort in that? So, Jules and Kathy, how are you doing? Jules, after that injection, you've got a lot going on.

And this is. May I invite this as a time to take a deep breath and yes, we're talking about celebrating consistency and how that celebrating builds consistency, where we're calming down. If we can be genuine about our celebrating when we do come, we. We can. The nice thing is I'm consistent and allow me to do this. I'll celebrate my consistency in being able to answer that blast of pain with. With an acknowledgment that my next thought is my choice. I just use the three steps of resilience in my mind and my heart and my spirit to say, it's over.

I know what I need to do. I want to stay focused on you. I get to choose my next thought. I get to choose my resilience because I. I get to choose who I am and what I am, and I celebrate all the practice that I have in being resilient. So, yes, Chicken noodle soup. That sounds. Oh, the Ritz crackers. That sounds excellent. Thank you very much. I hope you feel better. Absolutely. I was told to get injections every six months. Yes. Or so. Because I'm too young for knee replacement, as was I relate the.

Hi, Ms. Shannon. So glad that you're here. I was in my late 30s when they were saying you need to have a total knee replacement. Surgeries 4 and 5 were intended to try to help me keep my own natural knee. And so by the age of 40, those two surgeries didn't work. It's kind of interesting to note that through the seven surgeries, really only two and a half of them helped. The seventh is the half that it did solve some problems, but it created some new ones. The belief is here, six years later, that one of the two main nerves going into the left knee was damaged.

So that shot of pain, like you saw, is what I experienced randomly on my baseline a couple dozen times a day. So I'm curious to know, Jules, how did you. Have you gotten the benefit from the injection? It is something that. Yes, especially when it's working and helping. You can get it every six months or so and hopefully the benefit of it can last months sometimes for. Depending upon. I know some people where it lasts various amounts of time depending upon where the health of the knee and how the body is receiving the injection.

So we're talking about resilient, where we are being resilient and even talking about the challenges that we're facing and the challenges that come from things beyond our control. The challenges that even seem to arise when we make certain choices, the right choices, even though they may be difficult, we navigate it all with a sense of tapping into our own unique resilience. And to echo again the idea, if we use the three steps of resilience, we've tuned in and that's where the growth begins. And then if we go into the.

As we bridge going into the. From the tune in to the planned phase, we think about. All right, what we do. Would you please let me know if I am back? The connection went completely out and I quickly logged back in. If you would let me know if you are. If I am still with you, I'll keep on going for the sake of the recording as you can say hello and let me just check some notes. If we are celebrating our resiliency, how might. And celebrating consistency with your resilience. What does that look like to you?

What are the words that you use? Thank you very much. What are the words that you use to celebrate in that inner monologue or maybe even journal it maybe even speak out loud and thank you very much. How do you celebrate your consistency? It's part of bouncing back. Even when we do have a low level of resilience, if we Feel as though we're exhausted, especially when we're under the weather. That makes it extra. Sometimes there can be so much going on in our lives yet one more thing is that old term can be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

But the perseverance, Hope, very good. And faith, absolutely I do likewise. I tap into, especially when I need it most, my entire being. Sometimes when I experience a blast of pain such as the one I had at 4:30 this morning, it really rocked me. So one of the things that I did was I couldn't get back to sleep. I was concerned, my neighbors heard me and so I'm kind of stressing about that. But I paused, I took some deep breaths and I said something that I honestly believe in. It's not always easy to say, but the pain that I experience and the resiliency that I own is all part of my amazing life journey, my amazing life story.

It's amazing because I embrace life. It's amazing still, even with all the pain, connection is so good and thank you for bringing it up and the word, the word grace. So it's important when I experience blasts of pain like that to give myself grace, to breathe and to sometimes tap into my walk, my faith, my walk, my walk with myself, my walk with the Lord, my walk with you. Part of my celebrating resilience. And allow me to suggest, take a moment and take a deep breath. Let's do that together. Even if you close your eyes for a moment and take a deep breath, we are together, we are a community.

We are here for each other. We are holders of hope for each other. And that hope is real, that hope is powerful. This is something that we can share with each other. We can say, I see you my friend. And we know that we are connected. We know that we relate, we know, we understand. And it's in that understanding that we find our connection to strong and that we find that there's energy in our community, there's energy in our connection, our connectivity better than any Internet signal can provide.

So thank you, thank you for your words, Kathy, thank you for everything that you're sharing. Jewel and Shannon, let me ask you this. How do you keep what do you think to yourself when you choose to show up, to show to be in the moment and say I'm going to celebrate my consistency in being resilient, that I know that as tough as this moment is, I'm going to keep at resilience. If we will, if you will. We've gone from the tune in step to the plan step and now being our best, let's think in terms of how we might continue to show up and what kind of perspective do we bring when we show up.

So you wrote and thank you for this. I wrote a blog about Grace in lean times. It's somewhere here in the Cadiosphere. Oh I'd love to read that. I'd love to read anything and everything that you share. Kathy. Human connection is way better than AI. It is so true. Even though I'm spending more and more time in AI as a partner in my strategic thinking, there's nothing like being together. And let me take this moment to share with you some news. Speaking of being together, even in a more interactive and more engaging way, as much as we can online, I'm going to go live with Resilience coaching studio the first and third Tuesday, same time, 7 Eastern, 6 Central on Zoom.

It's going to be an open to the Cadre sphere. I'm going to be inviting people as well to just as Luke, Shannon, Nikki, Anna and team are on a mission to make mental health and well being more accessible, I want to elevate my game if you will and make it more accessible, make Cadre more accessible to people who are part of my my tribe and my my sphere outside of Cadresphere. It'll be free. Zoom, the Resilience Coaching Studio Special access. We'll call it the first and third Tuesdays moving forward and I'm going to actually invite some of you to join me in in talking about certain topics as we do this.

So don't be surprised when I invite you and say would you be prepared to speak to one particular thought or share with me some thoughts as we do these live Zooms in the months ahead. So Jules, looks like you're back. Welcome back. Just curious as we think about our numbers for our resilience, has it changed at all in our time together? I'd say these blasts of pain that I'm getting if they with the kind of frequency that I experience, it's like a hammer pounding down. And yet it's my resilience that keeps showing up and I celebrate each time that it does because then I'm getting more energy from it.

And that brings me back up to being able to say my resilience is stronger. It is a higher number. So I remember the good times. Hi, thank you so much for this. And remind myself those good memories deserve as much space as the negative ones. So true. That's one way of actually celebrating your life and the positive blessings that you've had along the way that is so important. The I believe in acknowledging it all because it's all a part of your amazing life story. Everything that I experienced, the highs and lows are part of my amazing life journey.

And would you agree that it's even in those most trying of times that we're tested and we learn that we passed tests and that's what we do and we grow from those there's growth in character and therefore that leads to a growth in hope. What does it look like for you to and how might you celebrate your consistency in the hours and days ahead? Yay for zoom and more interactive sessions. I agree. I'm really looking forward to this and the and I'm going to encourage you because it's going to be free for everyone from within Cadre sphere as well as outside of Cadresphere.

It's an opportunity for you to invite people to join us and I'll send you information I'll be posting information about this starting tomorrow. Speak Wonder that's good your ears have I like the way you describe that it's shot up to a five or more your that say it's wonderful to read and it gives me energy to see that positivity that you're able to acknowledge that you're able to be aware of it definitely remind me that I keep walking forward which sometimes I forget that's so true. If I may and I remember the time my mom told me she was sitting on the edge of my bed.

I'm a young boy. She told me Rick, you were born feet first. And that grew to have a certain meaning for me in life took on even more meaning when I couldn't take a step forward. Going through those first three surgeries those second three surgeries I'd gotten to a point where my leg was completely atrophied going into the third and also the sixth surgery and so the idea of that feet first taking one step at a time forward and still is very meaningful for me. Our feet are and we are meant we are made to keep going forward.

There are times when we need to and it's all well and good to do everything from be in the moment and even be still be still and know all kinds of things. Know our resilience, know the moment and let God be God. Whatever Lord you have whatever your approach to looking at the universe that still moment provides a source for refueling resilience refueling your ability to celebrate your consistency and let that feed more consistency Celebrate by calling a friend and offering connection in case they're feeling lonely.

That's so good to do that. When we give to others like that, the beauty and how it lifts us up is that says so much about you and is something that you can really celebrate about yourself. It's also helpful, I believe, even though there's this quote by Henry Ford, don't look back unless you're planning to go that way. I do believe, Shannon, just as you're describing, looking back and honoring the memories, the things that went well, the things that didn't go well, Especially if there's more to learn.

Perhaps it's even. Especially if there's more to learn something again for the first time, for the third time, for the 15th time. Looking back, sometimes there are the stories that we have that are good to remember them and those contribute towards our being able to move forward one step at a time. So let's see, a step forward is still a step forward regardless. The size of the step is so true. I'm sort of on a roll tonight. You've got me thinking about different memories, everything. I don't remember being born feet first, but I remember when my mom told me that I was very young and I remember thinking feet first.

I'm trying to figure out, like, what does that really mean? What does being born like? I think I was 23 years old when she told me. I'm only kidding. But the. There was a time when I had a test on my knee several years ago to see if there was an infection in the. The implants and the titanium implants. And the test at the hospital was down this corridor about 100 miles, 100 yards long. It felt like 100 miles because after the injection it locked up the knee virtually every step out of there. And then to the parking lot about another 100 yards out.

So about a 200 yard walk. It took me over 20 minutes to make it. Every step came with the kind of blast of pain that you've seen me have. But I did one step at a time and that's how I got through it. I. I often put on a perspective of the long term because there's so much urgency in the pining that we have the need to get out of the pit, to get from a place of having my resilience or your resilience being a two pining to be able to. An urgency, sense of urgency to say, I don't want to stay here, I want to be back above a 5 or I want to get back to.

I want to be on my way to as high as I can close to 10 as possible. And so what I have found that trading that sense of urgency for a sense of long term perspective is very helpful. It takes the pain of that urgency out of the equation. That helps us go one more step, one at a time. So thank you so much for that, Janet. I'm sure your best comedy comes from pain. So true, isn't it? With the best comedians that we know, like Robin Williams and others, the humor is authentic. That is resiliency indeed.

It's a way of using your own unique resilience with humor to be resilient, to celebrate your resilience and to celebrate helping others along the way with whatever they're going through. For those of you who have this wonderful talent of humor, thank you so much. We need you. We need each one of you and I thank you so much for being here. Let me just quickly glance on my notes to check to see if there's any one last thought I wanted to share. So even when the, even when we find it difficult to celebrate our consistency, the more we do that, it builds consistency, it creates more consistency.

And out of that comes something that we need more of and that's peace. I'm going to sign off now. My knee isn't happy. But I wish you an evening of, of peace, an evening of resilience. Here we are, Tuesday evening. I wish for you a week of healthy celebrating who you are. You're wonderful, you're strong. Your best days are ahead of you. And if I may remind you that your best is greater than any pain that you have or that you're holding. Good luck to each of you. Kathy, feel better. Jewel, I'd love to connect with you to talk about knees, torn meniscus and cortisone shots.

I'm here for you and for each of you, I see you and I'm a holder of hope for you. I'll be signing off. Let me just check your notes. Yes, peace to all of you. It's good to be able to use for something. Yes, yes. Rest well everyone. Indeed. Again, your best is greater than the pain. Thanks so much and good evening.