Authentic Leadership ✨ Check In With Your Inner Circle

Happy Monday, everybody. Jean Mitchells here. Just coming in, bopping in. I am doing a quick check in on our plants. I'm gonna. As you are dialing in, I'm gonna give you, like, a fun little thing. Do you guys have plants? Now, my second question is, do you name your plants? Because this is a really important question. So if I am on tour today with at the studio. Hello, Mel Myers. I just want to introduce you to Melman and our other friends down here. I am at our spin studio, and I'm doing a health check on our plants.

So down here we have Nala. We have. Up here we have Coco and Cleo. We have Rhonda over here. Are you starting to see a theme? Morning, Brianna. So all of our plants at the studio here have names. Oh, yeah. This one's Penny. Look at Penny. Penny's huge. Isn't she great? Hi, Speak Wonder. I'm doing a tour of our plants this morning at the studio. So one of our. Some of the people at our team. So, Pumbaa, Timon, we've got Bambi over here. Yes. They have name tags. And we have Bruno. So we decided that we wanted to make our studio feel more homey.

So I love plants. And we're not on Facebook Marketplace and did a plant search. And then our team decided that every plant needed to have a name. So we've named all the plants, and we also put stickers on all of them because we're gonna do a little fun scavenger hunt on the plants. But also so that way, if different people come in, they can. That we connect to energetically, soulfully, mindfully, all the different ways. And sometimes things can just feel heav. And we go even far inside because of many reasons.

Maybe you're somebody that just likes to process things on your own. And when things get really heavy, you go inside a lot. Maybe it feels like you've felt heavy for so long that you don't want to burden people around you anymore. We might find that we pull in a lot, but our circles get smaller. But here's what's beautiful about whatever your process is. Because when you've built those relationships, you've developed them over time, you've shown up for one another. Over time, some things can happen.

One, maybe sometimes those relationships have run their course, and that's sad, and that's the loss. I've experienced that with several clients and friends this year where they've had those transitions and they're hard. Right? It's when you lose somebody from that core central spot Those are the people that know you the best. And to get there, peeling back the layers of the onion takes a lot of time. But for others, it's just been a lot of people feeling in heavy spaces throughout the year. So my bestie, love him and his husband, they're fantastic.

And I know that whenever I call, they'll pick up the phone, and if they can't, they call me back right away. And I know that when they reach out to me with a phone call or something important, they need. They need me, like, it's important. And here's what's great about my bestie. I'm also besties with their. It's two husbands, and I'm best friends with both, which is lovely, because if something happens with one of them, the other one will reach out to me and be like, hey, Jean, I need you to reach out to so and so.

And here's why I laugh, because I get to be on the inside circle all the time. But what's beautiful about that is I know that we will each take our own time to go through the heavy stuff, but I also know that when we come together, we'll just sit and hold space for each other. So often I find at the end of the year when we. We're reflecting and looking back, we've spent time on these conversations looking back and seeing how far we've come, seeing how far we've grown. But what if we look back and check in on the relationships that we've curated, the relationships that we've nurtured, or maybe the relationships that maybe need a little plant food, a little watering, a little sunshine?

So I've been spending the last weekend, and I'll do this a lot more intentionally this week as well, just going back through, even sometimes looking back on my photos. It's funny, our iPhones have become like a Rolodex, a log, a history log of our life. And so I'll look back into each month and I'll see who I saw those months. And then I'll think about, like, is that someone in my inner circle? And what's fun is I'll take that photo. And whether it's from this year or may, maybe years prior, I'll take that photo or a couple of photos and I'll text it to them.

And then I'll share a fond memory to start the dialogue. And that eventually leads to a voice Memo or a FaceTime call. But it's. It's my way of looking back what happened this year, celebrating the things that maybe I have accomplished or the places that I've seen, the people I've met or held space with the events. But it's also my way to look back and remember the people who are in my inner circle and whether there's somebody I talk to every week, once a month, once a quarter, once a year. Maybe I don't get to see them every year because they live in a different country, or I just didn't have to travel to that state for work or time didn't work out.

I still find time, especially this month, but I try to do this twice a year, once in the summer when the season starts to change. So I, I kind of wrapper it around the solstices because it's easy to remember. Winter solstice is this weekend. Summer solstice is six months from now. Right. It's the two easy ones to remember. And so those are my times that I reflect and I check in with the people that maybe I haven't checked in with or plan a trip or I look ahead to see where I can plan a trip. Because life gets busy, right?

So my invitation to you is in the chat. How do you stay connected with that inner circle? What do you do to keep that relationship alive, especially for the ones that you don't get to see every day? So it's funny, I have a new inner circle and this circle of people I met at the coffee shop because every single day, Major, almost every day, Major and I will walk to this particular coffee shop and I started seeing these two groups of retired people that would meet for coffee. One group had males and females.

One group was just these three old men, older men, not going to call them old, but they're in their 70s and they're older than me. So what I mean by that is not an age thing. It's just I got to see them and, and I would walk past them really slyly with Major and they'd see Major. I could hear them talking like, oh, isn't that a good looking dog? Or wow, he's a good boy. Look at him when he goes up to the counter and they laugh. And so I'm listening to them. And so one day I shocked them. I asked the barista, I'm like, these guys are here every day, what is it that they drink?

And I bought them all a cup of coffee. So this is my story while you're typing in the chat. And I bought him a cup of coffee. I walked over with Major, I sat it all down, I pulled up a chair and I sat Down. I'm like, tell me your story. Who are you guys? And they were so excited. And so then the next day I came in and a couple of days later they. One of the guys is like, come over here. And I was like, what? He's like, here, take this card. Like, I'm not taking your card. I thought it was like his credit card.

And so I walked up to the counter and I ordered a cup of coffee and he came running over and he's like, no, you use this. So these guys bought me a gift card. Now I have this gift card with way too much money on it. And so I got my tea. I said, thank you. We plopped on down. I was like, tell me your stories. What are you guys talking about today? And so it became a thing where all of a sudden they found one of them, found me on Instagram. I found out one of them is an artist. A very, very good artist.

Was published in the New York Times. Would never have known. He just talks about painting. So I just, I didn't know. Bob brought in for me one of his catalogs that he sells and he signed it for me. And then eventually I got to take another friend to studio and do a private showing. So they're not my inner circle. If I don't, if I don't show up in a week to the coffee shop with Major, they send me a text and they ask if I'm okay. Asking me if I'm okay. So you never know who's going to come into your circle new that you want to invest in.

Speak Wonder says you have a friend and they put together list of ways to make meaningful connections with our grown children who live across the country. I love that. So we can track in with them and engage them in fun, creative ways. That's beautiful. Beautiful. So this time of year, winter solstice is coming. The new moon is going to be here on Friday. I'm going to probably pop in and give you you some woo woo things to consider around energy and manifestation at the end of the week because it's that season.

But right now it's a really great time. Whether you do Christmas cards or not, or New Year's cards or holiday cards. I'm. I'm throwing those out the window in this moment. And I'm simply saying send a voicemail, make a phone call, write an actual letter to those people in your inner circle, or look back on your photos and send them the photo. Maybe even print it out, put it in the card and ship it off. Something that you can do to just continue to evolve that relationship in a a way that says you matter to me.

So, Cadre team, I'm so excited to be here with you. You guys all matter. I recognize your names. I see you out there in the community typing up chats, speak, wonder. It's always great to jump into your sessions and hear your poetry. And I also love that you're writing a bl. And you're right, printing out photos is the last start. So I'm going to send you off with this one last thing. Our team at the studio does a photo shoot, and one of the people on the team says, I've got a surprise for you. And we painted this wall behind me.

This wall used to be red. And then they got this photo and they printed it out of our team so it could just. And they took all the other photos that we have and they started putting up Polaroids. So I've been asked for more Polaroids. And then last but not least, I'm going to walk you back here. Hey, Bob. And in here you can see one last thing. These are all the polaroids that we've taken over time. And they've now started a wall where they're taking all the photos and they're put names on them.

And these aren't even people that ride with us anymore. Our studio has been open for nine years, so this is our history. So they're making a wall of history for us. So you never know the impact you're going to make on people. You never know. Someone needs you today, right now, this moment. So here's my invitation. One photo scroll, or if you have physical photos, take a photo of it, send it to one contact today. And then my challenge is to do that every single day, this whole week, Monday through Sunday, one photo, one text or email with a story and a memory to that one person in your inner circle that you want to reconnect with.

If not now, when? I hope you all have the best day. Sending you all hugs.