Leading With Love 💕

Hey, Cadre Sphere. It is Leading with Love lunch edition, which I'm a little late because I was busy looking at the menu. I got a tummy grumbling. I am working from a coffee shop near home, and today I wanted to talk about a couple things that have been going on in my life. I'm noticing that I feel a lot of people leading with fear. And when people lead with fear, they lead with doubt. Hi, Speak wonder. Nice to see you. Happy, happy Thursday. And tell me what you're having for lunch today or what you had for lunch today or what you plan to have for lunch today.

My belly is hungry. I had a very late light dinner last night. So I am like, I want to eat. I want to eat. I want to eat right now. But first we chat. First we feed our souls, then we feed our bellies. So one of the things that has been happening in my world. So I help people with body focused repetitive behaviors. These are mental health conditions like hair pulling, skin picking, and nail biting. Happy Thursday. Happy Thursday, junk food junkie. And so these are mental health stepped up to say, hey, this is not cool.

I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna build something. But just a couple weeks ago, another community member told me that it shouldn't be me who does this work in the nonprofit space. And she kept saying, I conflict of interest because of my work at Habit Aware, which to me, it's a shared interest. It's. I am, you know, the type of person that pours the water into the vessel so that all boats rise. Type of person. And so that sat with me for a really long time. Like, she literally said those words, it shouldn't be you.

And my brain went offline when she said that because to me, it triggered core negative beliefs of I don't belong and I'm not good enough, despite for two years having done so many things for the community on both sides, on the for profit side and the nonprofit side. So. Where does this go with leading with love? Oh, can you. Did I lose you? Sorry. I don't know what happened. I enjoyed the $8 bag meal. Oh, yeah, that sounds good. Okay, junk food junkie, if you ever have time for this, you have tell me how this is.

McDonald's french fries with a Wendy's chocolate Frosty. That combination is just. I think it's the jam. But you've got to tell me next time we meet. Chicken with zucchini couscous. Ooh. All right, I'm seeing, like, two different spectrums of deliciousness here. I'm about to have me a bowl of pasta. Pesto pasta. If y' all can just give me a thumbs up that you can hear me, that would be great. Because I feel like the chat and what I'm saying is on a slight delay, so I don't know where you are in what I'm talking about that makes any sense.

So anyways, okay, so this person told me, it can't be you. My brain went offline. You're not good enough. You're. You don't belong here. Right? And that, like, crushed me for a while. And then I realized, you know what? Maybe. Maybe, just maybe, you know, it wasn't the best way. It wasn't a loving way of doing it, but maybe. It was a way to help me focus my attention. Maybe it was a way to say, okay, if people don't want me playing over here, that's fine. I have so many other things to do. I'm gonna go figure those out, right?

And I'm still gonna play. I'm still gonna do what I need to do. I'm still gonna serve my community. I'm not walking away from the community. But the how and everything else around it has just significantly shifted. So what does this have to do with leading with love? Well, you know, I wanted to punch this, obviously, to begin with, but I sat with it for a while, I processed it, I wrote about it, and I come back to. Yeah, this idea of while this person didn't say it in a great way, that they're still some positivity that can come from it.

Right now I'm no longer gonna talk to this person unless they engage with me, but because I don't need toxicity in my life. And I think that's another thing that's leading with love. Thank you. Speak wonder. I appreciate that. Sweet note, Ari. My smile. Smile that makes me, like, smile intensely right now where my brain is like, hey, I feel so happy right now. Thank you for that. It's amazing. Like, you just start smiling, and. The brain just, like, doesn't know what to do with that. It's just like, wait, why are you just talking about something that made you mad?

Because I'm in joy right now. So the lesson here, for those of you who are going through something or. Or may go through something. Oh, yeah, my boys are the best. Is. To. To flip that feeling of, like, this person is, like, personally get me to. Maybe there's a lesson in here that I can use to help me continue on a positive path, right? Like, they might be coming at Me from a negative path, from a. From fear, from doubt, from maybe being burned in the past by other things that have happened to them.

And so they're coming at me with negativity, but that doesn't mean I need to meet them with negativity. That doesn't mean I need to engage with it at all. Right? I can now have that boundary of if this person ever wants to talk to me, they are welcome to. I will happily have a call. I will happily respond to emails, but I am not engaging, right? And I am going to say, okay, this wallet is now up by this person and also mine, right? We now have two fences up their fence, my fence. And that means, boom, I can start going the other way.

There's still this whole area of space where I can still work with people who support me and love me and are for me. And if anything, what happened here is gonna strengthen my relationships and already is strengthen the relationships with other people in the community that are saying, that's messed up. We are happy to work with you. We are happy to make things happen. We are happy to support because we've seen the work you've been able to do in two years. Like, it's been incredible. So leading with love means when other, other people put walls up, you are absolutely welcome to put your wall up too.

Protect yourself, but do it with love. Do it with grace. Do it with, okay, I hear what you're saying. Bye. Bye. If you need me, I will open my door to you, but I am not coming knocking. I will find people who are for me, and that is where I will put my focus. And that is where love will grow and grow and grow, right? Because if I stay here, if I keep thinking about them, and frankly I am, my brain keeps waking up in the middle of the night of, oh, you should have said this during the call, and stuff like that.

And I want closure with this person, but I'm not gonna get it unless I reach out. And I'm not reaching. But if I stay here, right, it just makes my world messy and murky and dark. But if I go here, if I go see all these people who are for me and who are ready and willing to work with me, regardless of whether it's a for profit idea or a nonprofit an idea, I'm gonna make some great big things happen together with other people. So leading with love sometimes does require you to do cold, hard things like shut doors.

And that's okay. You're not locking the door, you're just shutting it. If they want to kn leading with love also means being ready to open that door. So that's what I want to leave you with. Thank you for the sweet notes about smiles and about my sweet sons. Oh man, they bring me so much joy. It is just so awesome to have them. It is like the cutest, cutest, cutest world I get to live in. I hope some of what I made, what I said made sense. That didn't make sense. But I hope what I said before about my story and the lessons make sense and hope.

I also hope that you don't have people like this in your life that knock you down and build walls. I hope that you only have in your life that build you up and support you. And if you don't, then you know where to start looking. It's not this way, it's this way. And yeah, just stay in faith, stay in focus, stay in love. And thanks Big Wonder Kathy for sharing that the story rings true. I'm sure we all have stories like this where we thought we were working together and yet it's only, you know, afterwards that we realize, oh, there's ulterior motives or there's doubt or mistrust or and things like that happening that you don't even realize until the cat's out of the bag.

And it's okay. I think everyone's going through their own things, their own belief systems, their own right. Like even this person is a very scientific, research focused person and I'm a very spiritual, intuitive, qualitative person, not quantitative. So we like, you know, we've already b*** headed in different moments and not really b*** heads. She's again said things to me about me that were negative, which I actually took it as compliments because that's the kind of person I am. Speak Wonder had a great quote.

Stop handing out emotional keys to people who only track mud everywhere they go. In Indian culture we actually take our shoes off at the front of the house because no mud, no germs. So I like that a lot. Do not let people into your heart space if they are not going to bring goodness. That's exactly it. So thank you, Speak Wonder, for that reframing of this, you know, of the same sort of message and mentality. I think that's always good to hear things, the same sort of thing in a couple of different ways because it resonates differently to everyone.

So yeah, thank you. I'll leave you with a big smile. Enjoy your lunch. Junk food junkie. You gotta tell me your thoughts on McDonald's french fries with Wendy's chocolate frosty dipped. Yes. You have to go to both places because the best French fries with the best frosty. It doesn't work as great with Wendy's French fries, I'll tell you that. But the sweet and the salty together. Oof. It's one of my favorites. I hope it becomes one of yours. And you got. You're gonna have to tell me at another time, so.

Yeah. Happy leading with love. Keep going. Keep doing what's working. Keep doing right by you. Wishing you love, strength, and awareness. Ciao. And I'll do a little dance and smile really big.