Good morning. Today I woke up, saw the sunshine, and I chose to make it a good day. Like, we got Natasha Benfield Unwritten on the Spotify playlist. It's actually one of my Feel Good songs. I recently had to switch brands, so that was quite the transition.
Let's rate ourselves from 1 till 10. I like to rate myself. Today I woke up at about a seven and a half. What is it going to take for me to go up a couple numbers? What does what those actionable steps look like?
Anyways, so today, just wanted to show up last week, had some technological challenges, didn't end up getting posted, but I am here today and here we are. Also check out. I got this weird haircut. We might get rid of it.
"I've been experiencing life feels very heavy right now. There's a lot of division. I reach out to individuals that I love, I care about, I respect, and that are probably smarter than me. I try to regulate my emotions, my approach and my thinking when I go into these conversations "
John: How do you want to show up in the world today? He says he wants to be someone that doesn't divide, that is compassionate, empathetic, and willing to listen even if we disagree. John: My challenge to you today is identify where you're at in the day on the scale from 1 to 10.
Good morning. Good morning, Cadre. Good morning. Good morning. It is 9:30am on a Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday morning, I should say 9:00am, Tuesday, January 27, 2026. And it has been quite a year so far. Quite, quite a year or four weeks, I should say. Welcome, welcome. I'll give this a second to let people roll in. Good morning. Good morning. Today I. I put on going into Spotify and put in my speak wonder. Good morning. Good morning. So today I woke up, saw the sunshine, and I chose to make it a good day, right.
Considering all the s***** things going on, right. I made it. I want to make it a good day. I'm going to put the effort in. And I went to Spotify and put in Feel Good Mix, which it collects all of your music that you have. And Natasha Beddingsfield Unwritten came up and I'm like, how the h*** did I get on there? But, like, it's actually one of my Feel Good songs. I grew up in the suburbs around a lot of different people, so people look at me like he most like rap music all the time. Like, we got Natasha Benfield Unwritten on the Spotify playlist.
It's such a delightful song. It's a breath of fresh air. Anyways, good morning. Good morning. How's everyone doing? My name is Rolando. I go by Rose612 row coach row. A lot of different variations of it depending on which space of my life that I'm showing up in that day. But I me all the time at the end of the day. Good morning. I got my coffee today, so we're getting that going. I recently had to switch brands, so. So that was quite the transition, but we made it through. So I always love to start off the day.
If you're in the chat and if you're hearing this and seeing my face, I challenge you. Let's rate ourselves from 1 till 10. 10 being the best day ever. 1 like, we shouldn't have got out of bed. I like to rate myself. Today I woke up at about a seven and a half. Once I saw the sunshine, I'm at about an eight and a half, which is really good considering everything we're going through right now. So I challenge you. If you hear this, where are you at today? Are you at a six? Are you at a seven? It's good for me to identify where I'm at so I can pay attention to it as I move throughout the day.
Because if my number is below like a six, I'm like, all right, how do I protect myself to make sure that something doesn't bring that six down to a five or two. Four. And it's like, okay, if I'm at a five or six, where. What do I need to do to get myself where I want to be? So I like to rate myself so I can protect myself and. And make my day better. So five for Rosie. Okay. Okay, a seven. So my next challenge is to ask yourselves, what is it going to. You don't have to drop in the chat. What is it going to take for me to go up a couple numbers?
What does what those actionable steps look like? 6. Slept in for a bit. Feeling kind of tired but wanting to bring it up. There we go. I like to check in with myself. Something I learned early on that worked for me when I started seeing a therapist and talking about my life, days, emotions, all the feelings, all the things that make me me. Like, it's okay to wake up at us five or six. A three sometimes. But like, what are we gonna do to get out of that and make that number climb? Anyways, so today, just wanted to show up last week, had some technological challenges, didn't end up getting posted, but I am here today and here we are.
Also check out. I got this weird haircut. I went to a backup barber considering for time and convenience, and he shaved off the top and disconnected this. I feel like I have like the Abe linking Abe Lincoln mustache. Like I'm about give a speech at Gettysburg or something. I don't know how to feel about it. We might get rid of it, to be honest. Anyways, but today. So I wanted to jump on here and just talk about the things that we've all been experiencing. I've been experiencing life feels very heavy right now.
It does. There's a lot of division. There's a lot of people that see things different, feel things different, believe in things different. And I've had to settle with that recently and especially with the people I love. And just like, you know what, you think different, you believe different, and that's okay. I'm not gonna, you know, I don't have to agree with everyone. I don't have to like what everyone says, but the people that I loved can respect. I tried to approach them recently with almost like a research approach because when I'm doing research, I think about when I was in school when I had to research topics or things that I just did not like.
I did not like. But like I said, all right, this is for research purposes. And it's like my brain switched. It's like the Topic that I'm looking at I might not like, but I want to understand so I can properly communicate, write a paper, make an assumption or whatever I have to do beyond it. But I have to put myself in that situation, learn it, absorb it from a neutral standpoint, and then I choose how to move on. And that's something that's been working for me because I'm a neutral kind of level headed person.
Not super big into politics, but I have a lot of people in my family and friend groups that are. And I don't mind a healthy conflict or a healthy debate. I love to debate. I don't like conflict. To me there's a difference. I'll debate the h*** out of s***, but I don't like an emotionally charged conflict that I just, I just don't do well in them anyways. So I try to regulate my emotions, my approach and my thinking when I go into these conversations, especially considering the times we're in now.
Like I do those research papers, right? It's like, okay, this might suck, but we got to get it done, we got to get through this. So. And that's what I do. And I reach out to individuals that I love, I care about, I respect, and that are probably smarter than me. In some things. I intentionally reach out to understand. It's okay, help me understand your beliefs, what you're thinking, what you're going through. And I take, sometimes the hardest part of doing that, for me personally, is to shut this and open these.
And that is the hardest part because as soon as someone starts talking, I just want to like, well, what about this? What about that, what about that? It's like, all right, did I come here to learn this person's perspective or I come here to change their mind? And that was a tough question that I had to ask myself a lot. I was, I like to change minds sometimes, but that's not always my job, right? And trying to learn how to just be patient in those situations. But in order for me to get to that, I even wrote them down.
Because when I'm talking about things that I'm passionate about, I like to go off on these rabbit trails when I'm doing all these things, when I'm approaching them, individuals, people, because I don't have all the answers. And I'm learning how to navigate these chaotic times in real time. But the things that I don't need to learn how to navigate is how I show up as me, right? How I show up as my best. And that includes for me, my disciplines. For me I talk a lot about going to the gym. Sonic hole, plunge at Embrace North.
My faith, my quiet time. One of the things that I've realized recently is pool. I love billiards pool. It's for me, I can step into a billiards. I was gonna say brand company, a building. Usually it's like a bar or a pool hall, but I like stepping in there because it's the one hobby that I have that's not the gym, because the gym, that's a whole, that's a way of life for me. But for billiards, I can sit, play a couple games of pool and my mind kind of just relaxes. Nothing exists outside of that table, right?
The news, sports, protests, disagreements, work, you know, dog chewing crap up, all that stuff, it just goes away. And I found that that's my, one of my safe spaces. So I double down on it, right? And I get a chance to process and think and analyze. Especially because when it comes to pool, there's a lot of geometry and power distribution. But it became second nature to me. But I get, as I'm doing it, I get to process the things that are going throughout my day. So that's one of my disciplines. So those are some of my disciplines that I have.
I know that I have to do those things on the regular to show up and be me, right? Those are the things that make me sane, they make me compassionate, they make me empathetic, they make me patient, they allow me to be understanding of other people. Now if I don't do those things, I'm usually running high on tension, high on emotions and uncertainty. And a lot of that creates tension. So it's like, how do I show up as my best self? I double down on my disciplines. Disciplines before discussion, disciplines before discussion.
That came to mind the other day and I'm like, oh, I definitely need to do this. So every time I've been in the community and showing up to these community events and conversations in these spaces where there's a lot of mixed emotions, different viewpoints, all these things, it's like, all right, I need to double down. I need to make sure that my daily dose of disciplines is established. But be considering everything that's going on, I kind of filtered out some of them. It's like, all right, some of my daily disciplines, which ones are optional, that are kind of just for fun, which ones give me the most clarity, the most level headedness, which ones make me the best human possible that I can be at that day, on that day and at that time and I double down on those.
So I've been double down on. Doubling down on pool, doubling down on the gym. The Sonic cold plunge. I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty tough. But to go get in a Sonic cold plunge when it's negative 20 below, like, I don't. I just can't. I just can't cash that check. To be honest, I can't cash that check right now. But I do all of these things because I don't want to add more onto my plate emotionally, mentally. I want to simplify as much as I can. I remove what's optional, and I double down on the things that keep me grounded, because that's the most part.
And I reach out to the people that I might. This is me. I'm not saying go and do this, but for me to understand things on a different level, I try to reach out to individuals that have different perspectives, People that I love, I care about, I respect, respect. And sometimes that I will just listen more than I talk, right? It's like going to talk to my grandpa or my grandma that have all this wisdom, and they might say some outlandish or crazy things or things that I don't agree with or like, but I respect them so much that I'm gonna listen and hear them out fully and then go from there.
And that's what I try to do when it comes to politics, beliefs, faith, all these things. And it's hard. I have to be disciplined before I have those discussions. And I do this because I don't want to be emotionally flooded and drowned and end up in a space where I'm drowning emotionally. I'm running high on tension, and I'm reaching for a life draft, right? Because some of those life rafts that we reach for as humans in those situations could be overreacting, could be chanting, could be this yelling.
All these other things fill in the blanks for. For some people, they could. It could be disagreeing with other people, all these other things. I don't want to grab onto things or disagree with friends or things like that and argue conflict. That's just not my style. It's a. How can I get myself grounded enough so I can have a conversation with someone so we can help save this relationship and push this needle forward together to move the goalpost a little bit, right? And that's the state that I try to show up and be in.
It's like, all right, what do I need to do to drain myself of the emotions that are gonna cause me to be fully flooded and how do I feel it with things that are good and show up in the world as my best self? Like days like today, the world is chaotic, it's super cold, but there's, the sun is shining, it's super sunny out there, right? And I like to think about my days like that as a human. It's like the world might be crappy, it's cold, a lot of disagreement. But like, I have joy in my heart. I'm gonna put in the work to protect that joy by doing my daily disciplines before I show up and have discussions.
And I'm gonna try to make the work, the world, a better place, even if it's one conversation at a time. I'm planting seeds of joy, compassion, empathy, understanding every single place that I go. I can't control the world, I can't change the world, but I can change how I show up in the world. I can make a conscious decision to meet someone. And you know what, even if I disagree with this person, they're going to remember my stance. They're going to remember how I made them feel. They're going to remember that I showed up and I shared my life, my, my, maybe not my beliefs, but I shared my spirit with them.
They can feel it. Like I'm showing up smiling, laughing, being understanding, asking questions like the Lincoln beard. I don't know, I don't know about the Lincoln beard. Speak, wonder. But we're gonna see how it goes. But. So that's my challenge to you. My challenge to you today is identify where you're at in the day on the scale from 1 to 10. So you know, if you're on the lower end, let's double down on those disciplines. Step, drop the optional ones, double down on the ones that have the most output or the most return on investment and identify how you want to show up today.
How do you want to show up in the world today? I want to show up as someone that doesn't divide. I want to show up as someone that loves on my neighbor, that is compassionate, empathetic, and is willing to listen even if we disagree. Because I disagree with a lot of people. And that's okay. And that's okay. I don't have to agree with everyone. If everybody was exactly like me in the world, it would be interesting. It would be an interesting world. I'm not gonna lie. We would need 24, seven doctors on staff all the time.
Yeah, I don't, I don't want a bunch of me's in the world. That's what makes us human. We learn how to coexist together and try to find ways to make the world a better place. And it can start with you all today by showing up as your full, self disciplined and ready to go spread joy and love in the world. So I am that guy that spread love, spread joy, peace, happiness. I would have been a great hippie back in the day. I'm not going to lie. I. I think I would have been a great hippie. Anyways, that's all I got for you.
I just wanted to show up, share a piece of my life with you guys because I enjoy this. Let's go show up in the world and be the best human we can be. Thank you guys for showing up. Have a great day. Stay warm and do something nice for yourself and then do something nice for someone else. Let's have a great day. The hangover was today. Front of the toilet.
