Inside JLC: Taking Care of Yourself in 2022

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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us at JLC Media. This is a series we're doing called Inside JLC where we kind of talk about what's going on with our client base and things that we have said to them that seem to be useful. So we're going to pick up two edges of that in this particular podcast. And before I do that, let me just make sure you know who's with us here. So each of you kind of introduce yourself and what the heck you're doing with us. So, Julie.

I'm Julie B. Wise. I am a JLC associate. I do executive coaching. I work with Navy medicine leaders and work with school districts to help enhance their ability to communicate.

That's beautiful. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Terry. Who are you?

Yeah, my name is Terry Moulton. I'm a retired naval officer, last served as the Deputy Surgeon General of the Navy. Was associated with JLC then and then since retirement have stayed in touch and participate along with the JLC on leadership issues and proud to be part of the team here.

You're absolutely part of the team. We're so happy to have you. And you can't run away from us. We even know where you live, so you really can't run away. Colleen.

Hi, Colleen Sullivan, JLC Associate. I'm here with my cat, who's also trying to cameo into this, but I have the pleasure of working with the people that you hear and that you see on the screen in supporting our client base and also in developing these great podcasts and leadership resources and materials for our clients.

Thanks, Colleen. Welcome aboard today and as always, it's great to have all of you with me on this journey. This journey started almost 28 years ago. I am the founder of this game called Jorgensen Learning center, and we kind of stay in this space of conversational leadership. So what you're seeing today is a conversation among leaders who have taken upon themselves the opportunity, accepted the opportunity, and responded to it really well in coaching others and helping others learn how to be their best self tomorrow, be their best self today, be their best self moving forward. This work is beyond compelling to me and I'll say it up front, we have agreed upon this. We are like minded in this statement. This is not the only way to lead. And we think it is really one of the most powerful ways to lead. And it says the effective leaders, the most effective leaders develop and sustain high quality relationships and they do it through these conversational practices. So today we're going to use these conversational practices. I mean, I don't know how I could actually improve the quality relationship among the four of us, because it's pretty good right now. And I think they would probably agree it just gets better over time. I know it is for me. Today we're going to use these practices to talk about two things in this world of resolutions. And here we are in the 2022. We've kind of concluded as a team, making resolutions is questionable. However, there are things we can do. We can intend to do some things that will be useful. And today we're going to talk about two of them. One, take care of yourself. Take care of yourself. And actually, I'm going to offer you a little four things to think about when you think about taking care of yourself. Because some people might say, well, that means I should drink more. No, not. That could be something else. Right. So we'll actually create opportunity for you to see how you could tap into one of those four areas that you think you might want to work on this year. The second piece we're going to do is. Is talk about the world we have been given, which is now a very, very digital virtual world. And some things we can do to enhance our virtual presence in meetings. And just in general, even like today, since all of us have done something with our material in front of us. My computer, my. My microphone.

See? And he did do something with his microphone right there, you guys. He tapped that thing and turned it.

Off by hitting it, it automatically went on mute. So there you go. So we have to remember in our virtual presence, not to mute yourself while you're trying to work. There's too many ways to do that. This is great. So let's kind of move forward. So what did you hear me say we're going to work on today, Terry?

Well, what I heard you say, this is all about conversational leadership. And there's two things we're going to focus on. One, taking care of yourself. And two, the world has changed. And so how do you enhance your virtual presence?

Yep, that's beautifully stated, Julie. Something more different.

There's four things about taking care of ourselves that you're going to talk about.

I will. And that's based on our relationship, Julie. You're going to probably like most of them. However, one of them you may say, I want to talk about that one. So. But we'll see. We'll see how that unfolds. Colleen.

No, I'm wondering about when you were muted. What the mystery conversation you were having that we didn't hear was.

With myself all the time. They're not interesting. Okay. And generally it's okay to talk to yourself, except if you start going, huh, that's confusing then. Because if you're talking to yourself, you'd at least know what you're saying. So in any event, thank you, guys. Notice what I just did? Those that are listening, and it's called closing the loop. I made some sentences come out of my mouth. That's a linear process. I had thoughts that I turned into a linear process by closing the loop. Each of them made sure that, yep, it's not just your idea. We all understood it and we're ready to play forward. So this is. Although this is simple. Sounds simple to do people skip this step. It's a dangerous step to skip. Don't skip it. State what you want to do. Make sure after you make your sentences come out of your mouth that everybody heard you in a way that you thought was exactly the meaning you presented. So very nice. Very nice. So let's go forward. So right now I'd like you to conjure up four areas. Okay? Physical. That's the first one. How do I take care of myself? Physically, emotionally? What do I do? I know what I do. My emotional success comes from my time to spend when I'm working on my meditation. That's probably my best thing that I can do. So physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. And when I drift into that intellectual piece, I can get lost there. So physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual. So, Colleen, talk to me about how you deal with any one of those four on a day to day basis.

Well, I think the easiest one for me is physical. And I think a lot of that is how I set up my week. Right. Because we talked about this before in one of our other podcasts. It's New Year's resolution. People talk about taking care of themselves physically. They join a gym. February, right? It's packed all the month of January, and then February 1st, attendance drops. So I think what I do for myself is I think about it a week at a time. I already know where I'm going. I'm going to Orange Theory Workout at noon, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and in the mornings, I'm going to my other gym. Three other days, unless I get to go skiing, because I've decided Friday might just be my ski day. So I am exceedingly intentional about how I set up what I'm going to do to keep myself physically active. And then I plan it out and I write it in. And I think if I don't do that, what happens is it's Wednesday and I'm like, oh my goodness, I haven't hit the gym yet or haven't gone on that walk or, you know, whatever type of exercise you have. So even with my clients, I'm like, whatever you decide to do, think about it, write it down, put it in your calendar and make the time.

I love that. I love that you said week to week. So like kind of short steps to get yourself focused and going. Yesterday my physicality was in shoveling snow. Not that I was happy about it, but that's what I did. And then when I was done, I said, no, I should do something else. So I ended up riding again too. This is really interesting. Notice that physical peace is something you can plan out and apply to yourself going forward. Terry, what do you do about the physical peace?

Yeah, I'm similar to what Colleen does. I like to plan out the week. You know, want to get 150 minutes in a week or a three, a three mile run, walk on the treadmill. I think cardio is very important for me at my age, so I really concentrate on that. And then I know that also weightlifting tone is important. So I have joined the gym since being here in Nashville and want to concentrate on keeping my health and keeping that physical capability. So plot that course. And I also keep track. You know, I'm a little bit competitive, so I have a watch that I keep track for the minutes and the miles and things of that nature.

You probably don't know this, but Terry was inducted into the hall of Fame at his high school for his athletics capabilities. And you played football in high school, is that right? That's the one you got in for?

Yes, I played all of them. Football, football, basketball, baseball and golf. And I played golf so I could get out a spring football player.

Well done. I actually watch kids do that. When I got, when I was high school principal, I said, I don't want to do spring football, it's terrible. So very, very nice. Thank you. Julia, what do you do about the physical piece?

I schedule just like Colleen. I have two chocolate labs. So in the morning they bang on my door and they are ready to go. So if I do not walk them in the morning, regardless of weather, rain, snow, I'm out there because they will tear my house apart. So that gets me moving in the morning. And then I try and go to yoga three times a week. And I schedule it out, depending on what my schedule is. And I also am a huge proponent for taking a nap so I can get snappy and I can get tired and in Order for me to keep going in the evening and and so on. I will take a nap almost every day. I schedule it in. I schedule around it so that I can at least get 30 minutes to an hour of a nap.

So as you're listening to us talk about this, and I'm going to go back to Julie about something in a second. This is really how we interact with one another. Like, what are we doing to take care of ourselves around anything. Earlier this year, one of our colleagues had a very tough physical situation she'd deal with. And the whole team banded around that, hung on, and made sure that that associate got through their physical situation as well as she could. He or he could, and made sure that the team was behind that person all the way. My wife is a yogini and has been as long as I know her. Right. And so she spends a lot of time teaching yoga and practicing yoga. But it does something to you, so it does something to you emotionally. Talk about that. How does that help your emotional standpoint, Julie?

Well, they always say when you're practicing yoga that you leave whatever, drop whatever isn't serving you, leave it on the mat. And when you're in yoga, I do silent vinyasa yoga. So there isn't music, and so then you just have your brain and you realize everything that's going on there. So I just really focus on my breath and get in my body, out of my head, and I get into my body and really just focus on the positions of my body. And that just helps me just relax and let go of all of that heaviness and the cognitive space that I always live in.

That's beautiful. Yeah. And the flow yoga. I enjoyed the last pose, which is Shavasana, I believe it is, the corpse pose, where you just stay silent, quiet. Right. So, Terry, you know about that. Talk to us about that.

That too. When I was the commanding officer in Okinawa, we had a sunrise yoga. I volunteered to go out there, and then from that time on, we had yoga twice a week. And I attended and absolutely love it. And my favorite pose is that corpse pose.

Yeah, it's over for me. It's like, oh, we're done. I can just.

We should start with that then.

I think so.

I did make that recommendation. No one listened to me. But notice that those that are listening, this really doing something like that or tai chi or any kind of kind of activity like that connects both the emotional and spiritual side of you. This is not about the religious side of you. This is the emotional, spiritual side. Colleen, how Is this landing on you? What do you do to take care of those two pieces for yourself?

Well, I mean, when I'm hearing you guys chat about is really that yoga and how that fills that space for you. And I would say for me, it's more just about going outside while I do go to the gym. To me, I feel grounded when I take a nature bath. And that's the thing. I love going outside. And I live really close to the river. So literally I can go out and see deer and fish and you know, all just kinds of in their natural self setting, just animals in their natural setting, turkeys and peacocks. It's just gorgeous. So that to me, really nourishes me spiritually. So whether it's on the mountain, skiing, right, Being. Being out there with nature, or it's just going outside and taking a really nice long walk, anything that I can be out and grounded in nature, I believe really kind of fills me up as far as my. My spiritual and even emotional piece.

No, I think it does. So I went in 1977, and many of you are probably not as somebody born in 1977. From 1977 onward, I have been writing in a journal every day. And for some reason, that gives me space to kind of just settle into myself and make sure that I'm not drifting during the course of my day. So the emotional and spiritual side, they always, for me, seem to be connected. Physical, emotional, spiritual. We're missing the I, the intellectual. So let's just talk about, for you personally, what do you do to develop yourself as a leader? Because you're all playing leadership roles and leadership support roles. So what do you personally do from the intellect side, Colleen?

You know, I think it's things like this, to be honest. It's getting on our podcasts, it's being in a learning conversation with the rest of the associates. I think one of the things that I'm so grateful for is we all kind of send each other interesting articles when we read them. So it helps continue to develop our learning around certain topics that we're sharing with each other and with our clients. So one of the things is I love to listen to podcasts. I love to engage in these podcasts. And then I really feel like that you guys are all a resource to me to stay engaged intellectually with the things you share in the conversations we have.

That's beautiful. Thank you. Julie, what would you add on to what Colleen said?

I also love to listen to books. I am usually always moving right and going here, traveling there, going to the grocery store, that sort of thing. And so it's much easier for me to do audiobooks now. And anytime that I meet with someone, I usually ask them, what is one of the leadership books that they're reading now? So I usually have a list of leadership books to read there. There are plenty of them. And then every once in a while, I'll do the podc. But what Colleen said is the biggest thing is just when I'm planning something for a course or coaching and I don't know what to do, I call you, call all of you and say, hey, what's your thought on this? And just brainstorming with each other is very helpful.

Yeah, it's incredible how the resources among the associates so powerful, I get stuck or confused. I just can't wait for you guys to get online with me so I can talk. Talk about what it is I'm struggling with. And on occasion, I get to play that role for one of you. And that's always nice for me and for Terry. I played that role formally for two or three years. And so it's been. It's been a wonderful run for me for that intellectual. But I love to listen to books. And the reason I love to listen to books is my eyesight went south about. I don't know when, a long time ago, and I finally got some surgery to fix it. But I used to love to read in bed, but that went away. So now I listen in bed. And it is interesting to see Ruby kind of punch me to make sure that I'm. You hear me? And of course, because my hearing aids are out and I got the book going, so I have to go, what? But it is one of the more fascinating ways of staying abreast of things. And I don't always read leadership books. I'll read novels from all different genres. So I do love to read. And I think reading is something that really helps us all intellectually. I think it helps us emotionally and spiritually, too. But it's a good piece to do, Terry, about you intellectual development.

Yeah, I concur with what you guys are saying. I really enjoy getting the articles from our team members here. I have one that I've been reading here, the five leadership strategies for 2022. I think Nicole sent that out. But I also go back and I listen to the JLC podcast and I actually take notes and put them in my book, trying to pick up some. Some tidbits that I can use to share with others and people that I mentor. You know, what did we Learn what kind of questions do we want to ask and things of that nature. So I do that. The whole gambit, and probably the podcast is my favorite. And the articles you guys send out.

Well, you brought something up exceedingly important. In order to learn, I have to let go of what I already know. I have to suspend my certainty about things, and then I can come back to my certainty. But to temporarily suspend it, it is one of the learning conversation guidelines. So under conversational leadership, we have five of those guidelines. And the third one that we typically talk about is your ability to suspend, to suspend your thinking and suspend your certainty. And I have watched Terry use his journal as a critical component of his learning, and he goes back to it. He reminds himself of things that promises that he's made as well as promises that other people have made. So it truly has been, for me, wonderful to watch his own intellectual development by using some of the tools and methods that we provide to people. So actually, this one went slightly longer than I thought it would. So I'm going to say our podcast is coming to a close. So before I close this out, though, those that are listening, remember we talked about P E I S. Okay. Physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual. If there was somebody listening to you who is your best friend, somebody you really, really cared about, and you're thinking about PEIs, what is one thing you would say to that person, someone you really care about, someone you really love unconditionally, what is one thing you would say to them about this peis structure? Who'd like to go first?

Go. So I would say get a coach or get a therapist. You don't have to, you know, as adults, we think we have to go through life and figure it all out on our own. And life is complex, and there are blind spots sometimes that we don't even know. And, you know, I know, Ray, you were pointing to that I'm not going to like the emotional part of the four things. And so I, you know, I have a coach and I have a therapist so that I schedule again, just like we schedule physical, I schedule that mental side so that I can really talk about what's going on and maybe reframe things or to get things off my chest or to find ways to handle things. And as a coach myself, my clients have found that it really is helpful and really enhances their ability to be a leader when they have a coach. And that is what I would say.

That is beautiful. So I had one gentleman on the phone with me, a senior, senior leader in a Fortune 50 company. And he said at the conclusion of our coaching 45 minutes, he said, the best thing about this for me is I don't have to worry about what I say. I can just open up to you and I know it's not going to come back and haunt me. You're not going to tell anybody else. You're not going to go, hey, Julie. Hey. What this guy said, you're not going to do that. You know, it's just not there. It's incredibly safe space. Thank you for saying that. Colleen, what would you say to our listeners?

You know, I would say it's about being intentional, right? If you say you're going to take care of yourself because people do, right? We hear our clients say all the time, oh, I talk to my team about a balanced life, about taking care of themselves. And then we ask them, all right, well, what does that look like? Just like you asked us here today in this conversation. And they're like, oh, well, I don't have enough time. Well, I'm too busy doing X or I gotta take the kids to soccer. So my invitation is you do have time if you choose to create time for yourself. So I love the fact that almost all of us schedule it and write it in, because just like Julie taking her little nappy poos in the afternoon, she writes them in and it gets done. So my invitation is make a choice to look at your week, schedule these things out and see how well you start to begin to do. And then the other piece of that is look at those four areas. What am I doing physically, what am I doing emotionally, what am I doing intellectually, and what am I doing spiritually to support myself in those areas. And I know I lean heavy on one side, but I think that if you're intentionally addressing each one, I think you're going to feel a lot better about yourself and the way you show up with others.

Yeah, it's beautiful. You actually got to one little piece that I want to just listeners, this is a big deal to me. My wife is a Native American and there are on this call with me people that are wolves. And the wolf in the Native American tradition is a clan, and that clan builds community.

Be.

It's a good, wonderful thing to have a wolf and have wolves in your clan or in your family. My case, I have some of them in the family today. When the wolf gets in trouble is when the wolf does too much and they be. They will actually shift into another creature that will die in service to the community. So you want to be careful, be Careful. And I'm probably talking to myself as much here as I am anyone else, not to overextend myself and trying to take care of the people that are in my life right now to the detriment of myself and the relationships that matter to me. So isn't that interesting? Wolves build community. And the creature outside on the other side of wolf is one that will actually perish trying to take care of everybody else. Terry, what would you tell the listeners?

Yeah, I think those four categories, the PEIs are foundational for your life. And as we were talking today, I was thinking about my granddaughter who graduated high school this year, and these four foundational things would be a good way for her to approach her life going forward. Again, it's foundational. It gives. It balances you out. And it's. They're very good.

I love it, Terry. And all my grandchildren heard this story. So they all know about peace, right? And they're like, oh, papa, you gonna tell me about peace again? Yeah, well, you're not doing anything. It becomes, you know, Papa Bear's mantra when they graduate from high school to be thinking about themselves physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Can't lose those. They are, to Terry's point, absolutely foundational. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. If you'd like to have a discovery call with us to see how our little team could help you in your leadership journey, feel free to call us. We are happy to do. On us, on us. An absolutely free discovery call for 30 minutes with any one of our associates that you kind of. I like that Terry guy. I like that Julie. I like Colleen. I would love to talk with them. We will make that happen for you. So please feel free. Feel free to dial us up, send us a note through the. Through our JLC site, and we'll be happy to respond and set up the discovery call. You can find us@gojlc.com you can listen to us on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple, any one of the podcasting structures that typically are out there for the population. Thank you for being with us and appreciate you listening to us today and giving us a little bit of your time. Be well. Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode of. Of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our events page at gojlc. Com.