1/18/21 - Be Kind To Yourself

Well, hey everyone. Welcome to Made for Mondays. I'm so happy that you guys are here today to start your Mondays with us and with me, Justin Lester. Thank all of you for your consistent listenership and consistent followership. As I considered whether or not to actually continue this podcast this year, it was your responses, your engagement, your text messages, your emails, and your follow up that made me say, you know what, let's continue this. And I hope and pray that we are simply empowering you to be all that you can be, to go into the places you know you can be, and to own the realities and the spaces you're in. So I'm excited for you. I'm excited for this week. I'm excited for an opportunity for you to be your best self and hopefully to participate in you being your best self this week. So let's jump into our time today. Now. Today is Monday, January 18th, and across the country we are pausing to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As a student currently at Boston University pursuing their doctorate, it's amazing to be able to walk the hallowed halls that Dr. King did walk. One of the things I've learned as I've done more research on Dr. King is I've come across some of his failures. I came across some things he did at Boston University, things he did in his marriage, things he did on the road, whatever that is. And I want to give you this as you go into this week. You're human. One of the things I don't believe leaders hear often is you're human. We make mistakes. We have accidents happen in our lives. We may have some poor decisions that we end up living into. My mentor told me something very powerful last week. A mentor who the leader of a multi billion dollar company. He said to me, justin, be kind to yourself. As I had the conversation with him, I told him about things that didn't go well for me and my church last year. Places in my leadership where I know I could have done. I told him and I explained to him some of my preaching, some of my teachings, my engagement, how I didn't follow up well, how I didn't do things as well as I thought I should have done them. And at the end of it all, he said, justin, I was watching you from afar and I told myself, and I told my wife I would call you if I thought you were going to fall apart. But I knew you had the ability to recover and you had the ability to get through it. So I didn't reach out to you. And I asked him why? He said, Justin, 2008 recession happened, and for my company, there's some decisions I wish I made at the beginning of the 2008 recession, when I saw it coming, that I didn't make until the end. So when Covid happened in our company, he said, immediately, within two weeks, I paused, brought my senior executive leadership team in, told them exactly what to do, brought my second layer in, told them exactly what to do. We had a company wide meeting. He said, he has over 7,000 employees. He said, justin, we had a massive meeting. I gave them four things we're going to do. So no matter what place they were in, from the top all the way down to the bott, they knew exactly what to do because of the four things I gave them. And he said, justin, I learned those four things because of what I went through in the 2008 recession. So, Justin, you're not terrible. You're not horrible. Be kind to yourself. And if I were to merge anything for leadership, if I were to merge anything for living into this day, I want you to go into this week looking for ways to be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself in your quiet time. Be kind to yourself in your drive time. Be kind to yourself in the fun things you do and the negative things that you do. Be kind to yourself in the decisions that you make. Be kind to yourself in the mistakes that you have. I want you to take a moment, even right now, and just laugh at some of the mistakes you made. A lot of times we're put in situations where we have to make split moment decisions. So in the moment we're supposed to make a decision and the decision we make has lasting impact and we know that weight. Be kind to yourself. You're not always going to get it right. You're not always going to have it perfect. There are times where when you show up to the room, you're not together. Be kind to you, extend the grace to yourself that you really wish other people would give to you. That's the lesson that I learned. And my mentor said, justin, the reason I want you to be kind to yourself is because maybe the reason why you believe people are mistreating you is, is because all you see is negative talk and negative language and negative body language around you, because that's what you give yourself. Be kind to yourself. Because the good news is you will make some great decisions. You will have some great ideas. In the spirit of the moment, you will make a great hire, you will follow through on something amazing. And there are times we won't and there are times we will. This week, King is teaching me be kind to you. Because in spite of his failures, he led a lot. In spite of his failures, there are monuments and houses and land dedicated to him. In spite of his failures, the entire country pauses in January to remember the legacy of Dr. King. That's my little spiel on King. So what about you this week? That's my little spiel. Be kind to yourself. Here's the two things I want to give you this week. As you go into this week, as you're kind to yourself, there's two things. Number one, I want you to plan before you do this week. You guys have heard me talk the last two weeks about the importance of some questions to ask yourself. And in those questions, I want you to pause and plan out your entire week. And by planning out your week, I'm not saying every single hour, but it's amazing how much stress goes away when you see how much or how little you have to do on a sheet of paper. It's a practice that I've employed in my life, and I want to give that practice to you. I want you to plan before you do. Take the time and, and write out, what hour meeting do you have, what two hour meeting do you have? What meeting do you think will be 15 minutes that may end up turning to be two or three hours? What days are going to be overwhelming and how are you preparing yourself the day before? I know I've said this earlier this month, but I want you to really take time this week to prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare you for what you have on your plate. For some of you, it's going to be a very busy week. You guys know I'm a black preacher as well. And so this week it's Martin Luther King Monday and Black History Month's around the corner. At the end of the day, y', all a brother's gonna be busy, right? I know I am. I'm a black preacher and I'm going to be very busy. But when you plan, it takes away the brunt, it takes away the umph that the week could have and actually brings you to a space where you can be excited about what the week is going to give you. Plan before you do. Also make sure in your week you have a moment that's already planned out for you to escape, to enjoy, to read, to draw, to write, to create, to watch a television show. Plan the moment you're going to watch the movie that comes out on Netflix or comes out on Amazon prime this weekend. Plan before you do then. Secondly, I want you to take time and begin to cultivate this year something you can do in your car or something you can do in your home office, in your current office, something you can do in the elevator. But I want you to plan this year a 32nd ritual that you can begin to employ this year. That every time you enter into your office on a Monday or every single day, there's a ritual that brings you to where you are and brings joy into place. You're going into one of the practices that I do. My son and I have something we do every time I drop him off at school. Every single day. And when I drop him off, there's a certain saying we have together. My son tells me, don't play with the brown basketball. I tell him I'm going to play with it anyway, but I can't wait to play with you later. It's simple, but it's full of joy. I've gone into meetings discussing millions of dollars after telling my son, don't play with brown basketball. What's your ritual? What's something you can do that's going to bring you joy? Maybe it's a text message you fire off to your spouse. Maybe it's a picture you take. Maybe it's something you do. Maybe you park farther away from your office and there's a picture you take every single day and you take a picture of nature or birds or the raccoon that gets so annoying but you're taking a picture. What is it that you can do? What's a ritual this year that you can add that's going to bring you joy? Maybe that's checking a sports stat. Maybe that's listening to a particular podcast like this one. Maybe that's sharing something with someone, maybe sending a text to somebody. But every single time I want you to develop a ritual and you'll be amazed what happens when you bring joy into your space so that no one has to bring joy to the space for you. Plan before you do something, create a ritual and be kind to yourself. This week you're made for Mondays. Now let's say our affirmation together. If you would just simply repeat after me. Say, I am me, I can be me and no one will stop me from being me. You're made for this. Now we're going to review our wine for the week and we're going to take a break and I have a really interesting pinot I'm going to talk about for a second and we'll take a break and we'll jump right back into our time together. Remember, you were Made for Mondays. Now go win your Mondays. Welcome back to Made for Mondays, you guys. And today we're reviewing another wine. I hope you guys are enjoying these wine reviews. I'm personally enjoying it. I'm bringing you on a journey. One of the reasons I'm doing it is I'm believing this year is a year of authenticity for me. And one of the things I've always hidden because I've been always in fear of judgment and things like that is wine. I don't drink wine to be intoxicated. I drink wine because I simply enjoy it. And I'm kind of inviting you on my journey of it. Eventually, one of the things I do want to do is go for being a sommelier. Not a master sommelier. That is just way too much. But I do want to eventually go for that. And so I'm happy to invite you guys on my journey, and I hope you guys are enjoying my little journey with me as we talk. So today is another bottle from the grouping I received from Naked Wines and Naked Wines. It was a bottle made by Jacqueline Behoo, and it's a Pinot Noir. It's a Pinot Noir. Now, the beautiful thing about Pinot is if you really want a great Pinot place, I'll tell you to go is Burgundy. Burgundy has some of the best Pinot you will ever, ever, ever hear about or ever have. I really think that if you are looking for a Pinot, go to Burgundy. And a couple of weeks now or sometime, I will make sure that we review a Burgundy from a Pinot from Burgundy. I had one and had my first one, and it was an absolute amazing experience to have that. This time around, though, I have a Pinot from Santa Barbara. It's a Pinot from Santa Barbara by Jacqueline Beh. Jacqueline is an individual winemaker, a small winemaker out in Santa Barbara. And this wine actually was a phenomenal wine. To describe Pinot for you, it's a silky wine. The one beautiful things about this is it pairs with a lot of different food. It's a wine that's really good to age. It's a really, really good wine to age, if you wanted to age this one. Now, Jacqueline's in particular this time. The bottle itself is a $35.99 bottle. It's a rather not expensive bottle, but it's a good date night bottle, I would say. It's a good, good bottle of Pinot. The color of the wine itself was light. It's almost a pink. It goes dark to light. It gets really light on the edges when you tip it. The smells you're going to have when you open up the bottle and when you let it age, I will let it decant for a little bit and let it oxidize for at least 30 to 60 minutes. You're going to smell berries, particularly dried fruits, and you're going to smell the strong scent of berries in this particular bottle. You smell a little bit of pepper, you smell some grass, you smell some herbs, a little bit of vanilla. You can tell it was aged in an oak barrel. You smell a little bit of cardboard and it smelled a little bit burnt when you smell it. It's a good, good powerful smell and kind of powerful for a pinot, but it was good. When you taste it, what you're going to feel in your palate, you're going to taste some strawberries, you're going to taste some blueberries, and you're going to definitely taste vanilla. It's a smooth finish of the wine. And in terms of acidity, it's a low acidity, very soft tannins and a light bodied wine. It's not a deep wine, it's not a wine. It's a good, it's a good date night wine. If you're looking for one and you want to pair it, I think pairing it with probably some chicken and pairing it with some pizza, I think it'd be really, really good. And the funny thing actually is I commented on this wine and Jacqueline actually wrote back to me and told me what she makes. And if you really want the best thing from the winemaker itself, Jacqueline said that she made some a wood oven pizza and it was really good with that as well. So I think it would go really well for you. And also charcuterie is always a good thing. I ate some cheese with it, I had charcuterie with it. So it was really good. And it's a beautiful, enjoyable, light wine. I recommend it. Like I said, for a date night, it's expensive, but it's not expensive expensive. It's a good wine. I will say this, it's not a Burgundy Pinot. Santa Barbara's grapes are just not the same as Burgundy grapes. But it's a good bottle of wine. And so it's a Jacqueline Bahue B A H U E from Naked Wines out of Santa Barbara, $35.99 bottle out of five stars. I gave it a 4.5. And I definitely will be buying this wine again. And shout out to Jacqueline for the great work that she's doing. You guys have heard me talk about some small winemakers. Karen Birmingham, Jacqueline Behoove, and I think they're just great wines out in California that may not be in Napa, they may not be in Sonoma Valley, but there's some great wines in Santa Barb, great rinds in Paso Robles. If you want a great cab, get a cab above the price of about $15.99 to about $40 from Paso Robles, and it'll bless your whole life. It'll make it seem as if you've gotten some of the best cabs from the, you know, the early 2000s, the late 90s, from Napa. Anyway, that's my little spiel on wines today. So have a wonderful week. You were made for Mondays. Mondays don't own you. You own your Mondays. Now go win the week, win the day, and be the best person that God's called you to, be an essential part in the wheel, your essential cog in the wheel that God is spending in this world. Have a wonderful, wonderful week. God bless you.