Happy Sunday! As we continue through our "self-care versus...fill in the blank" series, the next concept we'll be diving into is self indulgence.
Here's something to think about, what's so wrong with feeling good? And do the things that you do actually make you feel good? Self-aware overachievers to the front, this one is definitely for you.
Mentioned in the episode: https://www.tiktok.com/@domesticblisters/video/7064988004812819759
Welcome back to Inner Warmup where your inner work begins. I'm Taylor Elyse Morrison, creator of Inner Workout, and you as always are our expert guest. Thanks for being here. We are back in our self care vs series. And this time we're talking about the relationship, the connection between self care and self indulgence. I've gotten this question a few times : "If I practice self care, the way that you describe it Taylor, you know, the listening within and then responding in the most loving way possible, won't I just over indulge all the time?" And whenever it's being asked to me, I can tell that this is a very real fear for the person asking the question. Probably because I would put these people in the category of being self aware overachievers, I identify as a self aware overachiever. And if you are listening to this podcast, there's a good chance that you are too. A self aware over achiever is a person who, there is that self aware piece, you know yourself, you are interested in continuing to get to know yourself more, you've read the books, you listen to podcasts like this. And then there's the overachiever side of things, the part of you who wants to be the best that you can be, and has likely spent a lot of your life optimizing for that. If you've optimized your life for certain outcomes, you might fear that listening to yourself, and maybe putting those outcomes at a little bit of a backburner will somehow put you off track. Does that resonate? Does that track for you? In that question about the fear of over indulging, there's so many places we could go with this. But for today, there's two pieces that I want to unpack. The first is around our comfort level with feeling good. Do you believe that it's okay for you to feel good? It sounds like a simple, maybe innocuous question. But I can think of multiple places in my business life. And in my personal life, where I thought that I was somehow better, because I struggled. For the longest time, I didn't value my ability to write. I just was like, oh, yeah, I can I can write. And I will never, ever forget, when my friend Rachel, she introduced me to her husband, we were my husband and I went to her place for dinner. And she introduced me to her husband, as her friend who was also a writer. And I had the hardest time receiving that. I've written for as long as I can remember, I can think back to being in one of my homes in my childhood. And my parents were taking an afternoon nap. And I had my spiral bound notebook. And I was writing up a storm, I was doing like an adaptation of another story I'd written. I mean, I was five. So we're not talking about like this genius level adaptation. It was probably plagiarism, a five year olds version of plagiarizing. But I had so much fun doing it. I've always enjoyed writing. And because I didn't really have to work at it. And work is in quotes there. I just kind of cast it aside as this skill that I had that didn't mean that much. Which for you listening, you might be like, What are you talking about Taylor? Didn't you just write a book that's coming out next year? And I've built a business that uses my writing skills. I wrote some podcast scripts to record today. I write newsletters every week, I wrote a book, I weave my writing into workshops, and I have so much fun doing it. But it's been a process to allow myself to realize this thing that is fun and feels good is allowed. I don't have to like struggle in order for something to be worth enjoying. And in my personal life, I think I mentioned at least once on the podcast about my recent ADHD diagnosis. And something I'm actively coming to terms with right now is the fact that I can make accommodations for myself.
I can make accommodations that feel better for my brain, that's allowed. I don't have to struggle to do things in a more neurotypical way. I can do things in a way that feel good for me. So those are just two examples where I wrestled with this idea of what felt good or what felt easy. And if that was allowed. In today's episode, we're going to do two reflections. They'll be shorter, they'll only be a minute each. So the first reflection I want to flip this question back over to you. Do you believe that it is okay to feel good? Why or why not?
Okay, welcome back, I hope you got some good reflection around your relationship to feeling good and feeling allowed to feel good. And now we can unpack this other side of things. Which is whether or not the thing that we are doing, does that action actually feel good? Or is it really a distraction? I find that I can often sketch out this line for myself between self care and overindulgence by asking, does this actually feel good? Or am I distracting myself from something that would feel better? Sometimes binge watching a show feels incredible. It is nostalgic, it is cathartic. And sometimes it's avoidant, it would feel better for me to sit and journal. And I don't mean better in this like sunshine and rainbows form of better, where it immediately feels better. But in the long run, it would feel better for me to sit with the emotion than to numb out by watching a show. And I really like this perspective, from a creator whose account is called struggle care on TikTok. She talks about caring for three versions of ourselves. Caring for our past self, caring for ourself in the present, and caring for ourself, the future version of ourselves. And sometimes what can help is just to think, okay, is this thing that I'm doing, does it really feel good to all three versions of myself? Or am I doing something that feels good to one of them, but at the others expense? So am I doing something that my past self really liked? That was actually like a maladaptive coping mechanism, and I have better coping mechanisms now. Or am I doing something that short sightedly makes my present self feel really good, like staying up really late to watch a TV show when you know, you have to be up at 5am because you have a really early start time in the morning. So I don't think every single action can always care for all three of ourselves. But that as a follow up question, can do a lot to help you parse out what genuinely feels good, and is doing good for you. And what is more of a band aid, a way to distract from something that would feel and would be better for you in the long term. So once again, I'll pass the mic over to you. I want you to think about something for you that is on this line of "I don't know is this self care? Is this just like being too self indulgent?" And run it through this lens. Ask yourself, does this thing, whatever it is that you're thinking about, does this actually feel good to me? Or is it distracting me from something that would feel better? Happy reflecting?
Welcome back. If this episode meant something to you, I would love it if you could share it with a friend. And if you haven't already given us five stars on Spotify that's super easy to do, or rated and reviewed us on Apple podcast, that would mean the world. Thank you for your time. Thank you as always for your expertise and take care
