*This month, Taylor and her husband, Matt, celebrate their 5 year wedding anniversary - happy anniversary to the beautiful couple!*
On today's episode of Inner Warmup, we're going to be doing some reflecting, but you already knew that! This time we'll ask you to think about the last time you surprised yourself. What's changed about you, how have you adapted to your life's shifts? Taking time to learn yourself is a major part of self-care. Learning about your innate qualities, what makes you feel inspired, what drains your energy...having that true self-awareness is key. Some advice? Keep yourself on your toes. Try new things, say yes, tell them no, move across the country, start the blog. Just let life flow, see what happens. You just might surprise yourself.
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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. I just celebrated my five year wedding anniversary, which is wild. The only thing that's wilder is the fact that I've been with my husband, including all the time we dated for over 11 years. And sometimes I just look at him and I'll say, how are we not bored of each other yet? But somehow, we still surprise each other. And I think part of the reason that we still do is because we're learning about ourselves as individuals. We're also learning about each other, because we're continuing to change, we're continuing to evolve. And that's a really beautiful thing. I guess I'm at the point where I've been in a partnered relationship long enough that I can dole out advice here and there, if someone's willing to ask, even though generally, I say, my best advice is really on how to date my husband. It's not like I've dated a ton of people. But there is something, especially for those who desire like a long term partnered relationship, in acknowledging that that person is going to continue to change. Like, if you are marrying someone, and you're thinking that they are going to be the exact same on your wedding day that they are for the rest of your marriage, you're setting yourself up for failure, in my opinion. I think part of why we've done so well is that we are entirely different people than when we first started dating. And we're okay with that, we welcome the opportunity to get to know each new iteration, each new unfolding and becoming that presents itself. And that's a really beautiful thing. This episode, though, isn't about my relationship with my husband. It's really about our relationships to ourselves. And I try and bring that same energy of assuming my husband's going to change of being excited to get to know, new versions of him into how I view my relationship with myself. Learning about ourselves, is a key part of inner work. And to some of you that sounds really obvious like, duh isn't inner work about getting to know yourself? You'd think it would be obvious, but I can see how I've approached in the past and how other people sometimes approach it, where, again, it's this very, I'm telling myself how to be and how I should show up in the world, rather than trying to learn and to understand some of the innate qualities of yourself, that have brought you to this place, where you show up how you do currently, and also learning how you have changed and adapted as you are placed into new environments. As you feel more secure in yourself, you feel safer to show up and to show different aspects of yourself. That's where the learning of inner work comes in. And it's exciting. It's kind of like a game to allow yourself to be surprised. And wonder what new thing am I going to discover about myself this year? What new insight will not only change how I move forward, but also cause me to reconsider how I viewed myself in the past. into that, and the question that I want you to reflect on, is when is the last time you surprised yourself?
For me, I surprised myself when I finally admitted that I don't particularly like organization and business operations. And part of why that was so surprising is because I literally was the VP of Ops at a startup. And I built all of these systems and processes and was training other people on them and was deciding what software's to use and all that stuff. And I'm decent at it. I'm able to do it. I might even be better than the average person at doing it. But it's not necessarily something I enjoy. Like I couldn't start a business where I am helping people build out their business operations. At least I wouldn't be able to do that for long, because I don't enjoy that a ton. I can do it. But it feels like a lot of work. And it was kind of like surprise, you have this whole vision of yourself as someone who's like so operationally minded, and is like really good at getting into those things but you actually don't enjoy doing that. And so for me, that changed how I looked back at that job experience. And I realized, oh, what I really liked about that job was that I had a lot of autonomy. And that I could see like almost an instant feedback loop. I could see the impact my work was having right away, which is something I didn't get when I worked at larger organizations. I didn't necessarily like the work of doing all the operations and admin stuff. But I liked that faster pace, that feedback loop to see I am doing something that actually matters. So that's one example of how a surprise to yourself, which sometimes is something that maybe you had an inkling of, but you didn't want to admit, then that can change how you view your past but also going forward. Like knowing that about myself, I'm so much more open to getting operational support in the business instead of being like, I can't do this, I should be able to do this. I can just acknowledge, I don't love doing this. And there's probably someone who is so much better at this and would have a much more enjoyable time doing it than me. So that's the example that I have of me surprising myself recently, which that's a snapshot eventually led into a much bigger journey that I'll probably share later. But now it's your time to reflect. When's the last time you surprised yourself? When's the last time you learned something new or saw yourself differently? Or were surprised by a facet of your personality or your skillset? Take a couple minutes to reflect on that.
Thanks for taking the time to reflect together. If anything came up for you that you want to share. You can always DM us on Instagram or you can join the group chat where we're having conversations and we have opportunity for real time conversation at various events. We'd love to have you join us there. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks as always for your expertise. Take care.