In the year of 2022, it's time that we break down our walls and allow others to help. Just think, what if? What if you didn't have to do it all alone? What if you had the support you need and desire? Life is meant to be a shared experience, so make it one.
In this episode, Taylor gives some insight into individualism and just how...not helpful...it can be.
Welcome back to Inner Warmup where your inner work begins. My name is Taylor Elyse Morrison, creator of Inner Workout and you as always are our expert guest, let's get started with a little embodiment exercise. This one super simple, I want you to do is to place one hand on the top of your head and take a deep breath, or two or three. I learned this from one of my teachers, Michelle Pellizzon, she was leading us through a practice and told us to put our hand on our head. And I found it to be really grounding to have like, this container from the top, rather than on my heart or my belly, which also feels supportive, but it's a little bit different of a sensation for me. So try that out for yourself and then let's get into the episode.
So the question that we've got for today's interview is, what if you had help? What if you had help? And there are some things that you need to know about me and about the Inner Workout community to fully engage with this question or to know where I'm coming from as I ask this question. I've always been pretty independent, a person who likes to do things myself. I remember, my dad always wanting to open the car door for me, and I wouldn't understand. I'm like, I can open the door as a young girl, like, I got it, Dad, I'm good. I like doing things by myself. If you're into astrology as a meaning making system, I have a lot of Capricorn in my chart, which just means like, I tend to be a hard worker, believe that I can figure things out. And I can just like, bear down and get it done by myself, which sometimes has served me but a lot of times it hasn’t. It's a big reason why I own a company with a vision of a world without burnout, because I've been burned out so many times.
Another thing that you need to know about me, and that I hope is true of you as someone who's in Inner Workout’s community, is we're pretty comfortable talking about privilege and acknowledging privilege. I, even as a black woman who owns a business, when I'm talking to other entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, especially young folks, I like to tell people what the reality of my situation is, and has been, because I've seen so many people who don't look like me not acknowledge their privilege and it really rubs me the wrong way. So like, for example, for me and starting the company, I was married. I had a husband with a full time job with benefits. Health insurance is one of the biggest costs and what could be really prohibitive in doing your own thing, I didn't have to worry about health insurance. We had a healthy savings that I knew that we could fall back on if we needed to. I had skillsets and connections from previous work that I did.
So I had a lot of support in entrepreneurship. And that's just talking about privilege in a specific context.
But I would hope that you know we all have privilege in our own ways. Some of it is privileged because we look or act like the dominant culture or practice the dominant religion. For others of us, even if you're marginalized like me, you might have a privilege because of your socioeconomic status or a privilege because of your level of education. We can be comfortable having those types of conversations, I can be comfortable having those types of conversations around privilege, and understanding that saying something like, well, that person should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps is problematic because some people are starting with like Manolo Blahnik boots, and some people have no boots at all with which to pull themselves up from.
I noticed, and this is really me calling myself out, I've noticed that in the goal setting conversation, I often can fall back into this bootstraps ideology, even though I know how flawed it is. Even though I know that I am supposed to be looking at my context, in my capacity, and my starting point, which may be very different than the starting point of the person that I'm trying to emulate. And yet I still find myself thinking well if I I just do it myself, if I just work hard enough, I'll be able to make it happen on my own. Very individualist.
And that extreme individualism and focus on just me doing everything by myself is how I get to the place where I'm so exhausted and tired and burned out, it's the place from which I started this company. And I wonder if it might be the same for you too, even though you know the nuances of privilege but maybe you don't apply it to your own conversations around personal development. And when I compare that mindset, this bootstraps mentality, this do everything on your own, just white knuckle it, this me being an independent person, an island, as compared to the way that my ancestors lived, and how they related to each other. That was so interdependent, rather than independent.
It was communal, and collective, rather than individualist. And I think that if we really want a world without burnout, we're going to have to come back to that. We're going to have to return to this belief that we can't go it alone. And you know, there's old sayings about how it takes a village to raise a child. You may have had examples in your life of where people came together. You often, at least in my experience in Western culture, see it only really happening in times of crisis. Someone gets ill or someone dies and people show up with meals to support them, and offer to pick up their kids from work. But those same conversations aren't necessarily happening in the day to day. And so what I want to invite you to do is to think about the goals and the intentions that you've set for 2022. And ask yourself, what would these look like if I had help? What would these look like if I had a community supporting me? Or if maybe I didn't have to fully take all of the responsibility for it because I can be honest with myself and acknowledge it's not my skill set?
What would it look like if you had help? And I really want you to notice what the reaction is because it's the first time in my life where I thought about asking someone for help, or for support or for accountability, or paying someone else to do something that was really in their gifting. I had stories pop up about how well I can do this, I'm capable of doing this, I should be able to do this myself. So if you feel that wall coming up right away, reflect on that.
Where is that coming from? Where are those voices coming from that are saying you have to do it all yourself? that it should all be on your shoulders? And if that's the only reflection that you can get to in this time, that's fine.
And then for some of you, maybe you're like, you know what, I could use some help. Maybe you can go straight to thinking about okay, what could this look like? What could it look like for me to…I don't know, improve my mile time? What would help look like in that context? Or something that I'm realizing, I would like to get our home more organized and I go through bouts of organization. But I do a lot better with accountability. So for me, it's like how can I build accountability into that? Is it asking my mom to come over for a day? Is it putting down some money to hire an organizer who can support me? But maybe you get into thinking logistics around what it could look like to be supported?
So I'm going to stop talking and hand the mic over to you. What if you had help?
Thanks for taking the time to reflect. And if you want to really engage with this question in a more actionable way, I want to invite you to our Self-Care Support Masterclass happening on January 15. It's a two hour live workshop where we're going to map out our support systems and get really clear on the support that we need and where there are gaps. If that interests you, head to the link in the show notes. I'm so excited to be back in your earbuds next week. Thank you for your time and thank you for your expertise. Take care!