Several of us would love to have someone simply tell us what to do when we run into an issue, to give us the simple steps.
But what if you instead, you believed you’re your own best expert?? If you believed this, what is one action that you would take today?
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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 today. And thank you, especially to our Inner Circle members for supporting this work and all of the work that we do at Inner Workout. Now, you just heard me say in that intro, that you as always, are our expert guest. And at this point, if you've been listening to the podcast for long enough, that's probably just something that goes in one ear and out the other like, oh, yeah, Taylor says that at the beginning, that it may have lost some significance. And as we're doing the series this month of clarifying and honing in on some of Inner Workout's, foundational concepts, this idea of self expertise is definitely something that I wanted to return to. Because everything we do at Inner Workout is founded on the belief that you are your own best expert, to the point that I had a whole other personal development podcast before that was doing really well. And it started to feel misaligned, because I didn't want to simply tell people what to do. I wanted to create space for people yes, to hear concepts, but ultimately to have reflection, and to tap into their own expertise as it related to a concept. And the fact that we at Inner workout, believe that you are your own best expert, that can make things difficult, sometimes.
You may or may not know that I do a lot of facilitation work. And one of the organizations I work with is Google. And I get to lead this workshop every few months, about the idea of asking rather than telling. And if you can ever think back to like, think back to you trying to teach someone how to do something. Maybe it's at your job, and someone was new, and you're walking them through how you do a process. Whether it's a guest in your home, and you're teaching them something, maybe you've saw a TikTok and you want to share the concept with someone else, whatever it is, when you are trying to relay information, it is a lot easier just to tell rather than to ask. It tends to be faster to do that. It can feed your ego because you're like I am wise, I am important, I am the person with the answers. For me as a podcaster, it would be easier for me to just feed you information and to tell you what to do. But it does very little for you as the listener, if my ultimate goal is that you are more connected to yourself, and that you take steps towards your own becoming. And I know I know how tempting it is, as the person on the receiving end of the questions, to just want the answer, to just want the checklist like tell me what to do. I feel stuck, I feel confused right now, I don't want another question. I don't want it reflected back to myself. Just tell me what to do. This happens to me all the time, when I am talking to my husband, Matt, and I'm in the midst of a decision. And it's like I played it in my head. I could go this way or I could go that way. And neither way is necessarily better. It's really up to what feels more aligned, and I will whine to him. I will be like "please, babe, just tell me what to do." And I guess I got a keeper because he doesn't tell me what to do. He says no, I'm not going to do that because ultimately, you know what is best for you, Taylor. He is more than willing to help me process. He'll listen to me do a pro cons list. He'll ask me follow up questions. But what he doesn't do is give me a step by step breakdown of this is what you should do. Or this is the right path because x y z and that isn't natural to many of us. It's not what we see. At least I'll speak from the I, it's not what I've seen as the example to be set as a business owner, but also as a leader in many places, there's this model of, you are just supposed to tell people what to do. And when you tell people what to do, that puts you in a place of an authority that puts you in this role of being seen as the expert. And that is the ultimate goal. But that's not my goal, as you heard. That's not Inner Workout's goal. And so at Inner Workout, what we do, and what we try to do, I'm more than willing to being called out if you listen to this episode, and you're like, actually, Taylor, I don't think you're living into this, please do reach out, send us a DM, or an email, I will welcome that feedback with open arms. But our goal at Inner Workout, is to teach concepts or structures or frameworks. That's what you hear us doing, especially this month on the podcast, we're telling you these concepts and how we see them, what our perspective is, and then to hold space for you to figure out how they apply right now. So in this podcast, the structure is we're sharing concepts. A lot of times I weave in my personal stories and experiences. And then we have that couple of minutes for you to think, Okay, I just heard a lot of information. What do I need to focus on? What resonated, what didn't resonate? Or if you've ever been to a workshop that we hold, we try to have space for reflection. And when I'm answering questions, you even heard me do it earlier in this episode. I try to be really clear when I'm speaking from the I and from the place of my personal experience, and my self expertise, so that you don't think that this is the way it has to be all the time. I'm sharing what works for me, and what has been true for me, which may be different for you, as you sit in your own expertise.
I actually just had this with a one on one client, where she was asking me a question about how I like to approach my work, and how I'm able to do what I'm able to do. And I answered the question, but then at the end, I said, ultimately, I know that we, I've been working with her for a while so I know that we have different personality types, we have different things that energize us and drain us. We have different systems and structures that we need to have in place. So my hope is that what I shared to her was an inspiration. And I let her know, this is a starting point for you. And now what I want your next step to be is to think about, Okay, what does this mean for me? What are the themes that I can draw out and then apply to my own personality type in my own energy cycles?
So that is always my goal, whether it's I'm working with someone one on one, or as the person who has the pleasure of leading Inner Workout. We would probably honestly make more money, if we tried to sell step by steps. And we said, like, here are the five steps to taking better care of yourself. Or here are the three things that you can do to never feel anxious again. And a lot of marketers do that because in self care and wellness and personal development, you're getting people who are in this place where they want change often. They see that something feels off, they see that something could be different. And sometimes people like to exploit that and say, Okay, I have the magic formula. If you just follow this magic formula, all of your problems will go away. Obviously, I'm being a little extreme, even though it's probably not that far off from some of the advertisements that are out there. But those are the types of practices that I've seen. Of saying if you follow this process, all of a sudden you will have the business that I have or the job that I have or the life or the partner that I have. And that's just so short sighted if the true goal is transformation. That personally doesn't feel aligned to me. I love frameworks and structures and all of those things. If you've ever sat in on a workshop, I introduced a lot of those, but I love those because they give you a starting point so that you can plug and play them into your own life, using your own wisdom because you are your own best expert.
So in a moment, the question I'm going to have you reflect on is "If you believed that you were your own best expert, what is one action that you would take today?" For me answering this question today, me believing that I was my own best expert, meant one, taking a nap. I was like, I could push through this, I'm feeling really tired. I could just keep going. But then I was like, No, I know myself, I know my body, I know the energy that I want to bring to this task. And it is far better for me to take the rest than to try and just push through. The other thing that I did today, in believing that I was my own best expert, was trusting myself, as I put the touches on this podcast. In trusting that, I had something to say, and that I had a perspective and that it would be valuable to the people that it's meant to be valuable to.
Sometimes I find myself wanting to censor, or to say things differently. Because I think that, I don't know, I think people will like it better, that it will go down easier that people will like me better. But when I'm sitting in my self expertise, I'm like, you know, what, I'm not going to be for everyone. Inner Workout is not going to be for everyone. But for the people it's for, I'm going to do everything that I can to make it as valuable as possible. And when I'm trusting my self expertise, those tend to be the times where I get notes, saying, Oh, this newsletter was exactly what I needed. Or I'll see someone share an episode on the podcast and say, Oh, yes, this one. This one was speaking directly to me.
There's a correlation between when I am most trusting my expertise, and when things resonate out in the world. So that's what it looks like for me to trust and to believe that I was my own best expert. It's your turn to reflect : if you believed that you were your own best expert, what is one action that you'd take today? And I'll give you a hint too. Sometimes the action is inaction. Sometimes it's not doing something, that is the action. So that's a fair response too. If you believed that you were your own best expert, what is one action you would take today? I'll catch you on the other side.
Thanks for taking the time to reflect with me. Your time is valuable. I am so appreciative of it. And thank you for sharing your expertise. Hopefully that line hits a little bit different after today's reflection. Take care.
