Welcome back to another Inner Warmup where your inner work begins. My name is Taylor Elyse Morrison, I'm the founder of Inner Workout and the host of the podcast. Thanks for being here today. You know, we like to kick things off with a micro exercise. Today's is really simple. I want you to curl the corners of your mouth, into a smile. Your choice, it can be a soft smile if that's your vibe today, or you can get your teeth into it. I know for some of you this might feel a little uncomfy. But the science shows that smiling, even if you don't feel particularly happy, can make you feel more positive. And we're talking about something pretty fun and positive today, so why not start things off with a smile? And if you've been holding that smile, okay, now's your cue, you can let it go. The question that we're talking about today is what will you gift yourself? What will you gift yourself?
In my hope for you, and I know this isn't true for everyone, but my hope is that at some point over the next few weeks, you're going to have some time away from your day to day. Whatever your day to day is, time away from work, time away from school, if you've got kiddos, maybe you're with family, and so you're not having the full responsibility for caring for your kiddos 24/7. And as you have this time away, I want you to think about what the gift is that you're going to give yourself. For those of you who celebrate the holiday season in a way that involves the exchange of gifts, there's a lot of thought, at least for me. I put a lot of thought into the gifts that I'm giving. I don't always think about what I want to do for myself, so this was a helpful exercise for me. This is one of the episodes that was like, oh, I am preaching to myself right now. For me, the gifts that I want to give myself are space to rest, and space to play. I've talked about this before on the podcast, it's weird to run a company in the self care and wellness space and to have so much of my livelihood and my impact be related to helping other people feel well cared for. And having that push and pull where I don't always feel like I’m giving the same thing to myself. And so I want to use this last few weeks of the year to really pour in to myself to make sure I can rest.
If I start having ideas about the business, and it feels fun to explore them, or jot things down, I'm going to do that. But I'm trying to do as little work as possible. And as much play and rest as possible. And in order for me to do that, I've got to do some prep. I'm working ahead right now I'm batch recording some podcasts, so that I don't have to pause in the middle of my time away to get on the mic. Not that I don't love doing this every week but it'll be nice to have a break so that I can read a bunch of books. I have so many books that I want to be reading, some of which I started last year. And even though I've read a lot this year, I still have books that I haven't finished yet. And it will be really nice just to be able to sit back and read. I want to be with my family and be able to lounge around or go on little excursions and have it just be chill and not feel like I have any outside pressure. I want to celebrate my friend's marriage and my husband's birthday. And I want to have space to dream and to dream outside of what I'm creating with Inner Workout but also just reconnect to dreams and things that have been beneath the surface for myself.
And until I started recording this episode and preparing for it, I hadn't even thought about how much preparation and thought I put into giving gifts for others. If you listen to the last honest holidays episode, you know that I get really excited about giving a good gift. It's so fun for me to make note of what people say or what they're interested in, and I'll tuck it in the back of my head, until their birthday or until Christmas, so that I can give them something that I think they'll really appreciate. The same prep is true when we're giving gifts to ourselves. So give yourself that same thought of like, what have I been interested in this year? What hints have I been dropping myself? Think back into some of those pieces we talked about, about how your body talks to you, how your emotions talk to you. What have they been saying? Those are all hints for gifts that you might give yourself.
And then now you're asking this question with enough time that you can put the preparation in place. If you want to give yourself the gift of a day without having to hang out with anyone else, or feel responsible for anyone else, you probably should let your partner know, if you've got a partner. Or if your gift is a physical gift that you want to buy yourself, you probably need to look at your bank account and see if there's any saving or moving around that you need to do so that you can responsibly buy that thing for yourself. Or if the gift is that you want to just spend an uninhibited friends night, probably want to reach out to your friends and make sure that you can get time on their calendars during the season where a lot of us have our weekends a little bit more cramped than maybe they normally are.
So this is your time to think not just about the gift that you want to give yourself, using the cues that you've picked up on as you've been in conversation with yourself but to also think about the preparation that you will have to put in place in order to give yourself that gift without there being any guilt or shame or outside pressure. You want to be able to enjoy whatever it is that you are giving to yourself. I'm so excited to hand it over to you and to give you this opportunity to reflect. It already feels like I'm kind of giving you a gift right now, I'm giving you time to think about something that will hopefully bring a lot of joy in to these final moments of 2021. So it's your turn, what will you give to yourself?
I appreciate you taking the time to reflect with me. And if you want to give Inner Workout a little gift this holiday season, take a few moments to rate and review this podcast. It makes a big difference in helping people find it. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you as always for your time and your expertise. Take care!