KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

1. Self-care is listening inwards and responding with love: It's not a set of tasks, but rather checking in with yourself and understanding your needs. Forget the "all or nothing" mentality and focus on what works for you in the present moment.
2. Start with cultivating the practice of listening within: This can involve journaling prompts to identify what drains your energy or simply checking in with yourself throughout the day. Learn to listen to your body's cues as well.
3. Develop a toolkit of self-care responses: This includes proactive activities you enjoy, but also reactive responses for when things go wrong. These can be anything from breathing exercises to calling a friend. Remember, self-care doesn't have to be expensive or time-consuming.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Transcript

Teresa: Self care is a word that is often thrown around a lot. And sometimes we constantly think we must be doing more, especially as business owners. It is also something that I thought I had learned a lot about. However, today's guest talks about self care in a way that is completely different to how I thought about it before.

She offers practical advice on how to bring it into our everyday and really gets you to think what self care looks like for you. We also talk about why she decided to take her knowledge on self care and put it in an app and what it's taken to create that app and get it out into the world.

Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Terese Heath Waring. An international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, [00:01:00] but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in.

In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business. I hope you're good. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate it. And this episode is a really good one. So we're talking self care, which is a word that is like thrown around all the time, and everyone thinks, you know, self care is sitting down with a book or having a bath or having a massage.

Now, and granted, all of those things are self care. And actually, as I record this intro, I have in my diary for later on today, a three hour reflexology and massage, [00:02:00] which honestly is like heaven. However, it's not really about the big self care stuff. It's about smaller things. And today's guest made me think completely different about what self care means and what it looks like, which for me was actually super good timing because I spent most of last year pretty much just doing self care.

Like, I was talking to my therapist the other day and I said that in 2023, I felt like I spent 45 to 50 percent of my brain space and energy on me and looking after me and about 10, 15 percent on the business and this year it's moved, and rightly so and I'm super glad because otherwise I wouldn't have a business if I carried on that way.

And. You know, I spend a big chunk of my time and my energy now on the business, which obviously I love and adore. However, it has meant that my self care has taken a bit of a battering. And I'm trying to find [00:03:00] a middle ground or a way in which I can manage my own self care and make sure I look after myself while still being super productive.

And this conversation was so well timed for it and really helped me think about it and also helped me get over the kind of pressure that we put ourselves under to go, we must do these things and to look at them differently. So today I'm interviewing the lovely Taylor Morrison. Taylor turned being bad at self care into her career.

She is the founder of Inner Workout and the author of the book by the same name, recently named on a Fortune's 10 innovators shaping the future of health. Taylor is tired of aspirational wellness as usual. Instead, she makes wellbeing and personal development more accessible. Taylor can go from facilitating workshops at a fortune 100 company to talking about TikTok and body image with a high school class.

She uses her [00:04:00] coaching, mindfulness and movement training to meet people where they are at and offer actionable steps towards creating a world without burnout. Like I said, it's a great conversation, which I think anybody needs to hear, but also as business owners, this is probably something that should be high up on our agenda.

So enjoy today's episode. Here's Taylor. Taylor, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Taylor: I'm doing so well. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Teresa: I am excited for this conversation because I was looking through your notes prior to your interview. And this subject we're going to talk about is a subject that I'm not very good at.

So I am going to be picking all your brains to, to work out how I get better at this. But before we get started, please tell my lovely audience who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do.

Taylor: Yeah, so I'm Taylor Elyse Morrison. I am the founder of Inner Workout. It's a company that makes wellbeing easier.

I'm also the author of a book [00:05:00] by the same name. So, and how did I come to this work? I, I mean, I chuckled a little bit when you said, this is a topic that you're not really good at because I come to this work. I'm not personally good at this work either. And before I got into this space, I was doing work related to brand strategy.

And I kept burning myself out and I realized that the way I was structuring my life really wasn't sustainable. And so I came to this topic because I kept hitting up against a wall. And as I shared some of my own navigating around self care, people started telling me that they had similar issues and that's how inner workout came to be.

Teresa: So just explain the actual app and how that works and what, what it is.

Taylor: Yeah, so for the inner workout app are the biggest complaint I've heard we inner workout as a company has been around for about five years. The app is just [00:06:00] launching and from back in 2019 what I heard from people is I don't have time for self care.

And I kind of wrote it off because I was like, I can't do anything to help that. But as I've talked with more and more people, what I've heard is, oh, there are ways we can help people have more time for self care. So there's two sides of the app. Part of it is that we've got different practices, meditation, journaling, breath work, these mini courses we call journeys.

Those most of them can be done in 10 minutes or less. So if you can find a little snippet of time in your day, there is something on that app that you can do to support your well being. The other side of things is what seems to get in the way of most people's self care is we're spending so much time on our phones. And so we have this functionality called lock sections that locks you out of distracting apps. You can set it on a schedule or you could do it one off and you can't go on Instagram or you can't go on Tik TOK until your time is up. So it really gets the willpower out of the [00:07:00] way. You don't have to have willpower. The inner workout app can support you.

Teresa: I love that.

And it's funny, right? So anybody who listens to this podcast regularly, one will hear my voice is a bit funny, which is because I've been doing too much. But secondly, they'll think the list you gave of like journaling, meditation, like they are things I do a lot, but yet I said to you, I'm not very good at this.

So there's obviously a disconnect in my brain between doing some of those things and self care and not necessarily seeing them as a self care. Like, is that something that you see that's pretty common? Is it that when people actually do stop and go through, they're like, Oh no, actually I do do some things.

Taylor: Yeah, no, that, that happens a lot. Most of the time people are like, Ooh, self care, I'm not really good at it. There's a couple pieces to that. So first what I'll offer is the way that I define self care, the definition we use at inner workout is listening within and responding in the most loving way possible.

[00:08:00] I really view self care less as a set of tasks. And more is you checking in with yourself in doing what you need in that moment with the resources that you have. And that definition alone opens up so many possibilities for what self care can be. I was leading a workshop yesterday and someone was like, Oh, I guess The bowling league that I do with my dad is a form of self care and she wouldn't have defined it that way before, but it sparked something.

The, the other thing that I will say is in terms of, oh, I do these things, but I don't think of them of self as self care. A lot of times we're so hard on ourselves. We also have these ideas. Self care should be a bath or self care should be a massage. And if I'm doing something, that's not that it's not really self care.

So that idea comes up a lot of times in conversation with people.

Teresa: And that's so interesting because as you started explaining that, that's why I think I didn't and I don't see it as self care because I have put it as [00:09:00] part of my routine and it doesn't feel like I'm doing, you, what was this, what did you just say?

What was your quote? Self care is something that is

Taylor: listening within and responding in the most loving way possible. So it's, and we can get into more of the different types of practices because what you're doing is you're doing a proactive practice. It sounds like. So you've built these into your schedule.

I would guess that you have reasons why you do them. They make you feel grounded or focused or connected to yourself. So. There are these things that you've put proactively on your schedule that it sounds like, and again, tell me where I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're not even fully thinking of it because you've just integrated into your schedule so seamlessly.

Teresa: A hundred percent. And also almost in a way where I could berate myself if I don't do them, or I'll feel frustrated. So I would have, I have a habit tracker. And, and it's funny because actually in the last few years, me [00:10:00] journaling and meditating has been imperative to my health and my self development.

And I spent the last year getting sober and getting sober. Like they had been imperative to that journey. However, it's funny because now. I don't feel the need to have to journal every day. So, which I try and see as a good thing, because it's like, okay, if I don't feel the need to journal, there's obviously nothing really like coming up that I want to journal out.

But because I set it as a task, if I don't journal, I then see it as, oh, I failed. I failed at doing that thing. Like, It's like I've taken a self care thing and, which really was a self care thing. Like I said, it was essential as I was, you know, doing all this personal development, working with my therapist, getting sober.

However, now I've almost turned it into an action. And if I'm not taking the action, I'm beating myself up because I didn't take the action.

Taylor: [00:11:00] Absolutely. And this is, this, this is so common. I'm glad that you're bringing this up because I know people are listening and hearing, Oh yeah, I do that too. So a couple of things that I hear happening, one is there's this cognitive distortion, all or nothing thinking our brain loves to use this as a shortcut where it's like, I am either good or I'm bad.

I, et cetera, et cetera. And that happens so much in self care, especially for many business owners. We tend to be high achievers. We tend to be perfectionist. And so we want to be able to check that box. I did this. And because I did this, that means I'm good. If I don't do this, that means I've fallen short.

I'm bad. I'm a slob. Whatever we do to berate ourselves. So one thing when I hear people in, in that space is try and encourage people to, to find the third option. So it's not so binary that I am good or I'm taking care of, how do I [00:12:00] want to say that? I gave myself a tongue twister. I'm either good or I'm Taking terrible care of myself.

Yes, like opportunities in between. The other thing that I hear, and I talk about this a lot too, is Our self care is supposed to evolve because we are always evolving and our environment is always evolving. So it sounds like what happened really naturally to you is that journaling I'll pull on that one.

Since you mentioned that specifically, you needed that in that time when you were getting sober and now. There are other things that fill your cup and feel more supportive. And so I think that's actually an opportunity to celebrate and to say, wow, I'm so in tune with myself that I realized I don't need this tool in the same way anymore.

And I'm finding other ways to replenish myself. That's actually, again, going back to that definition, that's you listening within and then responding in the most loving way possible. That response used to be journaling. It's [00:13:00] other things now.

Teresa: And that's such a good way to frame it and to see it and to, and like you said, not like to say, and, and I guess be curious about, well, what else could this be?

Like, I don't need, and I think for me, the way I use journaling was very much. If there's a problem in my world, I journal it out like, and that used to be my husband's go to, which was very irritating sometimes when I like, if I was in a bad mood, should you journal that out? And I'm like, I'll journal you out in a minute.

But anyway, like that was my thing and, and working through it through journaling was really, really helpful for me. And like I said, in one way, it's really awesome. But I haven't, I haven't seen it like this, that I don't have to do that every day now. And when I do journal sometimes, I'm like, I'm not even entirely sure what I'm journaling about.

But because that was one of my go to things, it's like, oh, I have to do it. But I think I love the fact of like, actually thinking about what I need right now. I don't need that right now. So I know this is like, And actually this is probably what you were, you alluded to before [00:14:00] about the tactic, like the tactic of doing a thing, because I was about to say to you, so give us some examples of what that might be, which is me wanting to go, where's the list of have a massage, you know, have a