Where Can You Reclaim Choice?

Happy May everyone! As you may already know, it's Mental Health Awareness month! Of course we had to put our own spin on things, so we'll be using this month to talk about multidimensional health with the help of The Five Dimensions of Wellbeing. Join on us on this journey as we take a dive into a different dimension each week of this month. If you want to deepen your understanding and relationship to your personal self-care journey, you can take our FREE Self-Care Assessment here! You may also consider joining us in the group chat or getting on the Scroll With Intention Challenge waitlist! At Inner Workout, it's all self-care, all the time!

On this episode, we're reclaiming our power of choice. You only get one life (so they say), we think it's best that you start making the best decisions for you.

Mentioned In The Episode

Join our self-care group chat!

Sign up for The Scroll With Intention Challenge!

Listen to Amelia's Off The Grid podcast!

Episode Transcript

Hey 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. Thanks for being here today. It's May, which is Mental Health Awareness Month and we thought we'd put our own Inner Workout spin on things by talking about multidimensional mental health. So here at Inner Workout, we talk about The Five Dimensions of Wellbeing, physical, mental, and emotional , energetic, wisdom, and bliss. And we're going to talk about each of those dimensions and how they can impact your mental health, so that's what you can expect for the podcast this month. And let's go ahead and get into it, we're going to kick things off by talking about the energetic dimension of wellbeing. And if you're not familiar, there are two sub-dimensions.


One is breath quality, all about how you're breathing and the other is about energetic zones. So these different aspects of ourselves where our energy can be replenished, or can be drained. And the energetic zones sub-dimension is really what is inspiring today's question, where can you reclaim choice? The basic idea of energetic zones is that there's a fixed amount of energy in the world. And in many cases in your life, if you've ever heard of the law of conservation of energy, you've probably learned this in high school, energy isn't created or destroyed, it's just transferred. It can be transferred between people and interactions that you're having that are draining and energizing, it can also be transferred in between areas of your life. 


And I think it's important, especially during Mental Health Awareness Month, to see that everyone has different levels of energy, depending on what they have going on in their life. But especially if you've got some type of chronic illness, whether it is a physical diagnosis, or there is something that you're dealing with, with regards to mental health, you may be working with a more limited energy reserve than some other people in your life. And my hope is that you have the support to help you navigate those limited energy reserves, both personally, people in your life who can be supportive, but also professionally, therapists, psychiatrists, psychologist, and other support team members who can help you through that. What we're going to be focusing on in today's episode is really looking at the pieces that we can control. What can we control? What do we have choice around, because we all have some measure of control over our energy, even when it doesn't feel like it. 


Even when a situation is so awful, or just comes completely out of left field, there is almost always an element of choice. And I know for me, that's helpful for me to lean into, especially when I don't feel like I have a lot of choice or a lot of control in other places. And this term came to mind, I was actually introduced to it by my friend Amelia (who also is a member of the group chat) called energetic sovereignty, energetic sovereignty. And it's really this idea that, no, we're taking our control back of our energy. We don't have to give our energy over to things just because it's what everyone else is doing. And Amelia was specifically talking about it with regards to social media as a business owner. 


She has a great podcast that's out now called Off The Grid and it's for business owners who are thinking maybe they want to get themselves off of social media and find other ways to grow their business. So didn't mean to turn it into a whole plug for the podcast, but it is 100% worth listening to, but that term energetic sovereignty for me is really empowering. Because there are places where I have choice and energetic sovereignty reminds me of that, I can choose my response. Even if there is an email that is frustrating to me, even if there is a world event that is dis-regulating, even if there's something simple, like a package was supposed to be delivered, and it got delivered to the wrong building, I can choose how I respond to it. That's energetic sovereignty. I can expend a lot of energy being upset about it, or wanting it to be the way I planned for it to be or I can accept okay, this is how it is, and respond to what's happening, rather than what I wish were happening. That's a form of energetic sovereignty. 


In a similar vein, I have a choice in my attitude. Maybe attending something or participating in something is non negotiable, I have to be a part of it, I can be annoyed about it, or I can choose Okay, I'm going to show up and I'm going to make the best of it. Two different choices, two different ways to spend my energy. 


Another one that I think we sometimes miss out on is that we can choose where we spend our time. And again, maybe you don't feel like you have full control over your time. You have responsibilities to partners, or kids or family members. Maybe you're in a job that you don’t 100% love right now, but there are pockets of your time that you are in control of and you can choose how you spend that time. For me, there's this reminder, oh, I get to choose. If I'm on social media, how much I'm on social media, what I'm sharing on social media, when I'm on social media, I can reclaim energetic sovereignty in that area. And if you're listening to that, and being like, oh, yeah, I need some energetic sovereignty around social media too. I'm gonna do a quick plug for our Scroll With Intention Challenge, a seven day challenge and mini course. Not to say you need to get off social media, but to help you choose how you want to relate to social media and to your screens. So if that sounds interesting, you can join the wait list in the show notes. And group chatters get a discount, and first steps on it. 


So if that interests you, all that information is in the show notes. But social media isn't the only way, the only place where we can find energetic sovereignty. But I do find that when I'm letting a lot of my energy get sucked by social media and by things that I'm consuming, (even if it's not just social media), it could be certain content that I'm watching on TV…when I am letting that happen, then I have less energy to pour into myself. I have less creative energy, I have less energy for the things that I want to be doing. And so by reclaiming choice in one area of my life, all of a sudden, I feel like I have so much more choice and energy in other areas of my life.


So I want you to be thinking, where can you reclaim choice? Where can you reclaim choice? And maybe you really hone in on the area of your life where you feel like you have no choice. But to show up to this job, or but to do this task, like vacuuming? That just feels so annoying to you. Hone in that place where you feel like you don't have choice and see is there a micro-choice there that you can still choose where you can tweak your attitude, or your response or where you're spending your time. Find that choice.


That's what I'll invite you to do right now. And then as you move into the coming week, see if you can notice shifts in your energy as you start to reclaim that choice. Okay, I'm going to turn the mic over to you with a couple of minutes for reflection. I'll see you on the other side to close things out.


I hope you've been able to identify at least one place in your life where you can reclaim some choice and reclaim your energy in the process. I am really excited for you to play with this over the course of the coming week. I want to say thank you so much for listening. And if you want to chat more about it, go ahead, feel free to DM us on Instagram. Join the group chat but above all, I'm just so thrilled that you're listening and that you are investing this time in your Inner Work. Thanks for listening in take care!