TRANSCRIPT

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#33 - Prioritizing Self-Care with Professional Tips from Taylor Morrison

Eric Blake: Welcome to another episode of the Simply Retirement Podcast. I am your host, Eric Blake, practicing retirement planner with over 25 years of experience and the founder of Blake Wealth Management. On this show, our goal is to provide education, resources, and support to empower women to live your retirement on your terms, whether you're single by choice, divorced, widowed, or simply ready to take control of your financial future. This show is for you to listen to past episodes, ask a question, or suggest a topic for the show. You can go to www.thesimplyretirementpodcast.com. We're also available on YouTube at the Simply Retirement Podcast. If you have watched or listened to this podcast in the past, then we go beyond the typical retirement planning and discussion and topics for women. As I have shared before, my why is the women in my life, and that's my grandmother who is 89 years old to my granddaughter who will be nine months old by the time this episode goes live, which I can't believe my mom, my wife, my daughter, and if there's one thing that they all have in common besides me, of course, that is that they would each do anything for their family.

And as is the case with so many women, this can frequently come at the detriment of their own health, their own wellbeing, and for many women as caregiving. But it also could be a career, it could be a relationship, any number of things that women will put before their own self-care. On today's episode though, we are going to be joined by Taylor Elise Morrison. Taylor turned being bad at self-care herself, but also being firmly convinced of every human's potential. She turned that into a career. She's the founder of Inner Workout and the award-winning author of a book by that same name. She was recently named one of Fortune Ten's Innovators Shaping the Future of Health. Taylor uses her coaching mindfulness and movement training to meet people where they're at and offers actionable steps towards creating a world without burnout.

So with that, Taylor Morrison, welcome to the Simply Retirement Podcast.

Taylor Morrison: Thank you so much for having me, Eric.

Eric Blake: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Again, I'm really excited about having you on the podcast. If you don't mind, just share a little bit about your background. What led you to create Inner Workout to write your book? You've done a lot of great work, but just how did you get to where you're at today?

Taylor Morrison: Yeah, people just heard in my bio, I really come to this from a place of need, and I like to share that upfront because I think it's really easy when you hear someone talking about self-care and wellbeing to be like, well, their life must be completely different. They have everything figured out. They can meditate for three hours a day. And I actually came to this work during a really busy season of my life. When I was working, I had another business I was doing on the side. I was volunteering pretty extensively with two nonprofits and I was in the process of getting married while also trying to have a social life and trying to be a daughter and a friend and all of those things. And I found myself at this place of pretty just burnout. And one of the places where it came to a head was on a Sunday afternoon or really a Sunday evening, and I was trying to get ahead of all that the week held for me, and I was staring at my planner.

I had a paper planner, and then I had my laptop and I was trying to plan everything out. And what I realized was I wasn't getting anything planned, I was just panicking. And so I decided to do something pretty out of character for me, which was I closed my laptop, I took a bath, which is funny. I talk now about how self-care is so much more than bubble baths. But then it was really helpful for me to take a bath to step away and to come back on Monday morning. And that was really my first self-care ritual. And then the more that I sat with that, the more I realized it wasn't really about the bath, it was that I was taking a different approach to caring for myself. And I started talking about it with other people and they were like, Hey, I'm having the same problems and I need similar things too. So I came to it. I was really burned out and overwhelmed.

Eric Blake: Perfect. Well, if you don't mind then let's talk about what your definition is of self-care that you use in your work with Earner Workout.

Taylor Morrison: Yeah, so that was really the big shift that happened for me was before I was seeing self-care as an item on my to-do list, and if I'm being honest, and I bet people can relate to this, I was seeing it as an item at the bottom of my to-do list that maybe I would get to, but most likely I wouldn't. And what changed, and it started with that bath, is that I started to see self-care as a conversation that I'm always having with myself so that I use, and the definition that we use at Inner Workout is that self-care is listening within and responding in the most loving way possible. And I would add to that now, using the time and the resources available to you. So what I love about that definition is that it opens up so much possibility for what self-care can look like. And instead of being like, I can't go for a three mile walk today, it's like, okay, let me check in. What do I need right now? And what can I give myself even if I only have two minutes, even if I only have a dollar to spare, whatever it might be. And what I see for myself and for other people is switching to self-care as a conversation, as listening and responding with love. That mindset shift can change so much.

Eric Blake: What do you think are, let's call them roadblocks. I think you refer to them as myths. What are some of the things that stand in women's way when it comes to the way people they get in the way of practicing? Let's just break it down.

Taylor Morrison: Yeah, there are probably a million, but the three that I hear most in my work are the first one, and I'll call it a myth, but the roadblock belief is that self-care has to take a lot of time and this one gets us into all or nothing thinking where it's, I need to meditate for 30 minutes or I'm not going to meditate at all. I need to spend 60 minutes walking on the treadmill, or I am not going to walk at all. And the reality is, is that caring for yourself is good for you no matter how much time you have available to you. And I mean, I see that for myself. One of my favorite practices to do is a little one minute meditation. You spend 20 seconds fixing your posture. And if you're listening to this, you can fix your posture right now because a lot of us are probably slouching.

You spend 20 seconds then just noticing your breath. You're not even doing anything fancy with your breath, you're just becoming aware of it. And then you spend the last 20 seconds doing a quick body scan. And I do that practice when I'm feeling really out of things, and it doesn't change necessarily what's making me stressed out, but it brings me back into the moment. So one of the things that I love to invite people into is to think, okay, instead of saying, I don't have enough time and self-care takes time, so I can't do it, what can you do with the time that you have? What can you do in one minute? Maybe you can think of three things that you're grateful for. What can you do in five minutes? Maybe you do a little bit of stretch to a song that you like. There's so much available to you with the time that you have.

The other myth that I hear is that self-care is supposed to be one size fits all, and this one is, it's a little sneaky. We don't always realize that it's there, but we hear so many people on podcast or on social media or maybe even people that we know in our lives or in books that we've read who are telling us what works for them. They're telling us that it works for them to wake up at 5:00 AM every morning and have a three hour morning routine, or they're telling us that eating certain foods or not eating certain foods works for them. And I could give a list of all of these things that we see of what self-care is supposed to look like. But the reality is that each of us are individuals and we all have different situations. That person who's waking up at 5:00 AM with a three morning, three hour morning routine, maybe they're not a caregiver, maybe they don't have to worry about anyone else's needs in their morning.

It's unfair to ourselves to hold ourselves to that same standard when the reality of the situation looks really different. And sometimes what I see with people too is that they're holding themselves to a standard of version of themselves. So maybe you are getting close to retirement, but you're holding yourself to what you did when you were really early career or before you had other people to contend with or before you had an injury that's impacted how you're able to care for yourself. Going back to that definition of self-care as listening within and responding in the most loving way possible, that means that sometimes you're going to listen and you're going to hear something different. You're going to plan that. You're going to go for that walk, and then you're going to realize, Ooh, I'm really tight today. Maybe I need to do yoga this morning instead. So that's two of the three myths, but I feel like I've been talking a lot, so I'm going to pause and see if you want to jump in before I share that third one.

Eric Blake: Yeah, I think one of the things that I've taken from what you've said is that it gives yourself permission to steer away from the yes or no. The to-do list of, well, if I didn't get it done that I failed. It goes beyond that. Again, there's ways of getting small victories. It doesn't have to be a huge victor every time, but even small victories are progress.

Taylor Morrison: Absolutely. That's such a good way of putting it. It's getting out of, it has to be this way and it's more this responsive again, conversation. And I love that metaphor of conversation because we all talk to people and we know what it's like to have a good conversation or not to have a good conversation. You know what it's like when someone is so determined to have the conversation exactly the way that you planned and they like you bring something up about an emotion or something that you're having and they don't care because they just want to keep talking about this topic. Sometimes we treat ourselves that way too. And so I will say at the beginning, it can be uncomfortable for many people, but at the end of the day, it ends up deepening a relationship with yourself that sometimes isn't possible if we're only focused on our checklist. And it's not to say that checklists aren't bad, but we want to make sure that they're becoming useful and not a way for us to kick ourselves when we're already doing the best that we can.

Eric Blake: Well, and that's why I think that's interesting the to-do list almost like to me it's become the success is how long is my to-do list. It's not necessarily, again, that leaves yourself to feeling like, well, if I didn't get all of it done, did I fail? And that's where I think it's such a big challenge. Yes, we have enough mental barriers and things that get in our way. And again, it's back to that concept of if I failed, if I didn't get it done, and with self-care, I'm a very big learning person. I am one of those 5:00 AM people, but my kids are out of the house and I have the opportunity to do that. I've always been an early riser, but again, it's not necessarily have to be, it didn't mean that I failed because I slept in a little bit.

Taylor Morrison: Absolutely. And I love that you brought that word of if this happens or if I do this or I don't do this, then that means that I failed. Because that's really the opposite of care. When we are thinking about what it means to care for ourselves saying, you're a failure if you did or did not do that, that's not care for all of the people listening who are caretaking for someone else in your life. You wouldn't say to them you are a failure and say, oh, just cared for you. That was great. I just told you that you're a failure.

Eric Blake: Right. Well, yeah, and I think that's where great caregiving stand, and it doesn't necessarily always happen this way, but I think being a great caregiver starts with caring for yourself. And I think that's one of the things that I don't want to steer. I don't want to miss that third myth. But also once we get the third myth, I want to get into that concept that you brought up and I think is really cool about that solo care. So for share the third myth and then let's hop into what that topic means.

Taylor Morrison: And that's actually a perfect segue. So the last myth is that self-care has to cost a lot of money, and it makes sense because we live in a society that's set up to sell us things. So we're going to see a lot of messages around self-care that are telling us, yes, you have to spend hundreds of dollars on a gym membership or a massage or this new outfit or this fancy gadget for your kitchen in order to be cared for. And it's not to say that spending money in a way that's really aligned to your values, and I'm sure you talk about this a lot, that's not to say that that's a bad thing. What I want to encourage you to think about is, okay, and how can I incorporate things that don't cost a lot of money or cost a lower amount of money?

So if I know for example, that I am feeling disconnected from my body and it helps me to dance to get more connected to my body, I could say I'm going to spend a bunch of money and go to Spain on a dance retreat. I could say, I'm going to pay someone to give me private lessons. I could say, I'm going to put on a YouTube video at home, or I'm going to host a little dance party. Could be with your friends, it could be with your kids. You say, you know what, everyone pick a song and we're going to have a 30 minute dance party. So something that I like to challenge people to do is to think about, okay, what is it that I feel like I really want or need right now? How would I fulfill that need if someone gave me a million dollars?

And then how could I get something similar for a hundred dollars for $0? And it's an interesting thought exercise because it shows you how much is possible. And most of us, again, and it's not any fault of our own, are wired to think, to fix something, I have to spend money. And that's a good way to challenge yourself. The reason why I said that that was a good segue into talking about self-care not being solo care is because one of the reasons that we feel like, oh, self-care has to be so expensive is because we feel like we have to do it all on our own. And something interesting I've noticed in doing this work is it's often hard enough to get people to feel comfortable practicing, but there's a step further, especially for caregivers who are used to being the person who is giving, there's this discomfort that I see a lot in receiving care and we need self-care, need community care.

We are not designed as humans to do everything ourselves. So just like we view self-care as a conversation, and it gets us out of maybe some of the negative conversations that we have where we're telling yourself, you're a failure. You can't do this, why don't you X, Y, Z? The invitation with community care is to realize I'm human if I need help. It is very human for me to want to be in community and connected to other people. And there's opportunities for you to invite people into your care and that can look a few different ways.

Eric Blake: So let's talk and maybe get into some actionable steps that women can take. So when you think about the age range for our audience is mostly going to be, they're going to fall into today's kind of two different areas. So you're going to have women that are maybe in their late fifties, early sixties and heading towards retirement, but this is also likely going to be their peak earning years and when they may be the very busiest of their life and they're also going to be those that may be. But you're also going to have, we've talked about that a little bit already, but that in both of those age ranges, they may be retired, they may be still working, but are likely spending a great deal of their time caring for a family member. And as a caregiver, unfortunately, self-care is very frequently it gets pushed to the back to that bottom of that priority list. You talked about that from the very beginning. So first, if we can talk about how women can incorporate self-care into their lives when you've got a really busy schedule, whether that's because of work or being a caregiver or is the case in many situations both where you've got a busy career and you're providing care, how can we work self-care into that?

Taylor Morrison: Yeah. So it goes back to really, and I loved what you said about small victories. So what I see with people is we tend to say, I'm going to change everything. I'm going to completely revamp my schedule. I'm going to find a way to spend two hours a day just for me. And then what inevitably happens is the rest of our lives aren't set up to support that. So I want you to find the number that feels reasonable for you, and I invite you to make it smaller than you think it needs to be. Where can I fit in five minutes for myself? And if you're going to do five minutes, something simple is just to give yourself space to be with your thoughts. So for some people, that is going to mean that you journal. I have a client who will do voice notes and she'll just kind of talk out loud to herself and then listen back and realize, oh, I use the word fear a lot, or I use the word frustrated a lot, or I didn't notice how excited I got when I talked about this topic or how my voice just kind of trailed off when I talked about that other thing.

So it doesn't have to be necessarily traditional meditation where you're just sitting there, but there is a lot of power in being with yourself and especially when we're caring for so many other people, it can be difficult for us to tune into what we need. So if nothing else that counts as self-care that is actually doing a lot for you and it's going to maybe inform some of your other actions later. Another simple thing that you, I mean I can list off a few. There's so many amazing practices that don't have to take a lot of time. I love a breathing practice. You can fit those in anytime. And what's great about a breathing practice is it can be something that you do proactively, but it can also be a really nice spot treatment. If something is going off and you're feeling overwhelmed, your breath is always there with you, why not use it as a tool?

So one of my favorite breathing practices is to simply start sending your breath to your belly, which can be hard for us as women because so often we're trying to tuck our belly in, but when we do that, we're actually missing out on our diaphragm, which is meant to support our breathing. So you start sending your breath to your belly and then you make your exhales about twice as long as your inhales. And what's happening when you do that is you're engaging your parasympathetic nervous system. It's called your rest and digest system. And what that does is you're having this subconscious to you conversation with the rest of your body and your nervous system and you're saying, Hey, we're actually safe right now. It's okay for us to relax. So what I like about breathing practices is you could do that when you are having to, I don't know, change someone's bedding or you're having to help someone that you're caretaking, you can pause and be like, okay, you don't even have to close your eyes going to do some belly breaths.

I'm going to make my exhales longer than your inhales. And as long as you're not being super loud about it or closing your eyes, you can do that in a meeting. You can do that in line at the grocery store and no one's going to be the wiser, but you will feel the difference. Some other practices that are short and sweet that I like to recommend are doing a quick gratitude practice. I sometimes like to do it timed. I'll put a timer for a minute and just think of as many things as I'm grateful for. But you could say, you know what? I want to have a list of three things. There are so many micro practices like that that can support your wellbeing and be integrated into your day instead of taking it away from or taking time out of your day necessarily.

Eric Blake: That's excellent. So let's talk about this a little bit different spin on this. So thinking about women that are retired, one of the biggest challenges of course is now you're fully responsible for your own time, and that's one of the people and one of the struggles is, okay, how do am going to spend my day knowing that self-care is still very important, even in that scenario? What action items, thoughts, suggestions, would you have for somebody who's retired where there's not quite the same structure to their day, but they still want to incorporate some of the strategies and ideas that you've shared?

Taylor Morrison: So man, that's such a fun place to be in. I'm trying to imagine because it's very different from my reality right now. First of all, I would check in and ask yourself, would I benefit from having a little bit more structure? I know my grandmother, for example, loved being in a walking group and she would do that once or twice a week, and it supported her desire to walk. It also made sure that she was being connected with friends regularly and that she wasn't alone by herself. I think there's so much opportunity for you to incorporate both self-care and community care by being in a group related to whatever your interest is. I'm based in Chicago and we have so many amazing art classes, movement, there's a film club. There is all these different things where you can pursue things that are interesting to you, whether it's related to your physical wellbeing, your creativity, your mental wellbeing, and also get some of that connection and engagement.

And then the other thing, and I would actually encourage everyone to do this with some of my clients, what they'll do is they'll create, we call it a self-care toolkit, and it's these different practices that they know are supportive for them. And what's nice is that when you do it ahead of time, if you are feeling bored or you're feeling emotional or you're feeling like, you know what? I really need something right now. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You could be like, oh, I said that I feel really good when I take a walk by the lake, so I'm going to do that today. Or you know what? It sounds really fun to get out my paints and paint my front porch, so I'm going to paint a portrait of my front porch. Having those options can be really useful, and I just shared some options that might work well if you're already retired, if you are in the midst of you're working, you're seeing the finish line to retirement, yours might be, I'm going to send a text to my friend and tell them that I'm thinking about them and that makes me feel connected.

Or I'm going to do a quick dance party to a song, or I'm going to do a power pose before my meeting. Yours might be a lot shorter versus someone who is already retired can choose these more expansive options for their list.

Eric Blake: Excellent. So you kind of touched on the idea of technology a second ago. If you can maybe send a text message to somebody, but what are some of the ways that technology can get in the way of our wellbeing?

Taylor Morrison: I hear this from people of every age. I have done work in high schools and I talk to high schoolers about this. I hear this with people who are into retirement and nearing retirement. We spend a lot of time with our devices, specifically our phones, and especially when I hear people say that they don't have time for self-care, almost out of the other side of their mouth I hear them say, but I keep scrolling. I wake up and I'm scrolling on my phone and all of a sudden I look up and 30 minutes has passed. So there's opportunities for technology to really support your wellbeing. And I would also offer, if you're feeling like I don't have time for self-care, or I'm feeling more anxious than usual, or I'm feeling really hopeless to consider the ways that the content that you're consuming, especially on your phone might be tied to that.

That's part of why I built the inner workout app because I realized for me specifically that I would spend so much time scrolling Instagram, scrolling LinkedIn. Not only was I not doing the things that I know were good for me in the morning, but then I was like, well, this person got this award or this person's business is doing better than mine, and I'd start my day really discouraged. So I'm not by any means saying everyone needs to quit social media. I am encouraging a little bit of observation in introspection to see what role that might be having in your self-care, and especially for people whose caretaking involves kids of any age, noticing how your use of technology is informing their use of technology and how that gets in the way of you being able to connect as a family, because I see that a lot as well.

Eric Blake: You touched on your app and I think that would be a great idea, but are there any other thoughts, suggestions around how technology can actually be beneficial in managing your self-care?

Taylor Morrison: There's so many things. So from a most basic level, and I was just talking about this with people yesterday, it could be something as simple as having a group chat where you all have said, we are trying to walk more, and so every time we walk, we're going to put it in there and we're all going to celebrate each other. That can work really well. It is using technology, but it's not super, you're not having to do this high tech solution. Another thing is there are so many, so there's the inner workout app that locks you out of distracting apps and has micro practices, but there's so many things. You've got the Calm app, the Headspace app, there's, I'm trying to think of other, there's even more niche ones depending on what you're interested in. There's an app some people really love called Finch, which it's almost like an old school Tamagotchi, but for self-care and you have a little pet, and when you do the things that you've decided are good for you, it's how you feed this pet.

And so for some people that motivates them in a different way, and it might work really well for caregivers who are motivated by caring for other people. You're caring for this digital pet, but it's actually tricking you into caring for yourself. So those are some of the big things that I've seen. There's also certain, the category is called productivity apps, but for me, I've seen so many ways that I can use things like I use Tick Tick for example. I have friends who use Notion to set up some of those habits that you know are supportive for you. The menu that I mentioned before, I use an app that I know, for example, I want to make art twice a month, so whenever I'm feeling a little bit bored, I look and see, okay, what are these things I said I wanted to do monthly or quarterly? And instead of depending on my brain to help me do it, I use an app to help remind me of the things that I want to do.

Eric Blake: So I want to make sure that we get your information out there. I want to make sure that our audience has a way of getting in touch with you. But first, is there anything else you want to add, any other suggestions, recommendations, maybe that we didn't cover up to this point?

Taylor Morrison: Yeah, I would say it's more of just a reiteration. I think the biggest thing I shared a lot here, if you get nothing else out of this conversation, I want you to come back to that definition of self-care, listening within and responding in the most loving way possible using the time and the resources that you have available to you. And I want to challenge you to think of an option that is a little out of the box for what you would normally do. So if your go-to is I'm going to run a 5K in the morning, what are some other ways that you could care for your body? Not saying that you have to do those, but I want you to start practicing and building some new neural pathways of what is possible in terms of care. I feel like with caregivers and people who are preparing for the end of their careers or who are in the next stage of your life, there is a lot of opportunity for you to be hard on yourself, and I want you to use care as an opportunity to celebrate yourself and what you are doing. So make the stakes as low as you need to create those small victories that Eric talked about and to give yourself an opportunity to celebrate the care that you are able to give, even if it's only doing a minute of breathing.

Eric Blake: That's awesome. Taylor, if you wouldn't mind, just share what's the best way to get in contact with you, website, social media, anything like that you'd want to share? Where can they get your book, things along those lines?

Taylor Morrison: Yeah, the best place to head is to the inner workout website, inner workout.co. Right on the website there's a link to a free assessment that we have that measures your wellbeing and gives you some personalized practices, and then there's more information about the book in the app there as well.

Eric Blake: Perfect. Taylor, thank you so much for joining us today. If you're looking for guidance resources to focus or improve your own self-care, please be sure to contact Taylor, get her book in a workout. We're going to make sure we share all this information and all the links and the show summary for this episode. As always, please like follow and share our show, and we will see you again on the next episode of the Simply Retirement Podcast. In the meantime, please remember that retirement is not the end of the road. It is the start of a new journey.

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