This Is Soul Therapy

10. Empowering The Empath: From Burnout To Balance with Mindful Self Care

• Jennifer Hulley • Episode 10

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Are you an empath or highly sensitive person feeling emotionally drained, especially during overwhelming times? Discover how to mend and nurture your spirit with eight crucial self-care tips tailored for empaths. Join me as I share personal insights and unveil a pathway crafted specifically to support you on this journey towards holistic well-being.

Explore the incredible potential of your brain and break free from habitual patterns that govern your life. Learn the transformative impact of morning rituals, diving into the power of meditation and positive beginnings. Embrace change through mindful steps, kickstarting personal growth and development.

Let's delve into the hidden strength of mindful breaks and the art of releasing burdens. Together, we'll uncover five simple strategies to combat daily burnout and stress, including screen breaks, mindfulness practices, and stress-relieving breathing techniques. Reclaim control of your mental and physical space, restoring the peace and equilibrium you crave. Discover the importance of honoring your needs, setting boundaries, and gracefully saying no when necessary.

Join us on this voyage of self-discovery and self-love, as we navigate the path to healing and empowerment for empathic souls.


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Speaker 1:

Mind, body, spirit. This is Soul Therapy and I'm your host, Jen Hully. This week we're talking about empath, burnout and boundaries, because you know what. It's the season of giving and I can guarantee you that you are drained, exhausted and you've probably unleashed some hellfire on your kids or partner or important people in your life. We're in the season of giving and we are giving and giving and giving to everybody, and sometimes we're pushed to the point where all we have left to give is a tirade of rage and scary shit. When this happens, we're on the brink of burnout. It's so, so easy to push ourselves to that, you know, point of insanity, especially at this time of the year. And today we're going to talk about eight things that you can give yourself easily and do it today in order to feel anchored and in your power this season. And if you're an empath and you're nodding along to what I'm saying and you're like yep, yep, and you know what it means to be at the point of depletion, where you're not showing up for yourself, you're not showing up for the people that you're supposed to be supporting, like you're dropping the ball in your work or you're dropping the ball in your care and you just feel like fucking shit. I want you to tune into this entire episode and listen to the whole thing, especially at the end where I talk about my empowered empaths program that I'm launching in 2024. It's a 12 week coaching program that has the four fundamental philosophies and strategies that empaths need, need, need, need to be implementing in their life every single day so that they feel filled up, they feel anchored and they are powerful in a space where they are able to work at their life's mission. They are able to walk their sole path, they are not being dragged along. You know the path of where they're supposed to be going and who they're supposed to be. I believe that when we take care of ourselves on a deep, fundamental level, we are able to shape and shift the trajectory of those around us and we can have real, lasting impact on society and our world and, you know, greater community. But we can't do that. We can't pour from an empty cup and you can't even put water in your cup if your cup is broken. So hang out to the end. Listen. I'd like to give you my four pillar points that I believe are the fundamental non-negotiables for empaths. I'll give you a hint it spells a fancy little words, four letters. It's an animal. That's all I'm giving you right now and if, after hearing all that, you're like I'm in, I don't care. I don't need the details. Sign me up. You can just send me an email at contact at Jennifer Hully, and I will book a time for us to chat about it. All right on we go.

Speaker 1:

And where did this episode come from? Where did this idea of giving back to yourself in the season of giving come from? It came from me deciding to give myself the gift of an early morning. Wake up every single day, and I mean like ridiculously early, like five AM club kind of early, sometimes 430, sometimes 445 have boundaries not up at 3 AM, but somewhere between 445 and 515. I am up and Adam for the day and I am on day 11 of this. This is something that if you had like rewound and talked to me like two months ago, I would be like, oh hell, no, big part of me working from home and starting my own business was wanting to be able to sleep in because I was fucking exhausted. Okay, I am a single mom. I have a four year old son. I have had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life. We've worked through a lot of trauma, a lot of loss, a lot of grief in the last year and my system was just depleted and so sleeping was so, so important to me because at the time that's what I needed. Right, we were building from the ground up.

Speaker 1:

But I recently found myself in a state where I was like in that four of cups state that we talked about on a previous episode. You know that sad trombone where you're like and I was just like looking literally at my life through like shit colored glasses and my, I guess my habit of being was slipping into one that really like like we talked about on the episode before. And if you haven't listened, if this is your first episode, welcome. There is an episode previous to this about the four of cups and how we get stuck in these states of apathy and thinking like everything's going wrong, nothing's going to get better. And I was totally in that space and I was also like internalizing every perceived rejection and I'm going to say perceived rejection because a lot of them were just perceptions of rejection and I was internalizing every rejection real, tangible or perceived as like a sign that you know things were awful, I was not going to be successful, or I was a terrible human being, or I wasn't giving enough, I wasn't happy enough, I wasn't. You know me, me, me not being enough, over and over and over again. And that takes away your self-esteem. It really takes your power out of you, like it just sucks the air out of you. And I was not showing up the way I normally show up.

Speaker 1:

I felt, like you know, if we talk about like the internal flame and fire of our soul and our energy, I was, like you know, when, like the fire's gone out and the wood is just kind of like glowing, like slowly, like that was kind of where I was at and I was internalizing other people's pain. I was internalizing like taking on other people's struggles and making their shit my shit, and there was just like a lot of a measurement and not having boundaries and it was it was becoming a habit, right, like this. And it wasn't that it was becoming a habit. It was like me dipping my toes back into a previous habit that I had and I could feel it starting to cloud my mind and drag down my energy and like my mood sucked and I was grumpy and like I wasn't nice to be around with my kid, like I wasn't really able to show up as this like present and engaged and excited parent that I want to be, and I realized I was like I need to snap the fuck out of this.

Speaker 1:

And I was on YouTube just like going through random videos one night where they like suggest something and it was Joe Dispenza and Joe Dispenza and I have like a nice little relationship in my mind not in real life when he, like his work has been so fundamentally shifting for me. I think it was probably a year ago where I first got introduced to him and his whole shtick is like you have to break the habit of being yourself and he totally geeks the hell out on like the power of our mind and the power of your subconscious mind, and I 100% believe like I'm drinking the Kool-Aid of everything that he suggests, because it is so true that 90% of like how we act and show up in the world is a program. Like it's a programmed behavior that was set way when we were kids or as we were growing up and it's a subconscious belief about yourself. Everything goes back to a belief about yourself or the world or whatever. And if you want things to be different, like, if you want your life to fundamentally look different on the outside and you want to feel different every day, you have to break the habit of being yourself. And his philosophy is that, like we have these. Well, it's not his philosophy.

Speaker 1:

It's like so many people talk about this, how we have these well-worn pathways in our brain, like neurons that fire together, wire together, so we have these really strong associations and our brain is a little energy conserving machine and it's like let's run this program, let's do this. Oh, that happened. Let's run this story in our head and if you want to change, you have to literally like blow up the circuitry in your brain and reprogram new connections. And like I know this, I know this, I fundamentally know this. I talk about this with my clients, I talk about this with friends.

Speaker 1:

I'm always preaching it, but I had fallen out of practice with it, I think, because I don't know why. Actually, I think I used it so much and I got to a really good state and I was like everything's fine and I was grooving and doing things. But then I kind of like, every time you hit a new level in life, the things that you're like working towards or the things that you want to overcome, shift right. You're never going to arrive at this place where everything is wonderful and great. We're always going to be expanding. So I think that's just really. What happened was like a new level of expansion happened in my life. You know. Different experiences and things happened came in to my mental desktop or to my like reality that I was working with, and it just Sean a light on like okay, now here's some stuff that you need to deal with now.

Speaker 1:

And so I kept hearing his voice like you need to break, break the habit of being yourself. You need to break the habit of being yourself. And I was like, let me just, let's see, let's watch a video. And I watched this video of him talking about his morning routine. I was like, oh fuck, yeah, he's up at five AM. Of course he is old, programming right. Like getting mad and saying I can't have that. That doesn't work for me. I'm a single mom, I'm tired. How dare you tell me that I need to like? I was like running all this stupid shit in my head and I was like, okay, stop. Like let's actually listen to what he's saying.

Speaker 1:

And he talked about how he has, like a meditation routine every single morning, which is like I have a meditation routine, but I normally do it in the middle of the day. But he was talking about how he believes if you start your morning with meditation, especially because it's challenging to get up early. He's like if you can start your day where you overcome yourself and you overcome your brain doing everything to try to keep you where you are, and like keep you stuck and keep you the same, if you can break through that barrier at the beginning of your day, everything changes. Like so many doors are open to you. And I was like you know what? Like that's a good point, like it's actually true, if you can start your day with a win and overcoming yourself in your own bullshit, you're already starting your day with like power. Right, I'm thinking like little Mario brothers, if you start your day, rack it up a bunch of coins, like the rest of your day, the trajectory of your day can be that much more positive. And so he talked about that.

Speaker 1:

And he also talked about how he has like a pre meditation routine and he has like he goes into his think tank so he wakes up and he does like the first 30 minutes to a half an hour, looking at his day, what's required of him, where he needs to show up, who he needs to be, what's he going to have to overcome, what are some like previous beliefs that he's going to have to work through? And that changed my mind. I was like, oh damn, because you know, when I try to meditate at the first thing in the morning, what's happening is I'm like I got to get this out to this person. I got to answer this email Don't forget to do this. This client needs this. Oh, and you got to call the person about the garage door and right, and he was saying how, like that extra 30 minutes to do all your thinking before you get into your all?

Speaker 1:

Right now I'm in my meditation tank completely changed the game and I was like there was something in that that was like, hmm, okay, okay, I'll listen. Right, and I tried it and I was like just for today, I'm going to try it just for one day, because if you say I'm going to do something every day for six months, it's so overwhelming You're like the second it becomes uncomfortable, you'll bail because your brain can't comprehend any kind of possibility of doing that over and over again. So I was like, just for today, I'm going to get up at 5am, I'm going to go into my think tank and then I'm going to do his opening new portals meditation, which is a meditation that's designed to basically program in two new beliefs into your brain and to sort of embody what it will feel like when you when those things are a reality. And so I did it for one day. First day is always easy, right, like when you get up earlier, like whatever, because your body's in total shock. And second day I was like, let's do it again, I can do it again. Third day I was like this is getting old, like I don't want to get out of bed. And then, I think the fourth day, I was like I'm exhausted because I was still going to bed late, like my sleep hadn't shifted. But I was like, if you can overcome yourself first thing in the morning, you can do anything. And I'm on day 11 and I absolutely will never go back to not doing this. It has completely changed my life, literally, and it sounds like it's something that I would have never done. If someone said, get up an hour to an hour and a half earlier than your kid, I would have said no, because I'm exhausted. How is the solution to my exhaustion to make myself more exhausted? But it really has become the solution, like I look forward to it.

Speaker 1:

I am like so jacked up to go to bed early. I go to bed at like. I get into bed at like 830 at night, I'm not even kidding. I might listen to a podcast or an ebook or whatever, and then I'm usually out between 9 and 930 because I know I'm getting up really early. But when 8 o'clock comes and I know I can let the dog out, I'm like, oh, I'm excited because I can put him to bed. I can put the dog to bed. Sorry, put the dog out to pee, put him to bed, I can get into my bed, I can have some quiet time with whatever I'm learning about, and then I know I'm just going to feel so fucking good the next day and my mood has improved significantly, which I would have never thought getting up early and having less sleep would happen.

Speaker 1:

I say I'm getting up earlier and going to bed earlier, but it's not like before this. I was going to bed at midnight. I was going to bed at maybe like 10. I was still going to bed early because I was exhausted. 930, 10 probably was the latest that I was up. So it's like the difference of going to bed at 930, 10 o'clock to being like, okay, I'm going to bed probably around 9 is really not that big of a life difference for me.

Speaker 1:

But what's amazing is I get up, I do my think tank, I do a meditation, I go to get my tarot cards out, I do my like spread for the day. I can really tap in and get some guidance about like what I need to focus on. Also, my tarot readings are like super connected because I'm coming out of that like mind space of meditation and you know I'm accessing intuition and I find when my son gets up because he gets up and he's like he's firing on all cylinders and that was the hardest thing for me was that if I wake up just 10 minutes before he wakes up, I can't handle him Like I can't. I don't know what to do, I don't have anything to give. He needs a lot of support. He needs even just like he'll like he'll say I just need to sit with you and he'll need me to sit with him for 20 minutes to warm up for the day and he talks really loud and he's jumping around. He's four right, he's nuts. I can handle that because I've been awake for like a good 90 minutes, like my brain. I've had a piece of toast with some like nut butter on it or whatever. I've had a cup of tea, I've had me time, and then when he wakes up, I'm like I can actually care for him and show up for him the way he needs, but also in a way that makes me feel better throughout the rest of the day. So that was like a huge, huge shift. But I've also like I find I'm getting more downloads and connecting dots during the day, like I downloaded so much information about things I need to do in the next year, how certain things connect, like stuff that I just couldn't see, because I think my mind is clearer and also like my, I'm starting my day embodying a state that I want to be in. And I'll tell you, I took one day off, sunday, because I was really tired.

Speaker 1:

I was like you know what? It's the weekend, you're supposed to sleep in on the weekends and I was like I'm going to let myself sleep till seven and I shit you not. That was the worst day of my week. I was like I will never do that again, never. It was the same thing. It was so hard to get up.

Speaker 1:

In the morning I got up, I was, I felt like sensory overload was a big thing. I felt like my sensory overload was off the fucking charts, like every sound my son like pulling on me, wanting a hug, jumping up and down, slamming the doors. I was like I had to go upstairs and like breathe and decompress, because I was so fucking rattled and I was like this is not worth it, this is not worth, you know, two hours of lying in bed because really, let's talk about it when you're sleeping, your brain is in a different brainwave state, right, but it is when you're in meditation as well Same resting state, but you're still consciously aware. So I think that it's like the miss um not misinformation, but the misunderstanding is like you're going to be less rested and you're going to be more tired because you're up early and you're getting less sleep, like you know, staying in that scarcity, fear, mindset, what's it taking from me? But it's like, no, it's actually filling you with, like, instead of an hour in bed where you're like I don't know dreaming random shit or tossing and turning because your neck hurts, because your pillow is fucked or whatever. You're putting your brain in the brain wave state, like the alpha state that you need to be in for all of that restorative care to happen inside. So why not try it Right? And so if you want to like, I'll say I'll put that in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

Um, the Joe dispenser meditation. I found it actually on like there's some YouTube versions of it which have ads, but I found a podcast. I'm not condoning this, this is like full disclosure. I don't do this, but somebody else did it, so good for them and I can find it. But there's, like Joe dispensers meditation is listed on a podcast somewhere. If you search it Joe dispens, a opening new portals meditation you'll find it. But you can also purchase it from him and he has books and he has like CDs not CDs, my God, was it 1994?. He has like audio books that have meditation tracks in them. But if you're totally new to him, just put him in YouTube and listen to him talk. He's a bit of a kook and he's a bit of high level the way he talks about the brain. So if he's really, um, if you're not understanding what he's saying, don't worry about it. We're going to talk about it here and demystify a lot of what he talks about.

Speaker 1:

But today, yes, getting up early, that's one of the things I said. We're going to talk about eight things that you can do today that are easy to implement, that give back to yourself so that you can show up in the world as the powerful empath that you are. We're wired, like I said, we're wired to connect with people. We're wired to tap into our intuition, to you know, assess situations and people and just know what they need in order to move through challenging situations, in order to help them stretch and grow. And when we're constantly doing that without taking care of ourselves, we end up depleted and, like I was saying at the beginning, if you've like, if you're snapping and losing your shit on the people that are around you, you, that means that you've, you're at the brink of burnout and it's time to start giving back to yourself. So I want to talk about these things that we can give ourselves, that are easy and like maybe the early morning wake up is easy. For me it's easy, maybe it's not easy for you, but if you can wake up earlier in the morning to give yourself personal time, or to go into your think tank, or to go into a meditation tank or journal or meditate, or working like a on an art project or a sketchbook, or even just like have a cup of tea by yourself, have some breakfast, read a book. If you can carve out 15, 20 minutes an hour, whatever you can give yourself at the beginning of the day, so that you start your day by focusing on you and filling your cup, filling your container, you're going to have so much more in there that you can then pour out and you know, divvy up and divide and serve the people that are in your space.

Speaker 1:

A lot of us work in healing industries. You know you might be a teacher or a nurse or, like I've got someone on Tik Tok I was talking to recently. She's an end of life doula. A lot of us are pulled to these, not businesses, I want to say roles. Right, some of them are businesses if you run your own thing, but often we just you don't have to be a business owner to be an empath, to be empowered, like you might be working in a hospital or be working in a senior care facility, but we tend to be pulled to these vocations and careers that allow us to use our gifts right, where we can assess and intuitively know what's going on with someone and then give to them in a way that helps move them forward on their journey and it makes us feel so, so good. But we can't do that if there's nothing in our cup, if we've got nothing to give, like if you're standing in a closet with an empty bag, there's no gifts. You got to put some gifts in the bag. So, number one, wake up early morning me time, give it a whirl. If you can try it, let me know how it went.

Speaker 1:

My other favorite thing to do is 15 minutes of outdoor time recess, right? There's a reason that little kids get recess every day because our bodies need to move, we need air, we need sunlight. We spend so much time, especially at this year. If you're in the Northern hemisphere, when it's winter, we go inward, we're inside, we're in fluorescent lighting. If you're working, like I said, at a school or a hospital or an office, you might be around fluorescent lighting which is like no boy, no, that stuff's not good for us. Or you might be like me I'm working in my home office and there's not a lot of sunlight. There's a little bit coming in, but we need fresh air, we need vitamin D. We also need to ground from an energetic perspective. If we talk about our root chakra, which is our connection to the earth and our connection to our reality and our feelings of safety and purpose, that comes from feeling rooted and grounded where we are.

Speaker 1:

Some of the work we do not some a lot while we might be in giving professions or helping and healing professions where we're working directly with people, but a lot of it is up in our head space. Right, it's using our head, using our brain, using technology, using things that are virtual, and if you can't give your body 15 minutes to get out of that sphere and ground back down into where you are, you will be surprised at how much this impacts you. And, like fun fact, if you can do this in the morning, I think it's like 20 minutes, I said, of sunlight exposure within the first two hours of waking. Really, it helps regulate your sleep cycles. It helps regulate your circadian rhythm, which is your cycles of hunger and your cycles of energy and sleep and vitamin D. We know it's good for us.

Speaker 1:

This is the season where we slip into seasonal affective disorders, so it doesn't have to be complicated. You don't have to go out and play like a kid. I mean, it's maybe good if you do, it's probably going to make it even better. But if you can just carve out 15 minutes to get outside, put your boots on, put a hat on, go for a walk, get out there, you will feel so much better, even just like a quick walk around the block. The cold air on your face will wake you up, it will give you energy. It will shift your attention away from what you were doing and into the now. It's when our brain connects dots and brings in other big ideas that we need. And if you can do this without your phone, it's even better. But, like you know, if you wanna listen to some music or something cool, do it. The main thing here is to just get outside every day for 15 minutes.

Speaker 1:

The other thing I like to recommend number three, is a screen-free coffee break, making coffee and tea. I'm sure we all do this. And maybe you don't drink hot drinks. My cousin told me recently she doesn't like hot liquid and I was like what? Like I couldn't. I was like wait a long conversation. I was like, okay, not coffee, I get that. It's caffeine. I was like, not even tea. She was like no, and I couldn't, but most of us. And if you don't wanna have coffee or tea, what do you wanna have? Juice water, whatever?

Speaker 1:

Taking a break from your screens to really sit with something that you're going to be drinking, maybe not wine in the middle of the day, but like, if you wanna do it at the end of the day, cool, you do you. Maybe you're doing like screen-free, a screen-free, like mindful wine moment, whatever. It's all about getting away from the screen, going to a different location, so you don't take your tea break at your office desk, right, go sit on a different chair, go to a different room, don't check your phone, don't be doing anything, just literally sit, prepare your drink, pay attention as you're doing it and sit in silence and unwind and do nothing for anybody else other than enjoy what you're taking in. Now I know you're gonna be like can I read a book? Can I do this? You can, but I do think if you can just savor the moment and be present with what is happening and what you're doing, the drink that you're making like really tap into your senses. What does it feel like? What do you hear? Can you like trace the liquid as it goes through your throat or whatever? If you can embody that it's bringing your attention from the outward to the inward and that when we're burnt out it's often because, like, our energy and our mind and our existence is out of our body and we need to come back in. So if you can tap out of everything and just focus on your drink, it'll be that much more effective.

Speaker 1:

Number four five big belly breaths. I probably should have made this number five. So, like I said, like five belly breaths for number five. But whatever, number four is to take five big belly breaths. When we're stressed out or anxious or whatever, we take really shallow breaths from our, just our upper chest and if you can stop and just take a really deep breath, something to do is like put your hand on your belly and your hand on your chest and breathe in through your nose, filling the bottom of your belly first, so like your lower hand, feeling that expand outwards and then up in your chest, like, if you can, almost like a figure eight, if you could imagine a figure eight in your tummy and your chest. You're filling the bottom circle first and then the top one. If you can do that five times, you're going to reduce stress hormones, you're going to regulate your heart rate. Like your heart rate will slow down and you're going to bring a sense of calm to you mentally but also physically. And if you're like me, you're like breathing whatever.

Speaker 1:

I was like that too in the beginning because my way of thinking was like, if I feel like so fucking rattled and like my problem is so complex and difficult and has so many moving parts and is affecting me in so many ways, how can a simple solution like breathing actually fix it? And the answer to that is you don't need to know how, you just need to know that it's going to. And there are different breath works that you can do. Like there's the box breathing where you inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four, empty out, hold for four and you just keep going four, four, four. That's one. You can do the four, seven, eight. Breathing where you inhale for four, you hold for seven, you exhale for eight. That's actually my favorite Breath work to do is the four, seven, eight.

Speaker 1:

If you can do that five times it'll probably take you a minute and it will have such a profound physiological effect on your body and there's that whole thing where it's like symptom follows state. So you have to hack your body into the state of being calm and moving slowly and not being in hypervigilance. It's literally a nervous system hack. Breathing what it is. If you trick not trick your body, if you can trick your brain into believing something is true, if you can get your body to mimic the state. So taking a moment to breathe, one minute throughout the day to do a breath work practice, will have such an impact on how you feel over the course of the day. You can do it in the car Like it's breath work is something you can do anywhere. Go into the bathroom sitting on the toilet. You can take. You know a lot of us like hide in the bathroom from our kids. That's a great time to do your breath work. Just be like nobody's bothering me here, lock the door and do a breath work practice for you know, one minute, take five breaths in whatever format you wanna do, to just regulate yourself.

Speaker 1:

Number five is give yourself permission to let go, and this one is challenging. It comes up a lot for me, it comes up a lot for clients, it comes up a lot for friends. But we have to give ourselves permission to release something that's no longer aligned with us or no longer serving us, or it's just not part of the path that we are walking anymore. And these can be tangible things like getting rid of clothing that just makes you feel like crap. You put on your like. This doesn't suit me anymore.

Speaker 1:

I cleared out my whole closet within the last few months, I think. Probably between August and now. I almost got rid of everything that I owned because I was like this is a previous version of me, this is boring, this is generic, a lot of it is gray and it makes me feel like mop, mop and I just out it went and in came bright colors, sequins, polka dots, really bizarre coats that are like fluffy and have random prints on them, things that felt more like who I was. And it's hard to get rid of something, especially if it's something physical and you've spent money on it. You're like, oh, I gotta get all the use out of it that I can. Or you might have bought something and never even worn it because it's not aligned for you when you bought it, because it was on sale or whatever.

Speaker 1:

Get rid of it, send it out to the universe, donate it. Ask a friend does anybody want this? I often ask one of my best friends like do you want this, before I pass it on and donate it Because there's somebody else there that can have it and use it and love it and give it the exchange energy with it in a way that you're not able to anymore. And, like I said, it's hard to get rid of things that are physical because we like there's perceived investment if you've spent money on it or if it's not totally broken, especially like depending on how you were raised as a kid and what your financial situation was like. Some of us are like clingers, like we hold on to stuff because we might need it one day, or it's like wasteful to get rid of something, or why get the thing that you really want when this is doing the job, even if it doesn't feel right? And we have to give ourself permission to look at who we are now and really ask like does this serve me? Is this helping me? Is this reflective of who I am and where I wanna go, or is this an old version of me and can be better loved by somebody else? You can let go beliefs as well, you can let go of goals. You can let go of things that you thought you wanted to do or things that you wanted to be, because maybe you were working towards something Like.

Speaker 1:

An example that comes to mind is like going to school, taking all the courses, getting all the certifications and being like I'm gonna be a I don't know I'm real estate agents coming to my mind. I don't know why. I know you don't go to like I don't know what you do to be a real estate agent Otherwise, but otherwise like I don't feel like you go to real estate university but I feel like you go to, like you get a certification or something and you pay money to do it, but say you did all that and you're like I'm gonna be a real estate. And then you get there and you're like this doesn't feel aligned anymore. I actually feel like I need to be a gardener. You gotta give yourself permission to release the idea that you need to be a real estate agent and that takes work and that takes like self love and like when I say self love, I mean like loving yourself on a deep, fundamental level to be like it is okay to not want this anymore. You are not a bad person. You are not disappointing me. You are not disappointing anybody else by choosing to release this and just saying you know what. I will hold your hand as you are going to explore what the next version of you looks like. What are we at? Number six? I think six, number six something you can gift yourself A loving no to a previous invitation. That's right. You can back the fuck up and back the fuck out of anything that you agreed to do this holiday season.

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I was talking with a friend recently about how, like we do nothing all year not just me and her, but like fun, like as a society, a lot of us don't do a lot. And then we hit. These seasons were like shit. We got to get together and everyone's like dinner party, lunch, brunch, can I do this? That like because we're not tending to our social needs throughout the year. And then something happens with the end of the calendar that we're like fuck, I didn't, I need to see this person and your calendar is probably ramped to shit right now and that is draining right.

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Like empaths. When we're around other people, it's like we're a big sponge. We pick up on the energy of each individual. That's there. We pick up on the collective energy of the like, mixing of the people that are in the group. You can pick up on the energy of the space that you're in, and often we go home a lot more tired than we would be, you know, than the energy we received, like it's not filling our cup so much as it is draining.

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So you're allowed to say no, you're allowed to go. You know what? I know. I said I would do this thing. Or I know I said I would come see you, but I can't, I don't, it's not, I'm not up for it to now. You know, today or whatever, and like you can be as honest or as what's the word I want to say shady, but not shady Koi, I don't know what's the word, not where you're lying, but like you're, like I'm seeing the like I think it's the Page of Swords where he's like well, I'm not going to tell you. I'll tell you, but I don't need to tell you. You don't need to tell anybody shit. You can just say you know what. Something's come up. I'm not able to come anymore, but thank you for the invitation. I hope to see you sometime soon and then you can use that time to catch up on what you do need.

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If you're not going to this event because it's going to drain you, you can check in and be like well, what do I need to feel energized and what do I need to feel fulfilled? Like maybe you use that time to make a really awesome meal that's going to just, you know, fill your fill your belly with, like nostalgic memories of whatever being a kid, or maybe it's like something healthy. You're like I need to go eat some damn vegetables, like whatever you need. Maybe you need to just sleep, go to bed early. Or, like you know, we say no screen time, but maybe you need screen time. Like maybe you need time to zone out and really absorb yourself into the narratives of some drama. Right, like we all like drama TV. Why not give yourself what you need?

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Saying no to something, even if you said yes before, is a radical act of self respect and it's a way to preserve your energy. So I always say, check in with yourself, like as you're approaching an event that you RSVP to, because we say we're going to do something, often like weeks or months in advance, you have no idea, like you can't predict the future that well that you know what you're going to feel like on that day. So we always like say, yeah, sure, we look at our calendar and tend to be like, oh, I don't have anything booked that day. Of course I'll go, just because you have tangible time in your schedule. This does not mean you have the energetic reserves or capacity to show up there. You might have the physical capacity to be there in that you've got nowhere else to be. But you have to check in with yourself and be like am I going just because I have the time available or am I going because I genuinely want to be there? And if you feel like you don't want to be there and you're going because you feel guilty or obligated, that's your sign Number seven.

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Number seven what you can give yourself today super easy, free. You can do this like literally right after this podcast. You can sit in silence and stillness for three minutes. Meditation feels overwhelming. A lot of us avoid meditation because we're like I don't have an hour a day, I don't have 40 minutes, I don't have half an hour. You can do three minutes. You can sit in stillness, you can close your eyes and you can literally do nothing other than focusing on your breath or focusing on the sounds that you hear. You can pick a sensory input, you can go I'm going to just sit with my eyes closed and listen, or see what I can feel, or see what I can smell, or whatever. And three minutes, that's all you got to do. And, like you can literally do this in your car. If you're going grocery shopping, you don't have to get up and get out of the car the moment you put your car in park. You can give yourself the gift of sitting for three minutes, centering in on your body, holding space, emptying out, before you then go into the grocery store. Because grocery stores are chaotic. There's a lot of people, a lot of noise, it's echoey, there's a lot of bright lights.

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You can do it at any point in the day, before you enter something or at the end of something. If you've been working with a client, say, you're, you know, in counseling or whatever, or you're teaching and you've spent the day with kids, teenagers, adults, whatever, and you've been giving and giving, you get to your car. You don't have to turn on the car and drive away right away. You can sit in stillness and maybe you do want to turn the car, maybe you're like fuck this. I need to get out of here. Do that, get out of here. But the second you get home you can sit in stillness in your car before you go into your house, or you can enter your house and go you know what, before I even go to the mail or put the dog outside or whatever. I'm just going to stand here for three minutes. It's really easy, three minutes. If you can't do three, do one.

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That's the thing with all of these gifts that we can give ourselves. If it sounds like, oh, it's interesting, but it like might not work because just tweak it. Tweak it to make it your own. And number eight, number eight gift to give yourself as an empath this season is room to change your mind. This is linked back to giving yourself permission to release things, but this is giving yourself the freedom to change your mind about something, anything, any of these practices you're putting into place. You're like this doesn't work anymore. You can let it go. You can say you know what? I don't believe this, I believe this now. You can support yourself into changing your path. You can support yourself in changing your beliefs about something and it's okay, just because we've said I believe this is this and I believe this should be done this way you can change your mind.

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I'm like what's coming to my head right now is like a dietitian. If you're a dietitian and you built your career teaching people about keto FYI, I know nothing about keto, so I'm not gonna pretend I do but I believe it has to do with eating a lot of meat and not a lot of carbs. So, say, you spent your life not your life, but like a good portion of your business being like keto, keto, keto. And then something happens and you're like oh, keto. I don't actually believe that you can give yourself permission to change your mind, to share your new belief with the people that you work with. Maybe now you believe in intuitive eating and you're like I think you should be able to eat bread whenever you want, and here's why that's okay.

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You do not have to show up and be the exact same version of yourself forever for anybody. In fact, the only person you need to show up for consistently is yourself, and when we show up consistently for ourself, that means showing up and knowing that our consistency is going to be our inconsistency. If you followed me, well done, because I was like a tongue twister, but I really believe that we can like the only consistency we have as humans. The only thing that stays the same is that we're gonna keep changing and we're gonna keep growing, and it is okay to say to the world, to your friends, to your family, to I don't know people on social media that follow you this is who I was and this is who I am now. All right, so that's eight, eight things.

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Early morning, wake up time, get outside for 15 minutes, give yourself a screen-free coffee break, take a little mini breathwork practice. Let shit go that you don't need. Go clear out your closet, throw crap out that like I threw out a bunch of food that was like I actually don't like this stuff. Got rid of it. We had tried, it wasn't going over. Well, got rid of it.

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Say no, say no to invitations, sit in stillness and give yourself room to change your mind. They are free, they are easy, they don't require any kind of training. They don't require you to go learn a special skill. You can pick one and you can start doing it right now, today. And I promise you, if you start your days or you make yourself a priority throughout the day, you will be more powerful, you will be more rooted and grounded, you will be more in control of your feelings and your thoughts, and that means you will have the power that you need to show up for the people that you impact throughout your day. Being able to show up for the people that are important to us is so, so important.

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As empaths, our sole path, or our sole purpose, you might say, is to help guide people and work with people and show them the best of them and to support them through changes. And like we're good at doing that because, like I said, we're good at doing that because we have these skill sets. But what often happens is, because we're good at it, we'd give and give and give, more and more and more, and we don't check in with ourself. And we often don't check in with ourself until, like shit is going down. The airplane analogy, right, like put your mask on first before you help others. It shouldn't be that way. Like the airplane shouldn't have to be heading for the ground before we're like, oh fuck, I'm gonna take care of myself. You know, we should be doing this every day, and if we put our mask on a little bit every single day, we'll find that that airplane of ours can fly higher and higher.

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And I wanna let you know that I've got sessions open for 2024 for Soul Therapy, which is empowerment coaching for empaths. It is a 12 week program. It is designed specifically for us healers, feelers, overgivers, people that are working in a soulful connection with others, that like to nurture, heal, support, help others grow. And it's, using my philosophy, called the bird philosophy. Okay, b-i-r-d. If we think of a bird, it has the freedom to soar to the highest highs. You know, when they're out of the cage and they are living their purpose, they can move intuitively, they move gracefully, they move with beauty, they have a song to sing that is distinct from everybody else. And we too can, as empaths, if we focus on four things and that's where the word bird comes in, because it's an acronym If we've got B-I-R-D. These are the four non-negotiables that are required for empath, empowerment and purposeful living.

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B stands for benevolent boundaries, and that is about having boundaries in a way that serves you and the people that you work with. It's not about being like no fuck, get out of my place, like it's about loving, kind, anchored boundaries for yourself. If we don't have those as empaths, it is not gonna be pretty. I stands for intuitive insights, because if you are empathetic, you are also intuitive, whether you realize it or not. And when you learn to tap into your intuition and use that as your compass to guide yourself, you're gonna make better decisions, but you're also going to help the people that you work with in a phenomenally different way.

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R stands for radical removal, and that is about clearing our energy, removing the emotions that we have absorbed. It's about releasing trauma. It's about releasing conditioning and beliefs that we picked up on as children. That has sort of programmed us to think that I have to keep giving and giving or I'm like a garbage human being, not, so we work on removing those beliefs and making space for new, empowering ones to take place.

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And D is for deep discovery, and that is all about discovering who you really are at the core. When we bring your identity back into you, like internalizing your identity, we're moving it from like who you are in terms of other people, like how you relate to them. It's really about like who are you on a fundamental level and who were you before you needed? And when, as empaths, we focus on these things the benevolent boundaries, the intuitive insights, the radical removal and the deep discovery, we are able to craft a life plan and a support plan for ourselves that empowers us, it increases our ability to connect with others, it makes us a better human right For ourselves, for the people we're in contact with, and it moves us from this space of burnout and depletion and exhaustion into power so that we can show up and we can do the work that we're supposed to do and have that lasting impact that we need, the lasting impact that fills us up on a soul level.

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So if you're interested in this, I'd love for you to send me an email there's details in the show notes or you can go to contact at Jennifer Hully and we can schedule a free time to chat. I'll tell you all about it, what we do over the 12 weeks, and you can ask any questions that you have. And other than that. That's all I've got for you this week. I hope you take some time this week to take care of yourself, to gift yourself something that you really, really need.

Speaker 1:

And one more thing actually, thank you for everybody that is giving me feedback on the podcast. I love hearing that. It's helping you. Somebody messaged me this week and was like I released things this week and made so much space in my life and that was awesome to hear that. If you're enjoying the podcast and you know somebody else who would please send this podcast along to them so that they can tap in and join the community, and if you're really loving it, do a little energetic exchange and why not leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform. It really helps. It really really does. It's not a vanity metric, it just helps with the search results so that other people can find these episodes. So if it's helping you, let's help others. Take a few minutes, leave a rating or review and I will talk to you next week.