In today's episode, I wanna talk to you about one of my favorite discoveries of the last few years, and that is that you have a choice. There is always a choice. You don't have to do the thing. Sometimes you can just not go or not do the thing or move it. Postpone it, cancel it. You're in control. I'm in control. It's my favorite thing to do. Let's talk about it. And as always, if you want more information or you feel inspired by anything that we are gonna talk about today, you can find us at a life in color.co. We have all kinds of fun, prints, stories about the elemental primas. There are journals and rituals and soon to be color maps. So come and check it out. We'd love to see you there. Hello everyone. Welcome back to a Life in Color. it is a beautiful sunny day outside that could deceive you into thinking it was warm, but it's not. We're just at that time of year where it's just gonna be cold for the foreseeable future. So I'm trying to embrace it, but I am mainlining hot tea and I'm considering wearing the wearable heating pad that my husband bought me last year, which seemed kind of ridiculous at the time, but now I think it might be genius. It's like red, it's like bright blood red. crimson color and it has this collar on it. It drapes over your shoulders and then it clips around your neck. And frankly, I think it kind of makes me look like I'm wearing like a royal cape. So maybe I'll just wear that for the winter. we are squarely in the holiday season. It's one of my favorites. I feel like I love all the times of year, but I especially love the holiday season. I'm a big Christmas fan this year I'm trying to go a little bit smaller, a little bit simpler, both in the gifts that I'm buying and also in my decorations. It's been such a crazy year. There's so much going on inside my head that I feel like I kind of need my environment to calm down a little bit, and like my rooms need to feel not quite so cluttered. I don't need Christmas to punch me in the face. When I walk in. I kind of want it to whisper, like, Hey, come here. Becking me in with warm, glowing lights and maybe a, pretty pillow to lean against, I didn't do a lot of the decorations that I normally do in the house, and that's okay. It still feels beautiful. It kind of goes with today's theme. Actually, I decided not to. today I wanna talk to you guys about the fact that you are not required to do all of the things that you think that you are required to do? I want you to think about this coming week. How many things are on your calendar for this coming week that feel like they are non-negotiables? you don't have a choice. Even though you don't want to do them, you're going to, because it's a non-negotiable. You committed to doing it and you have to do it. Now, how many of those are actually non-negotiable? How many of them have an actual consequence if you don't go to it or don't do it? I bet there's a pretty big difference between those two numbers if you really were honest with yourself about it. It can be hard to wrap your head around that sometimes. So I wanna talk about that today. I think that realizing that you have freedom in your life about your own time and the things that you do and the choices that you make is such a relief. It's such an exhale, and I wanna give that to you, especially in this holiday season. I wanna give you permission to cancel your plans whenever you want to. It doesn't matter if it is happy hour with a friend or a meeting with your boss or a dentist appointment. Whatever it is, a gift exchange. I just wanna give you permission to cancel it or move it. I wanna point out that you can skip the dinner, you can postpone the meeting. It's okay to do that. You don't have to have a life altering excuse to do it. It is perfectly valid for you to just be saying, I'm not feeling it today. So all of those holiday plans that you have, all the parties you've committed to going to, or the dinners that you're throwing, or gift exchanges, happy hours, whatever the case may be, it's okay. You don't have to do those if you don't want to. If they fill you up, do it. But if they give you anxiety, if they make you feel tired, if you feel like they're depleting you in any way, I want you to consider backing out. There is something more important than social obligations and that thing that's more important is your nervous system and your sense of self sovereignty, frankly, control and freedom in your own life to listen to your own inner voice. And sit with your truth and let that guide the choices that you're making. Let that be the louder voice that jumps to the top of the priority list, even if people get disappointed. That's what we're gonna talk about today. I. If this sounds like it's gonna be a really big, heavy topic, it's not. I hope like a relief, like an exhale. I'm gonna tell you today also about some of my avoidance era stories. these stories definitely make me cringe, but these are from my youth. When I could feel that I didn't wanna do something or was trying to avoid something that I needed to do, but I was not very graceful or mature about how I got out of them. But these also make me laugh and I just think that they're so deeply also embarrassingly human. So I will share those with you. Let's talk for a minute about what sovereignty is. When I say sovereignty. I don't mean rebellion or selfishness or a dramatic reinvention of who you are. I don't mean just doing whatever you want all the time or being self-indulgent. What I mean is truth telling both to other people and also to yourself. Deciding based on your inner voice. I mean not performing, not apologizing for your needs and choosing without lying about it. Sovereignty is just telling the truth about your own life and letting the world adapt. Sovereignty is freedom. That is my discovery. Let me give you a recent example to illustrate what I'm talking about. Recently I committed to having lunch with a very old friend of mine. I haven't seen them in years and years, we set this up weeks ago we were both very excited about it, but day of, I had had a really tough morning I was just feeling. Depleted and grumpy I knew I was gonna show up to this lunch not as my best self. They would ask me, how are you doing? As anybody would ask after years, and I know that I would just launch into some diatribe about all the negative things that were happening at work or whatever the things that were weighing me down. And that's not how I wanna show up for somebody I haven't seen in so long. And that's frankly not even a realistic representation of where I am in my life right now. Also, feeling depleted like that and feeling like I wanna show up as my best self, but I don't know if I'll be able to, was causing me anxiety. So acknowledging my nervous system, acknowledging the fact that I wasn't up to it. I had to call and just say Hey, I am just not up to this today. Can we move it? And we did, and it was no big deal. then we had lunch a few days later and it was amazing. It was so much fun, and I'm so glad that we moved it. There's no way that it would've been that good. Can you imagine if you don't see someone for years, someone that means a lot to you, and then you meet up with them and it's just a letdown afterwards because you didn't show up the way that you wanted to and you weren't able to. hold space for them to be whatever they were feeling that day. it's just important to me to honor these moments. And it's also important to me to honor myself. So there's an example of a seemingly simple situation, I'm sure they were disappointed that day. I don't know what was going on with their morning, but I had to make that decision for me. Regardless of their reaction, it was the right decision for me, and I let my truth make that choice. So that is my recent example. I actually can't tell you how many times I have done this, like really listened to my inner voice, whatever it was telling me. I listened to my energy levels, listened to my mood, and figure out what I need in a given moment, and that might be I need to go and meet with my friends, and I know that they will knock me outta my mood and make me feel better, make me laugh, and I'll come back feeling better. It also might mean I really need to just curl up under a blanket with a book for the next two hours and not talk to anybody, both of those are really valid needs. And so when I listen to those and I let that truth guide my decisions. The results are magic. I cannot tell you how many times I have followed that, and it has resulted in a beautiful evening at home, either with my family or alone. I tend to let my mind wander in those moments and allow myself a level of introspection that I don't always get to do. in those moments, as I am processing whatever comes up, allowing myself to let my thoughts flow through me and my emotions flow through me. How many times that has resulted in a big aha moment, a light bulb moment, a creative awakening. maybe I'll just get an urge to pick up a new Painting or skill, or I'll research something that has piqued my interest or I am wrestling with some kind of a decision in my life, big or small and that moment has provided me the clarity to move forward with confidence. Those things wouldn't have happened if I was out, surrounded by people where I am taking in everybody else's mood and all of the. Feedback that you receive when you're out with a group of people or out in public. I wouldn't have been able to process any of that information, so I'm not just talking about canceling your plans for the sake of canceling. I am not just talking about what some might call laziness or using that time to rest. However, as an aside, I will say. I don't think it's laziness, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with using that time to rest. When you need rest, you should rest, but this is about honoring and protecting your nervous system, understanding what is causing you anxiety and making adjustments to try to maintain a level, like a baseline of calm And honoring what is true for you and building the muscle that helps you to understand that what is true to you does matter just as much as anybody else. That is really the core of this whole episode. So there have been a couple of eras for me that I have gone through to get to this point. The first one, unfortunately, was the avoidance era. I think that the avoidance era is actually a step towards sovereignty. This is the era where you're young, you are uncomfortable with conflict or just unsure of how to proceed when something feels bad. So for me, this was the era where I was still trying to protect myself, but I only knew how to do it through avoidance and frankly lying. I didn't yet know how to say, this doesn't work for me, or I need to cancel. I only knew how to do it in shadowy, dishonest ways. for example, when I worked for the remodeling company in my early twenties, it was intense customer engagement, My days were filled with meeting with customers in their houses multiple times a day. I don't know if you've ever gone through a renovation project, but these people were. at the beginning, very excited to talk about their project, so I had to mirror their excitement. and then by the end of the project they were really pissed off and frustrated and just wanted it to be done. So I am trying to make it through my day. my plate was overflowing with responsibilities and I was new to the workforce. I was carrying around my little math degree with no business experience, right? So I'm learning on the fly absolutely internalizing everything that was coming at me from other people because I was just young and that's where I was in my life. so people were getting really emotional in some of these meetings. this is your home. You're in their home. You are disrupting their routines, you're making messes. If things aren't going perfectly well, which they never were ever, it's a giant project and there are a million details and things go wrong. They just do, and people get upset. They get emotional about it. I learned to let that roll off of me eventually, but it's also intense and that took a lot of energy for me to do it, and sometimes, especially on projects where I knew something had gone wrong and I didn't have a solution yet, or wasn't sure how we were gonna solve it, or it had gone wrong because I had made a mistake and I really didn't wanna admit that. Sometimes I would try to move the appointment just to avoid having to talk about it, and I might call a customer even, 30 minutes before I was supposed to be at their house. and I might say some sort of false excuse for why I couldn't make it. Like, oh, I'm, I'm sick, or My car's not working, or there's some other emergency that I need to go attend to. I might blame it on like, oh, I gotta go meet with the countertop company because they messed something up, and can we please reschedule? Whatever came to mind. And of course we would reschedule, and then I would still have to face whatever that situation was in a couple of days. But. I did this a lot. I don't know where I picked this up. This was actually how everybody did their schedule. When I was at that company. But what happens then is you've told this lie and then you have to show up at their house in a couple of days or whenever you've postponed it to, and there inevitably, because people are, even when they're emotional, they're still decent people. let's say I said, you know, I'm sick, I'm not feeling well, can we reschedule? I would show up at their house a couple days later and they would say, oh my gosh, are you feeling better? Is everything okay? There would have to be this split second tap dance, where in my head I'm thinking like, what are you talking about? I'm fine. And then I would remember like, oh, I did tell them that I wasn't feeling well, and now I have to make up more details about what happened and just dig myself deeper into this lie, which felt terrible. Obviously I don't lie in my general life, I didn't wanna be making up stories and telling people things that were dishonest. And then I had to just remember for every customer, like, did I make up some story? What did I tell you last time about what happened? And it just causes more things that take your energy, i'll give you another example. When I was in my mid to late twenties, I worked at a bank. I worked in the bank branch. So I was interacting with dozens of customers every single day, regardless of my mood or what was going on with my energy levels or whatever it was. I remember pretty early on, so I had just come out of training, It taught me a lot about the overall rules of things and the products that we were able to talk about and provide to people. But there are a lot of small details in banking that it just takes time and experience to understand. And there was this one customer, something had happened with her account. I don't even remember what it was, but there was some sort of error and I was not actually sure how to fix it. I didn't know even who to call to start to get to the bottom of this issue. It was like a 90 cent difference. Like something was off in her account and we owed her 90 cents. I was not clear on how to move forward with this. And rather than admitting that I didn't know what to do, which would be the mature thing to do. I avoided it and she used to show up every single day to ask for an update on whether or not this 90 cents had been returned to her. I, every day would just dread that moment. And so there was this one day, God, this is such a shameful story. There was this one day where I was at lunch, I went to the break room, I was eating my lunch, and she came in for that day. One of my coworkers came to tell me like, Hey, she's here. Do you want me to go and talk to her? Or what should I tell her? can you just tell her like, I'm not available right now, and I will call her later please send her away. I was just feeling exhausted and just didn't wanna deal with it. So avoiding it. And they went and they told her like, she's not available. She will call you later. And this woman said, I'll wait. And so she sat in the waiting room and I sat in the break room for an hour while she was out in the waiting room, waiting for me. You guys. First of all, lunch breaks are 30 minutes in banking. Okay? I was not supposed to be in the break room for an hour. Second of all, I was legit hiding. That was me hiding from a customer avoiding this situation. So, yeah. There's another really embarrassing story for you. I wanna say this though. I tell these stories because they do make me laugh now, and because I have a lot of love for those versions of me, I know. And I hope that you all feel the same way about whatever stories you have from your past. I know that young woman who really on the inside was still a girl version of me, was recognizing that something was violating her nervous system, causing her anxiety, causing her discomfort, and she didn't wanna deal with it. She just didn't have the tools to be able to say, I don't know how to proceed, or, I'm not available, rather than just avoiding it. So she was trying to take care of herself. Even subconsciously, the actions were not justifiable necessarily, but she couldn't say like, this feels unsafe, or, I'm overwhelmed. There was no example that I knew of to be able to follow that and to know that that was the way to proceed. So I give myself a lot of grace. I was so young, honestly, whoever said that 18 means you're an adult it's so wrong. When I think about my twenties now, I think that I was a late bloomer. I think that it took me some time, maybe extra time to grow up. In some ways I was a little naive. But in your twenties, you are still so young, so much in need of strong examples and people to guide you, and you're just kind of out in the world trying to figure things out. So I give her so much grace and I'm not judging myself for those moments, even though I do feel a little bit of shame unfortunately about them. I do have stories that are the opposite of this as well, stories where I allowed other people's feelings and other people's expectations to force me to do things that I shouldn't have been doing. For example, there was one time, this was also during the remodeling, company job for me, where I had a legit personal tragedy happen early in the morning when I had gotten a call and there was legitimately devastating news that I received I was supposed to meet with customers at their house at like eight 30 in the morning. so I called them, trying to control my voice. And I asked them if we could move it. I told them I wouldn't be able to come'cause I had a personal emergency. And they really got upset and they said, you know, we arranged this last week. We took off a work. We're here, we're waiting for you. We are expecting you to be here. And I let them guilt me into it. Like, I felt bad. I felt like, they took off a work. that's justified. That's fair. Like I will try to pull it together and come to the meeting. I was really upset about it though, and I went to that meeting and I sat across from them in their dining room, I was running the meeting. It was just me and the two of them going over the details of their upcoming, project. And I spent that entire meeting with tears running down my face. My voice was trembling. there is absolutely no reason I should have been in that meeting. No matter what they said, no matter how bad they tried to make me feel about how this inconvenienced them, I should not have been there beside the fact that it was unprofessional to sit there with tears involuntarily running down my face. That's just self abandonment in that moment, right? I really let them guilt me into this, even though. I was, my whole system was screaming, this isn't right like this. And I, I wasn't focused, I wasn't focused on what they were talking about. I was focused on my own situation. Right? So again, I think I can be kind to that version of myself. I know why I did it. I was. At a point in my life, where I wanted to do a good job. I wanted people to be happy with my performance and I wanted to avoid conflict frankly. And I didn't wanna be the reason that somebody else was upset or inconvenienced. But all I'm doing when I make decisions like that is telling my body, you don't matter as much as everybody else. Whatever your needs are, that's not enough of a reason to inconvenience somebody else, so let's inconvenience you instead. That is the message that I was sending. But can we also talk about guilt for just a moment? guilt is so important in this conversation because guilt is one of the biggest forces that keeps people from real freedom in their life. It's like a counterfeit compass that you think is giving you guidance when it's not I'm not talking about like moral guilt. Like if you do something that violates your values or your morals, or if you hurt somebody, yes, that guilt is earned and deserved and it is telling you something that is guidance that you should listen to. It's saying something has been violated here, something's wrong, but performative guilt, which is what I'm talking about when you are trying to have the urge to assert yourself in some way, or you have one preference of how you wanna show up or how you wanna do something, but other people's expectations push you in a different direction. That guilt, that is not a signal that you should listen to. That guilt is just nervous system, static. It's like a leftover signal of trying to appease everybody and, people pleasing trying to keep people from feeling bad when those people are not trying to keep you from feeling bad, right? They're not in charge of your inner life, so why are you in charge of theirs? Why are you trying to protect their feelings instead of your own? It's the thing in your head that says, like. they'll be disappointed or they'll think I'm flaky They'll be mad. I should go anyway. Or a better person would just do it. Guilt is powerful. It feels like morality in your body. It's a physical sensation, at least for me, and it feels like something that you should listen to, but it's just conditioning. You're just reading from a script that you've been reading from your whole life, but you didn't actually write that script. It didn't come from you. It keeps you performing when you should be making choices for yourself. It keeps you available when you are completely depleted. It keeps you in meetings that you shouldn't be in or saying yes when your whole body is begging you to say no. That is not something that you should listen to. What I am saying is not easy because that level of guilt, especially for women, when you are inconveniencing someone else or you're causing some kind of reaction in someone else, we are very sensitive to that kind of guilt and it can feel almost impossible to turn that off, and so I don't think the focus should be on every time you feel guilty focusing on turning that off. I think the focus should be on yourself and teaching yourself and flexing that muscle that will ultimately get stronger to tell yourself that your needs matter. Your feelings are valid, your opinions are valid, your energy level is valid. All of that matters. And if you can teach yourself that, then I think that the guilt slowly fades away on its own. And when you stop feeling that guilt and when you stop obeying that guilt, when it does come up, that is where freedom happens. That is the path towards true sovereignty, and it's the moment when you start to feel inner alignment. All of those pieces start to fall into place This is real deep and difficult work, but it is so important when you are living your life and letting your choices be guided from you and your inner truth, life feels totally different in a really good way. Okay. I digress. Over time I slowly started making my way into what I think was the next era for me on my way to sovereignty, and that was sort of experimenting with truth telling. I think this started in my early twenties and it continued through into my thirties, think. What that looked like was sometimes I would actually say what was true, even if it was uncomfortable or inconvenient or made me look bad and just let it be what it was and see what happened. for example, I can think of a situation where I had double booked two appointments two customer meetings that were both really important. They were both with, big important clients had been scheduled ahead of time. And I don't know what happened. I messed up I double booked them. I could have, I thought of lots of excuses. I could have called and said, blame the system. Blame someone else tell them I'm sick, whatever. But instead I just said. Hey, I'm just gonna fall on my sword. I screwed this up. I double booked these two appointments, and I need to move our appointment. Can we please move it to another time or another day? of course, the person was disappointed or frustrated, they're entitled to their feelings and their reactions. But we moved the appointment and ultimately had the meeting and everything was fine. And I remember in the moment as that was happening. I felt like a different sensation, like a sense of power because I was not scrambling to try to think of. Other details or other reasons to justify why I needed to ask them for this, or, trying desperately to validate myself in the moment so that I could walk away thinking like, okay, at least they won't blame me. Instead, I just stood in my truth regardless of whether they were blaming me or not, and allowed them to react and just moved forward and that felt really good. That made me feel really confident and calm like I had a little bit more authority in my own life, eventually that feeling took hold and that pushed me into where I am now. Have you guys ever seen the Bluey episode where I talk about Bluey a lot? it's the duck cake episode actually where Bluey helps her dad clean up. he dropped a part of the cake and he was upset about it and she saw that he was upset and cleaned up the. Cake without being asked. when he saw that she had done that, he said, you did this, thank you, bluey. And her tail started sort of involuntarily wagging and she was like, oh, that feels good. And then she spends the rest of the episode volunteering to help people. That's how this felt. It was like a little tail wag that I wasn't aware was gonna happen. That sort of gave me a taste of something that I wanted more. this was the era where real sovereignty started to take its first breath for me. those moments were the beginnings of of understanding that I have my own truth and it matters, and I can use that to dictate what I say and what I do at any given moment. And it certainly wasn't obvious. It wasn't glamorous by any means, and it wasn't consistent. But this was me in a wobbly Bambi's first steps kind of a way. Testing out. Honesty and directness and courage, frankly, in the face of conflict or difficult situations. There is a step on the way to sovereignty that I wanna talk about, because I think we all have to cross through this period of time before you can actually make it to a point where you are allowing your inner self to drive your decision making, and that layer is reactivity, and here's what I mean by that. A lot of us have been conditioned to respond instantly to other people's needs. So we hear a request or a hint of discomfort and our whole system launches into action. Someone says, I'm thirsty, and your body stands up before your mind even has a chance to think about it. I do this with my kids. This is something I've been working really hard on not doing to force them to actually ask for what they need. If somebody size heavily, you start thinking of ways that you can make them feel better. If there's some kind of hesitation, you might rush to try to smooth the moment so there's no awkwardness. I think this is what decades of people pleasing and caretaking and high achievement have created for us. That emotional vigilance that we feel all the time trains us to do this, and a lot of us have been conditioned over our lives to respond instantly. So this feels like helpfulness or kindness or responsibility, but it's really just a well honed survival strategy, a performance. It's born of our fear of disappointing people and fear of being misjudged losing connection somehow I think reactivity keeps us exhausted and unavailable for our own lives. So one of the most important skills on the way to full sovereignty, I think is a pause. It is just a little bit like a tiny space between hearing or noticing a need and responding. A tiny space that you take for yourself to check in with yourself. What do you feel like you wanna do? What is your decision? Your decision based on no one else. And this is also where I wanna share with you a little trick that I use in situations like this, because it's not always easy and there are a lot of other emotions that come up when I'm trying to. push through a situation like this. I use the word noted. Just as I feel everybody else's opinions start to kind of seep into my decision making process. I use the word noted as a stop for myself, and it also pauses the conversation, like if somebody says to you, for example, I don't think you should do that, or I would really prefer if you did X, Y, Z. Your response can be noted and that kind of reminds you like that is their opinion and they're entitled to that, and that's fine, but that's really not part of your decision making process, and you need to consider what you want and what you think before blurting out a decision or starting to act on something. in my opinion, you should have done this. Or if you turn this down, it's gonna upset them. Noted. It just sort of allows you to step right back into your own inner realm, You are the queen of that realm. You are the one in charge, and it's so easy to let other people's needs and other people's opinions filter into that, and then everything gets kind of muddy. I use the word noted if it works for you, you may have it. You may use it. If another word works for you, use that. But find a way to give yourself a pause, some way to just put some space between what somebody else is asking for or asserting, and your own opinions and thoughts and decisions about that. But the responses that are driven by my nervous system reacting to a perceived need, not a stated need, that's the thing that I'm trying to cut off because that's the thing that pulls me away from myself. Does that make sense? And just letting you know that you are allowed to hear something without immediately solving it. You're allowed to register a need without instant action. You're allowed to pause, take a breath, and take however much time you need to decide instead of reacting immediately and rushing and depleting yourself in the process. If sovereignty is the goal and it's based in truth and boundaries and freedom. Then the pause, that's the doorway. That's the way that you get to those things. The final stage that I wanna talk about today is true sovereignty. Once you work your way through all of those other phases and obstacles, that final achievement is when you stand in your full freedom, you are making decisions based on your truth. You are not allowing others to even unintentionally bully you in a direction that you don't wanna head. The first time that I ever witnessed, this was long before I started to arrive at this place. I worked for a government agency for a long time where there was a fairly new. Actually a brand new director. she was not a part of the agency before, so people were not as familiar with her. And she was this diminutive little woman. I mean, she was less than five feet tall. She also dressed in pink suits she just really leaned into her feminine in terms of the way that she looked and dressed. People would see her in the hallways and they weren't quite sure what to think. in one of the first meetings with all of her senior leaders, I was in the room because I ran that meeting from a note taking perspective. I am this one other person who used to sit in the corner and madly take notes on what was said. We weren't allowed to record anything in this particular agency, so we had to pen to paper, madly try to take notes to get the full, record of what was discussed and decisions that were made and all of that. So we were in the room and she sat at this big long conference table with all of her leaders, most of whom were men. This agency did a lot of really technically advanced work, the different leaders were kind of trying to, you know, everyone's trying to make a good impression. Everyone's trying to assert their expertise and their value and they were going down the table to talk about who they were and what they did and the work that they oversaw I remember pretty early on in the meeting, one of the men started talking about his work, which was related to engineering, technical engineering. He was kind of glossing over a lot of the details and he said something like, I'm sure you don't wanna hear about the details. Like just in general, here's what I do. I'm not even sure if he intended to be patronizing or condescending or dismissive, but it came across that way. And I remember she just held up her hand and she said, I'm gonna stop you there. Like she didn't raise her voice, but she said, I'm gonna stop you right there. And then she listed the various advanced degrees that she has in very technical engineering subjects and all of the experience that she has and said, I am very much interested in all of the technical details. Please see me after this meeting and a hush fell over the room I just felt like, man, like I felt bad for the people at the table and also, I wanna be that person. She was such a badass. She stood in her authority, all day, every day. And she was a great leader. I mean, she ended up having a fairly long tenure at that agency and she was a really strong leader. I just was really impressed and also a little bit intimidated by her. So that was the first time that I ever witnessed somebody who was so clear and so sure about who they were and what they needed and what they would and would not be tolerating. I sort of had like a North star to aim for, among other examples. so I feel like I either am arriving or have arrived It's a process, right? I don't think I'll ever fully be there. I hope I will, but I think even for her, I'm not sure in every scenario. I'm sure she could project that. I'm sure she wasn't feeling that in every cell in her body. But I will say that, I feel like I am more comfortable than I used to be saying no to assignments that I don't have capacity to do because I stand very sure of the work that I do accomplish. So if somebody asks me to do something and I don't have capacity to accomplish that, I'm comfortable saying no. I'm comfortable asking for what I want out loud, and I'm in the process of trying to stop waiting for the perfect moment to talk about my feelings or myself, like with anybody that I have a personal relationship with. I tend to notice, like if they're in a bad mood or they have a lot going on, I don't wanna add to it. So I used to kind of wait and try to pick the right moment to bring up my stuff Now, I don't do that anymore. I don't know how my husband feels about this, but even if he's in a bad mood or he has a lot going on, I will also assert my concerns or whatever stuff is going on with me that I need to talk about, matters just as much in any moment. If it's bothering me, I'm gonna talk about it. So these are things that have been hard won and are probably pretty significant changes from me 10 years ago, and that same concept also applies to how you spend your time. I have a friend who makes this, analogy where, people talk about all the balls you have in the air, like you're juggling different balls in the air and every ball is a task Understanding which of those balls are made of glass. if you drop the ball, it's gonna break and shatter, and which of those balls are made of plastic or cotton? And if you drop them, nothing actually happens. Maybe the rubber, you drop it and it just bounces away and nothing happens. You can just pick it up later. It's important to recognize that difference. And I would say the vast majority of balls in the air are not made of glass for most people. in this era, I really love to cancel my plans. I'm really sorry to all my friends who are listening. I'm an introvert. I've talked about this. This will not be something that is appealing to everybody, But for me, when I have plans, I mean, dinner plans with my friends are not generally draining for me. I love to do that, but if I'm just not feeling it or I had a bad day, I am not above it, but also dentist appointments are one of my favorite things to move. I hate the dentist with a passion. Sorry to all the dentists listening. I hope you don't take this personally. I don't think I'm alone in this, but I have a lot of dental trauma, and so when it comes time to go to the dentist, I don't wanna go. And if I am paying attention to my nervous system, which is the point of this whole thing, if I'm trying to protect my nervous system, the dentist is not it. Can we move this to another day? So that's a decision you have to make. Sovereignty is not about asserting your truth when there are no consequences or being able to do it and never having any consequences. Sometimes there are, sometimes it's monetary. Sometimes the consequence is people get upset, people get their feelings hurt or they feel frustrated or angry So be it. I'm not saying never honor commitments. I'm saying be honest about the trade offs and stop pretending that you're trapped when you are not. If you are protecting your own nervous system, then that should be your concern first and foremost. I'm not saying go out and openly just try to make people angry or try to hurt people's feelings. And I'm not saying making decisions without considering other people's feelings is also okay. But. Considering your own feelings is also a part of the equation. That's what I'm saying. I just love the idea that I have control over this. If I need to move my flight, I can do it. I love knowing that that is freedom to me. I get to choose how I spend my time. I get to choose when I do and do not interact with other people, when I get a text message, this is probably the thing I do most frequently. I don't respond to text messages right away usually, unless it's something that I'm really interested in or it's urgent. For some reason, I'll see the text come through and I will decide like, oh, I'll get back to them later. Or I'll know that is going to result in a lengthy conversation and I'm not up for that right now. I will get back to them later because guess what? When somebody texts you, you don't have to answer them. That is not a signal for you to drop what you're doing and stop thinking about whatever you're thinking about or talking about whatever you're talking about, and focus on them. That's not what that means. The beauty of a text message is it will be there forever. You can wait an hour. You can wait a day or a week. That's a choice that you have. I really cherish that choice. Here's a story. So just a couple of years ago I was working for a company that was partially located in a different city and so probably quarterly we would have to travel to that city. And, we had one event where I wasn't feeling well. For some reason my anxiety had been very high lately and I'd been having some health issues. Actually, this was the first one because I had to go and I had to meet everybody for the first time in person. We got there in the evening. There was a happy hour and meet and greet, and I went to that and then there was talk of everybody heading to the bar and Making a night of it I politely refused and said I was gonna go to my hotel room and there was so much pressure for me to stay out and to go with them and drink and be merry, whatever they were doing. even from the founders of the company, and I could tell that they were kind of judging me on this, almost basing their opinion of me off of my willingness to participate in the social aspects of this company, and I just said no, because I knew my nervous system couldn't handle it. My physical body was objecting to anything outside of crawling under the covers in bed and getting some sleep and so I didn't, I went back to my room and I really didn't give it a second thought. The next morning I woke up and that was a day full of presentations that I had to give. Leading my team through all kinds of exercises and training, I killed it that day because I was well rested. I had taken care of myself and I just, I knew what I needed and I took what I needed and I felt really proud of that because I know there have been a lot of moments in my life where I would've caved and gone out and I would've been miserable and I would have felt unfocused and exhausted the next day. you can make an opinion about me based on that if you like, but if you do that, I'm judging you for it. that is full sovereignty in my head. In my mind, I do wanna talk about lying. There's a rule about sovereignty. It is easy to think that, okay, I have control over all of this. I can move whatever I want to. I'll just come up with an excuse and let them know I'm not available. The problem with that is. You are signaling to yourself that your needs don't count, that your truth won't be accepted, and that you have to be performing even when you are within boundaries that you have set for yourself. It tells you that you can only choose yourself if you have a good enough excuse, and that is not true. That just reinforces the exact system that you're trying to escape. You cannot build sovereignty on top of a lie. Lying. Even like tiny little white lies that are socially acceptable, like, oh, I'm not feeling well, or We have a conflict, or whatever the case may be. You're telling yourself, my needs are not enough and I can't choose myself without justifying it, or My reasons are not legitimate unless someone else approves it. That is the cage. That is when you're shrinking because other people around you have expectations. That is the internalized hierarchy where other people's reactions matter to you more than your own inner voice. So instead of that, sovereignty means choosing yourself without a performance, without a cover story, without bending the truth to make others more comfortable. Sovereignty is simply saying the truth out loud and letting the world adjust. You don't have to apologize for needing rest. You don't have to explain yourself. You do not have to downgrade your own reality so that others don't feel inconvenienced. And what that looks like is I need to reschedule, period. I won't be there tonight, period. Can we move this? You don't have to apologize. If you make a mistake, apologize and move on. You do not have to apologize if you just wanna make a change. No drama, no justification. You're not performing for anybody else. Truth is the muscle that you need to build. Make that one of the strongest muscles in your body. Boundaries are the actions that you're gonna take to maintain whatever your truth requires. Sovereignty is the state of being in that truth with those boundaries. I just want that to sink in. I just want you all to know you are not in a cage. Your life is not a locked box. You have more room than you think. More choice, more agency, more freedom, sovereignty. Is found in all of the small little choices that you make every day. It's not like a big revolution. And then suddenly you arrive there. You get to choose your pace. You get to choose how you show up, when you show up, where you show up, you get to choose what works for you and what doesn't. And you get to do all of that without lying. Here's what I want you to think about as we come to our close. Where have you been overriding yourself? where are there places that you would prefer to do something one way, but you have been allowing either your schedule or the expectations of others to push you to do things in a different way? Where have you been lying to make your needs seem more acceptable, even in a tiny, little seemingly inconsequential way? Where has guilt been making decisions for you? How does guilt play a role in your life and the way that you show up and make decisions? Can you think of one tiny truth that you could practice this week? Can you think of one plan that you might cancel this week? Can you think of one moment that you can choose yourself without apology? That is your homework this week. And please, if you don't change anything, if you don't cancel any plans, if nothing changes, please just know this. You have that choice. You don't have to use that choice, but you have that choice. You are in control. Your time is yours, your truth is yours, and you are allowed to choose cleanly, quietly, whatever you do with that information, I hope that you can exhale a little bit. And I hope that over time you start to work that muscle just a little bit so that you get a little bit more comfortable asserting your own needs. I'll be right here cheering you on as you do that. In the same way that you are practicing this for yourself, I hope that you will grant the same freedom to the people around you. If somebody cancels on you or reschedules your plans, see if you can offer them some grace and let that moment become like a tiny gift of found time for yourself instead of a story that you tell yourself about not being important. I really hope that they're canceling their plans because they're also honoring their limits. But either way, it's not an insult to you. It's just a sign that they are learning to listen to themselves and assert their own truth, Thanks everyone. We'll close with that. If today's episode stirred something in you, you can continue the journey at a life in color.co. That's where you'll find our journals, our rituals, soon to be color maps and fine art prints of the elemental primas in various sizes. All creations designed to bring more color and courage into your everyday life. Thank you for supporting this work and for supporting yourself, and as always, I would love to hear from you. Send me an email at Laura L-A-U-R-A at a life and color.co. I'll see you next time. Bye now.