Episode 22: Are You Acting from Overflow or Lack?

🎙️ Episode 22: Are You Acting from Overflow or Lack?

Welcome to Episode 22 of The Less Stress, More Magic Podcast ✨

I’m your host, Erin Wallen, and I’m so glad you’re here.

This podcast is for capable, caring women who are doing all the “right” things—yet still feel overwhelmed, exhausted, or stuck in stress. If you’ve ever tried to “think more positively” or reframe your mindset and wondered why it didn’t stick, this episode is for you.

In This Episode

What if the results you're creating have less to do with what you're doing and more to do with the energy you're doing it from?

In this episode, we're exploring the difference between acting from overflow versus acting from lack. I share a simple yet powerful framework that has transformed how I approach my business, relationships, goals, and everyday decisions.

We'll look at how to recognize when you're "touching the principal"—drawing from your reserves rather than your overflow—and why creating from a place of fullness often leads to more sustainable results, greater joy, and less stress.

We’ll talk about:

• What it means to act from overflow versus lack
• The concept of "touching the principal" and how it creates energetic drain
• How to identify whether your actions are coming from need, pressure, or genuine inspiration
• Why nervous system safety impacts your ability to create from abundance
• The energetic difference between forcing and allowing
• Practical ways to check in with your energy before making decisions

Why This Matters

Many of us have been taught that success requires pushing harder, doing more, and constantly proving ourselves. But when our actions are fueled by lack, urgency, or the need to get something, we often end up exhausted—even when we achieve the result.

Creating from overflow doesn't mean you never take action. It means your actions are rooted in enoughness rather than scarcity. When you learn to recognize the difference, you can build a life and business that feels more sustainable, aligned, and joyful.

If you’re ready to go deeper into this work and build a nervous system that supports the life and results you want, you can explore my signature program here:

👉 https://erinwallencoaching.myflodesk.com/powerofeaseprogram

Reflection / Journal Prompts

Take a moment to reflect or journal:

1. Where in my life am I currently acting from lack, pressure, or the need to prove something?
2. What activities, relationships, or opportunities create a feeling of overflow and expansion within me?
3. Before my next decision, what would it look like to choose from fullness rather than fear?

✨ Free Resource

Support your nervous system with my Daily Ease Reset Checklist—a simple, grounding tool to help you shift out of stress and back into calm throughout your day.

👉 https://erinwallencoaching.myflodesk.com/dailyeasechecklist

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👉 https://www.instagram.com/joybyerin/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

How can you act in your business and your life only from a place of overflow and not touching the principal? So when we touch the principal, we are feeling this energetic drain. So if I am choosing to create a post and it's creating an energetic drain, I am touching the principal versus I can't help but share. I am in overflow. This is energy giving. So when we check in with those energetic cues, we know if something is from overflow, we have extra to give, or if it's from need. Here, we explore how stress is a survival response, not a success strategy, and how regulating your nervous system leads to more clarity, better decisions, and everyday magic. I can't wait to share with you. Let's dive in. Welcome to another episode of the Less Stress More Magic podcast. I am very excited to have this conversation, and I'm hoping the audio is okay because I'm actually recording right on my phone. I am still on my solo beach retreat in Isle of Palm, South Carolina. I'm going to be sharing like where I stayed, the amazing Aaron Beach. And I just ate delicious food the whole time that I was here and just had an incredible time. So I'm going to share all of that on Instagram. So make sure we're connected there at JoyByAaron. But I just got back from one of my final beach walks and I was just like, I have to share this message. So before I check out, I just really wanted to talk today about a new type of consistency. Um, because I feel I've been an entrepreneur for over 10 years or about 10 years doing different things. You may or may not know my background, but I was a clinical pharmacist. I became a stay-at-home mom. And then I started doing social selling when my son was about two and a half. And I just went full throttle because that's the only way I knew how to do anything in my life was like all or nothing, and really grew quite a successful social selling business really quickly. And I am proud of that, but I'm not proud of how I did that. However, I have just so much gratitude for that version of myself because I did not know another way. So that way looked like no boundaries, working in the middle of the night, sacrificing sleep and my relationships in order to build this team. Um, but really, when I did do social selling, I was taught I had worked with a coach at that point, and she really shared like this gray box method. So, like simple 30-minute strategies that you could do to continue to build your social selling business. And I did that and I shared it with my team and other people, and it was very successful. However, I have just started to approach like a new way of consistency. And truthfully, I've been in this new way of consistency for years, but it's been coming up with some of my clients who maybe look at some external strategy to build consistency. I do this strategy all the time or five days a week in order to build consistency in my business. And while there is a season for that, and I want to talk about that today, there is going to be another season where you move away from trusting wholeheartedly this external strategy to start turning inward to what I am calling energetic consistency. And I think this is what is really powerful and sustainable. So today we're gonna be talking about external or energetic consistency. So, not external consistency, more turning inward for this energetic consistency. And I'm gonna explain what that is. Um, I'm gonna talk about how this can apply and maybe some personal examples about how it applies to business and to personal life. And I'm gonna really use this how we can use this method to start to act from overflow versus need and how that's gonna really change everything. So, thank you so much for being here. I am gonna start with just like this grounding moment before we jump right in. So, what I want you to do is really just start noticing your feet. I think I did this in another recent episode, but this is such a powerful grounding tool, is just bringing your attention all the way down to your feet. So many of us are living in our head, living in the future, living in the past, and just bringing it down to the present into our feet, being where our feet are is so powerful. If you'd like, you can squeeze your toes, contracting them. Fun fact if you hold your toes contracted for 10 to 15 seconds, it turns on an area of your brain that signals interoception. So basically, that means turning on the area of your brain that's responsible for feeling those internal cues, which are going to be key for this energetic consistency and really knowing what is good for you in that current moment. So squeezing your toes, if it feels good to hold them for 10 to 15 seconds, go for it. Sometimes my feet cramp up. So really honoring your body, giving this to be a practice of self-honoring what feels good to me in this moment. Maybe it's just simply my attention to my feet and not holding my toes contracted. If you would like, squeeze them in. Okay, so let's talk about energetic consistency. So, as I mentioned, I had a social selling business where I learned this gray box method from another coach. And I don't remember the specifics because I haven't used it in years, but basically it was like how to help build a social selling business in 30 minutes a day so you don't burn yourself out, which is fantastic. And it was like posting a story, engaging with so many people, making new connections, like all these things. And you were supposed to do it five days a week. That was what they recommended. And again, this is from memory, so it may or may not work. And it's not to say that is wrong, because I feel like I really did like that structure. It allowed me to some days constrain the amount of time I was spending on my business, even though those lines were so blurry, but it was a structure that at least I had some peace in. But I think we got come to a time where it's like instead of relying on some external structure, we benefit most by turning inward and saying, What do I have energy for for today? So some days it may be the gray box. Some days it might be 10x the gray box. And some days it might be nothing and going inward for yourself. I think about this in terms of like my business. Like right now, I feel like I trust that I am consistent with my business, not because I'm posting every day or sharing a story every day, but because my main goal is to allow my energy to direct my decisions and my choices in my business. And to me, that is the most powerful consistency. So I don't know how it's gonna look because our energy changes moment to moment. But trusting that the most consistent thing I can do is following my energy has been really powerful and life-giving to me. But I probably needed that external structure before I got here because in order to follow our energy, we need to start hearing those interoceptive cues about what is my energy anyway? Like, what do I need and want today? And there's a lot of things in the world that allow us to start masking that. So it's a rig coming home to like what is true for me. And sometimes having a structure, an external structure that we follow before getting to those external or to those energetic safety cues about what is right for me is a good stepping point. And I'm gonna also talk about this in terms of like my journey with eating, because I have in the past done macros, counted my macros. And I feel like this is a perfect example too, because right now I very much intuitively eat because I have built that connection to hear my own signals so much better. But in the past, when I did not have that connection to myself as strong, that external structure of macros was really supportive to me. But then as I built that habit, as I built the connection back to myself, sometimes saying, like, I needed this money, protein and carbs and fat, did not meet me where I needed to be met energetically. Maybe I needed to eat more that day. Maybe I needed to eat less. And if I was making the structure higher priority than what was true for me, I was kind of going against myself and I was creating more stress. So I think there is a season for both. And do you know what there are some times that I rely more on external structure? And I think sometimes we have more life stressors, we sometimes disconnect from ourselves a little bit more. So sometimes we need that I'm gonna follow this consistent pattern. But ultimately, I think the more that we can have practices of listening to ourselves, the more we are gonna hear these energetic signals and be able to trust them. So I think about that in business with my food journey. I also think about that in terms of like organizing my house. And I am forgetting who this was, but um, that she's someone very famous who like went through her house and was like, does this bring me joy? And really like streamlined and minimalized her home. And truthfully, like I am not a minimalist. Like, I don't want a lot of clutter, but minimal environments right now for me energetically don't feel 10 out of 10 supportive for me energetically. They might for you, but mine is a balance. So it's like that method, following that method. I remember, I think she had a Netflix show or something, and I remember watching it and kind of like going through my closet. And it was a good system, an external system that helped me get closer to what I wanted, right? You know, when I did social selling, I sold clothes, I had hundreds of pieces, probably over a thousand pieces. Like I used to do um shop my closet sales, and I would donate everything that I sold from my closet to a local animal rescue. And I would have so many pieces, and some was still like the tags on them, or that I had worn once. But anyway, I had a lot of things. I had a lot of clothes, and that method of being able to go through it, does it bring me joy was a great external structure that helps support me. But now it's like having that alignment and those cues internally, I'm more able to just follow my energetic cues versus saying I needing need this external structure. So there's a season for both, and neither is better than the other. And I think there are times when we go in and out of different structures. And I think sometimes like external structures can help us understand ourselves better. And I'm thinking too about recently I did a style analysis with a House of Color franchise, which was so fun. So it was like that helped me figure out based on my bone structure, what clothes worked best for me. But also, this is the balance, right? I am not using that as the master guide. My energy is the master guide. This might help me find things that really align with my energy, but ultimately I'm going inward. Do I love this? Does this make me feel good? Versus, well, this thing told me to do this. Or the macros tell me how much to eat, or this is the structure that I need to do in my business, regardless of how I feel. So keep keep building that cue to know how am I doing energetically? What do I have capacity for to guide you? And if we start using that in every area of your life, I think we're gonna get so much further. So I think the final thing, well, well, two things that I want to share to wrap up this episode is this concept of choosing to act from overflow. So when we follow our energetic cues, we are really acting from this place of overflow versus need. So earlier this year, I went to Kate Northrup's relaxed money retreat in Nashville. And it was so fun. I say I'm a serial retreater, so I'm always loving to learn from other women, especially, but women and men and go to different places and meet new people. And this was a great experience. And she was talking about like the principle. So she was referring to this in money, but also translating into your life. So it's like the principle is like what you choose not to touch, and then you are just living life based off of interest and the extra, right? The overflow. So that's like the ultimate goal to get to a place where financially you are just living off the overflow and you're not touching the principal. But referring this also into your life, it's like, how can you act in your business and your life only from a place of overflow and not touching the principal? So when we touch the principal, we are feeling this energetic drain. So if I am choosing to create a post and it's creating an energetic drain, I am touching the principal, right? Versus, and I have so many moments of this, like, versus like, I can't help but share. I just took a beach walk. I am in overflow. I couldn't help but getting on right now and sharing this message from you. This is energy giving, right? It's not draining. So when we check in with those energetic cues, we know if something is from overflow, we have extra to give, or if it's from need, right? And we are touching the principal and it's gonna drain our energy. And if we start to choose to act from energy, then we are gonna like be in this overflow more. And also it's like, what is the signal that I'm sending out? Because when I am working from overflow, and you probably feel this in this message, you feel that you are drawn in, you are more connected. If I am acting from need, you also feel that, right? So if we're acting from need, it's acting from lack. We're sending that cue out, it's pushing people away. And I mean, it can this can refer to anything in business or even with ourselves. Like if we are acting doing something in our own lives, we're disconnecting further from ourselves versus connecting closer to ourselves. So it's really this like from overflow, it's just connective, it's love from working, tapping into the principle in our lives, it's going to feel like an energy drain, like lack, and it's repelling. So finally tip that I will give you is like, what happens when you choose to act from your energetic cues? What happens when you start to shift from structural consistency to energetic consistency? Like, what would happen if you gave yourself that experiment for the summer? I'm gonna be doing it even more. I think there's always levels of this. Like if you tapped into my consistency is my energy and that is my consistency, what would change? So the final thing I will share with you is something I love from another coach who she always says, What is your energetic BO? What is your energetic BO? It's just fun. So as you continue to go through your life, it's like, what am I putting out? What is my energetic BO? If I'm acting from depletion, if I'm feeling like I need to do this and I don't have the energetic capacity for it, or it's draining me even a little bit, right? We get to be so nuanced about this. I am sending out that message of lack and it's repelling people. Less action is going to be more powerful when we're not in the energetic space. And then when we take less action, it allows us to fill ourselves back up to overflow so we can act from that place. So I would love to know if you are game to try an energetic consistency experiment. Please let me know either on Instagram. That new fan mail feature that we have on our podcast allows you to communicate directly with me. And if you are loving these episodes, I would absolutely love if you could leave me a five-star review andor a testimonial. It really helps get this word out to more people who are resonating with this message. Have a beautiful week. I'll see you next week. Thank you for spending this time with me today. If this episode supported you, you can download my free daily ease reset checklist. It's linked in the show notes and designed to help you shift out of stress and into ease this week. Make sure you're following the podcast so these conversations can meet you each week. I'll see you next time.