Soul Joy: Ditch Burnout and Fall in Love with Life

Mastering Your Personal Power

• Dr. Julie Merriman • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Feeling like you're constantly breaking promises to yourself? That persistent self-betrayal isn't a character flaw—it's an energy imbalance in your solar plexus chakra. Today's soul-stirring exploration takes us to the powerhouse energy center in your upper belly that governs self-esteem, personal power, and integrity.

We've all experienced that morning motivation that somehow evaporates by evening. You wake up determined to exercise, eat clean, or maintain boundaries, but by day's end, exhaustion and decision fatigue hijack your best intentions. This episode dives deep into why we struggle to keep our word to ourselves, even when following through would make us feel "so damn good." Drawing from both my clinical experience and personal burnout recovery journey, I share how balancing your solar plexus requires mastering three essential elements: time management, boundary-setting, and self-integrity.

The heart of this episode introduces my "Superpower Model"—a transformative approach to breaking self-sabotage cycles. This CBT-based framework helps you identify how facts create thoughts, thoughts generate feelings, and feelings drive actions. The magic happens when you intercept and transform those thoughts, because changing your thinking changes everything downstream. I guide you through practical steps to catch self-defeating thought patterns and replace them with empowering alternatives. When you practice this interruption for 21 days, you'll not only balance your solar plexus energy but develop the badass confidence that comes from trustworthy self-relationship.

Ready to reclaim your personal power and stop the morning lecture/evening regret cycle? Download the free Superpower Model worksheet mentioned in this episode by subscribing to my newsletter at juliemerrimanphd.com. This simple but profound practice will help you identify what's blocking your follow-through and transform your relationship with yourself. Subscribe to SoulJoy wherever you listen to podcasts and join me on this journey toward sustainable self-care and authentic personal power.

Speaker 1:

Hey y'all, I'm Dr Julie Merriman and welcome to SoulJoy. Today we're going to start unpacking the solar plexus chakra, where your personal power lives. Being the boss of your personal power is a necessary component of holistic, sustainable self-care, aka wellness. All right, hey you, welcome. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to spend a few hot minutes with me. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

So what's been going on since last week when we visited? Let's see, I got the bright idea to remodel my master bath. Now, this didn't happen last week, this started back in December, but anyway, my belovedlly has the philosophy that if it ain't broke, don't mess with it, and I tell you, I respect this man. He's usually right, um, but he respects. I have a different philosophy and I had redone our bedroom and I wanted nothing more than to remodel that master bath when we built the house back in 2012,. Brown was really popular and I'm telling you that bathroom is brown. So I had the idea of, you know, this beautiful dark blue, not a navy, more of a peacock blue for the vanity marble on the wall. Shower glass shower. Blah, blah, blah on the wall. Shower glass, shower, blah, blah, blah. Oh, but man, this, what should be a seemingly easy project has turned into a money pit. We had a relative start to the project, but tiles began falling off the wall and we ceased and desisted. I won't even mention money and pain. But then y'all, my goodness, trying to find a contractor. Oh, my goodness. Long story short, we found a professional that's going to start in about a month and I tell you I am so ready I miss that second bath. But the moral to this story is I need to always remember to listen to my brilliant and kind hubby. I could have lived with it the way that it was, but I will say my beloved does encourage me to exercise my personal power and has been very supportive. So, professional helpers, this podcast is dedicated to preventing and overcoming the occupational hazards of the career we chose specifically burnout, compassion, fatigue and, let's not forget, vicarious trauma. So that is why I'm sitting here with you today.

Speaker 1:

So last season we spent quite a bit of time on our root chakra and our sacral chakra, but today we're moving to the solar plexus chakra. Now this is in our upper belly and it is a powerhouse. This chakra impacts your self-esteem, impacts how you approach your life purpose, even if you've defined it, and it defines how you follow through for yourself. So let's just hang there for a second. Hear me there. So often we know what we need to do. We make a promise to ourself to do this thing, but we do not follow through. That is solar plexus stuff and y'all it is big stuff.

Speaker 1:

To balance this chakra you've got to work on. This is my belief. Now you can look this up and find lots of different things, but in working with people over the years and in working on myself when I had my big burnout crash and coming back, I found to really balance this chakra. I had to work on time management. I had to really come to Jesus about my boundaries and I had to get right with the integrity of keeping that word to myself. And I know, I know, man, it is easier said than done, but let's park here for another hot minute and really explore keeping your word to yourself.

Speaker 1:

So many folks I work with, including myself, struggle with this and I've done some yoga classes where I tell them the intention for that particular yoga class is keeping our word to ourself and I hear women and men just kind of moan like, oh God, that's something I really need to work on. The struggle is real. We know what to do, but we don't. So the big question there is why? And I know as trained therapists we don't like to ask the question why? But I'm going to ask it here. What is going on that gets in the way of keeping your word to yourself? Because y'all, with all love and respect, it takes effort to keep our word to ourself and it's hard. We wake up fresh in the morning, but by the time the evening comes and we're wanting to follow through with what we said we're going to follow through with. We're tired, even though when we do keep our word to ourself, we feel so damn good. We feel so damn good. It's a wonderful feeling, friends.

Speaker 1:

I'm talking about keeping the promise you make to yourself in the morning. Aren't we spicy in the morning? I mean spicy, gonna take the world on? I'm not gonna have. Okay. So you wake up in the morning and maybe it's this I'm not gonna to eat after six. I'm going to exercise when I get off work. I'm not going to have one drop of beer, wine, booze, whatever. I'm not going to have a diet coke today. I'm. Whatever it might be. I'm going to eat clean today. I'm not going to see him or her again. Maybe there's a relationship. You know that it's no good for you. I'm not going to bring up that sore subject with my husband again because it's not good for our relationship. I'm not scheduling anyone after five. I mean the list goes on, y'all, it's endless.

Speaker 1:

In my book In Pursuit of Soul Joy, on my website or Amazon, I go a lot deeper into this and I think I begin in about week six of the book. But for the purposes of our time together today, let's just explore this a bit. In the morning we're fresh, right, we've not experienced any of the stressors of the day, but y'all, by 5 pm we're fatigued. We've got a lot, especially in our business where we're making decisions all day long. You've got a lot of decision fatigue going on. It's really easy to say I'll do what I want to do and the cycle continues.

Speaker 1:

You don't keep your word to yourself. You wake up the next morning saying, man, I wish I'd kept my word to myself. See, y'all, you've got to interrupt that thought to break the cycle, that thought of F it, I'm just going to do what I want to do. You've got to interrupt that thought to break the cycle of not keeping your word to yourself. You've got to catch that thought and spend some time with it. I mean, really get curious about it. Go deeper. What do I really want here? Why is it easier to go here than to just hang with that discomfort for a hot minute, which is another thing to really think about. How do I handle discomfort? Because a lot of us, including yours truly, is not the greatest at sitting in discomfort. But you can only break that cycle of not keeping your word to yourself and move into the realm of being true to yourself by sitting in some discomfort and asking yourself in a very deeper manner what do I really want here? What am I really trying to accomplish? And I know this is much easier said than done, but if you'll do this break that cycle for 21 days you're going to empower yourself to help balance your energy in your solar plexus. You're going to gain confidence and feel like a real badass because you are approaching your relationship with yourself with integrity and keeping your word to yourself. And sweet soul, if you don't, you're going to be stuck right where you are and be in the cycle of lecturing yourself each morning with maybe a slight hint of disgust. Sweet soul, the choice is yours.

Speaker 1:

Okay, before we go to the activity, I just want to remind you to subscribe to my email list. It's on my website and you'll get an email with this podcast and my freebies that I create and include with my podcasts that have the activity that I'm about to go over and I go over in each podcast. You just go to wwwjuliemerrimanphdcom and go to the bottom of the page and subscribe to the newsletter and I will get you hooked up. So the activity we're going to talk about today I call it my superpower model. So we're going to look, we're going to work hard and heavy on this activity for this week. Okay, that's, this superpower model is going to become your buddy this week, and here's what I want you to do Every time you make a promise to yourself, I want you to run it through a superpower model.

Speaker 1:

Every time you break a promise to yourself, I want you to run that thought through a superpower model. See, you've got to figure out what's blocking your actions, what is getting in your way and how is this not serving you? And the only way to do this is to dig in to your thoughts. Now, my mental health friends. It's basic CBT. I did not create the idea of the superpower model. Beck and Ellis and great theorists far before my time created this, this CBT and behavioral theories.

Speaker 1:

But here, here's the basics, and I know, you know it, but it's worth repeating Thoughts, thoughts. Well, first there's a fact. Okay, there's just a fact that happens. The fact is, I'm zonked, I'm tired. Just an absolute fact. Then we create drama. Oh my God, I'm so tired, it's the worst day ever. I've got to have some kind of relief. You know, we just we take that fact and make it all dramatic and that fact creates a thought and that thought creates your feelings and those feelings end up in actions and actions result in your behavior. So you've got to drill down to understand why you're not following through for you. So here's the superpower model and if you've subscribed to my email list, you're going to get the PDF that has this all laid out.

Speaker 1:

But I do want, as I put together the superpower model and you know, all clinicians come up with their own little bend on CBT, but for me, as I created this superpower model, to work with my clients and patients, I got to thinking you know, man, this is like a cape-worthy superpower model, because the only superpower we have is changing that thought. Dude, when you change that thought, it changes your feelings, which changes your actions, which ends up in a completely different behavior. I call that capeworthy superpower model. And remember y'all, thoughts are not cemented in our brain. Just because we have a thought does not mean it's factually the way it is in the world. It's our thought and it can be changed. So, again, you have that fact creates a thought, creates a feeling, and the creation from that will be your actions, behaviors. So we take this information once you, once you.

Speaker 1:

And let me tell you I know it can be a bit tricky to find a thought. Sometimes we're like, well, no, I just have this feeling. This feeling is here and I'm telling you, it's screaming at me and there's no thought with this feeling. I just have this feeling. But I promise, when you dig into it, there's a thought there, somewhere, somewhere, and your chore, your opportunity, is to find that thought to. I mean, the fact has happened. We can't change the fact. We have a thought that is making meaning of that fact and that meaning making is causing the rest of the chain there.

Speaker 1:

When you can find that thought, that's powerful stuff. So it may take a hot minute to really drill down and find the thought. But I'm telling you it's worth it. Once you have this information, fact, thought, feeling, creation which, in my world, the creation is your action, those behaviors you take this information to your journal and I mean, you wear it out, you do a brain dump, you just write and write and write to try and understand where that meaning making is coming from and how you can shift it to feel better in your skin and and follow through with integrity with the things you say you're going to do for you. Okay, y'all, that's it for today. I invite you to subscribe to my podcast. Wherever you listen, leave a review to help me reach more people and until next time time, take care of you.