Hi, Taylor. How are you? I'm doing really well. I'm just here hanging with my friend.
Yeah, I love this. I was just saying to you that this is my first email newsletter conversation, which I think is fitting.
I believe I was the first guest on your first podcast when you were doing Begin Within.
That's that's what it was called, right?
No. Yes. B school. B school. I'll throw it back even further.
Yeah, back to B-School. And so now you're the first guest on this non-podcast
that is just audio I'm sharing with my newsletter as emails from Amelia.
And the vibe is IG Live. Throwback like four years ago, IG Live.
Not present day IG Live, like 2019. Probably like 2020 IG Live.
And if you're tuned into this, thanks for listening. Taylor and I are gonna have a chat about her book,
which on the day this releases is coming out tomorrow, it's called Inner Workout and it's gonna be amazing.
And I'm so excited to, you know, have like a actual BFF chat about how you're feeling
right before your book comes out, which is probably a lot. So Taylor, how are you feeling?
I am feeling all of the feels. I was telling you before we started recording,
there's just a lot, like I am an anxious ADHD person with rejection sensitivity.
And it's a lot of like putting yourself out there and having this perspective that now people get to see.
And hopefully they will find something that is useful to them, but it's a little scary.
It's a lot scary. It's also really exciting. Like I feel like I've done this thing that.
Not a lot of people have been able to be let into the process.
You were so integral to the book process on many levels.
I shout you out. I don't know if you've seen this, but you get a shout out in the acknowledgments of the book for being my book,
Big Sister. But even more than that, you just helped me navigate.
There was so many twists and turns of the publishing process.
Now we're in this other phase where it's like getting rid of all of the logistics,
politics, et cetera, of publishing and just like,
it's a relationship between me and the reader, and that's kind of weird.
I, yeah, I feel like this is stream of consciousness because I'm physically feeling
uncomfortable as I try to sit with all of the feelings that are coming up right now.
Yeah, it is so much to put a book out there. But I also think just any moment I've found that we're at a growth edge in our work,
in our lives, but especially when we're sharing something we've created, we have to hold so much.
In our emotional, physical space, psychological, psychospace, psychosocial space,
whatever we want to call it, of this is terrifying. This is anxiety inducing. I don't know what's
going to happen. I have huge dreams for what I hope that will happen. I'm so proud of this.
And also, it's getting publicly critiqued in the market, and that's horrifying. I want it to make
money, but I don't even know how much money it can make. All these things that come up, it's,
so much to hold in one experience, let alone everything else that's happening in your life.
So I'm wondering, as our self-care expert.
Ours, the world's with this book. What are some ways that you're taking care of yourself
through this process, acknowledging that that's like an impossible feat, but how are you taking care right now?
Yeah, before I answer that question, one thing that I want to speak to, which is something,
again, I think that you shared with me in your wisdom through your experiences, like,
I'm having to hold a lot of space for the fact that I started this work back in 2019.
I started writing this book in 2020. it's now 2023. I'm a different person. And so that's another thing too, where it's like,
oh, if I wrote this book now, it would be slightly different because I've grown and changed.
And the reason that I bring this up is because one thing I am really grateful to for past me is that
past me knew that this would be a really activating experience. And so last year,
I started really investing in building out my support system. And some of that was monetary
in terms of like, I started working with a therapist again, that was also partly because
I got diagnosed with ADHD and was like, Oh, my understanding of myself has completely shifted.
Working with a coach, but also like, getting more comfortable asking people in my life for support
and telling them when I'm struggling, whether that's my partner, whether that's you, whether
that's some other close friends in my circle, but really starting to lay that groundwork ahead of
time. So that when I'm in this period now, where it is all of the feelings, I'm not scrambling to
find those pieces of support. They're there already. And I don't like to share. It's weird
because I feel like I present as a very open person, but it actually takes me quite a while
to open up to people. And so doing that, that relationship support system building ahead of
time just made it so much easier for when things are hard now to be able to deal with it. And so
that's more of like a community care level, which honestly, my next book might be about community
care and like all of the barriers that keep us from giving and receiving care with and from each
other. But let's sell this book first. In terms of self care support stuff, it has been like.
Even today, in an ideal world, I wouldn't get up and be on my laptop right away. But I was because
I locked myself out of Instagram, my email, all of that stuff on my phone. And today, my brain was
like, you can just do it on your laptop. So I was up and working and got anxious for a lot of reasons.
And I came back to the things I know I need to do in my morning to feel supported,
which is to move my body and to have something nourishing and to try and meditate or do some
type of reflective practice. And I'm sure you've heard those things a million times, but it's.
It just makes such a foundational difference to my day. And then the final thing I'll say is,
I'm practicing coming back to my body more. I am so used to being in my head and using my brain to
solve problems. And I find myself saying more and more, like, maybe this isn't something you need
to think through right now. Maybe you don't need to reason your way out of this. Maybe you just need
to come into your body. And so trying to do a creative practice or an embodiment practice,
instead of obsessively trying to strategize around a problem. So that's how I'm taking care right now.
I love so much of what you said. Let me see what's coming up for me. So one piece is that I do think
the simple things are often the most important for taking care of ourselves and others. So many of my
my problems can be resolved by drinking water and sleeping.
Like it's phenomenal to me how so often I think I need something so involved
and all I literally need to do is drink some water.
It resolves so much. I think also this piece, the last thing you said around.
Like your brain will start spinning and like trying to problem solve.
I think for both of us, we are like, I'll just flex for us a little bit.
We are brilliant strategic thinkers. We really are. We can solve so many problems with the power of our minds.
But something I've noticed for myself, and you can tell me if this resonates with you is like,
sometimes my strategic brain is beautiful and wonderful and helps me out a lot.
And sometimes I'm just trying to control something I can't control by like imagining every scenario
and having a solution for it, like solving it.
And when I get in those moments, I really have, it's really hard for me to like step back
or downshift or stop the problem solving and.
Do something else. It's, I don't know. It's really hard. That's not really a question, but I'm like, is that hard for you too?
Yes, it's not just you, Amelia. I struggle with that too. Something in working with my coach too, that she has pointed out to me is, I have ADHD. She didn't point that out to me. But I have a tendency to get bored, and especially in this space. And I think you've talked, we've talked about this too.
So it's such a long journey to create a book. There's like the writing process, and then there's months, and then you edit, and then
there's months, and then you start to put it into the world, and then it starts to be in people's hands.
So again, like this process started for me years ago, and I have to hold on to this thing
when I'm like, there are all these other things that I want to do.
And my brain is like, look at all the possibilities, you know better than anyone.
I'm like, here are five more businesses that I could build. Here's a nonprofit that I could start.
Here's like all of these things that I can do. And that is great.
That is something that has served me well in some senses for business.
And also a lot of times I need to, like you said, downshift and just be with the present.
Like I can want to do that thing in five years and I can be with my body now and paint something or go for a walk or like you said, drink water. That's important too.
Thank you.
Yeah, I think that...
One of the best and worst parts of the book process is that it goes slowly and it makes us go, like we don't have any control over that.
And I think for everyone I know personally who's written a book, we're all, I'm speaking like, I'm thinking of like specific humans here.
We are all women who do too much, who are very good at what we do and who really like for things to be a certain way.
All of us. That's how we landed our book deals, quite frankly.
And like, it's so hard for it not to be in our control of like the timing and like, we're so ready.
And like, then you just have to hand it off and wait for four months for them,
like your publisher to make the cover, like do all these things.
And of course it takes time because there are a lot of people involved
in making a book when you're doing it
in the traditional publishing model.
But it's just kind of sucks and your actual experience of it.
Like I, and I think that's really hard to grapple with.
And what I've, now that I'm, you know, my book's been out for two and a half years now,
I am trying to look back and reflect on like, okay, what if I let more of my projects take two years?
What would happen if I slowed my timelines down a lot?
Even for my own, even when there aren't other people involved,
also what would happen if I brought more people into more of my projects?
And I'm no longer interested in doing that through like a traditional industry like publishing,
but I can do that in my own sphere.
You know, I can bring on people who I pay to edit my own work or who I wanna collaborate with
and we build something together and it takes longer and I release some control.
And that's also, I think, a beautiful practice in.
I guess, like slowing down and surrendering. So that's me two years out saying that to you
in the middle of it, which is like, you know, it's not helpful advice when you're like living
in that present of like all the things that are happening right now. It wasn't even really advice.
It was just me reflecting on those timelines and how long things take or don't take. And a big
lesson I've been taking away from running my business over the past is just that like things
things take time and life is long, hopefully for us. And we can let the things that are
going to happen five years from now be five years away. And like, what a practice, patience.
I have no patience, but it's a practice in patience. Yeah, that was a whole speech I
just gave to myself. Thanks for listening.
Yeah. I mean, it's funny. Again, we were talking about this before we recorded, but I do feel
like a bit of a mind meld is happening, where I've been
thinking about that too. So we both have a lot of thoughts about publishing. I, in some ways, feel really supported by
the fact that like, I didn't have to design everything. And.
I'm not having to knock on doors to see if people will stock my book. And I've had like a particularly difficult
publishing experience that maybe at one point I'll talk more about publicly, but it's been
hard. It's been really hard. And I don't know if I want to do it again in exactly the same way,
but I do. I am really interested in the beauty, like you said, of letting something take time.
And as I'm doing all the press and talking about the book, again, this has been like a five year
journey where I have really built a perspective on self care that now I feel so comfortable
talking about with the world because it's been five years. And it's built on conversations that
I've had with myself and my friends and my clients and people who have been sitting in on things.
And my tendency is to want to do things as quickly as possible and get this instantaneous result.
And knowing how you think so much about social media,
taking the time, whether it's a book or a collaborative project or whatever it might be,
allowing something to take more than an hour to create and be longer than a 15-second clip is so needed.
And it's not even like I think books are the end-all be-all and I'll be all because I still in the back of my mind,
and this is like research that I might be interested doing one day is thinking about how there's.
There's no shortage of knowledge right now. Like if you want to know how to do something,
if you want to know how to tackle your anxiety, you can look on Instagram under hashtag anxiety.
You can go on YouTube and watch a video. You can look on Pinterest,
you'll find like here are five tips that you can do.
That's a pretty small gap to go from not knowing how to do something to knowing.
But that gap between knowing and doing and being and integrating is so large.
And it takes time. And like the self-help industry, the publishing industry, social media, the world, like, we're not really interested in things that take time anymore.
And I think it's really radical to allow things to take time and allow things to invite other people into the process.
That piece about letting things take time is so wise. And for me is definitely something I'm
stepping into more in my 30s. It's taken time for me to learn that things take time. I think in my
20s, I thought I could learn anything, which is that knowledge piece, right? I could go out and
get the information. I could learn it. And I think for a long time, I thought that was just enough.
I was like, why? I wanted people to respect that, take me more seriously,
treat that as wisdom.
But I don't think, I think there's a big difference between knowledge and wisdom.
And it's all of those pieces you were talking about, the doing, being, and integrating.
Really, you need time for that to happen.
And I think it is something you mentioned. Obviously, a lot of my work is on social media
And the way is that I think social media has pushed us more toward those immediate feedback,
loops, that instant gratification, of course. And for me, it's like I spend a lot more time now,
vetting who I'm listening to than I used to because social media, you know, I think what
we're often taught, like anybody can be an expert. You just have to claim you are one, right? And,
And, you know, I've definitely told people like,
I don't disagree with a sort of fake until you make it mentality even.
It's a workaround for imposter syndrome, I think sometimes.
But.
Over the past year, I think I've been in a real practice of paying more attention to like,
how does this person, how deeply have they integrated what they're teaching? How long have
they spent learning this? How, where, who are their teachers and where have they gotten this
information? What are they bringing to it from their own experience? And I say all of that
because I really respect everything that you've brought to your work. And I think that in the,
world of self-care, both without quotation marks and with quotation marks, there's a lot of people,
I think, that teach it without having spent the time on it. I don't even need to talk about those
people. I just think that you bring a really practiced approach and you bring so many modalities
that I find fascinating. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about like,
what are a lot of the things you've woven into your perspective on self-care and the book itself?
Yeah, well, fundamentally, the book like talks about these five dimensions of well-being,
which are inspired by this yogic concept of the Koshas. And so I'd say there's a lot of,
inspiration from yogic philosophy. And I say inspiration because if you are like.
In like a Hindu priest or something, the way I talk about Koshas is not the way
that they're talking about Koshas. And that's why I call it the five dimensions of well-being,
rather than Kosha's because it's that inspiration, but it's not the same.
A lot of traditional work around mindfulness and yeah, being awareness, embodiment practices is something that,
as I mentioned, I'm working on a lot of, yes, I have this beautiful mind and that is only one part of me.
And I do like in the book, one of the most fun parts for me was,
there's these little sections in the second half of the book of self-care symbols and people who, I think, embody
one of the sub-dimensions.
And we have everyone from Rihanna to Martha Graham, the dancer.
And just seeing how so many people can teach us things, I think Tracy Ellis Ross is another one,
about relating to ourselves.
And in many ways, I think.
So many, almost everything can be a teacher if we allow it to be a teacher.
The example that I'll give sometimes when I'm teaching mindfulness to others is,
sometimes I'll knock my dog's food over and I'll get so frustrated because it's annoying and I'm,
almost certainly knocked it over because I'm in a hurry and I'm trying to get someplace else.
And then I'll take a moment to pick up the dog food and I'm putting each thing individually back into the bowl.
And if you let yourself get into that, you're like, these are not perfectly round.
That one has like a chip up over it. This actually smells really interesting.
Like all of these things.
And I say that because like putting dog food in a bowl can be a mindfulness practice
and the dog food can be your teacher in that moment if you allow it to be.
So I guess more practically to like answer your question, I feel like I draw on yogic philosophy, mindfulness,
psychology, different types of psychological practices,
coaching, I'm trained in meditation and mindfulness.
I'm wrapping up my resilience facilitator training. Right now I'm really obsessed with the research
of Dr. Michael Unger, which doesn't get into the book,
this book, but I kind of, like I said, I might wanna write a book on community care
and the ways that he weaves in social ecology, which is another thing that's mentioned in the book,
is really interesting to me too.
You know me well, Amelia, so there might be some other things that I'm missing.
Yeah, I mean, I definitely think something that you bring to the work is a really.
Like a systems approach, or you're really good at creating frameworks,
which is something I admire.
I think it's a gift we share as kind of an ability to synthesize a lot of information into a simple framework.
And I just, I guess that's not another influence, but it's something I see in the book
that I think brings something unique to our self-care conversations,
which is like a new dimensionality.
Because a lot of people out there, including yourself, will make the critique of self-care of like,
self-care is more than just baths, but also baths are great, whatever.
We've heard that a lot of times, happens in the book to some extent.
But you really are then like, okay, yes, it's more than that.
Here are five dimensions of our lives and ways that we get to explore that.
I also think the book is based off of this assessment that people can take and explore.
And in that sense, it's so much more than a book. Like it's a really personalized tool or it can be a really personalized tool.
And I don't want that to get lost in,
the conversation of it because it just it's so much more than a book.
I guess that's what I'm saying. Your book is more than a book.
I think that's something that I have been reminding myself as well is like.
Again, on my my tendency to get bored and onto the next thing,
I built the assessment because it was the beginning of the pandemic. I was like, I want to support
people in self care. I don't necessarily want to be on zoom 24 seven jokes on me because I still
feel like I'm on zoom 24 seven now for other reasons. And I created that assessment to measure
the wellbeing across five dimensions. And then it turned into the book, which is sometimes I say
it's kind of like a strengths finder for self care because you, you can choose your own adventure,
you can read it front to back and then you can be like, man, I'm feeling energetically off. Let me
go to the sub chapter on energy zones. But yeah, I'm just trying to sit in the fact like, oh,
that was a cool thing that I built and thousands of people have taken that assessment and I just
am like, onto the next thing. Oh, yeah, I can relate with that. It's so easy to just,
at least for us to make the thing and then just like have this amnesia that happened.
It's not amnesia, it's just like onto the next, onto the next, onto the next.
And our work becomes this list of things, but I like to sit sometimes in the body of my work
and really with like all of the things I've created.
And I think that you have also built a really beautiful body of work that will only.
Not only expand but transform, I think, and be transformative for the people who encounter it.
So I'm feeling like we have a lovely conversation and can start to wrap it up.
But I'm wondering if there's anything else you want to reflect on in this moment for us,
for this intimate community of people who I am deeply trying to influence into buying the book, go buy the book.
Um, anything else you want to say to me or to them right now, you know, a week or so
before your book comes out, your first book comes out, your first, whatever.
I know you had another pre project that was a book sort of, but you know, I think that's
your first book before your first book comes out.
I consider this my first buck. Um, I think to you, I just want to say thank you.
Like I love you so much and not trying to cry on this call.
I love you so much. I am so grateful. And I think this book, I say it somewhere in the book, but like, the process of bringing this book into the world has been this practicum of self care and community care and like you have just.
Try not to cry. You just like stepped up and been like such a pivotal part of my community again and again, and I'm so grateful for that.
And to everyone listening, like, I really wrote the book that I needed. I am not naturally good at self care.
I have all of these tendencies that make it hard for me to regularly practice self care.
And I am so interested in creating conversations and frameworks around self care that make it
accessible for you in your life that meet you where you're at. And that really underscore
your self expertise. Like, yes, I'm the person who wrote it, but I only really did my job if it
deepens your relationship to yourself. So if that sounds like something interesting to you,
then I hope you'll get the book or you'll request that your library buy the book.
Nicole Sarris Yeah, go get the book. I'll keep saying that. I think no matter how practiced or not practiced you think or feel you are at self-care,
whether you think you're awful at self-care or you think you're amazing at self-care.
This book has a lot to offer you. It's certainly offered me a lot, even as someone who's been
and deepened my self-care practice for a long time now,
I was still like, wow, there's so much more that I can learn from you, my dear friend and your book.
And thank you so much. It's been a joy to support you in the process.
And folks, you can find the link to get the book, I don't know, I guess in the show notes,
even though I'm not really making this a podcast, but also in the email that you listened to this from.
And if you're a business owner and you wanna hang out with me and Taylor Moore,
come join us in the Lifestyle Business League.
And that's it. Thanks for joining our non-Instagram IG live and we will sign off.
Yay. Yay, bye.