Inner Purpose Podcast

Harnessing Your Sensitivity: Thriving as a Highly Sensitive Entrepreneur

February 10, 2024 Michelle Dowker Season 1 Episode 5
Harnessing Your Sensitivity: Thriving as a Highly Sensitive Entrepreneur
Inner Purpose Podcast
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Inner Purpose Podcast
Harnessing Your Sensitivity: Thriving as a Highly Sensitive Entrepreneur
Feb 10, 2024 Season 1 Episode 5
Michelle Dowker

Have you ever felt like the world around you is just too loud, too bright, or too overwhelming? If that hits close to home, you're not alone, and this episode is crafted with you in mind. As a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and an entrepreneur, I unpack my experiences and share how we can all navigate the complexities of Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS). This isn't just about coping; it's about transforming our deep sensitivity into our superpower in the hectic world of business. We'll journey through the balance of energy thresholds and the art of boundary setting, and so much more.

I recount a personal health crisis that became a turning point for me—underlining the profound connection between our emotional well-being and our physical health. This  discussion is filled with moments of vulnerability and the strategies I've adopted to protect my energy, like spacing client sessions and choosing the right environment that caters to my sensory needs. These revelations are not just personal anecdotes but guideposts for fellow sensitive souls in the trenches of entrepreneurship.

Wrapping up the episode, we reflect on the beautiful complexity of being an HSP. From the shifts in how SPS presents itself across genders and life stages to the journey toward self-acceptance, I open up about my own evolution and the scheduling practices that help maintain my balance. And for those of you eager to apply these insights, the Empowered Empath Bundle – complete with my Business Brilliance Blueprint – is a treasure trove of resources for sensitive entrepreneurs looking to align their business vision with their unique needs. Join me for a conversation that's less about fitting into the mold, and more about reshaping it to fit us.

Support the Show.


CONNECT WITH MICHELLE


FREE RESOURCE: Join Your Next Intuitive Business Breakthrough Free Series for full access to all trainings and bonus resources: https://wellbalance.ca/breakthrough

SELF-STUDY PROGRAM: Business Brilliance Blueprint will guide you how to infuse more of your magic into your business and create a more purposefully profound impact, aligned with your deepest self. Learn more here

WORK WITH MICHELLE:


Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Have you ever felt like the world around you is just too loud, too bright, or too overwhelming? If that hits close to home, you're not alone, and this episode is crafted with you in mind. As a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and an entrepreneur, I unpack my experiences and share how we can all navigate the complexities of Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS). This isn't just about coping; it's about transforming our deep sensitivity into our superpower in the hectic world of business. We'll journey through the balance of energy thresholds and the art of boundary setting, and so much more.

I recount a personal health crisis that became a turning point for me—underlining the profound connection between our emotional well-being and our physical health. This  discussion is filled with moments of vulnerability and the strategies I've adopted to protect my energy, like spacing client sessions and choosing the right environment that caters to my sensory needs. These revelations are not just personal anecdotes but guideposts for fellow sensitive souls in the trenches of entrepreneurship.

Wrapping up the episode, we reflect on the beautiful complexity of being an HSP. From the shifts in how SPS presents itself across genders and life stages to the journey toward self-acceptance, I open up about my own evolution and the scheduling practices that help maintain my balance. And for those of you eager to apply these insights, the Empowered Empath Bundle – complete with my Business Brilliance Blueprint – is a treasure trove of resources for sensitive entrepreneurs looking to align their business vision with their unique needs. Join me for a conversation that's less about fitting into the mold, and more about reshaping it to fit us.

Support the Show.


CONNECT WITH MICHELLE


FREE RESOURCE: Join Your Next Intuitive Business Breakthrough Free Series for full access to all trainings and bonus resources: https://wellbalance.ca/breakthrough

SELF-STUDY PROGRAM: Business Brilliance Blueprint will guide you how to infuse more of your magic into your business and create a more purposefully profound impact, aligned with your deepest self. Learn more here

WORK WITH MICHELLE:


Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back. Today we're talking about sensory processing sensitivity and being a highly sensitive person. To start, I'm going to give you a brief overview about what that is and what makes some people more likely to be a highly sensitive person than others, and then I'm going to go into talking about my own personal experience, especially as an entrepreneur who is a highly sensitive person. I'm going to tell you about some of the realizations that I came to in terms of what was working and what was not working in my business, running it as a highly sensitive person, and some of the changes and adjustments and perspective shifts that I needed to make in order to be operating from a place of thriving in my business as a highly sensitive person, rather than just surviving. So I hope that you enjoy this topic. Know that I'm probably going to be revisiting this topic in another podcast episode and I'll go into a little bit more detail about this subject, but I wanted to just give a starting point in understanding being a highly sensitive person as an entrepreneur and how to harness that as your superpower. Enjoy. Today I'm going to be talking about sensitivity, highly sensitive people, sensory processing sensitivity, and the perfectionistic side of me wanted to have all the research prepared so I could give you the ins and outs, the one-on-ones, the every single piece of information that you ever needed to know about sensitivity. And I decided I'm not going to do that. So I've decided I'm going to give you information about what I know, what I've researched already, and I'm going to be at peace with knowing that if there's more information that I want to share with you about this, I'll record another podcast episode. This is me taking ownership of surrendering control. It's a survival mechanism that helped me get through some really important things, and it does not help one to thrive. I've learned this from personal experience. So I'm just sharing this little nugget of information with you today. So let's get into the episode today about sensitivity. I identify myself as a highly sensitive person or someone who has sensory processing sensitivity. These terms came to be by Elaine Aron, who published a book in 1996 after doing some extensive research. So she found that approximately 20% of the population has sensory processing sensitivity, which, by the way, highly sensitive person and sensory processing sensitivity are synonymous with each other. The terms are synonymous. So 20% of the population. Equally, both men and women tend to present with sensory processing sensitivity. 70% are introverted, meaning 30% are extroverted, so you can see extroverted people who are highly sensitive people as well. It's not just the introverts.

Speaker 1:

Sensory processing sensitivity it's not a disease, it's not a condition. It explains a feature about how your nervous system and brain operates. It's not a condition at the organ level, whether it be whatever organ is being impacted by the sensitivity and I'll explain what that means in a minute but rather it's about the nervous system filtering less incoming information, so more information is coming into the nervous system than a neurotypical individual, and there's a heightened level of brain processing compared to a neurotypical individual. What that means, then, is that, because the nervous system is impacted, highly sensitive person or sensory processing sensitivity is a neurodivergent trait, versus somebody who doesn't have this trait might be considered neurotypical. Now there are many other different types of traits that are included within the neurodivergent spectrum. Sensory processing sensitivity is one of them ADHD, autism. Those are all examples of neurodivergent traits, and there can be quite a bit of overlap between these traits, but just because you have one doesn't mean you have another. This was one thing that I've been seeing a lot on social media lately A lot of people saying well, if you're highly sensitive, that must mean that you're autistic. And while there's a lot of crossover and it is true that there are many people who are highly sensitive and also autistic it does not mean that you have one so you automatically must have the other.

Speaker 1:

So a little bit about sensory processing sensitivity. Like I mentioned, it impacts your nervous system. It's thought to be a protective mechanism. Science has shown that there's over 100 species that have some percentage of their species population that does have sensory processing sensitivity. It's believed that there's this protective mechanism because this subsection of the population is able to pick up on danger more quickly than the rest of the population and alert them, kind of like the canary in the coal mine. So if you think about it that way, that's kind of what we are as highly sensitive people is the canary in the coal mine.

Speaker 1:

So how does it come to be that one person might express this trait while another person doesn't? So studies show that there is a 50% genetic heritability. So 50% of the time it's genetically passed down in the genes to have this tendency for the nervous system to process things in this way. Now, whether or not there is a genetic heritability, usually there's some sort of trigger required to activate this personality type, kind of like how certain conditions might be passed down through the genes but need some sort of trigger before it's actually expressed.

Speaker 1:

And what studies have shown is that the most common trigger is parental emotional environment, especially in the first 18 months of life. If a child is, first of all, if the child has genetic predisposition most especially, and then they are in this environment with a parental emotional environment that might be dysregulated, that might be volatile, that might be unpredictable, then these are conditions that will tend to cause activation of this personality trait more often than not. Now I'm not saying that there are situations where the parental emotional environment is stable and calm and supportive and the child might still have this sensory processing sensitivity. That, of course, is a possibility I know for myself and for a large proportion of the clients that I work with. We have all been in a situation where we have been in an unpredictable parental emotional environment and the reason for that is, again, protection, to pick up on danger more quickly, to pick up on the nuances of oh, I see my parents gonna explode again soon or oh, I'm noticing the little tiny nuances in the expression in their face, or what they're saying, or what they're doing, or the energy or how they're holding me, and I can sense that something's going to happen, that's going to be unsafe and I'm going to prepare myself for that. And somebody who's neurotypical might not necessarily notice these really subtle, tiny, nuanced changes. So can you see how there's a protective mechanism involved here?

Speaker 1:

Like I said, this is not a disorder or a disease. It's a personality trait and it has both its advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately, so many of us who are highly sensitive have had the disadvantages pointed out to us more often than the advantages. I know for myself. Growing up, I had been led to believe that I was too sensitive, I needed to grow a thicker skin, I needed to stop being so sensitive. I was convinced that it was a flaw that I needed to hide, and I know a lot of other people have had the same experience as me and I'm going to talk more about that in a moment.

Speaker 1:

There's also benefits to being a highly sensitive person. So, while we can pick up on danger, we also have a higher level of positive emotions in response to rewarding stimuli. This is called vantage sensitivity. When somebody who is a highly sensitive person is exposed to a positive experience, the sensitive person is more likely to develop a greater sense of vantage resistance and improved level of overall well-being than someone who isn't sensitive. So if you've got two people who are exposed to a positive experience, the neurotypical will tend to not develop as high a level of emotional well-being from that experience and develop vantage resistance from that experience than somebody who is a highly sensitive person. So while negative experiences can really throw off the highly sensitive person, positive experiences can equally support the highly sensitive person to become even greater in their sense of well-being than somebody who is not sensitive. Highly sensitive people also tend to have a higher level of creativity. They have a tendency to more deeply reflect instead of jumping the gun and acting. They tend to be more empathic. They tend to be deep thinkers and because of this they can think out of the box. They can find solutions to problems that maybe just trying to think within the box of one way of thinking might not necessarily solve. Society also needs highly sensitive people as much as neurotypical people.

Speaker 1:

I was reading an article a while back and they were giving an example of two different groups of people and they were talking about. Say, for example, you know, hundreds of years ago you would have the king and his soldiers, and the king and his soldiers need to act quickly in order to, you know, do the things that they need to do. But then they also have the king's council, and the king's council is who provides the wisdom and insight after doing some deep reflection, and the world needs both. That consultant, that king's council, needs time and space to think and reflect in order to provide the best guidance to the king. This is a bit of an analogy, just to kind of give you a little bit of insight about how different people and how their nervous systems operate. There's nothing wrong with that. Both are necessary and it's really important, if you are a highly sensitive person, if you do identify with having sensory processing sensitivity, that you recognize the way you operate has benefits and it's okay. There's nothing wrong with it, even though, and even if you had been conditioned to believe that there was something wrong with the way you think, the way you operate, the way your nervous system responds, the way your nervous system processes things.

Speaker 1:

I know for myself. This impacted every single aspect of my life. It impacted my relationships. I've been in relationships in the past where they didn't understand sensitivity and told me that my sensitivity was something that was wrong and needed to be fixed, and I believed them because that's how what I was raised to believe, and so I had this inner judge within me that was shaming me all the time for being sensitive, and I was hiding that away, thinking that that was something that was a fault. I'm going to speak a little bit about me discovering, owning and accommodating my sensitivity in terms of my work, because there's a big shift that happened, and it was important that it happened.

Speaker 1:

When I was a clinical naturopathic doctor, I took on heavy patient loads, one right after another, with little time for myself to decompress and recenter myself. Between patient visits I was wondering why I felt so overwhelmed and exhausted. At the end of the day, I wasn't appreciating the fact that I needed space. I'm a highly sensitive person and in my human design I'm a generator, but I only have two defined centers. The rest of my chart is open. I'm not going to go into human design today That'll be for another day but know that if you know anything about human design, if you look at someone's chart, if you're looking at the picture of the person, you can have defined centers where you're going to see that there's nine different areas that can either be colored in or they can be blank, and so most of my chart was blank. Only two were colored in. So what that means is, when you have these blank areas, you're more apt to pick up on other people's stuff, and so, for me, I can pick up on people's thoughts, their feelings, their behaviors, their moods, their awareness, their speech, their thoughts. That really impacts me, and for the longest time I had no idea. Once I learned about my chart, I recognized, okay, yep, that makes sense. And once I understood that I'm an HSP, yep, that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

And now I've come to recognize that I need space between client visits, especially now that I'm doing more energetic work, that I'm using my intuition, that I'm channeling messages and that I'm tapping into my clairvoyant abilities and I'm doing work to help shift my clients energetic frequency when they're on a call with me. It's a lot. There's a lot of energy there for me to work through, to hold and for me to be completely centered, present, focused and in control of my energy, and so I need to make sure that my energy is managed in order for my client to get the most out of their session with me and in order for me to not end up burning out. I need to maintain my center support, my nervous system, in order to maintain a wide window of tolerance and also not to overload myself with too many things all at once. I need to understand where my threshold is, understanding my threshold, and not only where your breaking point is in terms of like okay, now you're overwhelmed and you can't deal with things right and I'm sure I'm.

Speaker 1:

I know I'm not the only person who's gone through an experience of getting to your threshold. And now you're overstimulated and overwhelmed. Now you can't think straight. Now you have a foggy mind. Now you're exhausted. Now you're incapable of doing much more than just existing at this point. Now you got to tap out. Now you got to go take a nap. Now you've got to go to a dark room. Now you're done until the next day after you've had a good night's sleep.

Speaker 1:

I know that's the experience for me, and so it's really important not only to identify what your threshold is, because everyone's going to have a different threshold and yours is going to be different than somebody else's, and it also might be different depending on the circumstances that you're in. The more stressful circumstances that you're in, the lower your threshold. It's also going to be important to recognize when you are approaching threshold, what are those signs and symptoms that you're getting to 75%, 50%, 25%, even 10%. And the more you can recognize when you're reaching those milestones of approaching threshold, then you can take proactive action in order to bring yourself back into balance, in order to maintain your center, in order to make the accommodations, in order to not get yourself to threshold. This awareness is really important and understanding that there can be many different things that can impact your nervous system and what's going on and how you're tolerating things.

Speaker 1:

You might notice that you have a higher level of sensitivity when it comes to auditory or hearing. For some people it's visual or what you're seeing. For some people it smells. For some people it's tactile or what you're feeling. So I know for myself. I know loud sounds and bright lights overload my nervous system and I also know that I have a tactile sensitivity. So certain clothes take up a lot of sensory bandwidth. If I wear aggravating clothes, they're too tight, they're scratchy, they don't breathe, they're not soft enough, and then I went and played loud music and turned on all the bright lights and spent the day like that. By the end of the day, I'm going to be tapped out, and if I had a client call at that point, I'm not going to be able to channel much for them, because by that point I'll be left in survival mode just trying to manage the fact that I blew my threshold.

Speaker 1:

And that took a long time for me to figure it out and to accept it and to give myself permission to accommodate for my needs and not think that there's something wrong with me and that I just need to tough it out. That was huge for me, right? I used to think, well, if other people can do this, why can't I? If other people can deal with being in fluorescent lights and wear these types of clothing and listen to loud music, and they can deal with watching scary movies that's another one for me then why can't I? There must be something wrong with me because other people can do it and I can't. So I need to train myself, I need to hide myself, I need to fix myself so that I can do these things. And the truth of the matter is that's not how I'm wired, and the more I pushed against it, the more I didn't accept it. The more I tried to fix it or change it, the more I was at war with myself and the more my inner judge was trying to shame me, and all of that just caused more stress for my nervous system.

Speaker 1:

This is the thing your nervous system is the bridge that connects your inner emotional terrain with every single system in your body, and if your nervous system gets overloaded for too long and too much, this can start to cause dysfunction in every other system in your body, and I see this time and time again. I saw this with myself. Right, I've told you the story about when my mom passed away. I ended up in the worst health flare of my life, with autoimmunity and endometriosis, and the reason for that was because my nervous system took a huge hit with all of the stress and the grief that I was dealing with, and it got to the point where my nervous system became so dysregulated that it started to cause dysregulation in other systems in my body, particularly my immune system, and studies show this to be true. And so, especially when you're a highly sensitive person, it takes a lot less for your nervous system to become dysregulated, especially if you're not accommodating for it, especially if you're not honoring what brings you to threshold most quickly, really honoring this for myself was a really big piece of my own puzzle, of my own healing journey To stop trying to force myself to be like other people and accept that my nervous system is wired differently and accept that and to accommodate it and to work with it.

Speaker 1:

So now I only chose, choose clothes that work with my sensory capacity Soft fabrics, loose fitting. I can't handle anything tight around my abdomen or anything tight around my neck. Stiff fabrics that don't breathe are problematic. And tags Tags on clothing. I've had many a conversation with fellow sensitives. You know cutting out the tag isn't enough. You got to get the stitch ripper out there to remove all evidence of the tags. And even underwear is something that I have become choosy about. The fabric must be soft and all of this does make a difference because it's just another level of stress that my nervous system has to constantly fight with when I'm wearing clothes that feel uncomfortable.

Speaker 1:

And then when it comes to my work, I spend time before and after client calls to center and ground myself, and I put that into my schedule. There's 30 minutes of space before and after every scheduled client session on my calendar and I programmed that into my scheduling software so that I can do a meditation and grounding beforehand to prepare myself and to bring myself back to center afterwards. Another thing about scheduling is I see a maximum of two mentorship clients a day for 90 to 120 minute sessions and for no more than two days in a row will I see a maximum of two clients per day. More commonly, I'll see one client per day, and if I see one client per day then I can do that for five days a week, no problem. And this might seem a little extreme to some people. I know for myself when I was a naturopathic doctor I would see six, eight, 10, even 12 people in one day and I would have never imagined making a boundary of only seeing one to two people per day.

Speaker 1:

And here's the thing the work I do now is big. We go deep, energy moves and I pick up on everything that's going on and my nervous system processes it while we're talking. And doing that for two hours takes a lot of energy. While I love doing what I'm doing now, this deeper work, it does take a lot of my energy and it took a long time for me to recognize that this fact is absolutely valid, even though it's not what the neurotypical world says to do, and it took a while for me to give myself permission to make this shift without judging myself for it or explaining myself to anyone, because their opinion is not my responsibility and has nothing to do with me, and I know I've said this before and I'm going to say it again.

Speaker 1:

What I've come to recognize is, if someone's upset with the fact that my schedule is the way, it is because there's been some people who've made comments judgy comments about what? Only one to two people per day Wow, that's lazy, or that's this or that's something. Usually, if they're making these comments and they're upset about it, it's more often than not what I found is actually what they would like to do themselves, but they feel like they can't, and so, instead of making the changes themselves, or maybe doing some reflection or seeing what they can do to change, they will instead look at me and insult my choices, because it feels better to them than actually having to take a step back and looking at their own. Can you see how their reaction has more to do with a projection of something going on within them than anything to do with me directly? That was a huge one for me to not take their comments personally when people didn't understand the choices that I was making to accommodate my own nervous system needs.

Speaker 1:

Now, one aspect about my sensitivity is a tendency to pick up on other people's emotions and moods. I know for myself this has, in the past, caused me to become completely derailed from my own center. This was especially problematic when I would pick up on my patient's stuff. Sometimes I would even feel the physical symptoms of my patient and it was just too much. It was overwhelming, it was exhausting, it was painful and I couldn't continue on like that.

Speaker 1:

I was really thankful when I was doing my internship at Naturopathic College that I had a supervisor that actually pulled me aside. I was telling her that I was noticing I was having this problem with my patient, would be having these physical symptoms, and I was struggling with the physical symptom. Before the patient walked into the office. I was struggling with getting through the day because I would have all these symptoms headaches, pain, digestive issues and some of these things were things that I've never experienced before in my life and I was asking myself why am I having this symptom? What is this? I've never had it. And then, an hour later or later that day I would end up with a patient who was telling me about the exact thing that I was feeling. It blew my mind a little bit. I had no idea what was going on and I was so thankful that I had a supervisor that pulled me aside and told me look, you're picking up on other people's energy and you need to protect yourself. You need to learn energetic hygiene, and it was the best thing that she could have ever told me. I didn't fully understand the whole concept of it back then this was 15 years ago but I'm very thankful that she brought this idea to my attention.

Speaker 1:

For the longest time I relied on energetic protection to help me so that I wasn't picking up on my patient symptoms all the time. It was helpful and I relied on that for a very long time. But since I've been doing this deeper inner work and I've been advancing my own inner evolution work and I've been guiding others to do the same I've been noticing something. What I see now is that the more centered you are within yourself, the less you need to rely on energetic protection, because you'll be less likely to blown off center when you are more deeply anchored and centered and grounded within yourself and confident within yourself, kind of like a tree with strong roots is less likely to be blown away in a windstorm. So the more that you know, accept and own who you are and all of your traits and do the appropriate work to maintain your center and avoid blowing your threshold, the less other people's stuff is going to derail you, the less you're going to need to rely on energetic protection and the more you'll recognize the appropriate and healthy boundaries.

Speaker 1:

To establish Boundaries is going to be a topic for another day, but, as an aside, boundaries are not a way to get people to do what you want. You can't control other people. There are a set of rules of engagement that you've decided upon to determine what you will and won't tolerate in a given situation and to communicate that with others and decide and communicate what you will or won't do in that if that situation falls outside of the boundaries that you've established. Oftentimes, as highly sensitive people, there can be a fear of establishing boundaries, this fear of what other people are going to say if you stand up and say, look, I can't tolerate that, I don't want to do that, I'm not going to do this. The more and more centered you become and the more and more you own who you are, then the more and more you are going to stand up for what you tolerate and don't tolerate, unapologetically. And when that happens, then other people's stuff isn't going to blow you off center, because you know what you're going to tolerate and you know what you're going to walk away from. You know what is going to blow your threshold and you're not going to stick around and allow that to happen. But also because you are so centered and rooted within yourself, then you can see other people's energy for what it is their stuff and so you no longer take it on and you no longer feel responsible to have to take it on. And that's going to be another topic for another day. Right, this feeling responsible for taking on other people's stuff, feeling responsible for what other people are going through I'll talk about that another day.

Speaker 1:

Today's episode is about sensitivity being a highly sensitive person having sensory processing sensitivity, it being a neurodivergent trait which may or may not all overlap with other neurodivergent traits, and also the fact that I just want to point out and I'll probably talk about this more in another episode is that oftentimes neurodivergent traits will show up differently in females than males, and I mean this is definitely proven to be true when it comes to autism and ADHD and the studies and the research they've done on boys and this recognition and realization now that actually it looks very different in girls and then it looks even more different when you now look at grown adults and especially women. The same could possibly be true for sensory processing sensitivity. It is found equally in both males and females. It may look different in a male than a female and it's going to look different in each person, regardless of whether they're born a male or born a female. Each person is going to have their different collection of traits of what they're most sensitive to and maybe what they're least sensitive to. As I mentioned before, one person might have more of an auditory sensitivity versus another person that might have more of a tactile sensitivity or have a blend of multiple different sensitivities. Neither one is wrong, neither one is better than the other or worse than the other.

Speaker 1:

It's about understanding you and your collection of sensitivity and how your nervous system works. Understanding it, because awareness is always the first step. You can't make shifts or adjustments for something that you don't understand and that you don't see and that you don't know about and then owning these things, accepting that this is a part of you and owning it and accommodating for it and giving yourself permission to make the changes and adjustments, even if they don't make sense to other people, because sometimes they won't. And if someone is asking you, you don't need to over-explain yourself. This is a common trait that I see and a common tendency that I've been guilty of myself over and over again is over-explaining, hoping that you're going to get the other person to see your perspective or maybe hoping that they're going to accept you. Unfortunately, not everyone's going to get it and it's not your job to try to convince them to. It's your job to own who you are and you don't need to over-explain that. You are who you are and your traits are what they are. And if someone doesn't understand, it's not your job to try to convince them and it's not your job to over-explain yourself to try to get them to accept you.

Speaker 1:

Let them. That's actually something that someone I know just brought to my attention is the concept of let them. They don't understand you. Let them. They're going to speak badly about you. Let them. They're going to judge you. Let them. You can't control them and it's not your job to try to convince them anything other than what they're thinking, what their perspective is, what they choose to do. The more and more you come to own and accept and trust yourself, then you'll naturally decide you know what, that's their stuff and it's not me. And if they're going to decide that that's the way they're going to think about me, let them, because it takes way too much of my own personal energy to try to convince them. Otherwise I'm no longer there for that. I'm going to direct my energy in more productive ways. I'm also not going to discredit myself and disrespect myself by not following my own nervous system needs just because somebody else doesn't understand.

Speaker 1:

I've made changes to how I run my business. Like I said, I only see a set number of people for mentorship client calls because they go deep. They take up so much energy that for me to be my fullest and for them to get the best out of what I have to offer, I can't be diluting myself and spreading myself thin with my energy by overpacking my schedule so that my nervous system is getting close to threshold, overstimulated, overwhelmed. I know where my threshold is and I honor that with my schedule and I honor that with how I show up, having time before and after my sessions. I also do the same thing. If I'm going to be doing any type of group workshops, meeting people face to face, or doing any type of group events, online or in person, I am going to make sure that I schedule time before and afterwards to ground myself and to recenter myself afterwards.

Speaker 1:

I know that there's a lot more that I want to say about this and I don't want to overwhelm you with too much information. I think it might be best for me to reflect on what next chapter about highly sensitive people and sensory processing sensitivity I want to share in a different podcast episode and give you more smaller, bite-sized pieces. It's kind of a tendency for me to want to pack everything in and give you everything all at once, and I recognize that not everybody's nervous system is ready for that. I think what I'm going to do is just cap it at that for today. Now, if you recognize yourself as a highly sensitive person or someone with sensory processing sensitivity, you might be interested in something that's available.

Speaker 1:

This week I've contributed to an amazing collaboration called the Empowered Empath Bundle and this bundle it's only available until February 14th. It's only $97. It contains amazing contributions from 27 different collaborators, including myself, and it contains all sorts of valuable workshops, guided meditations, tools and programs for you to access, all geared towards highly sensitive people, so that you can better understand your nervous system, gain better control over your nervous system and turn your sensitivity into the superpower that it is in your life, with your relationships, with your health, with your business and your leadership. My contribution is the Business Brilliance Blueprint. It's a brand new program that I've just created and it's especially designed for highly sensitive entrepreneurs who are looking to more deeply align their business to who they are and where they know they want to go, and it gives you amazing clarity to help you see what those next steps are and what you actually want in your business, to help you feel fully satisfied, fulfilled and find the most success in your work.

Speaker 1:

If you want the Empath Bundle again, it's only available until February 14th you can use the link in my show notes, and if it's after February 14th, you can still access my Business Brilliance Blueprint and you can access that through the show notes. So I hope this has given you a little bit of insight and if this has sparked anything within you, I'd love to hear from you, send me a message. I'd love to know. All right, I'll talk to you next week.

Highly Sensitive Persons and Sensory Processing
The Importance of Managing Energy Thresholds
Accommodating Sensory Needs and Setting Boundaries
Managing Sensitivity and Setting Boundaries
Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Self-Acceptance
Empath Bundle and Business Brilliance