537. Prioritizing Yourself Without Guilt | Reclaim Your Energy in 2026

Kara: Welcome to Soul Elevation, guiding Your Ascension to New Heights. I'm your host, Kara Goodwin, and I am thrilled to be here with you in 2026. This is my first episode of 2026. We're recording this on Friday, January 2nd, so I hope that this year is starting out well for you and this is a time where collectively.

We tend to be thinking about, uh, you know, taking stock of where our life is, where we are in our lives, and where we wanna go. This is a natural thing that a lot of people do at this time of year, and I was having a conversation with a friend a couple of days ago and it inspired what I wanna talk about in this, [00:01:00] in this live, which is.

Prioritizing yourself without seeing yourself as needing to always be doing. And so when I was talking to my friend, she didn't know that I'd written a book, and so she was asking about my book and then she said, how do you. How do you read your books? Do you read physical books? Do you listen to them? And I said, well, I prefer to, I I do both actually, but I do like to have a book in my hands and read it.

And, um, but I, I'll also listen to audio books and she said, yeah, I have a really hard time sitting down and reading something. I feel guilty. I feel guilty if I'm not doing something. And this person is a very productive person. She's a very giving person, and [00:02:00] she's very, very smart. And so maybe you can relate to this, a lot of times when we're high achieving people or we, you know, there can be a lot of reasons that we do this, but if you're a high achiever, you have.

Rewarded, been rewarded and probably grown up rewarding yourself for churning, for doing, for constantly being productive. There can also be religious guilt that's tied to this. There can be family conditioning that's tied to this. There can be. An underlying sense of your worth, that you are worthy when you do.

And so I want you to be aware of this tendency and challenge yourself to understand that you are worthy [00:03:00] because you are not, because you do. You are sent to this earth with. Precious time, and you are, by virtue of being here, you are worthy of enjoying yourself. And of course, there's a difference between just lounging around day after day consuming and not being productive and not contributing.

And not really doing anything, just spinning your wheels, but you can also be spinning your wheels and be very, very busy. You can be just constantly looking for things that you need to do or change or. And never being, and I want you to zoom out on your life and [00:04:00] understand that you are here for a limited amount of time and from a sole perspective.

Do you think that you came here simply to churn through to-do list after, to-do list? I know that I struggle with this too because I tend to. Desire being productive. I like feeling that I'm contributing, but I also need downtime and, and I need to prioritize it. And so as I'm, as I'm sharing this with you, I'm, I'm reminding myself, and as I'm recording this, we're in the middle or we're toward the end of the, the break at the end of the year when we all tend to.

Uh, kind of break away from work commitments from our regular day to day. This is a, a lot of people are joking. They don't know what time, they don't know what day it is, you know, [00:05:00] it's that, it's that weird time of year. So I have been disconnecting, I've been allowing myself to sit down and read. And to just be, but I recognize that I, I have to allow myself to do that.

I have to remind myself that I don't always have to be productive. And, you know, as I've gone through this, this break, I have been very productive as well. I've gotten through some things that I, that have been on my to-do list for a long time. In fact, if you go and look at my website, kara goodwin.com, I've.

Finally updated my homepage after five years, so you'll, you'll see a new change that's been refreshed. It's been something that's been sitting on my to-do list probably since the spring, maybe even before that, and I just have never gotten around to it. So it feels good to get some of those things done, but.

It is important that we, we spend time doing [00:06:00] things that just make us happy and that can be reading, that can be drawing. That's something that I'm trying, you know, a lot of people who. Watch, you know, my content know that Sacred Geometry's really important to me and I haven't taken the time to draw for a while.

So that's something that is in the back of my mind of, you know, I keep, there's just this habitual line of thinking of do this and do that. Get this done, get this cleared out, check this off your list, and then you can, um. But that's something that's on my mind too, that I wanna make time to draw. But these are the things that we, that our soul derives joy from.

So I want you to think about the things that your soul derives joy from drawing, painting, dancing, walking, [00:07:00] moving. Doing some yoga, doing things that may feel like you're tempted to say. I'll do that. If I ever get a ton of downtime, then I'll prioritize that. But remember from the soul perspective, you're here now and you as a soul did not come here to be a slave to a to-do list.

You did come here to experience. Joy and to express yourself through your body in different ways, in creative ways. And I want you to prioritize giving yourself that time to put your feet up and to do something that you enjoy and to do that regularly, not just today, but to provide yourself with the time.

[00:08:00] To do things that you enjoy, and if you're a parent, I encourage you to do this when your children can observe you not being productive a hundred percent of the time. Because a lot of the reason that we feel that we must go, go, go, go, go, and that we. Are best used as a doer. Is because that's been handed down throughout our family.

So either it's been really entrenched and our families have, you know, made sure to tell us and continue to reinforce that, or we've picked up on it subtly because we see that our parents don't put their feet up, that our parents are always busy, they're always stressed, they're never happy, and. That's what we think being an [00:09:00] adult is because that's all we've seen modeled.

So it is really going to do a lot for your kids if you allow them to see you prioritizing yourself, prioritizing your restoration, your relaxation, and your creativity. Prioritizing yourself, prioritizing you being worthy of downtime, you being worthy of doing things that are not productive because that tells them that that's normal.

They are not gonna then have to deal with the guilt. You have, if you can overcome your guilt and heal that wound within you, that [00:10:00] feels that you're only worthy if you're contributing 150% and you're sacrificing constantly if they're seeing you doing that, even. Even if you're not pointing it out, and even if you don't mean to, it's just how you're operating.

If they're never seeing you prioritizing, they're, they're ingesting that and it's programming them, and then they're going to continue the cycle and they're not gonna enjoy their lives. So give them permission to enjoy life and to prioritize within themselves. Having some downtime, having some time to catch up and just to restore and not always be sorting the mail or tidying up [00:11:00] or on your computer or whatever it is that they see.

So do it for you. Do it to heal your family lines, but you know, most importantly, just remember that as a soul. You came here not to be a slave to your to-do list. You came here to experience the fullness of who you are and to express yourself in the fullness of who you are. So don't let yourself be an ottoman that is just constantly doing and not prioritizing the the being.

Just being, just experiencing yourself in quiet in stillness. Enjoy. Let yourself read a book. Feel good about it. [00:12:00] And resist any temptation to feel guilty. Reprogram yourself. As you do things like that, reprogram how you think about it. Catch yourself. If you're feeling guilty about prioritizing some downtime, catch yourself.

What are you telling yourself? And so don't be lazy about just saying like, okay, well I'm gonna do this but I feel really guilty. And then you just let those thoughts cycle through about how you don't deserve this and you'll deserve it. If you can clear your list down to zero and 'cause you'll always find.

More things. You will always find more things if you never let yourself be. If you're not going to prioritize allowing yourself to have restoration, you will always find more things that you could be doing. [00:13:00] They'll always show up. You will never be done, so you have to choose. To allow yourself to get to a point where you can put your feet up and enjoy your time doing something that really nurtures your soul.

So please do that. Please do that for you. Do that for me. Do that for your children. And enjoy yourself. Prioritize this, this year. Make it a habit. So thank you so much for being here. Again, happy New Year. Let's make 2026 the fantastic year that it can be. Bless you. I'll see you next time. 

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Soul Elevation. If someone in your life would be inspired or uplifted by what [00:14:00] you heard today, please take a moment to share it with them. These are the kinds of conversations that ripple out and elevate collective consciousness. And if you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the powerful episodes ahead.

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