Ep 61: Why Reconnecting to Yourself is Your Ultimate Superpower
Welcome back to the second week of our conversations around reconnecting. In the wellness and healing spaces, we hear buzzwords like "reconnect," "go deep," or "tap in" tossed around all the time, without always understanding what they actually mean or how they fit into the bigger picture.
Last week, we talked about reconnecting through play, nostalgic traditions/foods, and writing a letter from your future self to your present self. This week, I’m diving into why reconnecting to yourself matters so deeply. Reconnecting to yourself gives you the superpower you have been looking for in everything else. When you connect to your intuition, your body, your wants, your needs, and your desires, you start making decisions that align with how you actually want to feel today, tomorrow, and five years from now.
Chapters
(00:00) - Reconnecting and personal power
(01:05) - Intuition, needs, and intentional decisions
(02:24) - Burnout and giving away power
(03:29) - Conscious choices and responsibility
(06:25) - Survival mode and disconnection
(08:37) - Desires as a decision-making filter
(10:33) - Small choices and agency
(11:41) - Personal needs and relationships
(13:55 - Self-reflection and future desires
Key Takeaways
Beyond the Buzzwords: Words like "tap in" and "reconnect" often lose their meaning when we don't look at why they matter to our overall well-being.
The True Superpower: Connecting to your intuition, body, wants, needs, and desires is the ultimate superpower you’ve been searching for outside yourself.
Asking the Right Questions: Taking time to ask yourself What do I want in this moment? What feelings do I want to feel? (powerful, alive, hopeful, loved, adventurous, curious) creates immediate clarity.
Future-Aligned Decision Making: When you know how you want to feel, you can start making decisions today that align with where you want to be in one, two, or five years.
Resources Mentioned
Podcast Platforms: Leave a comment/review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
Threads: Connect directly with Asha on Threads at @ashawilkersonesq.
Newsletter: Subscribe to Love Notes, Asha's weekly newsletter sharing insights, stories, and opportunities to connect, grow, and heal (link at the bottom of the show notes).
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Asha (00:02.55)
Welcome back to the second week of us talking about reconnecting. I'm excited to talk about this week because oftentimes we hear these words in the wellness industry or the healing space like reconnect or tap in. I say tap in a lot, probably more than I should, or go deep or whatever. And they don't really have meaning. Number one, we don't explain them well enough. Or two, we don't always see
how they connect to the bigger picture. So last week I talked about reconnecting to yourself through play, through remembering what you used to like to do in your childhood. I also gave an option of reconnecting with food or tradition from your childhood because I'm visiting my mom, my childhood home, and that's what came up for me when my mom made fried okra, my Mississippi mama, I love her. And I also talked about reconnecting
Through a writing exercise where you would write from your future self to your present day self. But your future self, in order to give advice or encouragement, or words of wisdom, has to connect with where you are right now. So those are the three exercises that I gave last week. But today I'm going to give you a little bit more around why it's important to reconnect to yourself. And the reason is reconnecting to yourself.
Gives you the superpower that you have been looking for in everything else. It is the superpower that you have been looking for. When you connect to your intuition, your body, your wants, your needs, your desires, you start making decisions based on what you want, based on what you need.
Based on what you desire, based on how you feel in this moment of time. And the reason why it becomes a power re-grab or a reconnection, a reclamation of your power is because we can get into the habit of doing, of following a script, of making decisions without realizing that we're making a decision. And when we don't do it with intention.
Asha (02:26.808)
We give our power away. So when you decide that you're going to keep this corporate job that is killing you, and if you love your corporate job, I'm really, really happy for you. It's not a knock on corporate jobs, but as an example, because so many people are coming to me who are burned out, overworked, and they hate their corporate job, but they can't seem to find the power or the autonomy.
Or the empowerment to make a change, it is because they're giving their power away. And the way to reclaim the power is to be intentional about the decisions that you are making. It's not about taking power from somebody else or saying F the system or blowing everything up. That's not it. That's what our modern day
Very violent, capitalistic, patriarchal society would tell us, but that's not what it is. You reclaiming your personal power has nothing to do with anybody else's power. It is all about you making intentional decisions every moment of every day so that you are doing exactly what it is that you want to do in that moment.
Now, that doesn't mean that you're not gonna go to work when you don't want to go to work. No. But when you understand or connect with your reason for going, then you make an empowered decision that brings your autonomy and power back. And so instead of feeling like you are floating, instead of feeling like you are at the whim.
Of the waves, instead of feeling like you're drowning in this ocean, you get to say, I am in this situation because I am making a choice to be in this situation. And maybe this uncomfortable situation is a stepping stone to the next one. Because, you know, I cannot lie to you and say that once you start making decisions for yourself or once you start following your wants and desires, that you'll never have to do something you don't want to do again. That's
Asha (04:48.822)
Not true. I still have more things on my plate of responsibility that are outside of my realm of like. But they are stepping stones to creating a life where I only have to do the things that I love. So when I do my own bookkeeping, when I am responsible for payroll, when I am going to the gym.
It is because I am making an intentional decision to do this thing to get me to the next phase. So I'm not just going to sit there in it. But if I am not connected to what feels good to me, if I am not connected to my wants, if I'm not connected to my dreams or more my desire, then I'm just making decisions potentially going in any old direction.
It's not an empowered decision. I'm just following somebody else's script. And when you follow somebody else's script without being connected to the reason why, without being connected to how you feel along the way, you unintentionally give up your power and you become subject to the script, to the system, to the world around you, instead of
Creating the circumstances that you have control over to get you to where you want to go. So, this idea of reconnecting to your body, particularly if you were someone who has experienced lots of trauma, or you have been raised to think that emotions are bad, or you have been in survival mode so long, trying to get the degree, start the business, keep the job.
Run the family, take care of aging parents, you probably have no idea what it is that you even want anymore. And that's okay. That's okay. So I'm sure as I'm saying this, you're probably going, I have no idea what I want. And so how and so, of course, I don't feel like I'm empowered. I don't feel like I have any power or control over the situation. And the reason why, again, is because.
Asha (07:14.816)
You aren't connected enough to how you feel and what you want. And you're not making decisions for yourself based on that information. And now this is not to shame you. This is not to say that you have done anything wrong at all. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we are so busy taking care of everybody else and we're in survival mode that we put ourselves on the back burner. Sometimes we have grown up in families or in cultures that never ask us what we want that we are.
constantly or we have been trained and conditioned to put other people's needs before ours, particularly if you are the oldest child, if you are the only child, if you are the only girl, if you're the firstborn male, if there is a culture around your role in the family, it doesn't really matter what you want. Nobody asks you what you want. It's all about the responsibility. If you are running a program
If you are the CEO, if you have people who report under you at work, it's not really about what you want, it's about getting the job done. But when you reconnect to what you want, when you reconnect to yourself, you get to decide this decision gets me closer to my desire, or this decision takes me away from my desire. And that becomes your filter. But when we are in survival mode, it's really hard to ask that question.
So again, please don't shame yourself if you are not aware of what you want, if you haven't thought about it in a long time. If you are just tuning in to this episode, if this is your first one and you didn't listen to last week's episode, go back and listen to last week's episode for three different activities that you can do to reconnect to your wants. Play again, tradition again, and a journaling practice.
Those will be really good for helping you start to reconnect. And then you get to decide. So oftentimes we hear about these different practices. we should do breath work. Why? And people don't really explain. you should do yoga. Why? And people don't really explain. Or you should do this, that, and the other thing. Why? And nobody really ever explains. It just becomes the trend, and we end up doing things and we're not really sure why we are doing them.
Asha (09:38.52)
But I don't want that to be your experience here when you work with me, whether it's just through the podcast or it's through another channel. I want you to understand exactly why I am suggesting the things that I suggest to you and why you're going to do them, the ones that align for you, and what the outcome is gonna be. And so when you talk about reconnecting, when we talk about feeling your emotions, when we talk about honing in and tapping into your wants or your desires.
There's more than just the nervous system regulation that comes. That's a huge part of it. That's really important. But really, what it is is that when you know yourself, when you know your body, when you know your emotions, when you know all of yourself, your energy, your spirituality, your whole complete self, you can use that as information to make decisions that place you at the center.
Even if you cannot honor your desire right now, but you know that this middle step is what needs to be done to get you to where you want to go, you find your power. And you stop being subject to everything else around you. You stop feeling like a leaf that goes whichever way the wind blows. You stop feeling like you're drowning in the ocean because you have a plan. Even if that plan is to do one thing that feels good for me today.
Even if that plan is to do one thing that gets me to how I want to feel in the future. Even if that plan doesn't have a 10-year lens on it, that's okay. We're talking about the moment, being in the moment, being empowered in the moment, deciding what you want to do. Now, I want to say, because again, oftentimes we feel like, okay, if we're going to be doing things for ourselves, we should only do things for ourselves.
If I know exactly what I want, that means every decision is going to be aligned with what I want. That's not always true. I gave an example to somebody a couple weeks ago, I think it was doing a retreat that I was leading. And I was talking about being connected to my body and making decisions that are based on what I want. A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine was visiting and we were talking about going out to see.
Asha (12:01.69)
a sp a open mic night in Lisbon. If you are in Lisbon and you are here on a Wednesday, every other Wednesday, there is an open mic night that is super powerful called The Shift on Instagram, @theshiftlive. It's incredible. I never regret going to The Shift, but on this particular Wednesday, I was tired. Like most Wednesdays, full day of co-working. I knew that what I really wanted to do was go home because I was tired.
But I also knew that it'd be a great experience for my friend. I knew that I would get some energy from being there because I always enjoy it. The music is incredible. I knew that I would also benefit my friend. And so I weighed the decision of what my body really wants to do is go home and rest. But what these other reasons are also valid reasons as well. And I decided to take my friend to the shift and we had a good time. And
Even though what I really wanted to do, or one of the options, or maybe the most aligned option, would have been to go home and rest, I made an intentional decision to spend time with my friend, to go to this event, to make the most out of it, and to go home when I was ready. And I have zero regrets. So just because you know what it is that you want or what you're connected to, it doesn't mean that every decision is going to be.
For you only, and you're gonna be saying no to all your friends and your family. No. What it does though is it gives you a moment to decide. And that means that every decision you make, whether it is aligned with exactly 100% what you want in that moment, or it meets some other needs, it becomes an empowered decision. And when you make empowered decisions, you feel powerful and you tap into
All of your superpowers as a human being. So this is why it's important to reconnect. Think about today how you can just kind of interrogate sounds so violent because we talk about it in we talk about it in law. Interrogate just means to ask questions. But of course, if you're watching any police shows and they interrogate the suspect, it just means that they ask questions of the suspect. But I want you to interrogate, I want you to ask questions of yourself.
Asha (14:19.882)
What do I want in this moment? What do I want in this day? What do I want in the next year? What about the next five years? And really connect with that. What feelings do I want to feel? Powerful, alive, hopeful, loved, adventurous, curious. And think about how you can make decisions that align with how you want to feel.
And with what you want to see or experience or be or do today, tomorrow, in the next month, in the next year, in the next five years. And see how powerful you feel. Just try it. Let me know. I would love to hear your feedback. Let me know how you feel. I would love if you would leave a comment on this podcast, whether you're listening on Spotify or Apple or YouTube. Ooh, YouTube, leave me a message.
if you would like to chat with me directly, please find me on Threads at @ashawilkersonesq. And if you'd like to get more content like this, I have a little newsletter called Love Notes that I write weekly. At least I try to write it weekly. I'm gonna get better about writing weekly, I promise. But I have a little newsletter called Love Notes that I share different insights, different stories, and different opportunities to connect and to grow.
and to heal and to be in community. So that link is at the bottom of the show notes. And I would love to have you in my space. All right, y'all. I love you. I will see you next week with one more episode about reconnecting for this month of August. And I will talk to you soon. Ciao ciao.