Episode 4 - Listening to the Wisdom of our Body with Jen Aks
By Jessica Garrison
Our week continues with the passionate, dedicated, committed, trustworthy, empowered, and inspired Jen Aks. Throughout this episode, you see each of these character traits jump out, especially her passion for helping others get connected with themselves, allowing them to feel whole both inside and out.
Jen has an unbelievable sense of embracing her layers, which is arguably one of the more difficult bridges to cross. It doesn’t have to be as scary as it sounds, but sometimes you just don’t know where to start. Jen is able to help frame her layers by using IFS (Internal Family Systems). It’s a great way for her to find empowerment in her layers by teaching her to frame the observation as “there’s a part of me that…” rather than making your layers the whole part of you. If there’s an aspect of your past or your layers that you aren’t proud of, remember that it’s just part of yourself and you are not defined by it.
She also offers the perspective of being older and looking back at your past with a new lens. Rather than reliving the pain, you’re just trying to understand it better and learn. Being 26, I agree completely that I can look back at decisions I made or layers from the past of when I was in high school or even college and understand myself better. For example, you can look back and understand why you lacked boundaries or what event happened that made you realize you needed to have them in place.
Sometimes this self-reflection means that you have to sacrifice certain relationships for your own inner peace. We’ve discussed on the podcast in the past that there’s an idea of relationships needing to last forever, but they aren’t all built for that. I think that goes into Jen’s framework wonderfully because reflecting back on how you acted in past relationships or even current ones and how they have affected you is all part of the growing process. Relationships ending aren’t always a bad thing, and it’s necessary to do these check-ins with yourself to see where you are and how far you’ve come.
Jen has such charisma when talking about these important topics, and she has such a positive outlook. From small accomplishments to the large ones, Jen will recognize them and think, I did that! Hype yourself up and remember that you did that! You have come a long way from who you were before, and you continue to transform each day into a healthier version of yourself. There’s always something to learn from and always something to look forward to, and now hearing the rest of the episode from Jen’s perspective is another thing you can look forward to!
Ways to Engage: When a relationship ends, what’s your perspective? Do you vilify it? Do you recognize that it’s the end of your season with that person or do you try to keep relationships just for the sake of having them? Relationships, romantic or otherwise, are not always meant to last forever and that’s okay.