This is a Metaphor
There are so many ways to be a person. This Is A Metaphor is what happens when a curious creative can’t stop connecting dots. Life hands you a breakup, a bird call, a bagel? Boom. That’s a metaphor. This show isn’t therapy, and it isn’t theater, but it is art. It’s an existential treasure hunt—with jokes. Hosted by Mo Houston, a sharp-witted, soul-deep storyteller who views life through many lenses. She who knows the world makes sense… if you squint really hard. She’s lived out of suitcases and studios, built brands and burned out, laughed onstage and cried in voice notes. This podcast is kind of a memoir, a mirror, and definitely a metaphor.
This is a Metaphor
Musings: Lessons From Power Hour
We trace the tug-of-war between fixing others and tending ourselves, from breakup fallout to a supermoon yoga class that forces a choice between pushing and resting. Petty thoughts, poofy bangs, and one blocked mirror turn into a lesson on worth, boundaries, and good-enough days.
As heat builds and the sequence stacks, we hit a choice point familiar to every overachiever. Push because you can, or pause because you should. We unpack the guilt of sitting a round out, the myth that rest must be earned, and the surprising strength it takes to resist performing for the room. A fighter’s post-competition “fat week” becomes a metaphor for recovery cycles, and “act as if” gets recast as practicing ease now, not later.
Body image rides shotgun through a heated yoga practice—bangs misbehaving, angles not landing, that tug to fix the reflection is louder than the cues across the room. Today we talk about liking the silhouette and still refusing to make worth conditional on a good hair day. The takeaway isn’t polished, and that’s the point: rest as a power move, boundaries around perfection’s endless appetite, and letting good enough be a full answer. If you’ve ever stared at the mirror and felt the urge to edit yourself into acceptability, this conversation offers a gentler script and permission to sit down when your body says no.
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs the reminder, and leave a quick review—what’s one place you could choose stillness over push this week?
Instagram: @this.is.a.metaphor & @joyscout.mo
Email Mo: mo@joyscoutstudio.com
Cover Design by: Joyscout Studio // For commissioned art & design inquiries: Joyscout Studio
“Don’t get Deterred, get Inspired”
Others have a way of just handing to you large bounce of the truth. And I mean, not always necessarily the thing that you want to hear, nor do you always agree with it, but I remember a couple of years ago after I'd been through a breakup. I was just hurting. And it was a hurting that had been there forever. And it was like oh no, the the the whole, the heart is getting bigger. It's bigger. It's as big as it's ever been. And I and I had thought that I had that I had healed that thing, you know, and I realized I was just filling it with these things that, you know, could be people, could be, could be moments that made me feel better, loved, or wanted, or validated, or whatever bouquet of belonging you can have for a minute until it just withers away and just dies. Um and my mom has said, you know, she was like, you know, Mama, you think you can fix everyone. You think you have this belief that you have to fix people. And I will show up in ways that even imply that there is something to fix, or that I have done that for uh a long time. And I think I've sat with that for I mean, at least a couple of years now, and it was it was it was real and it was true, and it was one of those pieces that I was happy to be shown about myself. Because I you I think when your intentions are in a place of what you think is like the right place, a place of like love and and wanting above anything to be able to show up for someone, even when they're not doing the thing that you think that they should be doing or feel, and like you want to you want you want to support them and becoming the best version of themself, um, which happened often in the past for me. I I was thinking about this today um in yoga. There is there is I I enjoy yoga classes when a mirror is in front of you. Um and I'm never really the person that will go and sit right in front of the mirror, like first row mirror type thing, unless it's a really dark room, because I'm not there for that reason. You know, like I want to put down the part of me that's always correcting this reflection, and yet I want to see my form and I want to see the grace that I bring to yoga by seeing my reflection from maybe one row back or or whatever it is, but I'd want a full-body glimpse of my body in the mirror because it makes me feel good and connected. And today I was on my mat and I got into the room first. There's nobody else in the room. The studio was pretty hot already, and I just chose a new spot. I chose a new spot because I wanted some new energy. And when I was laying my mat down, you know, I got up to get my my water filled and probably turn my phone off and then get a block. And when I got back to my mat, there was a guy sitting right in front of my mat. Like he put his mat in the first row in front of me, you know, sat down, looked straight at himself, and I could not see myself beyond him. And this was really infuriating and annoying and rude to me because, like, hello, there's a whole room in front of you. Like, I, you know, maybe it's my responsibility to like accommodate, but I he literally put his like just in line with my yoga mat. And I was like, What fucking decade are you in? Like you know, you're a practitioner, like you shouldn't block the person behind you. Like, we all want to look at the fucking mirror, and I was so annoyed. And I pinched my yoga mat over and I huffed and I puffed and I looked at him in the mirror and I looked at my mat and I looked at him again, and then I sent him very bad vibes. I did, I looked at his mat and I was like, I hope you have a terrible practice. And I don't regret doing that. Maybe a part of me was like, Morgan, love and light. Send him love and light, but I didn't want to send him love and light because he's big dummy head, and I hate his gut. And I hope I hope that when we do some side body stretching and some and some knee across your chest, you know, like that, like maybe he would just let out a giant fart. Like that's what I wanted for him. That's what I wanted for his practice. And clearly I still want it, even after a particularly challenging yoga class. And so that being that, we get into the flow, and I am pretty close to my reflection in the mirror, and I'm not I'm not in love with the person that I see staring back at me today. Like I uh I have I have bangs right now, and I was pretty gung-ho about getting these bad boys, and I feel that way. I, you know, this is the age old bang story, but it they just didn't look great today. Like, I didn't feel the way that I felt looking at them recently, which is that they're adorable, and I am also adorable. Instead, they seemed very poofy on my head, and all my hair felt poofy, and I felt like I just looked poofy, and and they were just parts of my practice that I usually enjoy watching in the mirror. Like, I enjoy watching my my waistline and like my legs stretch in certain poses. Like, I like watching glimpses of that because I feel strong in my body and I feel like I like the silhouette of my movement, and if that makes me into myself, then I am so into myself. But at the same time, I just I was trying to just be okay with the fact that maybe I didn't what you know didn't feel like the person looking back to me today was the sexiest person in the room. I like to feel that way, and I'm not saying that that's the truth, but I do like to feel that that is the truth because it makes me feel good. And I'm like, what why can't you feel that even if it doesn't look that way? And I have this weird thing where I'm like, can you not just enjoy it no matter what? Why do you have to feel and look a certain way? Like, why does your hair have to be doing a certain thing? Why do you why why does your expression have to be a certain way? Why does why does your stomach have to look like all of these things? Like, why did that have to that's not yoga, you know? And I was thinking about this guy standing in front of me, meaning the class. Maybe wanting to like, you know, he was blocking me, and yet at the same time, maybe it was a block that I needed. Like, maybe I needed a little bit of grace today, and not to be like what I want to be able to do is stand in front of that mirror and not feel as though like I I didn't want to have to fix myself, you know, that it's you came to your mat for a reason, and there's nothing else to do other than to be in the room, and I could feel myself, you know, like adjusting my bangs. I could feel myself, you know, the practice got pretty heated. Honestly, today is a it's a it's one of the largest supermoons. It's the largest supermoon of the year, it's a very large full moon. And to think that that has nothing that that has no effect on us is just absolutely bonkers. Like it it like this class is full of a bunch of fit yogis, was just demolished by this power hour selection of yoga. Like it was, you know, we're halfway through, and it wasn't even a hot, it wasn't even that hot, but it was just like the bodies around me, you just feel it were all just kind of dense and lethargic, and and she had us go, she just had us keep building on this practice because you're going through the motions once, and then you have your second set, and you go again and you add something on, you go again and you add a little bit of flair, a little bit of your own exploration, and then and then you go again. And it was that last time that I was like, dude, I I mean, I was like, I don't, I don't think I can, I don't think I want to. And for any for any athlete, I think for anybody who likes to push themselves or to arrive and to that and anyone that knows that sometimes growth comes from the endurance that is necessary in order to you know build muscle or or see how long you can keep at it the pace at which you're going. But I I had that moment where I was like, I don't feel like that's my practice today. Like, I think my practice today is to actually just sit. Maybe I'll sit this round out, which is really hard. It's a different type of hard to not do it, you know, to sit and like breathe. And it wasn't even that I was out of breath, it was just that like my body was just really like kind of hurting from some of the things we were doing, you know. Like we were doing a lot of same leg movements and poses, and we did three rounds of that. So like my ankle was just like, I'm good right now. I don't, and I already felt that way going into the class that I was kind of feeling just like just this deness, and I thought I could power through it, and yet it just was the reminder that maybe the lesson today was oh, just um sit. And you know, the word rest has been coming up a lot, and words will do that for you, they will come up and they will have new bits of wisdom with them. Um I think sometimes I still subscribe to the idea that I have to earn rest. And like if things aren't going, if I'm not where I thought I would be, as far as you know, the amount of clients that I want to have, or the places that you know where I thought I would physically be right now, or if I'm not if I haven't seen radical change around me, then I can't rest. Rest is very challenging because I'm like, no, we gotta keep going. We gotta keep going, we gotta keep going. Like on to the next project, on to the next thing. You have, you know, on to the next website update, onto the next article that you're gonna write, onto the next painting. What what else can you do? What else can you do? Have you made any content? Like, you know, and it's just non-stop. And the more that you do, the more that voice will just be like whipping it and and cracking it, hoping that one of these things is gonna get you to where you want to go so that you can just rest. And when I think of the embodiment that one needs to, you know, especially when there's talk of manifestation, we talk about to act as if you already have it. And one of the feelings that I think I would feel if let's say everything was going my way would be that I would probably feel pretty good about doing absolutely fucking nothing for a day. I mean, just a day. Just be like, no, I'm good. Like I actually am gonna lay around and do nothing. And I I remember I was I was dating a martial artist for a while, and they would have months of training and of you know, either you're either trying to bulk up or you're trying to like drop down when you're competing. So you're gonna eat a lot and gain a little bit of weight and muscle, mostly water weight, or you're going to starve yourself and make everybody in your household hate you because you are a demon version of yourself and you're hungry and you're frightening. And I remember at the end of that experience that he would always have a fat week. Like that there would be like after the after the competition, no matter if he did, if you know he won or he lost, it was like it was just it was called fat week. And he would just fucking eat a bunch of terrible food. I mean, just an excessive amount of food, really. And he wouldn't, he wouldn't be training, you know, and he would just kind of be around the house doing whatever the fuck he wanted. And it was like, yeah, I earned this, you know, and I and that's probably an extremity, but like also it's not terrible. Like, I think that's a good manageable bite and something to consider because rest is like very necessary. And it's oh, there was even a lot, there was even fucking she, the instructor even said something during class where I was like, mmm, that was good. And it was about knowing when to rest is a power move, you know. And fuck it is like it it is knowing when to rest is the most powerful thing. And I think knowing when to rest, the critique is probably the big thing that is really hard for me to do towards myself and especially maybe the the reflection of myself, because you know, you you're always gonna be crafting the next version of yourself. There's always gonna be something to perfect if you have learned how to craft and perfect. And to say that it's perfect because you feel days that you feel pretty perfect, which is a pretty wonderful thing to feel. Like you also have to be able to say that it is good enough when it doesn't feel perfect, like putting it to rest that there's not, you know, at the end of this class, I was like, you know, I take all my Bobby Vins out. I was trying to fix my hair, and I could feel my like I could feel the fixation of it, where I was like, now I will like my reflection. And I'm just like, no, you no, no, it doesn't matter. Like, why can't you just be fine? Like you're still you're still worthy to be here, no matter what. Kiddo, sorry. There will be days where one will have great hair days, there will be days where you will really like the way the light is hitting your mat and maybe sparkling on your freshly shaved legs. There will be days where you'll have a perfect sheen of sweat in all the right places, and you will feel madly in love with yourself. And then there are days when nothing is inherently wrong, but it's just not the best there ever was. And that is good enough too, but why does it feel like a lie when I say that? You know? I don't want it to feel like a lie, I don't want to feel forced. But that's just what it is, and that's just what it is. This is just where we are. I think I I had one of those days where that heaviness and that that need to fix, it doesn't matter how much I fix that, it still wouldn't be fixed. And it was like, oh, this will never actually stop. And then there's a feeling of jumping ahead and of overwhelm of this is actually forever. And so when do you decide to stop? When have you fixed all that you can fix? When are you fixed? There's probably days in which one does not have to look at their reflection in yoga, and it's not because you don't think you're gonna enjoy your reflection, but because you would much rather enjoy your practice and not expose yourself to that shadow side of you. You know, like there is a moment where perfection is just very much the devil, and yeah, if I can I can shield myself from that, then that's pretty lovely.