NOTE: I promised you a Transformation Tuesday on the subject of how to interpret illness and injury and Spiritual Strategies for those seasons, and one you shall have. As my own real life experience unfolds in real time and as I work on that piece for you, the insights Iare ripening and dropping in powerfully and in Divine Timing. Look for something soon!

As I sat in my Daily Ritual today, what follows is was what wanted to come through me to you. It happens to be a lesson that comes from when Londyn and I got COVID, but it’s not all about that. I’m a big fan of following Inner Guidance, so…here we go!

***

A while back, Londyn and I holed up for 10 days with COVID. I’d been vaccinated months before, and our cases were pretty mild. It was much less stressful than you might imagine, for a bunch of reasons. 

When our tests came back positive, the stress of wondering was almost instantly replaced with the relief that so often comes when the worst case scenario you’ve been dreading actually happens… and catastrophe does not, in fact, ensue. 

Then a ripple effect of more and more relief unfolded, as I realized I would now be extra immune, and she would get a natural immunity that was unavailable to a 3-year-old in any other way. 

So I sat her on my lap, touched my forehead to hers and said, “Bun, we’re going to stay at our house for awhile. Let’s make it magical. Okay?” (insert fist bump and major fist bump explosion with sound effects here.)

And we did. We made it magical. 

We dressed up in tutus (her) and Dior dresses I’d bought in Paris and on the Riviera (me). 

We made up a new nightly ritual where I turned on the “ballet music” (aka Classical Relaxation station on Spotify), while she pirouetted around the living room. Then we’d find our coziest blanket and snuggle up to read every story in The Goddess Book, until she fell asleep. 

I ruthlessly cleared out one closet every day, generating five contractor bags full of wonderful things I eventually posted on my neighborhood’s Buy Nothing site, watching them disappear off my front porch into the hands and homes of grateful neighbors. 

We cooked and baked wonderful things for the joy of it (because we couldn’t really taste them.)

Our friends and neighbors (and local delivery angels) dropped off yummy dinners and groceries and flowers and ibuprofen at our front door, waving and blowing us kisses through the window. 

We took leisurely naps. We slept more than normal. We ate dinners on the back deck, savoring both the food and the gratitude for the space and place that we’ve been blessed with. 

But for the first 6 or 7 days, I still worked. Just a few hours a day, but intense hours. I did a round of executive interviews for a client. I reported back on them. I wrote and shipped that week’s Transformation Tuesday newsletter. 

Until Day 7. 

On Day 7 of quarantine, I had my regular therapy session. My therapist, a wonderfully sage and smart Jungian, asked me how we were faring. I reported that our respiratory symptoms were all but gone, with just the fatigue and mental fogginess lingering. 

Oh, and the headaches, I said. The headaches are terrible.

She asked me a few more questions and I shared about our glorious week, and the work I’d been able to still get done during quarantine. 

This gave her pause. At first, she gently suggested that I consider whether I could move some things off my calendar and stop working for a few days. 

But by the end of the conversation, she said much more forcefully than she’s ever spoken to me before: “Tara, stop working. For a week. No more. I insist.” She wasn’t playing around. 

So I stopped, which was very hard to do. I had to withdraw from a meeting that was very important the very next day after my “no work” order came down. I couldn’t help but see how often my mind veered to work, over the next few days, to a point I’d almost describe as obsessive. 

When I let that time of illness be a time of REAL stillness and focus, I could see how much of my Life and Self were dedicated to work in ways that I was no longer even totally in control of, and no longer totally approved of. And that very next week, I made some key shifts at SoulTour that would kickstart a ripple effect of alignment. You’ll hear much more soon. 

What a gift Miriam (my therapist) gave me by seeing my misalignment and saying what needed saying to me: Don’t work. 

One moral of this story is to make sure you have people in your life who, no matter how powerful you are and what a badass you may be, will commit to seeing what needs seeing and saying what needs saying, in a graceful, constructive, iron-sharpens-iron kind of way. 

And moral #2 is to receive what they say not with blind obedience or harsh self-criticism, but with the commitment to self-compassion, self-awareness and feeling what your Inner Guidance knows is resonant and true. 

But Moral #3… and the real point of all this… comes from something Miriam said to me just before we got off our Zoom therapy session that day. 

She said something that I’ve been thinking about, acting on and sharing with my students ever since: 

She said: “Tara, you have been responsible for other people and for big things for so much of your life. People will always want more of you, and you love to do so many different things that there’s a never-ending flow of things you could be doing.

You are a very reliable, responsible and available person. But I think you will benefit from becoming much, much more selective about what you agree to be reliable, responsible and available for.”

Me, silently: Well, damn. 

When she dropped the mic—reliable, responsible, available—my very next thought was of a sacred line of Scripture I’d just read in a new (to me) translation, about how our Divine Inheritance is to live a “wide-open, spacious life.”

Reliable. Responsible. Available. 

Catch this principle, Brilliant One: Practicing discernment and sovereignty on these subjects is the key that unlocks your wide-open, spacious life.

I’d never thought of these qualities as things you can overdo. 

But the moments after she said that were moments of rapidly snowballing clarity. 

I could see how so often I’d agreed to be overly reliable, responsible or available. 

I could see how I’d created whole programs, projects and businesses over the years where I was very responsible and reliable, but  was requiring little or nothing from the other side. 

I could see how the breakdowns and not-thriving areas were often areas where I was bearing way too much load myself, not asking for help or support and straining my system and spiritual infrastructure. 

I could see how I have a habitual pattern of creating new commitments by saying yes to incoming people, opportunities and things that are WONDERFUL and beneficial opportunities in general, but strain my system and spark struggle. 

I could see how the projects and relationships I struggled with were the ones where my over-reliability, responsibility and availability was maxing out capacity. X My wise Inner Being was saying a hearty “no ma’am” and pumping the brakes, without my conscious consent x. 

And over the next few days, this recognition did what all good spiritual alarm-clocks do, when you live with a commitment to hear and to heed them: It gave me permission to commit to my wide-open, spacious life and to living it deeply-resourced, deeply-connected, and all the way in my Zone of Genius.

And that acted like a spotlight on the things in my life that were not in alignment with that x. 

And that emboldened me to tell my team and my vendors I’m cutting my workload almost in half, permanently, effective now. Not so that I can free up the time and energy for other projects. So I can keep our ballet music ritual going, and spend more time with my friends, and get into nature more…and read more, and write more deep, delicious things…and take swim lessons with Londyn instead of using that half hour to answer 10 emails.

And that emboldened me to stop a bunch of wonderful projects cold.

No, seriously. 

I called up people who had paid thousands of dollars for things and told them transparently about my reset. And we worked it all out… effortlessly.

I called up vendors and said, you know all that stuff we planned to build next year? Nope. Not doing it. We’re going all in on this ONE thing we already do well. 

We’re going Beast Mode on OUR ONE THING.

And they LOVED it. 

It alleviated our Zerissenheit, that feeling of torn-to-pieces-hood. 

It sharpened their focus. 

It sharpened my focus. 

It increased our space and the size of the vision for the SINGLE thing we ARE deciding to do.

It deepened my depth. 

I suspect that this COVID revelation will turn out to be the thing I reflect on 20 or 30 years from now, as having been pivotal in reshaping my life, and my empires, in wonderful ways. 

So I wanted to share it with you.

You can be too reliable, responsible and available. 

Those are generally good things to be. But you can do them too much. And when you do, you strain the system, and limit your joy.

So the real flex is this: Discerning what to be reliable, responsible and available to. Being very, very selective. Being courageous enough to say no to people, projects and things that are very money making, or even fun and fulfilling so you can pour into your most important things, including … your very own wide-open spacious life. 

Head up + heart out,

PS: There’s a whole after-story about what happened next, which you’ll find resonant, eye-opening and heart-opening, especially if you have any trauma or trust issues. I’ll share it soon.

PPS: I  have a bunch of announcements coming down the pike. I kickstarted them last week with the announcement that my adoption of Londyn is now final! 

Here’s the post from that, with a bunch of photos from our last two years together, which I promise you is content you need today.  Transformation Tuesday | What do you worship?  Watch: www.instagram.com/tv/CUXuo67FOKk Listen: https://soundcloud.com/tara-nicholle-nelson/transformation-tuesday-this-comes-after-crisis Read: www.taranicholle.com/transformation-tuesday-what-do-you-worship/

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
The Inner Critic Coach™️
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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