Friends,

If you tune yourself to the frequency of answers, you can find wisdom anywhere.

Saturday was the last day of my first 90-day book writing boot camp. As I was preparing my final words for my brilliant students, I was studying various perspectives on the subject of clarity, curious to see what the great philosophers had written on the subject.

I came across a quote from the modern thinker and sports ball savant Venus Williams. It didn’t seem on topic at first, but I read through anyhow. She’d been asked how it feels when she’s playing a great game and it begins to rain, stopping momentum and forcing her to sit on the bench.

Counterintuitively, she said: “Rain is good for me. I feel like I achieve clarity, actually, when it rains. The longer I have to sit and wait, the clearer my game becomes to me.”

I was instantly reminded of the bull in its querencia, the bullfighters’ wisdom that if you let a bull take a pause, get out of reactive mode and recalibrate, it taps back into its natural strength and power. It does what it was made to do, and will run through anything in its path. It becomes unstoppable.

But I was also reminded of so many conversations I’ve had with my friends and students, the people I think of as “impatient uplifters”: ambitious and successful in their day jobs, seeking to live conscious lives and lift others up, yet always feeling like they’re behind, like they’ve not yet hit their stride in life. Like they’ve not yet made enough money to leave their corporate job or shadow career.

Those who are doing their life’s work, often feel they’ve not yet figured out how to be as successful or play as big a game as they were put here to be or play. Because life got in the way. Or their childhood wiring gets in the way. Or they’re good at one piece of the puzzle, but they’ve never quite gotten (or made) the break or the traction they seek.

So they feel behind. Sidelined. Benched.

I’ve been there myself, despite having had an all-hit career. And that’s precisely why this quote was so meaningful to me. Because I’ve been there, yes, but that was then and this is now. Now I have crystal clarity. I can see how every single shadow career, every seemingly more than good-enough-but-not-quite-right career path, every job I disliked and even the ones I loved, every personal crisis, drama and trauma, every obstacle and delay was really another moment (or season) on the bench.

Each moment was good for me. In each season, I achieved greater and greater clarity. Because I had to wait, my “game”, my long-term vision and my immediate next steps, are now completely clear to me.

So if you’re feeling behind, or like life has sidelined you over and over again, take heart.

And take a sacred pause.

That pause might be for a moment, or an evening. It might be for a week or a season. But take the time to stop doing and achieving and “getting things done”. Just be. Even for one evening.

‘Be’ with the feeling of behind. You don’t have to push against that feeling, or spring into making some action plan because you feel like doing something, anything, will make you feel ok. Yes, sometimes clarity comes by taking one step toward what feels like it might be resonant and expansive, and seeing what happens. But you don’t have to earn your place on this planet by doing. Sometimes, the best plan of action when you’re not clear what to do next is to take a pause and let those feelings of behind, anxious, scarce – whatever – sit right next to you on the bench.

When you stop trying to do things to outrun those feelings, you recoup the energy you’ve been putting into that struggle.

And with that energy, you can do loads of things. Way high up on the list of uses for that energy: allow what you’ve learned to integrate. Whether your recent season (or whole life) has been characterized by wanted experiences and emotions, unwanted experiences or both, catch this principle: there’s a life adventure to be had in allowing your experiences to clarify your game for you.

And catch this principle, too: the unwanted experiences often hold more power to clarify your game, to clarify what you do want, than the walk-in-the park parts of your life.

So, you might be feeling like you’re behind. Like you expected to be “further” by this point in your life, or like you’re not all the way grown up yet (even though you’re plenty grown).

Or maybe you feel like the twists and turns of life keep getting in the way of you walking fully into your calling?

Take some refuge in the community, the collective of impatient, ambitious uplifters, almost all of whom have felt this way at one time or another. I’ve known industry leaders, people millionaires many times over who still say they feel ‘behind’.

Channel your inner bull: take a pause, stop reacting, recalibrate and tap back into your natural strength and power.

Then, channel your inner Venus and remember: you’ve just been getting clearer on your game.

That’s how you’ll become unstoppable, in divine timing. Because that’s what you are.

NOTE #1: I’m currently building a course on how to make bold career transitions successfully and soulfully. If you’ve been thinking about making a career move and you have a question you’d like me to answer, just hit reply and send it my way. Thanks in advance!

NOTE #2: I’m teaching a series of four, LIVE 90-minute transformational business and marketing classes on Creative Live on May 24th:

• How to Build and Market Products that Change People’s Lives
• Rethink Your Content Marketing Strategy
• Rethink What you Sell and Who you Serve
• Build a Customer Journey Map that Drives Engagement

There are a few ways you can participate:

• You can stream the classes live, for free, on May 24th. Use the links above to register for access.
• You can buy access to watch them on-demand anytime you want at the same links.
• If you happen to be in the Bay Area, you can apply to be part of the live studio audience! The audience will get breakfast and lunch that day, plus free access to the class (both during and after broadcast). (And of course, you get to be there in person, ask questions, and be a part of the course!)

Apply to be part of the live audience, here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfRahOe738s6CvZ76dkBzKbgMcRfw3Owfpiq8EKFUQV4AOm-Q/viewform

Head up + heart out,

TNN

Sign up for my Transformation Tuesday newsletter, here: http://www.taranicholle.com/transformation-tuesday