Here are the first two things I learned during Farm-on-the-Beach 2020: 

1. Surrender is a low-regret decision. 
2. Resisting reality is exhausting. 

So far, very few of my best laid plans for this Farm-on-the-Beach extravaganza have played out as planned.

In a major plot twist, we had 11,000 lightning strikes in California the weekend before I moved to the farm for my month of monk mode. And see, California and lightning don’t really play well together. That particular weekend of lightning sparked over 300 wildfires, massive evacuation orders and put life into suspended animation for about 40 million people. 

In a major stroke of grace, I got to the farm roughly 2 hours before the main highway into the area was closed. We arrived one day before smoke and ashes began to rain down at home. Without knowing it, we’d managed to plan our month-long retreat in a spot north of the fires where the wind blows southeast, so we’ve only had a whiff or two of smoke all week. 

At the same time, the fires and road closures stopped my childcare plans from coming to fruition. Our off-the-grid farm turned out to have neither good wifi nor cell service, so I spent my first few days here getting the internet upgraded. These sorts of snafus kicked off a domino effect of what felt like blockades between me and my uninterrupted writing time. 

For the most part, I’ve been able to stay open-hearted and out of feeling stymied by sitting with the question: “What wonderful thing could be coming through this?” 

I hold that in my mind as I watch Londyn frolic in our little apple orchard, not with the nanny I’d originally hired, but with a lovely local woman, her infant and her 3-year-old, Rosalyn, who come over to play with Londyn every day so I can write. 

Every time they pull up in the driveway, Londyn squeals “MY FRIENDS ARE HEEEEEERE!!!!!!” 

This never gets old.  

For the most part, I’ve been able to maintain paciencia and stay in flow mode, even on days when I have almost no time to write, by reminding myself of what I learned from Jon Kabat-Zinn. He said: “You can’t fight the waves. But you can learn to surf.”

I hold his words in my mind as I drive down the hill from the farm in the morning, about a quarter-mile, to the totally unspoiled coastline of the Pacific Ocean. This little commute and its vast oceanic vista cleanses the grievance from my spirit and reminds me of just how consistently we’re winning by being alive, especially when we practice surfing the waves instead of complaining about them.

I’ve been learning to reset myself, when aggravated, with the reminder that resisting what IS is a losing game. 

I’ve been reminding myself of what Byron Katie says. She says that wishing things were other than they are is a bit like trying to get a cat to bark. It’s frustrating, foolhardy and a waste of your precious life force.

I’ve also been reminding myself of what I teach my own writing students, which is that sometimes when you begin to write a book about a thing, life begins to serve you up opportunities to master the very lessons that want to come to your readers, through your book. 

So I’ve been staying loose, in part, by looking for those lessons and documenting them, all along the way.

And mostly, when I feel the temptation to list my obstacles in the interest of getting someone to please understand meeeeeeee… I’m reminded that you can’t create a liberating journey for someone else from the energy of struggle and angst. 

And that’s what I’m here to do. On Planet Earth and on this farm, right here and now. I’m here to write my fourth book, which is shaping up to be a playbook for radical liberation, wholeness and reclamation. I’m here to metabolize the last year of my life and to reset SoulTour around a vision and roadmap that has expanded and focused, somehow, at the same time, over the past season.

One of my clarities that has fully downloaded over the last year is knowing what I call my “signature symptom” The high-level human problem I exist to solve is the problem of repression: all the ways that we silence, hold back, abandon, divorce, reject, shush, hide and sabotage ourselves. 

Repression is a massive cause of human suffering. 

We learn to repress ourselves early in life. The adventure of an awakening life is to unlearn these habits, over time, so that we might rediscover our whole, True Self and start bringing 100% of our True Selves out. First to ourselves. Then, to the world. 

This is important because reclaiming your True Self feels like inner peace. Self-respect. Alignment. No more inner critic. No more imposter syndrome. No more hiding. No more touchy subjects. No more blocks.

This is also important because when women repress themselves, all of humanity suffers. Our unlived lives burden our children and block the world from receiving our gifts.

And the opposite is true: When women begin embracing both their inner powers and their inner chaos monsters, radical alignment ensues.

The ideas, books, movements and businesses they create from that place will power the next season of human evolution. 

Your un-repression is my personal mission. And that’s why I’m here.

Last night I had a long talk with one of my quaranteam homegirls who is here with me, and the conversation meandered to the story of when she bought her home, 18 years ago. She talked about how extreme the market dynamics were in favor of the seller, how glitchy and grindy the negotiations were, and how it just got to a point where it seemed highly unlikely things would work out.

She said she called her husband and just told him she was ready to let the house go.

He agreed. So she called their real estate agent and said: “Let it go.”

She let it go. 

She let go of her attachment to the home. 

She let go of the attachment to the vision she’d been playing in her mind for how her family might look and live and grow in that house.

She just let it go. 

And the next call she got was from the agent, excitedly telling her how a bunch of different little circumstances had rapidly lined up so that the deal was back on, if she wanted it to be, on her terms.

Hearing her say this was what my friend Monisha would call the right medicine at the right time.

It was my reminder to let it go.

Let go of the struggle.

Let go of the recitation of the struggle.

Let go of my preconceived attachment to things playing out my way. 

Let go of my action plan. Let go of my calendar. Let go of my “lists”.

Let go of my attachment to a given, specific outcome.

And as I felt myself more fully let go last night, the energy from my struggle with reality began to flow right back to me. 

And almost without any involvement from me, that energy kind of electrified the mission – lighting up the big picture in my mind and my spirit again.

I was reminded that I’m not here to check a bunch of stuff off a list. 

I’m here for un-repression. Liberation. Reclamation. Wholeness. For the joy of creation. Mine and yours. 

Letting go was my reminder to stay focused on the vision and flexible on how it comes to pass. 

To watch for the wonderful things. 

To inhabit this moment fully. Which you can’t do when you’re wishing this moment was playing out any other way than the way it is actually paying out. 

And let me tell you something: This level of surrender is always a very low-regret decision. 

It always feels like shackles off. 

Always feels like an opening, like space being created, like reclaiming all the sprays of life force that were feeling so pulled in some many directions, bringing them back inside, back home. 

In the week to come, I invite you to recognize those moments when you’re feeling pulled in a million different directions because things aren’t going the way you’d planned, and to press the sacred pause button. 

Take a sacred pause. Create a little momentary refuge. 

Take a moment to stop reacting. 

Recalibrate your nervous system and your connection to Source. Watch the ocean. Hug your dog. Pull up a photo of someone who fast-forwards your heart to “unconditional love” and list 10 things you love about them, even just in your mind. 

Remind yourself just how miraculous it is that this planet and your body are constantly conspiring for you to live. 

Give thanks.

Take a deep, grounding, 360-degree inhale that oxygenates your entire torso: front to back, side to side.

Then empty your lungs, creating fresh new space for the next 20,000 breaths you’ll take today.

And as you do, use the power of your focus to reclaim your sovereignty over your own thoughts, actions and emotions. 

Then, surrender more deeply to what is. Surrender to Divine Timing. Surrender to the truth that your delays are always beneficial to you. Surrender to your own Inner Guidance. Surrender to the assistance that is always trying to get to you.

Surrender to the truth that life ain’t going to play out as planned almost ever. And surrender to the truth that some of the most wonderful people, places, things and moments in your life are trying to get to you through the very circumstances that seem like crises, losses, curve balls and plot twists.

This is the paradox that will give you your joy back: sovereignty and surrender. 

It will stop you from the depletion and inner strife of resisting what is. 

If you can hold these polar opposites in one heart at the same time, you will get your power back.

Inhale sovereignty. 

Exhale surrender.

Head up + heart out,

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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Today begins my month of Monk Mode (aka Farm-on-the-Beach 2020).

On my way out the door, I stopped to shoot a quick live mini master class all about Monk Mode.

I covered:

• What Monk Mode is
• The 3 rules of Monk Mode (a la Fight Club, but way less violent)
• The Spiritual Strategies and principles behind why Monk Mode works, and
• What you can expect during the first 25% of your own personal Monk Mode deep dive, whether you go in for a day, a week or a month.

Watch the Monk Mode Master Class on: 

>> IGTV here.

>> Facebook here.

Comment, share and let me know what lands for you, [First Name]. 

Head up + heart out,

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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Let it be easy. 

Let it be easy. 

Let it be easy.

Whatever it is. 

Try that on in your spirit. 

Get curious about it. 

If the idea that it could be easy feels like a spark of relief, immediately followed by a spark of argument (Easy is not real! That’s not how the world works! You don’t know my life!) then… you’re on the right track. 

If the mere phrase “let it be easy” sparks within you the temptation to pull out your struggle portfolio and start litigating the case for how real your struggle is… good. Let’s go there. 

If the idea that some stuff you’ve been doing the very hard way could actually be way easier sparks a frisson of terror in your heart, like it still occasionally does in mine, you might be on the trail of a radically liberating insight.

Here’s that insight: Very early in life, you might have learned that to get love, attention or affection, to avoid catastrophe or to be seen as valuable, worthy or a card-carrying member of your family, you have to be any of the following things: 

• Extraordinary
• Perfect
• Longsuffering
• Martyr of the Month
• The Director of the Universe*, spinning all the plates, all the time and smiling all along the way
• Busy
• Better than others
• Over-achieving
• Valiantly plugging away, doing hard things in every area of your life (even, in your relationships and hobbies)
• Never quitting or imposing boundaries on how hard you’ll go
• Never all the way “off” 
• Constantly putting forth super heroic effort.

If you had to be heroic to get your needs met as a child, your toxic penchant for struggle might be rooted in those very early life family patterns. This is what the author and psychologist Alice Miller deems the Drama of the Gifted Child. The “gifted” part describes how good the little You was at repressing your True Self to get what you needed. 

If the struggle “feels like home”, you will re-create it, over and over again as you go through life.  You will re-create that repression of your True Self, over and over again as you go through life. and you’ll even find that struggle just feels more comfortable, available and “right” than ease does. You might not even like people who seem to live on Easy Street, and you might reject, ignore or blow up opportunities for your own easeful, spacious life, over and over again.

But let me tell you something. Your True Self and your true life are not all about the struggle. I mean, have you ever met a toddler who was a martyr? 

Didn’t think so. 

So anything you were taught that says you must struggle to be worthy of love or to thrive is what I call a “lie”. These are the lies of well-meaning family members, and the lies of culture. 

But over a lifetime, these lies get wired into your worldview. They become internalized into the voice of your own inner critic. Your own imposter syndrome. Your own self-judgment and self-criticism. Your own harsh standards for yourself and the false prerequisites you place on your own joy. Your own harsh worldview and negative mental narratives about what kind of life is possible for you and how hard it has to be.

If your thoughts say that all of life is struggle, not struggling doesn’t even occur to you. Doing things the very hardest way feels like it might even endanger your existence. When things feel easy, you feel lazy. Like you’re courting catastrophe if you go all the way on vacation without checking a single email for a single week. 

A spacious, easeful lifestyle without constantly living on the clock might spark existential dread in your soul.

If struggle feels like home, you’ll create hard, to feel alive. You’ll take on difficult relationships or make easy ones difficult, because that just feels more “right”. That feels like home. 

The struggle lies, the unworthiness lies, are the lies that stop you from taking a nap. From taking a break. From getting the help you need. From taking things slow. 

These are the lies that stop you from saying no when everything within you wants to say no. 

These are the lies that cause you to overrule your own inner guidance, to push through that feeling of “shackles on” that would keep you out of depleting, joyless relationships, jobs and patterns if you only listened to it. 

These are the lies that cause you to take on more and more new obligations, without first ending old ones or getting help.

Please be aware that I’m using the harsh word “lies” with great intentionality here. 

That you must produce to have value is an absolute, bald-faced lie.

Because you need never prove your value.

You need never perform to have value.

You need never conform to have value.

You need never achieve anything – be it a certain weight, a certain income or a certain level of status or “success” – to have value. 

You might want to do those things and you might even be destined to do them, but that’s not how you “earn” your place on this planet. 

You need never produce superhuman output to have value.

That’s the lie of the oppressor, in the guise of productivity culture. 

You didn’t come here to check a bunch of tasks off some never-ending, ever-growing to do list in the sky.

You came here for joy.

You came here for ever-increasing wholeness, as you start reclaiming all the parts of yourself you had to shut away, repress and disown just to make it through life, when you were young. 

You came here for radical liberation from inner conflict, from a life of struggle, from the repressive lies of culture and of your own inner critic, imposter syndrome, and self-sabotaging, negative thoughts.

You don’t prove or earn your value by achieving, even though that’s what culture wants you to think. 

That might feel real, like it’s how the world works.

The struggle way feels real. I know it does, y’all. But it’s not true, [First Name].

What’s true is that you are valuable, valued, cherished and beloved of All That Is, not because of what you do, but because you exist. 

You can’t earn your worth, because it’s not earnable. And you can’t lose it, because it’s not lose-able.

Your value is absolute. Your worthiness is, too. You deserve a wonderful, blessed life not because you work your heart out, but because you exist. 

Theeee end. Actually, no… I’m not done.

You are not an asset to be tracked, measured and “valued” like a commodity. 

You are a radiant, magnetic soul and spirit. 

You are made of stardust and mystical, scientific miracles.

You are offspring of the limitless love, the infinite intelligence and the creative power that formed all worlds.

You are a droplet of that.

And you weren’t made for constant, chronic struggle. 

So. 

What are you willing to let be easy today? 

And if the idea of “easy” comes hard to you, ask yourself this breakthrough question all throughout the day/week/month/year/decade, anytime your struggle switch flips on: 

“How easy can I let this be?”

And just watch what lights up. 

Let me flag something for you: You can expect your inner critic to talk you out of the opportunities for things to be spacious and easeful that will start lighting up when you start asking yourself “How easy can I let this be?”

Your inner critic will chime in. Your imposter syndrome will flare up. 

I dare you to gracefully do things differently than you ever have before, and let it be easy anyway.

Head up + heart out,

P.S.: I’ll share more about the struggle switch within you soon.

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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Thank you for meeting me here, in this meeting place between Heaven and Earth where we gather together..

Thank you for meeting yourself and your Source here, too.

Today, gather your things and yourself together and let’s meet up at your favorite nest of a spot in which to sit.

Arrange all of your beautiful, blessed body parts in their most comfortable configuration, for the moment.

And let every bit of you, every piece of you, every cell of you drop into this moment, fully.

Today, let’s devote our practice to this moment, and to being in it fully.

Be in this breath fully.

Inhale fully.

Exhale fully.

Take a few more deep breaths like this, then let your natural breathing engine, your lungs and your brain and all of the collaborative cells and muscles in your body take over and do this life-giving cycle they were created to do.

So you can just be in this moment, and inhabit it fully. Receive it fully.

When you begin to inhabit your moments fully, you begin to inhabit your life fully. And all those voices of Inner Critic, Inner Editor, Inner Judge, Inner Censor, their voices drop in volume, turning down until all you can do is see and hear them through the eyes and ears of compassion for your earlier self, because those voices?

What they say has nothing to do with now.

What they say really doesn’t even have much to do with you, and certainly not with who you are now.

Because in this moment, you are safe, even when you reach out to do uncomfortable or new things.

In this moment you are loved and you are love.

In this moment, you are in the Circle, so you have access to all the resources of this Universe.

In this moment you have access to all love, all energy, all time, all Spirit, everything you’ll ever want or need.

In this moment, you have access to clarity, to good timing, and to inspiration.

In this moment you know 100% that you cannot lose. You cannot fail. You cannot be depleted.

Everything you touch your hands to do prospers and succeeds. And sometimes, when things look happen that you don’t want or like they’re going sideways, you know that are getting Guidance and clarity and blessings and things are lining up and working out to get you ready for the wonders ahead.

Because in this moment, you are one with the Limitlessness that created you and everything else in this Universe.

You are one with Limitless Love.

You are one with Infinite Intelligence.

You are one with Creative Power.

And you are eternal.

So today, just let your eternal self, your loving self, your beloved self, your intelligent self, your creative self unfurl and open up to fully inhabit your body and your space.

Let any tense spots or tight spots or constricted spots within your cells or your organs or your bones or your muscles or your skin, let them unfurl and open up, too.

Receive more breath. Receive more love. Receive the inspiration that is coming your way.

And for these 20 minutes, just focus on allowing yourself to unfold and unfurl and inhabit this breath fully. This moment fully. This body fully. This life fully.

Head up + heart out,

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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You have more influence over your thoughts than most people will ever know or even try to exercise.

This is a wonderful thing, because your thoughts matter.

They attract more thoughts like them.

They spark the emotions that create your felt and lived experience.

The thoughts you think over and over again become your beliefs.

And maybe most importantly, your thoughts turn into your tangible reality.

This is true whether you are thinking about things you want or thinking, obsessing, fearing and fixating on things you don’t want.

Bottom line: Think about beautiful, sweet, expansive, joyous things as often as you can.

Think about the things you desire as often as you can.

And when your thoughts are unwanted or negative or just focused on what you don’t currently have, don’t try to force them the other way, because that basically never works.

Let them rise and let them pass. Let them do the inner alchemy of turning your unpleasant thoughts into the gold of your clarity.

Change the subject or take a nap. Take a break from thinking about the subject entirely and find a topic you can always turn to for surefire good-feeling thought momentum.

Even if that topic is pugs. Or a blissful memory. Or something that seems small or irrelevant to Your Life’s Big Callings.

And should your unwanted thoughts persist and confound you, investigate them with kindness. Grieve, as needed. And watch your Inner Guidance bring you back to your inborn setpoint for joy.

It’s been there all the time. And it always will be.

The master key is being intentional, not accidental, about your thinking and taking sovereignty of it into your own hands.

Our dear Florence Scovel Shinn wrote:

“Man should make an art of thinking. The Master Thinker is an artist and is careful to paint only the divine designs upon the canvas of his mind; and he paints these pictures with masterly strokes of power and decision…

All power is given man to bring his heaven upon his earth (through right thinking), and this is the goal of the Game of Life….

Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

And in the Science of Being Great, Wallace Wattles takes this thought transformation subject even further, and tied it in with our concept of Spiritual Independence.

“There are many ideas in your mind that you have outgrown and which, from force of habit, you still permit to dictate the actions of your life. Cease all this; abandon everything you have outgrown. There are many ignoble customs, social and other, which you still follow, although you know they tend to dwarf and belittle you and keep you acting in a small way.

You still indulge in distrustful fears that things will go wrong, or that people will betray you, or mistreat you; get above all of them.

Rise above all this. Be free.”

Gather your things and yourself together and curl up into your sitting nest with the intention of letting yourself enjoy every moment and use every moment of this Inner Retreat to expand in freedom.

Feel your legs, your pelvis, your belly, your chest slowly, gently release all tension and sink heavily, bit by bit, into your seat.

Allow your weight to fall evenly, heavily, onto the support beneath it.

And let your breath, your heart, your thoughts all slow down, gently and naturally, at their own pace.

Allow the visual of the Circle to come into your mind.

Golden, flourishing, vibrant, pulsating, glowing light and life, spinning alive before your mind’s eye.

While you’re in the Circle today, take some time to breathe in what you need, and breathe out anything you don’t need, any thing, any thoughts, any fears, that no longer serves you.

Inhale FAITH.

Open fully to receive whatever you want or need or are just starting to think and believe and know that you’re able to receive.

And on your exhales, as you relax to allow your Pipeline to open wider and wider, you can let go of some stuff, too.

Try releasing judgment and condemnation, for yourself or for anyone else.

Release old pain.

Release your bondage to thoughts that don’t work for you anymore.

And most of all, exhale FEAR.

With every inhale receive fuel and clarity for your journey ahead.

With every exhale release the need to be right and open wider to receive what life has in store for you.

Inhale: Receive the fuel and light and love of Source. Receive enlarged expectations for the wonders ahead.

Exhale: Release the shoulds and judgment and straining. It no longer applies to you.

Release doubt.

And sit in this way for 10 more minutes, just receiving and releasing.

Inhaling FAITH.

Exhaling FEAR.

Inhaling FAITH.

Exhaling FEAR.

Head up + heart out,

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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One of the most common sources of anger in our culture is feeling like someone is holding up our progress or slowing us down, whether it be on the road, in line at the grocery store or in our lives.

I’ve never been much of a road rager myself, but I’ve definitely found myself in relationships where I felt like someone was slowing me down.

I’ve even come up with a poetic way of describing relationships that felt like this: My foot was on the gas and his was on the brakes.

But if you believe in Divine Timing, then you know better.

You might oughta even send thanks and blessing rays to whoever is in your way, because you know that delay is benefitting you.

Take those moments that used to feel like moments of obstruction and use them to find something – anything – to delight or revel in instead.

Oh, geesh… just one last thing. When you really know that like attracts like, you might even take a moment when you’re feeling obstructed or delayed by someone in your life and investigate with kindness and self-compassion, whether there’s anything within you – any belief or expectation – that might be calling this kind of behavior forth from that person, or calling this kind of person into your life.

So in those moments when you feel like you’re being obstructed or delayed in a big way or even in the smallest way, use your word as your magic wand.

Say: I give thanks for this perfect day. I look with wonder at that which is before me.

Say: I have all the time in the world.

Say: Divine Timing is real and it’s always in my favor.

Say: Every person is a golden link in the chain of my good.

And then, well actually, just repeat this after me to start on your Inner Retreat today:

“Today is the day I pronounce as my day of greatest appreciation.

Today is the day I pronounce as my day of greatest awareness.

Today is the day I pronounce as my day of greatest emotional awareness and emotional response to my awareness.

Today I am pronouncing myself a liver of unconditional love:

Unconditional clarity, unconditional alignment, unconditional attunement.

Today I am tuned in, tapped in, turned on to who I really am.

Today I intend, to the best of my ability, to fulfill myself as I am meant to be fulfilled: in my Zone of Genius.

Today I will look for reasons to feel good, and I will find them.

And if I stumble upon something that doesn’t feel so good I will revel in the perfection of my guidance system.

And I will make the adjustment today.”

– Abraham Hicks

So today, go ahead and get into your favorite spot to sit.

Get your body into your favorite position.

Shoulders back and down, head up, back supported. Feeling all the points of contact between your back and your thighs and your feet, and whatever is beneath them.

Take a few deep grounding breaths in your own time right here, feeling the juice of your inner wellbeing coat the inside of your nose and throat and lungs as it comes into your body.

And for the rest of your time here today I just want you to focus on this moment.

This day.

On your inhales focus on the word JUST.

On your exhales focus on THIS.

Maybe at some point you’ll want to shift things around, with your inhales focus on ALL and with your exhales focus on WELL.

All is well.

Allowing for all to be well in just this moment with you, with your life, with your world, and with your universe.

All is well.

Just this.

Head up + heart out,

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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I really want you to catch this principle from Wallace Wattles’ book from way back in 1910, The Science of Being Great:

“There are many ideas in your mind that you have outgrown and which, from force of habit, you still permit to dictate the actions of your life. 

Cease all this; abandon everything you have outgrown.”

This might be one of the biggest treasures hidden underneath the lies of our culture. The truth is that you get to outgrow things.

See, when you were little, you acquired a bunch of self-limiting thoughts and mindset programming bugs that were actually all part of your process of conditioning, being socialized, being domesticated and ALSO: becoming who you are becoming. 

And if you do it right, right around middle age, you start reclaiming your sovereignty to think different thoughts. To be who you are. To stop holding yourself back, like you were taught to do when you were young in order to gain love, approval and what culture defines as success. 

If you’re doing it right, right around 35, 40, 50 or even 60 years old, you start learning to let yourself be who you are, more and more fully everyday. If you’re younger than that and you’re doing this work, you’re advanced. 

But I say this to make sure the 35, 40, 50 and 60 year olds know that YOU ARE NOT BEHIND. You are RIGHT ON TIME. You’re just doing it right. 

Now. Most people who start intentionally walking this journey of radical self-un-repression think they have to quit their job, get divorced, blow up their lives and run away to join the circus, the farm or the ashram. 

And hey, if your Inner Guidance tells you to do any  or all of the above? Get it. Do that. 

But making the shifts in your inner landscape to shed your inner repressive parent (part of how the normal, human psyche develops) and become your own inner nurturant parent doesn’t have to be that dramatic. 

The key to making it non-dramatic is to honor the fundamental truth that you get to outgrow things. 

Real talk: You already have outgrown a bunch of things. 

Can you feel the absolute freedom in this? 

Freedom from self-judgment. 

Freedom from hesitation when you know good-and-damn well what you need to do because it feels resonant to your soul. 

Freedom from the urge to retreat on the brink of your breakthroughs.

Freedom from the spiritual static of other people’s opinions that will cloud and obscure your own Inner Wisdom, if you let them. 

Freedom from outdated obligations that no longer really serve anyone well, and freedom from outdated ways of being that definitely no longer serve you.

Freedom from the patterns of seeking approval that keep you cramped into shackles of perfectionism, conforming and performing. 

Freedom from the lie of culture that says you are ever anything but worthy.

It’s shackles off time, y’all.

Radical liberation is available to you. 

But you must claim it. Proactively. And personally.

And the mental model you need to claim it is this: You’ve simply outgrown some things.

You’ve outgrown old patterns.

You’ve gotten everything you can out of your painful patterns and dysfunctional magnets, and now they’re ready to be released. 

The next step is to go against culture and decide that it’s totally and completely okay to let go of what you’ve outgrown. 

In fact, it’s the only way. 

Holding onto your old, outgrown ways of holding yourself back, shrinking yourself down and staying distracted or addicted to crisis when your Inner Being has already moved on? That’s like if my Londyn kept wearing her size 4 toddler jeans even she really needs a size 5: those old jeans are too small now. 

It’s uncomfortable. The old, small ways chafe and burst at the seams, until you just get some bigger jeans. 

Get some bigger ways of being.

Wallace Wattles lists some categories of thoughts and ideas worth examining to see whether they’re ready for your “outgrown” pile, among them:

• Social customs that keep you acting small
• Narrow restrictions that “bind the majority of men” (and women)
• “Obsolete institutions, religious and otherwise”
• “Creeds you no longer believe”
• Unhealthy habits of mind and body
• Distrustful fears of catastrophe, mistreatment or betrayal.

So, today just sit with these questions. 

(Extra credit if you write your personal answers out in your personal journal.) 

Q: What old thoughts, beliefs or behaviors have you outgrown?

Q: What relationship scripts or templates? 

Q: What expectations are you ready to take off and set down (like those jeans) so you can think and live some more expansive thoughts? 

Q: What new, expansive belief are you ready to replace that old, small, chafing, limiting one with? 

Q: What will be possible for you, once you set down what you’ve outgrown? 

Q: And how will that feel? 

Head up + heart out,

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

The other day in my favorite Peloton rider community, a new rider asked for help. She was struggling just to get through a short beginner workout, and asked if anyone had any helpful tips for how to get motivated to ride.

The key piece of information she’d included in her post was this: She said she was a runner in high school. She used to have great cardio conditioning. 

But she grew up and life did what it does, and she was fearful she might not be able to have a healthy heart again. 

Here’s what I said: “Here’s the thing: Your heart is a muscle. And it has muscle memory, just like your other muscles. Don’t wait to get motivated: Just get on the bike. If you do this frequently, even for 10 minutes at a time at first, the day will come when your heart remembers what it already knows how to do, and you’ll be back in the game.”

I thought this was a word for someone today, and I don’t mean the fitness advice. 

Your heart is a muscle.

And it has muscle memory. 

So whenever your heart feels broken, or you’ve experienced loss, betrayal, disappointment or that gaping, heavy, breathtaking feeling that you might be unloved, know this: 

Your heart has not forgotten.

It has not forgotten how to love. 

It has not forgotten how to be loved, either. 

If you’ve ever looked at a puppy, a baby or a pajama-wearing goat, and felt the unconditional wave of warmth and openness flood through you, your heart remembers how to love.

If you’ve ever seen the twinkling, crinkling eyes of someone who loves you regardless of how much you make or how much you weigh, whether it was your life partner last week, your best friend last year or your grandmother when you were four, your heart remembers how to receive love without the condition of performing or conforming.

In fact, if you exist as a human being on Planet Earth and you can’t recall that feeling of all-encompassing love from another human, take a walk in nature as soon as you can, even if it’s for 10 minutes. 

As you walk, be reminded that you are beloved by All That Is, by Source, by what some of us call the Divine or God. And if you need evidence, take a pause and try to count the leaves on the trees you pass that are conspiring with the sun, to create the oxygen that, in turn, conspires with your body for you to live. 

You are beloved. 

Unconditionally.

Whether or not the people around you are stable enough in their own sense of being loved to be able to communicate that to you in word or deed.

You were born to be loved. Adored. Cherished. 

If you haven’t been feeling that way, turn your attention inward and upward.

Tune yourself to the channel of Universal love. 

Remember that it is already yours and do whatever you’ve got to do to get receptive to it. Bestow it on yourself first. Extend openness, warmth, appreciation, affection and attention to everything about your own, inner experience.

Like the song says, stop looking for love in all the wrong places.

Like the children’s book says, let yourself be who you are. Stop rejecting and disowning parts of yourself. 

Like Rumi said, stop wandering from room to room looking for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck. 

Like Bapuji said, “break your heart no longer.
 
Each time you judge yourself, you break your own heart;
you stop feeding on the love which is the wellspring of your vitality.”
He said: “The time has come. Your time to live, to celebrate.
And to see the goodness that you are.”
 
He didn’t say the good acts that you DO.
 
He said the goodness that you are.

You are beloved.

You are love.

And no matter how broken your heart has ever been, your heart has muscle memory.

Your heart has not forgotten.

And it will not forget.

Neither has your Source.

So don’t you forget, either. 

With great love and appreciation that you are riding this rock that is hurtling through space right alongside the rest of us…

Head up + heart out,

P.S.: My leaderboard name on Peloton is SoulTourCEO, if you’re a rider and want to connect there!

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

Catch this principle: Hesitation is the enemy of your self-actualization.

Think of it this way. Inspiration is an interruption in your regularly scheduled programming. An inspired idea is like a nudge from the Divine that says: “It’s go time. Get after it. I’ll help.”

But when you hesitate to move forward on a bolt of inspiration you’ve received, you give your old patterns the chance to take over. 

Old patterns like seeking approval and validation from other people before you give yourself permission to move forward on your own callings.

Old patterns like perfectionism and procrastination.

Old patterns like getting super excited about the idea you’ve had… then losing steam as you think about why it might be hard, how embarrassed you’ll be if it doesn’t happen, or all the times you’ve tried and been disappointed before. Old patterns like failing to see how all those disappointments were part of your preparation, part of your process. 

And that’s why hesitation is the enemy of self-actualization. Hesitation weasels it’s way into your habits of thought and becomes a treasured way of being (TWOB) by lying to you, telling you it’s going to keep you safe from making bad decisions, embarrassing yourself or failing. 

But what hesitation actually does is keep you stagnant and small. 

When you say “I’ll think about it”, you allow your Inner Critic to masquerade as the voice of reason, giving it a chance to cook up all sorts of imagined, terrible, unlikely outcomes of whatever action you were feeling inspired to take.

“I’ll think about it” usually means you’re not convinced you’re really ready, capable or deserving of whatever you’re hesitating on. You’re still litigating against yourself in your own mind. 

When you decide what you really need is a more detailed plan, more credentials, more money or more time, you create false prerequisites for your own fulfillment. And you cause your best ideas and goals to get stuck in your inner pipeline, where they start to congeal and wire into a template of unfulfillment, incompletion, despair and disappointment.

Hesitation interrupts your natural cycles of growth, creation and soul-level fulfillment.

Most people who know they have a hesitation problem try to whip themselves into shape with more action and more accountability. 

But the antidote to hesitation isn’t always action. 

Sometimes, the antidote to hesitation is simply inviting inspiration, trusting that it will come and allowing inspiration to power your action when it does. 

And that’s about getting consistent and intentional with your morning routine. 

That’s about keeping your mind, your calendar and your relationships free and clear of grudges and grievances. 

It’s about carving out a little time and space to be able to take the first step toward your inspired ideas, in small ways, as they arrive (versus just adding them to your “someday” to-do list, never to be seen again).

It’s about reclaiming sovereignty over your own spiritual wellbeing, your capacity and your calendar, instead of feeling like you live at the whim of the mood-of-the-day on Facebook and the calendar commitments that no longer serve you. 

That’s what a masterful life is. It’s not a life where nothing unwanted ever happens to you. 

It’s a life where you regularly receive inspired ideas and do your role to bring them to life, all the time, without getting blocked and stuck. 

It’s a life where you know your own patterns of self-limitation and hesitation, and when you see them arise you recognize them, salute them, and gracefully continue moving toward the callings of your soul, with self-compassion and appreciation for the wisdom and clarity you glean every time you make a new, graceful choice.

When was the last time you had an inspired idea or received an opportunity that made your heart leap to say YES, but your mind and your mouth said: “I’ll think about it?”

What would be possible for you if you were willing to unlearn your hesitation habits? 

I invite you to get curious about that. 

Head up + heart out,

P.S. If you want to overcome your hesitation habits, I’ll help you gently, gracefully unlearn them in Life and Self Mastery.

Next session begins Monday, July 6th, and you’ll start out receiving my soothing, energizing, inspiration-sparking Daily Ritual emails, six days a week.

Twice a month, you’ll get invited to a live master class that’ll contribute to your inner wellbeing and your success in life. 

I’ll teach you my Spiritual Strategies for releasing the treasured ways of being (TWOBs) that no longer serve you, like hesitation, as we focus together on a different area of your life in each month’s curriculum. 

I’d love to support your journey into the masterful, magical life you came here to live.

<< Learn more or register, here. 

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

On Easter, an old friend texted to ask whether we’d done an egg hunt at my house. I said “Yes, but we did it very Tara-style.” I meant that we had put on our Easter dresses and done a video shoot all around our neighborhood. 

But before I could explain, she wrote back: “You did an Easter egg hunt with egg whites????”

See, she remembers back when I was a total health obsessive. After an unhealthy few years as a young Mom, I’d lost 60 pounds. In the process, my pendulum swung in the way opposite direction. I survived mostly on chicken breasts, egg whites and vegetables for years. I didn’t drink… alcohol or milk. Or milk substitutes. I didn’t eat sugar, most fruits or grain. 

For years.

I used to say things like: “cow milk is for cows” and “grain is for livestock.”

And, if asked for my exercise philosophy, I would share my Dad’s old rule about working out: “You don’t work out every day. You only work out on the days you eat.” 

So, I ran and ran and ran and Versaclimbed and lifted. I wore 70 SPF all day every day. 

For years.

Until one day, crossing the street, I slipped a bit and shattered the side of my foot. Freak accident. Then a few years later, I slipped a bit and broke the other one. Bizarre.

I switched from running to spinning, to minimize the impact on my feet, sometimes taking two classes a day. My feet still hurt, but it was tolerable… until it wasn’t. One day I had to climb off the bike and limp into the office of a new doctor, who held up the x-ray film and counted out all the stress fractures in my feet: One, two, three, four. 

He put me on total foot rest. No walks, no workouts. I came back six weeks later. 

He found 3 new stress fractures.

Turned out, I had early osteoporosis, from a severe, chronic Vitamin D deficiency I’d probably had forever. 

The new doctor counted off her own list of reasons I had nearly no Vitamin D in my body: 
You’re Black, and melanin makes it harder to get your Vitamin D from the sun
You wear SPF 70, blocking the sun
You wear long sleeves all the time, even to work out. Blocking the sun.
You work inside. No sun.
You don’t eat dairy or dairy substitutes, most of which are fortified with Vitamin D
You don’t eat grain, which is also often fortified with Vitamin D.

It turned out that a lot of the things I was doing in the name of ensuring my health were actually harming my health.

She went on and on, then gave me 500,000 units of Vitamin D to take that week, to at least get a little traction started on the bone matrix I needed to rebuild. 

I’m fine now, of course. 

But this story is not about Vitamin D.

This story is about what happens when you distrust your own body, and your own Universe.

See, when I was doing All of Those Things in the name of “making myself healthy”, it was like I’d decided I was the Director of the Universe, as my friend Victoria would say.

I was solely responsible for my health, in my mind. So I pulled every lever I knew how.

And in so doing, I blocked the most fundamental gift this Universe bestows every single day on every single human:  the sun. 

And, in trying to run the Universe, I blocked my body from doing what Infinite Intelligence had already programmed my cells to do: convert that sun into Vitamin D. 

Since then, I’ve discovered that the idea that we must control and manage everything we possibly can or catastrophe might occur is an unworthiness story. The idea that we’re not worthy of a wonderful life if we’re anything less than superheroic in our efforts to tame the Universe, including but definitely not limited to our bodies, is oppressive and flat-out false.

So the next time you think you need to inventory all the things that you want to fix, edit, change, optimize or make happen about your body, your self or your life, I invite you to try this reframe which has a funny name: pronoia. 

Paranoia is the idea that everything in this world is out to get you.

And pronoia is the opposite. It’s the idea that everything in this world is conspiring to bless you.

But pronoia is not just an idea. If you reflect on the logistics of your existence, you can’t help but find the proof points for pronoia.

Your lungs and your atmosphere conspire to breathe you to life about 22,000 times a day, with no assistance or instruction from you. 

Your connective tissues keep on negotiating a series of agreements between your skeleton and your muscles, all conspiring to hold you together even if you release your clenched jaw and those little muscles between your eyebrows. They conspire to keep you all together, even while you sleep.

Your cells keep re-creating the new version of the old you, like the rapper says.

Your skin and the sun conspire to continuously re-create your skeleton in a process that continues even at night, even if you live in the Arctic. Your sweat even plays a part in this chemical miracle. 

Unless you block yourself from receiving your pronoia blessings like I did, by refusing to trust that all could be well with my body with a more joyful, less superhuman performance on my part.

I still take really great care of my body. But I move and nourish it in ways that feel like a gift, not a superhuman, neverending chore. 

I’ve reflected. I’ve connected the dots. And I’ve learned that you can get a lot done in your life the very hard way. I did, for years. I used to have an addiction to doing things the very hardest way possible. 

But the best things in my life didn’t come to me that way. 

They happened when wonderful things lit up before me.

And when I trusted my Inner Guidance.

And when I decided I can’t lose. I can only win or learn, because that’s all there is. 

And when I learned how to get out of my own way and take action, when inspired, from a stance of total trust that everything would always work out for me. 

And it does. 

That’s the thing: You’d think that a trusting, receptive mode would make you lazy.

But it totally works the opposite way.

Trust actually opens you up to those golden threads of inspiration and gives you the energy to act on them when they come. 

Trust and inspired action go hand in hand.

Trust is the masterful way to live. 

Stand down. Stand still. Stop achieving so much. Stop blocking your own blessings.

Start receiving. 

Decide you’re not willing to participate in feeling unworthy anymore. 

Get receptive.

And watch what lights up for you.

Head up + heart out,

P.S.: Tomorrow I open the doors to my cornerstone program, Life and Self Mastery, for the first time since March of 2019. 

I’ll tell you all about it soon, of course. But know this: The students in that program learn my proven Daily Ritual and build the mindsets to silence their inner critic and break their patterns of negative thinking and self-sabotage.

Just 30 days in, they report feeling clear-minded, positive and focused on what really matters to them.

<<  Learn more or sign up here.

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.