Contrary to what you’ve been taught or conditioned to believe, when you want to create something or contribute to its creation, your job is not to hustle hard, make it happen or wrestle your goal to the ground.
Your job is to envision it vividly and viscerally, with the full power of all your senses.
Your job is to daydream about all the beautiful, wonderful ways the idea in your mind might become tangible and real. This is true whether what you are daydreaming about is your next home, your new lover, having a thriving business or helping create a wonderfully just and equitable world, the likes of which humanity hasn’t even seen… yet.
Your job is to get yourself into alignment with what you desire, and to stop contradicting what you desire. Get your identity and your beliefs into alignment. Get your actions and inactions, the way you spend your time, the words you use, get all of that into alignment. And whatever you do, get your systems and relationships into alignment, too.
Your job is to get still and quiet your mind enough for at least a few moments every day so that you can receive your own inspired ideas.
Your job is to take care of your precious self and learn the art and science of practicing boundaries, so that you may have the energy to act on your inspired ideas when they come.
Your job is to note your touchy subjects, to welcome the coming awareness of your self-sabotaging patterns and to see the things about yourself that you hate to look at. And your job is to move toward them instead of recoiling from them, so you can integrate all of who you are into a whole you, withholding nothing.
Your job is to take inspired action. To squeeze every ounce of juicy momentum out of your inspiration when it strikes. And your job is to back off from taking action when things feel super grindy or you hit hard resistance inside. Sometimes your job is to investigate and explore that resistance, so you can receive the gifts of clarity and fuel it exists to give you.
Your job is to trust that Divine Order and Timing will bring you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.
Your job is to unlearn the lies of culture: the scarcity, the fear, the unworthiness, the better-keep-quiet-and-play-small-to-stay-safe. Your job is to release your old, chafing templates of self-limitation, unfulfillment and disappointment. Your job is to stop practicing the stories that keep you small and to upgrade the habitual thoughts we call beliefs.
Your job is to receive and allow your desires and dreams to become real, without opposing them in your own mind.
Your job is to remember that your so-called selfish desires are planted in your soul by the Divine, and that you will have Divine assistance as you seek to answer those callings, because when you do step into the callings of your soul. you will discover what is yours to do in our world today… and you will help power human evolution in that way.
Your job is to refrain from participating in patterns, relationships or even conversations that are inconsistent with what you desire.
Your job is to refrain from judging, tracking or rushing your own journey or path or progress in life because all that just clogs up your inner pipeline of clarity and inspiration.
Your job is to request and receive assistance from the safe people in your world and from the higher forces of your Universe, and to revel in the magical-feeling perfect place, perfect time moments when they light up and line up for you.
Your job is to allow what is yours to do in any given season of your life and of humanity to be as unique and sacred as the unique and sacred gifts and talents you came here with.
Your job is to let the Divine handle the specifics of how, what and with whom you step into your next season of expanded wholeness, joy and liberation.
And your job is to focus on why you want it, how you want to feel and what your dream or goal will make possible for you. Then just stay loose and detached from your own idea of what it will look like as you allow “The Divine How” to surprise and delight you.
Now, don’t get me wrong. You can make a bunch of stuff happen in your life the hard hustle way.
Most of us do that most of the time.
I used to do that 100% of the time.
But at some point, I realized most of the things I “made happen” weren’t satisfying at all. And the more I relaxed my grip on my life, I realized that all of the best things that have happened in my life — the beautiful work, meaningful relationships, joyful adventures, creative fulfillment, blissful family moments — all of those things came to me through my steady practicing of receiving and allowing, listening to the Divine voice of Inner Guidance and following what that lit up, step-by-step.
The best things in my life came to me when I started following that feeling of inner resonance and shackles-off, step by step. (Not by following some detailed 5 year action plan for life.)
So I’ll just leave you with this question: How easy are you willing to let the creation of your new, next season be?
Oh! One more thing: Your job is also to allow yourself to desire what you truly desire – not for status, money or other people’s opinions, not for achievement or atta girls – just because it feels right in your soul.
And that might be your work for awhile: To allow yourself to desire the fullness of what you desire, with your whole heart, without exception, even if you can’t see how that fits in with the bigger picture of what is happening in our world right now.
Because your soul’s callings will ultimately play a role in the evolution of our world for the better. They always do.
Head up + heart out,
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
There’s an Old Testament story that people always tell the wrong way. (According to me. 😂)
In the story, King David’s beloved child gets very, very sick.
For 7 days, David refuses food. He prays and pleads with God for his son’s recovery. He wears sackcloth and sleeps on the floor, refusing all his normal luxuries and conveniences.
And then the boy dies.
David’s servants are so concerned about how he’ll take the news that they’re scared to even tell him. But he figures it out.
And when he gets confirmation that the boy has died, David gets up off the floor, takes a shower, washes his face, gets dressed and asks for a meal. Then he eats.
David’s household staff was like: “Wait what? You were sooooo devastated when the boy was just sick. But now he’s dead and you’re good?”
And David said something to the effect of: “When I was stressed out before, I was hoping that my pleas would help him survive. Now that he’s gone, my stress won’t bring him back. I’ll see him again in the afterlife someday.”
Every time I’ve ever heard that story, I’ve heard it told as a story of resilience. When you hit the rough stuff, when you lose something precious, when a season ends against your will, don’t wail and moan.
Get up, wash your face, get back in the saddle.
But I think the most powerful part of the story hasn’t even been told yet.
After David ate, he went to comfort his wife. And during all this “comforting”, she gets pregnant and eventually gives birth to another son.
That baby would eventually become King Solomon, the historical Jewish emperor whose very name symbolizes wisdom, clear-minded discernment and incredible prosperity.
So, as I read it, the moral of the story is not “get up and wash your face”.
The moral of the story as I read it, is that after grave crisis, after a season of loss, after even death and mourning comes creation and wisdom.
If you let yourself receive them.
Every spiritual tradition has the principle of death preceding rebirth and creation.
So does science.
The elements of everything that has ever lived and died on this Planet are recycled into the new things that now live.
Including you and me.
And everything you’ve ever wanted that didn’t work out, everything you’ve ever tried and failed at, every season of your life that’s ever ended… all of that creates space for fresh, new things to be born.
But more importantly, all your past “endings” create clarity and wisdom.
Catch this principle: You can’t start receiving and leveraging the clarity and wisdom of a loss until you let it go, grieve it and decide to get back in the game.
So yeah. Wash your face.
But that’s not the end of the story. Wash your face so that you can collect your clarity. So that you can expand in wisdom.
And so that you can see what wants to be created in your life next.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: Doors are about to close on my Do Your Dream program, the 21 day online workshop where you learn how to overcome old patterns of procrastination, perfectionism and negative self-talk so you can take unprecedented, wholehearted action on your self-care and life goals.
The program begins June 1st. Join us if you’re ready to start seeing what’s next for you.
My house has 40 stairs from the sidewalk to the main floor.
Every day, usually several times a day, I have to get a forty-pound 2-year old and all our groceries, bags and other belongings (i.e., pugs) up and down those stairs.
So as soon as she could walk, I made it my personal mission that Londyn be safe and self-sufficient on the stairs, as soon as humanly possible.
And most of the time, it’s all good.
But once, when she was with a nanny, she had an accident on one particular staircase in our home.
She’s fine going up, 100% of the time. But every single time we go down together, I hold her hand tight to make sure she doesn’t fall. On top of that, I walk one step ahead of her, so that even if she were to stumble, she’d fall right into me and no harm would come to her.
Ninety-five percent of the time, she’s perfectly happy to go up and down this particular staircase, hand in hand with me.
But occasionally, she’ll realize that the dogs aren’t coming with us, or that she’s left her doll or her hoodie upstairs, and she’ll look backwards.
When that happens, she gets wobbly and pulls against me. Her safety is my number one priority, so immediately whatever I’m carrying gets wobbly as I start attending to her. And I have to slow way down to coax her back into looking in the same direction as we’re walking.
I hear myself saying in a cheery, sing-songy voice: “Look in front of you!” “Watch your steps!” “Watch where you’re going!” “Don’t look back!”
Eventually, we get on the same page.
But twice since her accident, something has happened where she has a little flash of a memory and freezes up. She just stops, cold in her tracks. The first time this happened, she actually just shook her head “no” and sat down on the steps, before I even realized what had happened. I had to drop all our stuff to the floor and just pick her up.
But the second time, I didn’t pick her up.
Just the other day, she had one of her fright moments. Instead of picking her up, like she wanted, I stopped and set all our stuff down on the stairs.
Then, I sat right down next to her, picked her up and put her on my lap, making sure I was exactly eye to eye with her.
I made sure she was calm and paying attention. I smiled at her. And then I said:
“Listen, Londyn. Do you know Amma will never leave you on these stairs? I will always be RIGHT HERE. You hold my hand tight, and I’m going to stand RIGHT HERE, right in front of you. I’m right here with you. Your Amma always has your back. Always always always. I’ve got you. Okay? ”
She smiled the smile of a thousand toddler teeth, nodded, and then walked right on down the stairs holding my hand, like the baby boss lady she is.
Why am I telling you this?
Because you are like Londyn.
And your Inner Being is like me, holding your hand on the stairs of your life.
Your Inner Being knows exactly where you are going.
It is guiding you into the full flow and current of life, through the experiences that will form the most joyful, successful and abundant version of you.
Your Inner Being speaks to you through those “shackles on” and “shackles off” feelings you get at every decision point in your life.
Your Inner Being speaks to you through the impulses and inspired ideas that come to you, the ones that put you in the perfect place at the perfect time.
Your Inner Being speaks to you through the beautiful options that light up before you with ease, when you step out into a life goal or direction that feels resonant to you, even though you have no idea how you’ll pull it off.
And your Inner Being speaks to you through the desires, dreams and callings you’ve had your whole life: the ones that won’t go away, even though you run from them or hold yourself back from fully fulfilling them.
They just keep coming, no matter how small you want to play. No matter how much you want to get in your own way, with procrastination and chronic distraction.
And as long as you hide and hold yourself back from your own dreams, you live in a chronic state of inner tension. It’s like an inner tug of war. That’s what it feels like when you refuse to go where your Inner Being is calling you to go.
You don’t have to live that way.
When you get a dream or desire in your heart, your Inner Being is like me with Londyn: it always has your back.
You will be guided as you step forward. But you can only be guided when you step forward! You can only see the magical, masterful next steps in your life light up before you, step by step.
I can’t protect Londyn if I stand at the bottom of the stairs. I’m right there with her. Step by step.
When you have a soul-level intention, but you resist it by looking backwards at all your past so-called failures, traumas or disappointments, not only do you hold yourself back, you also obscure from yourself all the assisting forces that are always trying to help you.
And when you have a soul-level intention or goal, not one you set based on status or money, but one you set because it felt like a gift you were giving to yourself when you committed to do it… when you have a goal like that and you resist it by just sitting down on the stairs, you deny yourself access to the steady, stabilizing stream of Limitless Love and Infinite Intelligence that is trying to help you get where you’re going.
Now, stopping to take a seat isn’t actually the end of the world, because in that place of stuck and struggle between you and your own Inner Being is where you begin to learn exactly how covered and safe you are, exactly how much help you really have.
If you get still during those times, and turn your attention inward with the right practices and focus, you’ll see exactly how safe and abundant this Universe and your life really, truly are.
Every time you have an eye-to-eye with your Inner Being like this, you come out like Londyn did after our conversation: with new clarity, calm and confidence: a new sense of your own power, safety and excitement about the adventures ahead at the bottom of the stairs .
Listen: I know the stairs can be scary.
But on the other side of the stairs — on the other side of your fear — is the whole rest of your wonderful life.
So as you start envisioning the changes you want to make to your life NOW so things never go all the way back to normal after this pandemic, please catch these principles:
#1: Don’t look back.
When you’re tempted to tell yourself all the old stories of struggle, disappointment and incompletion, just say to yourself: “that was then this is now.”
Say it gently, with great compassion and warmth for yourself .
And then start looking for the revelations, insights, clarity or new realities that came to you through your past disappointments and are coming to you now, on the other side of this crisis, too.
#2: And don’t sit down. (Unless you really need to.)
Keep taking little baby steps to go where your Inner Being is calling you to go.
It helps if you keep your nervous system in good shape.
It helps if you keep your spiritual system in good shape.
It helps if you stay connected to your Source and your resources.
And you do this by building the muscle of a soothing, grounding, energizing Daily Ritual, like the one I teach in Do Your Dream.
Catch this principle: You CAN get very far in life without ever running down the stairs.
Just keep taking one, imperfect step at a time, and the occasional bigger, bolder move… and soon, you’ll feel the wave of self-respect and inner peace that comes from aligning your vision, your identity, your beliefs and your actions.
That’s how you get in the flow, and start fulfilling your potential as you were designed to be fulfilled.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: If you’d like my help overcoming old patterns of self-sabotage so you can come out of this quarantine taking better care of yourself, no longer playing small and finally fulfilling your potential, join me in the Do Your Dream program starting June 1st.
In this 21 day program, you’ll learn how to overcome the fears, distractions and negative mindsets that have held you back in the past, so you can build beautiful momentum on your self-care and life goals.
I recently surveyed 1,000 Americans and 77% of them said that they were RELIEVED when they learned of the shutdown.
One of them even said: “This is the break I didn’t even know I needed. But I did.”
NINETY-FOUR PERCENT said that they don’t want their lives to go all the way back to normal, after all this.
If you’re anything like them, you’d like to be healthier, wealthier, closer to your loved ones and closer to fulfilling your lifelong goals after this is all over.
Maybe you’d like a slower pace of life.
But you’d also like to feel like you’re fulfilling the potential you know you have inside.
Fear, self-doubt, your inner critic and the hectic nature of your everyday life may be stopping you from taking even one step toward this vision of a new-and-improved life.
The truth is, YOU may be holding yourself back in all sorts of ways without even knowing it.
And that can create a self-defeating shame spiral, where you’re constantly thinking about all the times you’ve tried and failed, so you don’t even try anymore.
It’s time to hit reset.
If you’d like to reset your vision, intentions and priorities for the rest of the year, join me this Thursday for this incredibly powerful, LIVE online workshop.
Topic: The Great Reset: Learn 3 secrets for setting intentions that work
When: Thursday, May 14th, 2020 at 11 am Pacific | 2 pm Eastern
Here’s how you’re repressing your unique, sacred gifts and keeping your beautiful, visionary ideas trapped inside:
Creating unnecessary drama by doing everything the hardest possible way or ignoring important details in your life
Creating chaos and crisis in the periphery of your life so you don’t have to focus on the scary inner work or intimidating parts of your life goals (e.g.: by picking arguments or clumsily having accidents)
“I’ll do it myself”: not letting others pull their weight
Perfectionism (which: exhausting and self-repressive)
Futzing around ad nauseum with the name of your business, brand, platform, book, blog, etc. so you never really get it launched instead of diving deep into the substance and content and launching meaningful, imperfect things
A chronic pattern of intervening between others and the natural consequences of their behavior (aka codependency)
Mating and pairing and partnering and hiring and teaming up and raising people who underperform so you have to do All of the Things, All of the Time
Incessantly seeking love and approval from others instead of giving it to yourself, in the form of prioritizing title, status, money, achievements, approval, awards, “wins”, shout-outs and even competing with others over just doing what really matters to you
Chronically getting bored and moving onto other projects when things start to feel too easy
Chronically trying to delegate, outsource or sidestep the parts of your most important projects that spark your own Inner Resistance (the parts that spark Resistance point to your most transformational soul work — that’s why they feel scary)
Believing the lie of culture that says you have to prove your worthiness by being perfect or working your heart out
Refusing to focus on one of your many brilliant ideas because you feel like you’ll choose the wrong one and miss out on something
Shiny object syndrome (which: also exhausting)
Majoring in the minors: keeping yourself distracted and depleted on the things that don’t actually move the needle on your business, creative or life goals
Saying you’re confused or unclear about your life purpose, what you really want and what you want to spend the precious moments of this life doing (you’re not)
Saying yes when you mean or FEEL “NO”
Telling the story that you don’t have time, energy or money you really do have but simply aren’t prioritizing in alignment with what you actually care about.
Listen.
There is a calling on your life.
There is a transformational empire that wants to be built through you. A book. A blog. A special system. A business.
And you’ve always known it.
During quarantine season, you’re probably starting to hear your soul’s calling a little more urgently…. or maybe a lot.
Maybe you can even feel your calling in your body. It feels like a great tension within, as you hold yourself back from going where your Inner Guidance is telling you to GO.
PLEASE hear me right now, as I speak for all of humanity: WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR YOU TO KEEP PARTICIPATING IN YOUR OWN SMALLNESS. You = small is a lie.
If you’ve been asking yourself why you can’t ever seem to get traction on your business dreams or life goals, and any of the things on that list come up as answers, now you know the truth: these are all just various methods of self-repression you engage in to keep yourself small, safe and out of the tension, out of the fear.
But if you’re ready to have your own, personal Great Reset and become an unapologetic leader of your own thought leadership platform, your own message, your own business or your own life, please hear me when I say that you are ONE EPIPHANY AWAY from feeling the fever of self-repression break.
And when that fever breaks, you will feel like I feel right now: LIKE I’M BREATHING FIRE.
Unapologetically, DEEPLY in love with yourself, your purpose and the people you serve.
You will feel poised. Prolific. REAL. Resilient. Powerful. Able to make your lifelong dreams REAL, without any further delay or hesitation.
You’ll feel a wave of self-respect that feels like unprecedented, perfect love.
You’ll feel radiant. Magnetic. Masterful in your life because you’re just always listening to Inner Wisdom and moving in the direction of whatever feels like: shackles OFF.
You’ll feelon purpose, EVEN IN QUARANTINE. Even when all you’re doing is resting or connecting with friends, or nourishing your body or your family.
You’ll feel clarity and power, but also relaxation, knowing that Divine Order and Timing are so real that you can’t even GET it wrong. You go from success to success. From glory to glory.
If you KNOW you could live a magical, extraordinary, blessed life, and you’re ready to start getting real results, then I’m making the time to show you how it’s done.
Here are your next steps, depending on who you are:
If you’re a human being on Planet Earth, your next step is to join me at my LIVE intention-setting workshop, The Great Reset, on May 14th at 11 am PT | 2 PM ET.
If you’re a human being on Planet Earth and you also have a vision for a thriving, business, book, personal brand or thought leadership platform — CLICK HERE to book your one-on-one epiphany session with me (it’s totally free).
FYI: I’m opening up just a handful of spots and this message is going out to thousands of people.
The madness of you repressing yourself stops now.
My personal un-repression journey — the journey into my powerful, magical, masterful NOW — started during the recession back in 2008, when I lost everything.
So I speak with total clarity and authority when I tell you that as crazy as this year has been, it can STILL be the year you stop holding yourself back and your life explodes into TECHNICOLOR success, happiness and abundance.
It doesn’t have to take forever and it doesn’t have to be a struggle.
Head up + heart out,
PS: This email is going out to thousands of people. Spaces WILL fill up fast, because… that’s how life works.
Click here now and book your session before it’s too late.
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
My name is Tara-Nicholle Nelson, and I’ve been here before.
I’ve lived through a global crisis that turned my entire personal life upside down.
If we’ve met in the last 10 years, it might seem like my existence is nothing but pugs, cashmere, businesses and trips, soul and spirit.
But it wasn’t always like that. In 2008, I lost everything: my business, my home, my marriage (and I’m not even done, but I’ll stop there).
When I reflect on that time now, 12 years later, I think of it as The Best Crisis Ever. Best thing that ever happened to me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the exact events that seemed like they would do me in ultimately turned around to my great advantage.
As I lived through and surrendered to those losses, I was being groomed. I was being prepared to become who I have now become.
And I was learning to be unapologetic about my unique genius and putting 100% of it out into the world.
In 2008, I learned one more thing I want you to remember in the coming weeks and months:
There are people who thrive in every crisis, and come out of it better than they were before.
If you want to be one of those people, you’ve got to get a handle on your own thoughts, actions and emotions.
You’ve got to get skillful about managing your own inner wellbeing, nervous system and boundaries.
There is no shortcut. It’s the only way.
It’s the only way to stay calm and grounded enough to not spend every day on the coffee-wine-Facebook overconsumption rollercoaster.
It’s the only way to stay out of the breath-holding fear, anxiety and worry that stop you from seeing the opportunities and help that is all around you, even right now.
It’s the only way to stop running around in frenetic, ineffective, anxious activity and trying to control your world by doing more than your fair share of things, so you can come back to center and get recharged.
It’s the only way to stay energized and inspired enough to tap back into your own natural strength and power.
You’ve got to reset your nervous system. You’ve got to recalibrate your insides.
If you want to make this your Best Crisis Ever, you’ve got to get intentional about your life again.
It is possible. And, let’s be real: It will be uncomfortable. There’s a strong pull to stay in the patterns of your crisis reaction “type” and the coping mechanisms you feel powerless to resist.
There’s a strong pull to stay bonding with others over fear and negativity and stress and overwhelm. And hey… if that’s where you need to be for awhile, no judgment. Seriously.
But when you want things to be different you have to reclaim your sovereignty from your unconscious patterns of self-medication and self-limitation.
It’s the only way.
I’m going to start sharing some action steps you can take if you’re ready to reclaim your energy and your life, so you can start living your upgraded priorities.
But before those steps can even work, you have to put a stake in the ground.
You have to decide that you’re willing to let the disruption of pandemic season disrupt your old ways of being, and that you’re open to gracefully trying on some new, empowering ways.
And you activate that decision in two steps:
Step 1: Let go of whatever you thought 2020 was going to look like.
Step 2: Set a resilient, new intention that is calibrated to help you thrive, even in current conditions.
If you want me to show you how to take these steps, you’re in luck.
I’m hosting a free, LIVE intention re-setting workshop:
Topic: How to reset your intentions for 2020 and set yourself up to thrive Date: Thursday, May 14th Time: 11 am PT, 2 pm ET
I am limiting the number of attendees so I can answer as many questions as possible, and I’m giving my Transformation Tuesday readers the first shot to sign up.
If you’re willing to invest an hour of your time to make the most out of this year, I’m down to show you how.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: I’ve been working from home, running businesses and writing books with kids, for the better part of the last 15 years.
If we have time at the end of the intention-resetting workshop, I”ll share a handful of strategies that work for me to create some boundaries and get my shit done.
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
When I was a kid, I hated group school projects, but I loved getting straight A’s. So any time we were assigned a group project, the voice in my head immediately replied: “I’ll just do it myself.”
As an adult, though, my callings required more of me.
When you want to create big things or truly impactful things, you can’t do that on your own. And in the process of exorcising my inner resistance to collaboration, I realized that doing it all myself was one way I’d been repressing my own inner genius, depriving it of the resources I needed to put my soul fully on deck in the form of my work.
Cut to: Quarantine Season 2020.
One of the things I hear the most from my executive and entrepreneur coaching clients is how urgent their lifelong dreams have become as they’ve sheltered at home.
This is an urgency that feels bodily and almost aches: so many brilliant ideas, writhing in a mass within their chest or their throat to come out. Books. Talks. Brands. Businesses.
Movements, even.
And in Quarantine Season 2020, maybe the 2nd most frequent pattern I’m detecting among the badass boss ladies in my world is a mind-blowing list of All The Things they’re doing everyday, at home and at work.
They’re running businesses and business units.
They’re dealing with layoffs or dealing with being laid off.
They’re ramping up their companies and their customer loads.
They’re trying to organize curriculums and Crisis School kids.
They’re working out and baking, or stressing about not working out and ordering in.
They’re walking the dogs and walking the kids and walking themselves.
They’re tending the tender emotions of their children, their parents, their mates, their employees, their employers, and their customers.
They’re writing and creating. They’re envisioning and dreaming.
They’re feeling what Anne Morrow Lindbergh described as “zerissenheit”: the feeling of torn-to-pieces-hood, pulled in every direction, all the time.
And then they say: I feel like I’m so busy. Like my hair’s on fire all day. Then I crash, without feeling like I’m getting almost anything done, even though I don’t even have a commute anymore. And I haven’t paid attention to my own goals or dreams at all since the quarantine began.
Let me say this: However you’re doing this quarantine, you’re doing it just right.
You can’t sleep “too much” or do “too little”. Give yourself the grace you would give a stressed out toddler.
But IF you are pulling more than your weight at home or at work, and IF you feel like you have an urgent, deep dream or desire inside that you can’t quite get out, I need to break some sobering news to you:
You are using your codependency to repress your own brilliance. And it’s keeping you from playing the bigger game you came here to play.
See, codependency isn’t what it sounds like. It’s not being dependent on another person. It’s actually the exact opposite: It’s being addicted to fixing other people’s problems.
It’s a chronic pattern of interfering between others and the natural consequences of their behavior.
Doing it all ourselves one way we deplete and distract ourselves so that there’s nothing left to invest in our own callings, passions or visions.
Then we “get to” tell ourselves the story that there’s just no time to do our own dreams, or that life is so chaotic you’re not sure how you’d ever do anything else in addition to All The Things You’re Already Doing.
It’s an addiction because it is toxic and very, very difficult to stop doing, even when you know it’s toxic.
And the truth is: To take little, beautiful steps toward what you’re called to do, you don’t need to add them to your existing plate. You need to take some things off your plate, like the things you’re currently doing at work or at home that others could reasonably be asked to share in doing.
Your kids can do more than you think. Even the little ones.
Your team can do more than you think. Even if they never have before.
If you find that hearing this sparks resonance and resistance, hear this:
All inner resistance to your own dreams and soul-level desires and all resistance to what would free you up to foster them is a form of self-repression.
One of the gifts of the current crisis is that it will disrupt your cherished, dysfunctional ways of being, giving you an opt-out opportunity: a chance to reclaim sovereignty over your old story and start gracefully being a new way.
And in fact, for some, that will look like a system breakdown at first. If you’re living the lives of 5 people or doing the work of 12 people right now, the moment will come when the urgency of all that working and living and the urgency of your callings will reach a collective fever pitch, and you’ll realize the only option you have is to stop.
Stop asking yourself to do more.
And hopefully, you’ll also stop stressing because you can’t do more.
And then, it’d be great if you also decided to reclaim a tiny corner of sovereignty over your own time, your own power and your own life.
Hopefully, you can stop telling that old story of being the fixer, being the superhero, being chronically stressed and overextended and under-assisted.
Because you get to change this story right now.
And you don’t do it by wheedling or convincing or controlling or trying to force other people to do things you used to do, or by wheedling or convincing or controlling or trying to force other people to do things the way you used to do them.
You do it by holding the others in your life as sacred and powerful. Even your toddlers and your elders.
You get to change your old story of “so much potential, perpetually unfulfilled” by deciding to sit with the initial, disorienting, disturbing, discomfort of requiring the people in your life to experience the consequences of their actions or inaction.
You do it by trusting life and the universe, and by trusting your team and your family.
You do it by holding yourself as sacred and your dreams and goals as sacred, too.
You do it by reading Boundaries.
You do it by stopping your toxic, crippling patterns of fixing and living other people’s lives for them.
You do it by trusting me when I say that you DO have plenty of life force and energy for YOUR life and your desires, for the callings of your soul. If motherhood is one of those callings, you have plenty resources to be a wonderful mom, too.
But wonderful moms create self-sufficient kids.
Wonderful bosses create self-sufficient teams.
Wonderful entrepreneurs create thriving, interdependent customers: not co-dependent ones.
And when you decide to sit with the darkness and disturbance of disrupting your toxic pattern of fixing, very, very soon, you’ll start to recoup the incredible wells of energy and life force you’ve been using to spin other people’s wheels, maybe for decades.
Maybe forever.
And with that restoration, you’ll find yourself receiving your Divine Downloads at an unprecedented level of fidelity, so that all your old mental fogginess and inner chaos will gradually subside and allow you to hear whatever your soul is calling you to that day.
Maybe it’ll be a book, a business or a movement.
And maybe it’ll just be to curl up with your pugs and take a long-needed, well-earned nap for a few weeks.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: Did this resonate? Let me know.
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
I’ve been teaching and coaching a lot lately about how to find your Zone of Genius and how to spend as much time in that Zone as possible, once you find it.
This mostly requires that you understand your Divine Coding: the unique pattern of power, motivations, strengths and challenges you were wired with when you arrived here on Planet Earth.
My students are learning how to identify their unique powers and stand in them, unapologetically.
There’s one particularly powerful thread of Genius that we all possess, but give short shrift to:
You possess the superpower of knowing whether a relationship, person, job, project, conversation or experience is in alignment with your highest potential or not.
And you possess this power right now.
You know.
As children we were taught to be deliberate or politically correct about these things.
We’re taught to be rational, reasonable, strategic, or talk ourselves out of what we know in the name of obedience or social harmony or some other nice name for domestication or letting somebody else’s priorities trump our own Inner Genius, our Inner Guidance.
But you knew back then when something was in alignment with your Inner Guidance or not.
And you know now.
You are not confused.
Stop saying you are, if that’s a thing you say.
Because, real talk? Confusion is just a case of competing priorities.
Let me rephrase: Confusion is almost always a case of you trying to prioritize something or someone else’s feelings or approval ahead of your Inner Guidance.
Confusion is almost always a case of you doing an inner calculation of the cost of following your own Inner Guidance system, and getting all hung up because your logical, rational, verbal mind — your domesticated mind — is trying to talk you out of going in the direction your deepest wisdom, your Inner Genius, is pointing.
Your logical mind and your trained, domesticated thoughts are trying to convince you that the cost of following your Inner Guidance is too great or that the payoff of going the other way is worth shouting down your Inner Genius.
So when we talk about tuning to yourself utterly unresistant, we’re not just talking about utterly unresistant to the callings you hear with clarity.
I’m talking about tuning yourself to be utterly unresistant, fully in surrender, to the Divine urgings and callings that are softer or that you’re not allowing yourself to hear with clarity because you’re focused on that feeling you’re calling confusion but is really just letting someone else’s opinions or priorities matter more than they should.
You know what to do.
You might not hear it clearly yet.
But you do know.
Your Spiritual Self knows.
Because you know what feels good when you think about it, envision it or daydream about it.
You know what feels like bliss.
And despite all the talk we do about all of this, you really can boil down a huge piece of this enterprise of awakening to the order our old Uncle Joseph Campbell once gave us, when he said FOLLOW YOUR BLISS.
Follow your bliss.
Your bliss is your Genius.
Your bliss is your Inner Guidance.
And your Inner Guidance is Infinite Intelligence.
Infinite Intelligence is a Divine Resource.
And that deep down feeling of friction, of ARGH, of “that ain’t right”, of disconnection, or shame or guilt or shackles on?
THAT IS INNER GUIDANCE, TOO.
That is how the Divine, Genius path for your life lights up, step by step.
When a step feels like bliss get after it.
And when a step feels like shackles, move away from it.
It doesn’t always have to be more complicated than that.
In fact, making it more complicated than that, practicing the story that you don’t know what to do or you’re confused or whatever… that’s the same thing as talking yourself out of listening to your Inner Genius: the voice of Divine Intelligence that speaks to you, through you.
And making the commitment to listen to that still, small voice that speaks through your bliss on one end of the spectrum and through your angst on the other?
That’s standing in your power.
Head up + heart out,
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
I love you. And you know me. I have all these spiritual insights into the current global situation and how the human collective can use it to create what Eisenberg called “the more beautiful world we all know is possible.”
But let’s be real. That’s probably not the most pressing issue on your mind right now.
You’re probably trying to figure out how this will impact you, your family, your business or career, your employees and your ability to make your living.
Or, if you’ve already been impacted, you might be trying to figure out what’s next for your life.
The other day, I was talking with a friend who works at a massive company whose products you know and probably use, daily. She was telling me about a meeting of their leaders, after this crisis started, where one of the leaders flat-out said: “I’m a wartime executive. We have a war chest that will never be depleted. We will be okay, regardless of how long this thing lasts. You can count on that.”
And I think that’s what everyone wants.
Everyone wants someone smart, strong and strategic to have their back.
Just about everyone wishes they had someone who they could count on, 100% of the time, to be clutch in a crisis, kind of like a wartime consigliere to help you make the right decisions and be in the right place at the right time as things play out, in real time.
Everyone wishes they had a war chest that could never be depleted.
How would you feel, if you had those things?
Relaxed? Relieved? Safe? Secure?
I’m here to tell you that you do, indeed, have those things.
But your wartime advisor is not another person.
And your war chest isn’t the cash you have on hand, even if you have a ton. Let me tell you, I know people with many millions stashed away and most of them don’t feel safe right now, either.
Because as long as your wartime consigliere is someone else, and as long as your war chest is some external resource, you will feel insecure, because your ability to access that resource could be limited by a circumstance or event beyond your control.
So take a sacred pause. Stop looking out there. That’s not where security is to be found.
I’ve had my life turned upside down a couple of times, and I can tell you that there’s no security like the security you feel when you realize where your real war chest is.
It’s within you.
Your war chest is within.
Your war chest is your unique skills and genius, talents and resilience, your inborn potentials and the wisdom you’ve acquired over your lifetime. Your connection with Source and All That Is.
Your Inner Being, Inner Guidance, Inner Wisdom, Infinite Intelligence: that’s your wartime advisor.
I was an entrepreneur during the last recession. And I know for a fact that there are people and companies who thrive in every economic climate.
My desire is that you be one of those.
So today, I’m just going to give you a rapid-fire set of spiritual and practical strategies for:
Becoming your own wartime consigliere, and
Tapping into the war chest of wisdom you have within you, so you can
Make clear-minded, wise decisions and move forward in your business and your life, even during this apocalyptic-feeling season.
Spiritual Strategy #1: Practice rapid, radical acceptance. The faster you accept the rapidly shifting realities around you, the faster you can get your footing and feel your way into the right, next steps. Sometimes, like when you’ve literally been ordered to stay at home, there’s not much of your normal way of operating at work or in your business that you can do.
So practice Zen-style equanimity, cultivating the ability to keep an even keel regardless of circumstances.
And practice Buddhist detachment from how you expected your year to play out, your product launch to go, or your customer base to grow. Let go of how you thought your business or your career would look. And let go fast. When you do, you create an opening for something even better, potentially, to come to you.
Don’t resist the reality of what is. Allow it. Feel what you need to feel. Then get organized and move forward in whatever today’s new normal looks like, without judging or bemoaning it.
Spiritual Strategy #2: Feed your own meter first. Stay prayed up and worked out, or whatever your preferred equivalents are. If you want to be on top of your mental strategy game, you absolutely must tend to your own inner wellbeing and physical wellbeing, especially when it feels like there’s no time for that.
Tend to your own state of wellbeing first thing in the morning, even if you’re feeling like you slept in too long. Get a walk or a workout in, stretch or do The Five Tibetans, nourish your body, and meditate or journal… whatever works for you.
Make these things non-negotiable in this season, and you will find that your thinking is clearer. Your insights are more uncanny. Your ability to influence and inspire will level up. And you will be able to sell in whatever you need to sell in to get done whatever you need to get done.
Spiritual Strategy #3: Third time’s a wrap. Count your blessings, not your struggles. We all want to feel understood in our outrage at the level of personal hits we’ve taken. And we want our super-heroic efforts just to keep the freaking trains running on time right now to be recognized.
But the solution to a problem is never found in the same energy as the problem. And what you focus on grows. So when you focus on listing off your problems over and over again, it becomes easier to see even more problems and harder to find any solutions.
I know, I know. Listing your struggles is tempting, because our human brains are wired to focus on what’s wrong. On top of that, our culture loves and rewards a martyr. And on top of that, it’s very normal in our world to bond with others by pulling out and showing off all the files in our struggle portfolios.
Here’s what to do when you have legitimate grievances, instead of repetitively airing them: When you hear yourself listing off all the shit that’s gone wrong, refrain from judging or shaming yourself for venting.
Best practice when you need to vent is to write it all down, brain dumping your grudges, grievances and guilt trips every morning. Julia Cameron once said to “put your dramas on the page… and leave them on the page.” Do that.
But if you find yourself venting anyway, vent away, without judging yourself. But when you hear yourself tell your tale of woe the third time, decide that the third time’s a wrap. The next time you’re tempted to tell that story, you either need to tell the story in a way that feels more powerful or change the subject entirely.
Here’s a script for when you’re tempted to bond with a friend or colleague in venting your grievances: “Things have been intense here, too. And also… I know that every crisis is a portal. So I’m appreciating all the clarity this situation is creating for me about what really is and is not important. And I’m trying to stay ready and open to see what is mine/ours to see/learn/embrace/realize/uncover during this time.”
Spiritual Strategy #4: Notice what you’re afraid of. What are your nightmares about these days? What catastrophic narratives do you play out in your mind? If you’re not sleeping at all, what’s keeping you up?
Write it down. Get the swirl out of your head. Don’t worry: You won’t make it happen by writing it once.
The subject of your fears is often pointing you to an inner shadow, repression or touchy subject that needs your attention or is calling you to do some inner work.
When you notice your fears, instead of repressing them, you will get a flashlight on the exact subject matter you’ll need to wholeheartedly engage with in order to grow and evolve as a person and as a leader.
Spiritual Strategy #5: Get crystal clear on your Zone of Genius. Read The Big Leap, or take my Sacred Money Archetypes workshop to understand exactly what you’re the best in the world at, and how to make sure your business or career is in alignment with that.
Spiritual Strategy #6: Take it all in… then take a sacred pause. I know so many entrepreneurs who are feeling pressure right now to take action, do things, put things out there and react to the crisis. But they’re also feeling pulled in so many directions that the net result is scattered and the net output is small potatoes, compared to the impact they are capable of with intentional, strategic action.
Take in what you need to take in, informationally. Talk with your customers. Listen to your employees. Let the dots connect. Let all this material marinate.
And then take a sacred pause. Take an hour or a day to feel what you need to feel. Allow yourself that, so the fearful feelings can pass on through. Investigate your feelings and brain dump every new idea or project you think you may need to do out onto the page.
And don’t track or rush your own progress, or anyone else’s. Judgment of any sort just creates turbulence in your system. So let that go.
After a day or so, you might be surprised to feel the spurts or even the steady rush of inspired, right ideas and the flow of creative power that comes in to fill the vacuum you create when you take a day or two off from rushing into action.
When you’re done with your sacred pause, get organized and prioritized, then communicate the clear vision to your team at work or at home.
Spiritual Strategy #7: When you get a golden thread of an inspired idea, download it, capture it and run with it then. When you’re inspired with the right next step, don’t put it on next week’s to do list.
Take that step, or some part of it, now.
Spiritual Strategy #8: Implement frequent Mini Monk Modes. Reclaim sovereignty over your mind and your inner peace. Don’t outsource that to the media or the worriers in your world.
Even if just for an hour or two a day, or a day or two a week, dive inward and isolate yourself a bit, so you can focus on the things that matter the most to you.
Withdraw from the news and social media. Set aside a sacred space in your heart, your home and your calendar. And then turn the magical power of your focus on the deep work or easily neglected work that you know will make a difference, moving forward.
Spiritual Strategy #9: Live in “day-tight compartments”. This is one of Dale Carnegie’s rules for how to stop worrying: Visualize yourself as the captain of a ship with the power to shut off any part of the boat into a water-tight compartment in the event of a leak anywhere else in the ship.
But in your Inner Being, the compartments aren’t water-tight. They close off the present so it isn’t impacted by “leaks” from the past or the future.
Anytime you ruminate or worry about what happened yesterday, last week or last month…. and anytime you fret or stress about what may come tomorrow, push the button.
Shut yourself off into a “day-tight compartment”, locking off the past because you can’t change anything about that… and locking off the future, because the only way you can positively impact that is to be 100% present in your now.
Spiritual Strategy #10: Make no assumptions about what is and is not possible. Lean into beginner’s mind, over and over again, every single day. Just keep asking yourself: “What is mine to be, do, have, create, see, uncover, allow… today?”
And you’ll find it.
Before I go, please catch these principles:
Every crisis is a portal for your awakening.
Every crisis is a portal for you to actualize your God-given potential a little more.
Every crisis is a portal through which you can become a little bit more of who you need to become to answer your callings.
Whether you walk through the portal or not… that’s up to you.
Head up + heart out,
TNN
P.S.: Entrepreneurs and Executives: Here’s how to work with me right now. I guide and coach startups and companies through the fearless, intentional decisions you need to make in order to survive and thrive during this crisis.
I also brief companies and leaders on the post-virus Transformational Consumer Trends they need to be aware of now…. before they can even be seen in the data.
Just email tara@soultour.com to inquire about ways to work with me to thrive during and after this season.
P.P.S.: Rumi said there are two kinds of intelligence, and I think you might appreciate what he had to say. He wrote:
There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired, as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says, collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
There is another kind of tablet, one already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of the chest.
This other intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid, and it doesn’t move from outside to inside through conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you, moving out.That fountainhead — your inner wisdom — is your war chest. And every crisis is also a switch that can turn the fountainhead of your inner wisdom on.
I had a beautiful email written to you, all about how and why it’s worth taking a sacred pause while you’re still in the eye of what feels like a hurricane.
Instead, I’ve decided that the video and photos below are actually the content we all need the most right now.
I present… Life with Londyn, Homeschool Recess Edition:
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: If you’re wanting to read some wise, inspired thinking on the state of your mind, business and soul right now, here are a few links:
