Transformation Tuesday | Dead Butt Syndrome 🍑

>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday


There’s a new condition on the block in the world of sports medicine, and it has a very funny name: Dead Butt Syndrome

The idea is that our modern lifestyle places us in a state of near-constant front-body muscle contraction — think sitting at a desk, in a car or on a couch, and even exercising in forward motion or while facing a mirror.

As a result, most of us have actually forgotten how to fully activate the muscles in our backs and, particularly, the large muscles of our glutes. 

In other words, our butts are dead. 

Sports medicine doctors and physical therapists care about this because it can cause all sorts of pain in the, um, butt, but also all sorts of other injuries in our hips and hamstrings, calves and even feet. 

Fortunately, this pain can be relieved by learning to fire your glute muscles fully and stretching and strengthening them regularly.

But I think there’s a deeper lesson we can all learn from Dead Butt Syndrome. 

To fully inhabit your life — to live wholeheartedly, shrinking from nothing, exploring even your shadows and fears and thus causing them to dissolve — you must fully inhabit your body, and learn how to hear the wisdom it contains. 

This can be challenging for those of us who are very cerebral or very verbal, those of us who have a practiced habit of living in our heads and those of us who prefer talking about our feelings to actually feeling them. 

A wise woman set me on the path to learning how to feel my feelings, asking me over and over again to translate my detailed, verbal, thoughtful descriptions of my inner experience with these questions: 

“How does that feel in your body?” 

“Where do you feel that, in your body?” 

She also taught me not to push unwanted feelings down or reframe them immediately, but to allow them. To feel them. They pass much more quickly that way. 

When you allow yourself to feel your feelings in your body, you also get access to a new Inner Wisdom another wise woman taught me to see. 

My friend and colleague Monisha regularly issues our students this challenge: 

“Can you investigate and find the gift in that feeling?” 

I say it this way: “What is your body trying to tell you?” 

Or when someone is struggling with a decision: “I suspect your body already knows the answer.”

Yet one more wise woman, Martha Beck, taught me to use my newfound ability to feel my feelings as a deep, inner wisdom containing the answers to almost every question, from what to wear today to whether to get into partnership with this person or that one. 

Her advice: When an option or course of action you’re weighing feels like “shackles on” in your body, DO NOT DO IT.

Overrule or argue with your Inner Wisdom all you want. 

People do this all the time, making lists of pros and cons and Googling for backup, and even asking the whole entire peanut gallery for advice or emailing me to see if they can “pick my brain” when they actually know what they want to do, deep down. 

Catch this principle: When you get a “shackles on” feeling, your body already knows the answer, whether it seems logical or not. 

And your body’s deepest, Inner Wisdom is never wrong.

In all my conversations with transformation-seekers, I have never once heard someone who followed their Inner Wisdom regret it later. 

But when something feels “shackles off”? Feels like opening, expansion, freedom in your body

DO THAT. GO THERE. THAT’S A YES.

Even if it’s a little scary.

Over the years, that has translated into one of my personal life rules: “I’m a no on most projects, until I’m a YES.”

I felt no and said no to my last job for six months, until it because a resounding, inner YES. 

And when it did become a YES, all the people and circumstances and learnings and everything else I would need for that job to be the best job I’d ever had had lined up and fallen into place, and not through my hard effort or forcing.

At the center of your Being, there is an infinite well of wisdom that will guide you along a beautiful, unpredictable path into the life you came here to live. 

So learn to listen for that still, small voice. Don’t let the chaos of your calendar or your Inner Critic drown it out. 

Ask yourself: 

  • How does it feel in my body? 
  • What is the gift of this feeling?
  • What is my <breath holding, jaw clenching, stomach sucking in, constant fidgeting, hard rock in my chest> trying to tell me? 
  • Or, what is this <opening in your chest, warmth flooding through me body, feeling of solid, grounded, okayness, exhilaration or sudden expansion inside me> trying to tell me?
  • Does my body know the answer? 
  • When I think about this course of action, do I feel “shackles on” or “shackles off”? 

There’s one more step.

When you get a Divine Download, which is what I call an idea, a desire, a bolt of inspiration or even just a hunch that feels so “shackles off” you can barely restrain yourself from taking the natural next step? 

Milk it for all its worth.

Head up + heart out,

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Transformation Tuesday | WWYD with this underbite? 💥🐶 pics inside

Brilliant One,

>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday.


To those in the know, my dogs don’t look like full-bred pugs. 

And they’re not. They are half pug and half Japanese Chin. That’s how they got to be so glamorous.

But when people ask me what they are I usually say something like: 

“They’re half pug, and all underbite.” 

Exhibits A and B: The Girls and their underbites
Note: You’ll have to turn images ‘on’ in your email to see this photo.

I was watching them wield their underbite superpowers on College Avenue in Oakland the other day, walking up to all sorts of people they do not know and receiving what The Girls do know is their Divine Inheritance: the adoration of their human audiences. 

These two move through the world with regal self-assuredness as they receive yelps of delight, lavish head pats and unfettered cheers from people taking in the splendor of their God-given dental apparatus. 

I marveled, in that moment, at how a human with similar dentistry and the means to do so would almost certainly have their bite corrected. 

And I wondered, in that moment, what my Girls would say if they could talk, and heard that a human was about to have her underbite erased. 

I’m certain they would wonder why on earth someone would want to do that. 

Because in The Girls’ experience, this so-called “flaw” of an underbite is the same thing as the keys to the kingdom. 

Their underbites have unlocked thousands of head pats, belly rubs, human smiles, treats on treats on treats and limitless opportunities for The Girls to do what they were bred to do: warm the hearts and laps of royalty (including people who just feel royal, like me).

Exhibit C: A normal Tuesday at my house
Note: You’ll have to turn images ‘on’ in your email to see this photo.

Case in point: My blonde dog, Aiko, smiled one particularly potent smile for her pound puppy mugshot, ten years ago. 

The volunteers at the San Francisco SPCA posted that photo on Craigslist, and it found its way to me, deep in the throes of grief from having put my last canine child down, just having sworn to never get another dog.

That single snaggletoothed smile scored both Aiko and her sister, Sumiko:

  • a beautiful home (if I do say so myself)
  • a lifetime of the best grain-free dog food money can buy
  • two sets of generous godparents
  • local celebrity status
  • regular guitar serenades by their Dad 
  • daily cranio-sacral massages
  • and travels and adventures beyond what many humans will ever experience. 

So here’s the question: What might you unlock if you accepted every single thing about yourself, right now, exactly as it is? 

Well for one, you’d eliminate the constant mental chatter of self-judgment. And you’d unlock the energy that’s been siphoned off by the drain of self-criticism. 

In other words, your inner atmosphere would shift. You’d unlock a new level of Inner Peace. 

And Inner Peace allows you to hear your Inner Guidance at a level of volume and clarity you might never have experienced before. 

So if you decided to radically accept everything about yourself, in that atmosphere of Inner Peace you might receive guidance like Aiko and Miko did, the kind of guidance that brings you to a whole group of humans who are thrilled at the chance to revel and delight with you in your Youness, so-called flaws and all.

And listen, you don’t have to worry that releasing self-judgment will make you lazy, or passive, or unmotivated. 

In fact, the opposite is true. 

Radical self-acceptance is the most powerfully transformative basis for a relationship between you and you. 

When your relationship with your own body and your experience of life is one of true self-love and acceptance, you are much more likely to care for your body in all the ways that are truly nourishing, and your body will respond to you with vitality, energy and real wellness. 

But the most compelling reason to radically accept everything about your body, your Being and your experience of life is this: It’s just a delightful way to live.

It unlocks your ability to be present and powerful in this season, in this life, in this body and in this moment. 

It just feels good. 

This reminds me of one of my favorite poems: 

My beloved child, 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.

The time has come. Your time to live, to celebrate.

And to see the goodness that you are.

You, my child, are Divine. You are pure. You are sublimely free.

Do not fight the dark, just turn on the light.

Let go and Breathe in to Goodness that you are.

— Bapuji

I invite you to try it, even for one moment, right now.

Look in a mirror, if you can. 

Meet the light behind your own eyes with all the love and appreciation you can muster. 

Fill your lungs, then empty them, three times. 

Then whisper the words “I love and approve of myself, right now.”

If the spirit moves, hit reply and let me know what this practice unlocks for you. 

P.S.: Here’s a quick video I shot a while back on the concept of Radical Acceptance, if you want to go deeper. 

Head up + heart out,

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

Transformation Tuesday | How to Be Indestructible 📛

>> Click here to listen to today’s Transformation Tuesday AUDIO, or read on!


Have you ever heard of the tardigrade? 

You might also have heard it called a moss bug or water bear.

The tardigrade is a microscopic, translucent creature that lives damn near everywhere: from the tops of the Himalayas to the grody moss you keep meaning to scrub off the pavers in your backyard. 

Eye of Science/Science Source

Like the dust mites that were en vogue when I was a kid, tardigrades are today’s bug du jour.

They’re beloved by teachers and kids because you can find them anywhere and you can see them easily under the microscope. 

Under the lens, tardigrades look like the Michelin man would if he had claws.

Despite their fame, a tardigrade is just a moss bug that lives for a year under normal conditions. 

It’s what they do in abnormal conditions that’s remarkable. 

See, when subjected to harsh environmental conditions, a tardigrade jettisons almost all the water in its body and slows its metabolism to .01 percent of normal.

When it does this, the tardigrade takes on a new identity. It’s new name is the “tun.”

And tuns, it turns out, are extraordinarily badass. 

From the New York Times (bullets mine):

  • Tuns have been reconstituted after more than a century and brought back to life as tardigrades, looking not a day older.
  • Tuns can be subjected to atmospheric pressure 600 times that of the surface of Earth, and they will bounce right back. 
  • They can be chilled to more than 300 degrees Fahrenheit below zero for more than a year, no problem. 
  • The European Space Agency once sent tuns into space and:

Two-thirds survived simultaneous exposure to solar radiation and the vacuum of space. Without water, “the damaging effects of freezing cannot happen,” Dr. Siddall explained. “It protects against heat because the water inside cannot turn into a gas that expands. Even radiation needs water to do damage,” he said. “When cosmic radiation hits water in a cell, it produces a highly reactive form of oxygen that damages cell DNA. The tun doesn’t have this problem.”

As far as I’m concerned, the tardigrade should be everybody’s spirit animal. It exemplifies resilience and thriving after extreme trauma and stress of the nature that would do anybody else in.

Here’s the part I find particularly fascinating: The tardigrade’s whole identity changes when it sheds the water that would make it vulnerable to damage or destruction in extreme conditions.

The tardigrade doesn’t fight the conditions that it can’t control.

It doesn’t text its tardigrade complaint buddies and spiral into feeling even worse.

It doesn’t get on Facebook and post to anyone who’ll listen about the unwanted conditions.

Catch this principle: The tardigrade goes with the flow of life, shedding what no longer serves it along the way, evolving and transforming, morphing from tardigrade to tun, then back to tardigrade, depending on what’s going on in the world around it.

The tardigrade doesn’t just Google for solutions.

Under circumstances that would obliterate any other being in the Universe, the tardigrade sheds what it no longer needs, and uses its innate strengths to evolve into a new being that is the solution.

Think about this:

There are only two kinds of humans: those who’ve been through trauma, or those who will someday.

Think about a time when you went through an adversity and came out changed for the better, the more conscious, the more alive, the more resilient.

Think about your post-traumatic breakthrough, or write about it if the spirit moves.

How did your identity change in the process? Who were you before? Who did you become? 

Who are you now?

Heads up: If you want to refill your clarity, motivation and inspiration tank for whatever you want to be, do or have in 2019, this one’s for you.

I’m presenting a live encore of my 2019 Goal-Setting workshop next Tuesday, March 5th at 11am Pacific/2 pm Eastern (See your timezone here). 

It’s free, and I’d love for you to join me. 

Last time I taught it, over 800 people joined me live and it was 🔥. 

Right afterward, Tanya emailed me in all caps for emphasis 😂: 

“THAT WEBINAR WAS EVERYTHING.”

Kirsten also attended, and said: “Thank you Tara-Nicholle. You always deliver action steps. SO very grateful. recommended a few people to this program today, saw a few names, and I hope everyone got something golden. I know I did. Thank you.”

>> Click here to join me for a free workshop where I’ll share my 3 Secrets to setting intentions that work.

Head up + heart out,

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

Transformation Tuesday | Set down your grievance 💼

>> Here’s your AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday. 

There’s a suggestion I’ve been offering a lot lately, and it goes like this…

“Set down your struggle portfolio.

Revel in your wins instead.” 

Usually when I teach this, we’re talking about an area of life we’re trying to improve, or we’re focused on a goal or a project. 

See, lots of people feel the need to argue all the reasons why they haven’t yet gotten where they want to be in their lives by listing off their past limitations and disappointments which — as you might imagine — only keeps the energy of past unwanted experiences alive in their present. 

That’s what I’m usually talking about, when I give this advice.

But I’m not here to talk about goals this week. 

This idea of trading in the laundry list of your struggles for some reveling in what is working, instead is also very useful on the subject I do want to talk about today: LOVE.

Here are a couple of quick premises: 

  1. Love belongs to you. 
  2. You are entitled to it by virtue of having been born on Planet Earth. 
  3. You never have to earn it. 
  4. And you can’t ever mess up, fail or screw up enough to lose your entitlement to love.
  5. Ever.

That said, most of us do not feel that we were totally, completely, one million percent adored and accepted as very young children the way we’ve always known, deep down, we deserved to be. 

Even if we had wonderful parents. 

And most of us have never really grieved those old feelings of unlove. 

So those feelings harden and calcify into chunks of grievance that clog up our hearts. 

Grievance causes us to act in all kinds of ways that replicate and perpetuate that feeling of unlove. 

Grievance causes us to block ourselves from creating a love-riddled life, full of thriving work and play and healthful food and sleep and habits and relationships that fully nourish and love ourselves. 

Grievance also causes us to engage in patterns of thinking and acting in ways that block others from loving us the way we deserve to be loved. 

So here’s the question of the day: 

Is there any chance you might be ready to set down even some of your grievance so you can let more love in?

See, unlove is an entire mood. It’s like a life operating system where we view the world through grievance-colored glasses. 

Grievance can cause us to see the whole world through the lens of what is wrong, broken and not working, despite the relentless evidence of beauty and wellbeing that is all around us, all the time.

Grievance can cause us to think that the way to love other people is to commiserate with them or to fix them. 

Grievance can cause us to find and fixate on what’s broken and what’s not working for them or in them, and to rail away at the perceived cause of that brokenness, whether it be poverty, tough breaks, sickness, social injustice or the injustice of life itself. 

When your prevailing story around love is tinted through the filter of grievance, you think that’s how you love someone. 

You find their suffering and pick the scab of it. You pick something you see as “broken” about them and dive into the depths of that brokenness with them, try to “fix” them, or offer resources they didn’t ask for, which is actually the same exact thing as judging them Not Okay Just As They Are.

All of this fixing and fixating on what’s not working in our loved ones lives or in the world at large simply reinforces the mood of unlove: our own sense that others or the world or life or the universal powers that be don’t love us, or don’t love us as we are.

There are many definitions of love, and many of them are gorgeous and expansive. 

But for now, let’s try this one, from John WelwoodLove is the recognition of beauty and goodness. 

One way to be the Being of love you came here to be is to play this game I’ve been playing the last couple weeks: Walk through your life and your town looking for what is beautiful, what is good, and what is working, even in situations that are unwanted

And one way to love someone — yourself included — is to seek out and recognize their innate beauty and the goodness in them.

As they are right now, and also with all the limitless, vast potential they possessed when they were born and still do possess.

How might your relationships change if you consistently reset your concept of who your parents and your kids and your dates and your mates really are through the lens of love instead of the lens of grievance? 

If you could release the need to see or focus on their weaknesses, release the desire to control what they are and aren’t doing, and instead, revel in their wins? 

…their actual wins, the things that have gone right for them and are going right for them today, even if you have to dig very deep to find a few.

…and also the “wins” they represent, just by existing

Just by showing up and playing the game of life. 

My bff and I were reading an article the other day in which a young man was explaining that he doesn’t eat natural food anymore because lunch doesn’t hold “value” and in fact, the time it takes to eat real food limits his ability to be “of value” at work. 

My immediate thought was WOW. It’s going to be a wonderful day, the day this young man learns that he is of value because he is, not because of the tasks he gets done at work that day.

So, let’s revisit the question of the day. 

Are you ready to set down even a little bit of your grievance so you can let maybe 10% more love in than you have before?

Before I go, here’s a Pro Tip: In order to be a lover of life and people, you have to make a choice that you prefer to live a love-riddled life over focusing on the “objective”, outrageous facts about your loved one or the world news. 

The bright side is that if you make this choice, you’ll start to experience life in a transcendent kinda way. It’ll feel something like heaven on earth. 

Love,

TNN

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Transformation Tuesday | May You Love Like This

Friends,

>> Here’s the AUDIO of today’s Transformation Tuesday.


This morning, I sat perched in the window at my favorite cafe, writing away.

A wonderful little old lady sat next to me. But I couldn’t tell if she was 70 or 90, because she had a very intense tremor in both of her hands.

She carefully, painstakingly brought her scone and drink over and set them down at the seat next to me. I smiled and went back to my work. A few moments later, I noticed her struggling quite a lot in the effort to reach for her cane. 

I offered to help, but she quickly said, “I think I’ll be okay,” and then tremulously shuffled out the front door, without the cane. 

Before I could even think to wonder where she might be going, I glanced up from my work and saw for myself: she was standing in front of the restaurant, having spotted a fire truck making its way down the street, just beaming and waving at the crew. 

She waved wildly, joyfully at the driver in the front. Then she just stood there, smiling from ear to ear, and watched them pass by. Before they were out of view, she waved gleefully, with her whole entire body, at the driver in the back.

And they beamed and waved right back. 

Soon as the fire truck passed, she shuffled back inside, sat down and ate her scone. 

During this week of love, my wish for you is that you find something you love like that every day — something to revel in and frolic with at the same level of sheer joy that my coffee shop friend felt for that fire truck this morning. 

May you find that level of joy as you meet eyes with your loved ones… or as you meet new loved ones.

May you find that level of revelry and delight in the process of anticipating the wonders and adventures before you — including your adventures in love. 

And may whatever you find to love like that this week return the love you shine its way, multiplied.

Head up and heart out,

TNN

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

Transformation Tuesday | Making the Unconscious Conscious

Carl Jung is the source of my current favorite spiritual mic-drop. 

He said: ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Meaning: Deep-seated beliefs and parts of your personality that you aren’t even aware of are controlling the events of your life, and you don’t even know it. 

Until you make them conscious, you’ll just think that life is hard, that the struggle is real or that the world is an unfriendly place.

We call the most pervasive, most deep-seated, unconscious beliefs that pave the landscape of our lives “trances”, because: 

  • they are constant and absolute
  • they are so unconscious that they run in the background of all our waking — and sleeping — moments, and 
  • they direct our own actions, emotions, decisions, perspectives and even the events and circumstances we create or attract.

Here are just two of the most common, most devastating trances:

1. The trance of scarcity. This is the trance of “there’s not enough to go around” and “life is hard.”

The trance of scarcity is opposite of the truth that, actually, billions of miracles occur every single day simply to support your personal, individual survival, existence and thriving. 

It also opposes the reality that this world is totally riddled and abundant with resources, that there are plenty to go around, and that actually the less we strain and struggle the more easefully the resources we need flow our way.

You can make your own unconscious trance of scarcity conscious by noticing the storylines in your head that chronically go like this: 

“I didn’t get enough sleep.”

“I never get enough sleep.”

“There’s no time for that.”

“The struggle is real.”

“Adulting is hard.”

“I’ve got to be perfect or act perfect or work my heart out or over-perform to keep Really Bad Things from happening.”

You can also notice how often you clench your teeth, grind your jaw, hunch your shoulders as though bracing for catastrophe or (and this used to be my personal go-to) hold your breath.

2. The trance of unworthiness. Any belief that you “should be” different than you are is a page from the book of unworthiness. The trance of unworthiness will convince you that it’s not okay to relax all the way, ever. Or that there’s a little bit something wrong with you, so you have to be perfect. Or that people will reject you if you’re anything but totally beyond criticism, 100% of the time.

This often shows up in perfectionism, self-criticism and the resulting symptoms of overeating, over-drinking and over-working.

The trance of unworthiness also shows up as what John Welwood calls the “mood of unlove”: the failure to understand that you are deeply lovable, exactly as you are. This can make it very hard to let love all the way in. 

Welwood says people with a mood of unlove “imagine that they are insignificant, unattractive, deficient, lacking in some essential way. And all human greed, jealousy, aggression, and violence arise from there.”

You wake up from the trance of unworthiness by radically accepting yourself, your history and your life and even the way the world is and works. 

This does not mean you can’t transform your life — and impact the world — in wonderful ways. 

In fact, the most powerful platform for changing your life is to practice being what one of my teachers describes as “satisfied with what is andeager for more.”

Waking up from these trances is possible. Just by making the unconscious conscious, you begin the process of learning to see the world very differently and upgrading your beliefs.

Upgrading these beliefs is a journey of moment after moment of clarity, as you see the inner narratives that have been guiding your life. (These stories might even have been controlling your whole family or culture, sometimes for generations.)

Upgrading these beliefs is a process. And it takes time. And you must be gentle and easy with yourself along the way. Because each step of this process feels a little like the end of the world as you know it .

Let me rephrase. Each step of awakening from these trances is, actuallythe end of the world as you’ve known it if the world as you’ve known it has been cold, mean or struggle-filled. 

This can be disorienting, and can even make you occasionally yearn for the comfort of your old, harsh, limiting, stressful worldview. 

But then one day, or maybe a little bit at a time on a thousand different days, it will occur to you that you’ve acquired the ability to intentionally choose how you live your life. 

Albert Einstein laid out our options for choosing how to live very clearly. He said, “there are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Transformation Tuesday | Fear is a spiritual allergy

Friends,

>> Here’s the AUDIO version of today’s Transformation Tuesday newsletter. Enjoy!

Have you ever heard the saying that we’re all spiritual beings in physical bodies?

This is true. But it’s incomplete. Here’s my version:

“You are a spiritual being, in an ever-evolving, ever-expanding psychobiological system, living in and around a multitude of other ever-evolving psycho-bio-socio-technological ecosystems.”

In other words, I love to learn and think about how the insides of our minds, bodies and souls work. 

Recently, I was reading about one such subject that’s of great interest to me personally: allergies. 

I knew that allergies are misfires of our immune systems. For years I’ve blessed my allergies, knowing that they’re just a false positive reaction by the same system in my body that does a wonderful job warding off all the Really Nasty Stuff. 

But a while back, I read this article about an all-new allergy that is evolving in humans as we speak. It goes by a very sexy name: Mammalian Meat Allergy. 

Mammalian Meat Allergy came to mind as I was talking to a couple of college-aged entrepreneurs the other day about the fear and self-doubt which stop them from taking the right next steps for their projects. 

I said, “Think of it this way: All fear is a spiritual allergy.

Allergies are physical responses that evolved to keep us safe from dangerous substances, mistakenly triggered by non-dangerous substances like peanuts, pollen and now, apparently, meat. 

Fear is also a response that evolved to keep us safe from danger. But in our lives, most of the time, fear is triggered by scenarios which, like peanuts, pose no real danger to our safety.

Here’s the lowdown: The deepest, oldest part of your brain is the brainstem or limbic system. (It’s very similar to the entire brain of a modern-day lizard.) 

This piece of your brain evolved to send fear signals throughout your body to alert you to dangers in your environment so you can keep yourself safe. 

Your lizard brain triggers physical fear responses like holding your breath, rapid heartbeat, bracing and clenching your muscles and narrowing your field of focus to exclude everything but the Supposedly Dangerous Thing.

Then your thinking brain tells a story about the connection between this non-dangerous thing and the fear you feel in your body. The fear-based story and your physical fear reactions wire together over time.

Fear was designed to keep us safe when the beast that lived in the cave next door charged at us, way back when.

But in both cases — allergies and fear — our bodies haven’t kept up with our world. 

Allergies are misfires. Peanuts and pollen are not dangerous to humans, other than the allergies they trigger.

And the vast majority of our fears are misfires, too.

Nothing about giving a speech, speaking up in a meeting with a creative idea you’re not sure will be well-received, putting yourself up for a promotion or putting a book out into the world is truly dangerous.

But they feel dangerous, because they are outside of the comfort zone you’ve erected around yourself and your life. 

So all of these things trigger your brain’s fear responses.

And just like different people have different allergies, in some people the “fear allergy” might be really intense, causing you to fear non-dangerous things like:

  • speaking up and asking for what you need
  • expressing how you really feel
  • making needed relationship, career and life moves
  • criticism, disapproval or rejection 
  • or even fearing that catastrophe will result if your life plan or even your day doesn’t go exactly how you want, so you try to control the specifics of your life, including what other people do and say. 

So much devotion to “making things happen” exactly the way we want. 

So much breath-holding. 

Fear prevents us from joyfully pulling out all the stops, and just fully being who we came here to be.

Knowing that fear is just your Lizard Brain doing what it does is the first step on the path beyond fear and its first cousin, self-doubt.

Fears are just spiritual allergies. And most allergic reactions go away fast.

Neuroscientist Jill Bolte-Taylor says that when you think a thought that sparks fear, the fear feeling lasts only 90 seconds. 

Unless you keep thinking that thought, which is what happens when we try to talk ourselves out of being afraid, keep old fear-based storylines alive in our minds, or judge ourselves for feeling fearful in the first place. 

Fear-based thought habits are learned patterns that you have the power to rewire.

Fear is not who you are. 

I know fear can feel very real. But it’s not true, almost ever. 

It’s very temporary, if you let it pass instead of struggling against it.

Almost every successful spiritual or practical strategy for living beyond fear will tell you that arguing with your fears in your own mind is not the answer. 

The answer is to understand what’s happening when you experience fear and find ways to leave the conversation with your lizard brain entirely. 

P.S.: In my next couple of emails, we’ll cover the two types of fearand how to opt out of the fears and doubts that limit you.

NOTE: Upgrading our inner wellbeing by learning about our inner workings is something we do all the time in the School of Upliftment. 

I want to introduce you to SOU student Christine Casillas, who shared a bit about her experience in the School recently. She said: 

“What I like about the School, is that it brings together the psychology and the science and the whys and the wherefores of why people act the way they do.

Actually, more importantly, of why you act the way you do. It brings all of that together and integrates it with your spiritual side.”

After sharing about her own personal transformation, she closed like this: 

“I recommend the School of Upliftment for anyone who is ready to lead the life they were always meant to lead.”

I’m re-opening enrollment in the School of Upliftment soon. If you’re interested, just hit reply and say: “Put me on the interest list, Tara!”

Here’s the rest of what Christine had to say (3 minute video): 

Click to watch Chrstine’s Testimonial on YouTube

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Transformation Tuesday | My 10-year challenge (before-and-after pics 📷)

Friends,

While looking for 10-year-old pics of myself on the Internet yesterday, I came across a 2007 article in which I’d been interviewed by the New York Times.

What I found took my breath away. 

I had to stop right then and send it to one of my coaching clients: a brilliant, creative and wildly successful businesswoman with a serious fear of flying.

Turn your email images “on” to see this throwback pic.
Here’s the link to the full NYT article. 

I don’t think I looked much different back then than I do now. 

2007 Tara || 2018 Tara

It’s genetics. And cod liver oil. So much cod liver oil.

But this article was hard, cold evidence of a truly shocking before-and-after transformation I had in the last decade:

I used to be afraid to fly.

I used to be paralyzed by claustrophobia and a fear of flying. 

So paralyzed that just a few months before that interview, I’d missed a major meeting because I couldn’t sit in the middle seat on a plane. 

And now? To say I’ve overcome my fear of flying would be an understatement.

Seeing this article reminded me of something I’ve been saying a lot lately to my students when they bring up their past failures, disappointments and limitations.

It’s super profound. I tell them: 

That was then.

This is now.

And I speak from experience. 

Because in just the last couple of years, here’s a partial list of places I’ve flown with no fear at all, off the top of my head:

📍France a few times
📍The UK
📍Italy
📍Sweden
📍Denmark
📍Norway
📍Belgium
📍Croatia a couple times
📍Germany, also multiple times
📍Spain
📍Costa Rica
📍Canada
📍Mexico
📍And alllllllll over these United states.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be flying out to Utah for the Sundance Film Festival (just for fun!). Soon after that, I’ll be off to speak at SXSW Interactive in Austin to speak about spiritual rituals in the workplace. And then I’ll head off to speak at another A-list festival in Portugal. 

The crazy part about this whole thing is that, until I saw that throwback article last night, I’d forgotten I was ever afraid to fly in the first place.

So when I say “That was then, this is now,” I speak from experience. 

This kind of freedom from your past limitations, 

…freedom from fretting and ruminating and stressing about unlikely events, 

…freedom from the fears that seem like they control you, 

…freedom from the anxieties that keep you playing a smaller game in life than you are destined for?

This freedom is available to you, too.

I’ll be even bolder. 

This freedom is yours. It is coming. You’ve called it in. 

And it’s on its way. 

The More You Know: Cows are called ruminants because they chew their food endlessly, over and over again, before swallowing it… kind of like we do when we endlessly rehearse and rehash our worries and tales of woe. 

🐮
🌿
🐮

Cows are cute. But don’t be like cows. 

P.S.: If you’d like to get on the interest list for the next enrollment window in the School of Upliftment, send an email to tnn @ soultour.com and say “I’m interested!”. We’ll be inviting new students in soon!

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Transformation Tuesday | 🎯What are you practicing?

I just had this thought on my dog walk, and thought I’d share.

With our thoughts, our actions, the way we hold our bodies and what we choose to focus on with our minds, we’re all practicing something all the time.

So it’s a good exercise to occasionally un-click autopilot and pay attention to what you’re practicing, because that’s what you’re wiring in. 

Are you practicing stories of scarcity and struggle or stories of prosperity and wellbeing? 

Are you practicing holding your breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop or hiding behind perfectionism?

Or are you practicing engaging with life, wholeheartedly: taking risks, taking inspired action, doing your best and letting the chips fall where they may? 

Are you rehearsing an endless, soul-sucking litany of the terrible, no-good, very bad or unwanted things that happen in the world? 

Or are you consciously choosing to focus on the trillions of wonderful things that happen in and around your body and your world every single second of every single day? 

(Catch this principle: When you focus on something, you’re saying “More, please!” of that thing. Whatever it is.)

Are you practicing putting all sorts of conditions on your own happiness, refusing to be satisfied unless and until Some Other Person acts the way you want them to?

Or are you practicing joy-tripping through life, regardless of other people’s behavior and opinions?

Are you practicing arguing for your limitations, desperate not to feel misunderstood

Or are you practicing giving in to the natural trajectory of your own expansion, asking timidly at first… how might I be able to be, do or have THAT?… then taking what feels like the right next step, doing your best and watching expectantly as the other elements of your future fall into place and light up before you?

We’re all rehearsing something all the time.

So it pays to be intentional about what we choose to practice.

Note: Last week, I put together something I call The Big List of 96 Transformational Intentions for Conscious Leaders and Creators: 2019 Edition — complete with instructions and optimized for impact. 

Thought you might enjoy it — here you go! 

DOWNLOAD THE FREE PDF: The Big List of 96 Transformational Intentions for Conscious Leaders and Creators: 2019 Edition

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Transformation Tuesday |Fresh and New

Friends,

I woke up today with this New Year’s Message on my heart. 

Here it is in VIDEO or AUDIO (~4 minutes) … or you can read it if you scroll on down. 

Today is Day 1. 

Today, you are fresh and new. This is true every day, but it feels especially true today.

You are still a baby at some things. Still learning how to walk. Still building certain muscles. 

But your soul is eternal. It has eternal wisdom running through it and to it. 

This wisdom is worth listening for and worth following, this year. 

In the coming year, trust that everything is always working out for you. You will have everything you need and you’ll know everything you need to know, exactly when you need to know it. 

In 2019, you can learn to trust this. You can feel your way into a clear vision, set intentions and allow the right path to light up before you. You can let the Divine handle the how.

Every seeming problem just setting up a solution. 

Every seeming obstacle increasing your clarity. Your direction. 

Every person a golden link in the chain of your good, whether they know it or not. 

Every time you take a moment to meditate and slow your thoughts or wipe your emotional slate clean by getting an inner drama out onto the pages of your journal and leaving it there… every time you do this in 2019, know that you’re sending out an invitation for even more clarity, more guidance and what my friend Artie calls more “golden threads” of inspiration. 

And they will come.

As we move into the New Year, I’m here to remind you why we’re all here: We came here for freedom, growth and joy.

That’s why discipline and deadlines don’t work. They’re the opposite of what we came here for. They actually defeat the purpose of setting goals in the first place. 

I’m also here to remind you that at soul-level you are whole and well and good. Now. Not 20 pounds or six figures or a promotion or a marriage away from now. 

Right now. As you are. 

That’s why self-criticism and self-judgment don’t work to keep you motivated on your goals, either. Because they are the opposite of what’s true about you, at a fundamental, universal level. 

What does work is setting goals you love to work on. Setting intentions that feel like a gift to yourself, and not a burden. Working toward a vision to bring 100% of your true self to the world, instead of a vision of changing or “fixing” things about yourself. 

And what does work is reaching those goals with little, imperfect, daily actions and bigger leaps that get you started bringing 100% of yourself to the world in accessible ways. 

What does work is getting help with prompts and nudges that come from a place of Radical Love and Acceptance, and never harsh judgment or critique. 

What does work is recalibrating your nervous system, taking a little, energizing Inner Retreat and windshield wiping your spirit every day. 

If you’d like me to help guide, prompt and coach you through 21 days of momentum on your top goal for THIS year, I invite you to join my new program: Do Your Dream 2019. 

My mission is to help you generate momentum on your #1 goal of the year by February and to help you stick with a proven, daily self-care routine, in the process. 

***We begin this Friday, January 4th.***

The program is fully online, and it’s simple: 

  • 21 days of baby step action prompt emails
  • 21 days of guided Daily Ritual emails
  • 3 weekly “leap” actions on your goals
  • 5 weekly live group coaching sessions (plus the replays, if you can’t make them live), and
  • A bunch of follow-through resources, including Quarterly Group Coaching Sessions throughout the year.

>>>> Learn more about Do Your Dream 2019: https://soultour.com/doyourdream <<<<

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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