Friends,

I’ve been sharing with my students about my grandmother, as we came to the end of her precious and wonderful life. 

Here’s one of her lessons. May her memory be a blessing.

My grandmother is a beautiful, influential Being, a real agent of the Divine.

But she was also a professional nurse for decades. And she was opinionated, too. 

Here’s an example of what I mean: When I was a little girl, it was en vogue among women to sort of stifle their sneezes into little, polite ‘achoos’.

Every time we saw someone do this, my grandmother would turn to me and whisper in my ear to never, ever, EVER hold my sneezes in or let them do anything but rip, full force. 

She would say: “Tara-Bara, your sneezes move at the speed of 200 miles an hour. So never hold them in. It’ll scramble your brain!”

In this way, my very proper grandmother encouraged me to LET IT ALL OUT. 

This is exactly how I want you to think about your own creative power, force and flow. When you are in that “shackles off” emotional place — open, receptive and feeling so free and so good — and you get a golden thread, a divine download or other deep-down impulse to call someone, find something out, do something or create something, what is happening inside you is something like a spiritual sneeze.

The very creative power that formed all worlds is trying to flow through you, at the equivalent of way more than 200 miles an hour. 

It’s normal — as heroes of our own journeys — to refuse our callings a few times. 

But when we do this, it feels bad. When we hold it in or play small, refusing our callings, we’re essentially doing violence to our own insides. 

We feel stuck. We feel confused. We feel unclear. Holding your spiritual sneezes in feels something like scrambling our brains. 

When we let it flow, though? When we follow our impulses to be, do, have, investigate or create whatever we’re called to? 

We feel clear.

Even if others look at our paths and wish they were more linear, or more in line with what they want us to do.

Catch this principle: Everyone else can’t hear your calling. That’s why it’s your calling. 

But if you hear your callings and follow them — even the little, still, small nudges to call an old contact or research a new thing: when you let these spiritual sneeze out, you feel clear. 

You might write a poem, even though you’re a lawyer for your day job. You might do projects other people in your life think are crazy.

Or, like my grandmother, you might dare to get an education at a time when Black women simply did not, to move your whole family to a new and foreign place in search of a better life, and to spend a lot of your pouring love (and food) into people others don’t see as worthy.

You might change jobs or whole lives a few times, to the befuddlement of those around you.

Just remember: other people can’t hear your calling. It’s your calling.

The more you follow its direction, the more your Divine, Inner Guidance will strengthen and :

• burn off Inner Resistance
• light up the right path before you, deactivating all obstacles or turning them into opportunities, 
• attract in the resources you need, and 
• snowball into energy you can use to fuel any future you are guided to create.

It will call forth greatness and capacity you never knew you had. 

In other words: It’s really, really good,  [FIRST NAME GOES HERE] , the life you create when you stop holding in your spiritual sneezes and start following your Divine Downloads of Inner Guidance.

So please do that. My grandmother would approve.

In memoriam of my beloved and truly GrandMother, Verdell Teresa Gamble, 

Born: March 30,1930 — Texarkana, Texas

Transitioned: December 22, 2018 — Bakersfield, California

If you ever met her, you knew that my grandmother was an agent of God on this Earth, blessing everyone she met and “laid eyes on” (in her words). 

If you knew her, you knew she was here for just a season and that you were blessed to encounter her during it. 

And what a wonderful, fruitful season it was. 

She. Lived. This. Life. 

This past weekend, her eternal soul returned home. 

In this moment, I’m feeling intensely, acutely grateful for her life and her love and her influence on me, but also on so, so many others. 

May her memory continue to be a blessing.

NOTE: So that I may fully celebrate my grandmother’s life, I am moving my Live New Year’s Intention-Setting Workshop from this Friday at 11 am to next Monday, December 31st at 11 am.

If you’ve already signed up, there’s nothing else you need to do except update your calendar with the new date (use links below). Thank you for your understanding and grace.

Add event to calendar

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Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Friends,

Here’s a quick New Year’s Invitation video I shot for you — click through, or find more details at the bottom of this email.

Here’s the AUDIO for today’s note.

I used to think self-love was a nebulous, “nice-to-have” cherry on top of an otherwise disciplined, productive and high-functioning life.

But it occurred to me during my sit this morning that we really only have two options: to fall radically in love with ourselves and radically accept ourselves and our process of life… or to feel really shitty a lot of the time.

We choose to judge ourselves or be stingy with ourselves sometimes, out of long practice. Other times, because we think it’s virtuous. Still other times, because we’ve believed the lie that self-critique and self-restriction are highly motivational. 

But the truth is, when we choose to judge ourselves harshly or be stingy with ourselves, we are placing ourselves at odds with the force that runs this entire Universe. Because our Source loves every hair on our heads.

That’s why self-judgment feels so bad.

Catch this principle: Self-love is not an indulgence. And it’s not a nice-to-have.

It is the natural state of things. 

In fact, anything else is unnatural, meaning: learned. 

That doesn’t mean that something’s wrong with you if you don’t feel deeply in love with yourself on a frequent basis. 

What I mean when I say that any and everything other than self-love and radically accepting your own brilliant self was learned is that anything other than self-love and radically accepting your own brilliant self can be unlearned, too.

NOTE: It’s a total fallacy to think judging yourself will create discipline or motivation in the long run, but it’s also a common one. 

(If that were true, don’t you think everyone would be thin? Doesn’t work that way. You can’t hate yourself skinny.)

I’m sharing 5 secrets for setting 2019 goals that do work in the long run in a LIVE, free 90-minute New Year’s Intention-Setting Workshop for Conscious Leaders and Creators on December 28th at 11 am PT, 2 pm ET and 7 pm CET.

Here’s the link to register: https://soultour.com/2019

I hope you’ll join me and bring your friends — just send them the link.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

“I’m behind” used to be something I felt and thought all the time. 

Now I know the truth: “I’m behind” is a lie of our culture. 

It’s a scarcity lie. Scarcity because it causes us to tense up, constrict, hold our breath and let our lizard brains, our Inner Critics, run wild with irrational fears of disaster. Keyword: irrational.

(Our Inner Critic is really predictable, y’all.) 

And it’s a lie because the truth is that we’re always in the right place at the right time to become who we are in the process of becoming. 

To get the clarity we need to get. 

To create what we’re here to create. 

To learn what we’re here to learn. 

And to see — if we can stay out of fear and relax into our own deep, profound worthiness — to see the divine path light up before us. 

We’re always in the right place at the right time to catch a golden thread of inspiration, if we’re listening.

We’re always in the right place at the right time to be surprised and delighted by the help that comes and opportunities that arise without our effort, if we look for them.

“I’m behind” is based on the fallacy that there’s a perfect set of tasks you were supposed to check off some rigorous, unrealistic cosmic checklist in some perfect time frame, and that you have failed. All lies. Because: right place, right time. 

But it helps to understand that “I’m behind” and perfectionism are first cousins. 

So now I think about “I’m behind” in the same way as Anne Lamott writes about perfectionism in Bird by Bird. I’m going to steal her quote now and just replace “perfectionism” with “I’m behind”, okay? I think it’s perfectly worded, not too strongly at all. 

Here goes: 

“I’m behind” is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life….. I think “I’m behind” is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”

2018 was the year I stopped saying: “I’m behind”. 

I wrote much more about this reframe, here, and shared some of my strategies for unlearning the “I’m behind” story, here. 

NOTE: What if you could kickstart 2019 with momentum on your most exciting, most inspired intention or goals? 

You can. 

We’re doing BIG THINGS to help you clean the slate of 2018 and usher in New Year’s 2019 with clarity and purpose.

Check it out.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Friends,

Here’s the AUDIO for your Transformation Tuesday newsletter.

Saul Bellow said you never have to edit something you write in the middle of the night.

And Saul Bellow was right.

Because that up-at-night kind of inspiration is just like getting a download from the Divine.

It’s what I like to call a Divine Download of the right ideas and the right words at the right time — sleep schedule be damned.

You don’t have to work hard to get your Divine Downloads. They just flow to you and through you, if you let them.

What you create when in you’re in that mode is very, very good. Brilliant, even. It’s in another league of excellence from your output when you have to crank away and grind away to create a thing.

And doing your work in Divine Download Mode — which some people call the flow state — is fast. It’s incredibly efficient. Much more efficient than the work you do when you’re straining, hustling, grinding or forcing.

This year I learned to respect the process of life, to trust that it’ll bring me exactly what I need to know exactly when I need to know it. I learned this trust as a byproduct of learning how to invite that kind of inspiration to flow in, how to get into the flow state regularly, and practicing it so repeatedly that I can now trust inspiration to flow on demand, anytime I need it.

I also learned to trust the creative process in a literal sense. I made a default rule of intentionally waiting to do the deepest work on my most creative, most inspired projects — the ones that are calling me to do them— until they’re fully ripe in my mind and in my spirit.

Sometimes I wait until I almost can’t resist working on the thing anymore. Then, when it’s ripe and ready?

The download flows, unmistakably. Unstoppably. I apply butt glue and let it flow. I invite inspiration, then I act on it when it comes. That’s my role in this thing.

Working like this is like everything you’ve ever heard anyone say about being in the flow state. It’s delightful. Expansive. You’re clear. Productive. Prolific. You lose track of time. Distractions can’t even touch you. You’re just creating for the joy of it, for the rush of the process.

Dots connect. So much flows out, with incredible ease because: Divine Download.

It ain’t all about you. It’s bigger than that.

And the output isn’t strained. It’s wonderful. Molto bene. If I do say so myself.

When I’m creating in this way, whether I’m writing a book, an email or a strategic plan, I envision that all that creative power and delicious energy is downloading into me, pouring through me, onto the page or the slide or into the email, and then flowing directly into the spirit of whoever ends up reading it.

I envision my reader getting a contact high from my own energy, right off the page.

To be clear, this way of creating isn’t as passive as it might sound. Every morning I wake up and do the delicious Inner Work of sitting, free-writing, inviting what my friend Artie would call “golden threads” of inspiration and capturing them, then acting on them and juicing them for all they’re worth when they come, trusting them to keep coming until the project makes it to its divinely intended target audience — which could be millions, or could be a single, perfect person.

That’s not up to me.

So on any given day, I might be waiting to work on an particular project, the kind of waiting I used to call procrastination. But every day I’m working on or creating something, with the leverage of this inspired action.

The reframe I learned this year especially applies to those of you who are actually very productive and get loads of things done, but maybe not everything you want, and maybe not as quickly as you want.

And it especially applies to people who identify as beings of upliftment: people who know they are on this planet to help lift other people up using whatever talents they’ve got.

For people like us, I’ve learned that procrastination is almost always one of three things:

• Preparation. You’re getting ready. Life is getting you ready. You’re collecting the skills or growing the thick skin or receiving the information or becoming the person you need to be to do the thing that is calling you.

Haven’t you ever struggled with a project, decided to change the subject and met the just-right person or found the just-right data point you needed while you were out on a walk or at the gym? Divine Timing and Order are so real, and so perfect, always. (I teach how to trust this in the School of Upliftment.)

• Processing. Your brain is connecting the dots of seemingly disparate knowledge and inputs to create the original, inspired thoughts it will create, given the chance. You can’t force this to happen, but it helps if you stop overthinking things and literally change your scene, take a break or change the subject, which releases any inner resistance you might have had.

That’s why we get brilliant ideas in the shower, right before bed or while we’re on a run. When overthinking and Inner Resistance are at their lowest, our Divine Downloads can flow in.

• Plugging in. Your personal, spiritual Self is plugging into the Divine extension cord of energy. That’s what’s happening when I sit and meditate or write in the morning. I’m reconnecting to the source of Infinite Intelligence and Creative Power that runs the show.

Think of yourself as teaming up, partnering up with the forces of Spirit, love, transformation, human evolution or whatever other, higher force is calling you and guiding you to do whatever it is that you’re feeling called to do.

Doesn’t knowing what procrastination really is take the pressure off?

You’re being prepared.

Your brain is having the process it needs to have for your Inner Genius to come forth.

All the forces of this Universe are teaming up with you, lighting up the path for you, lining up the people and places and things and opportunities and collaborative components you need to move forward in life more easily, with better results than if you were doing all the hard work on your own.

But note one thing: I did say procrastination is almost always one of these things.

Occasionally, every once in awhile, it can be something else. Something students of The Hero’s Journey might have heard described as “refusing the call”.

Sometimes, when you’re procrastinating, you are literally refusing one of your callings. (Note: callings, multiple.)

All heroes do it, so don’t worry. It’s part of the process.

I’ll share more about that soon.

Question: How does this reframe land for you? Resonate? Not so much? Hit reply and let me know.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Friends,

Some of the most valuable stuff I share in these newsletters are my reframes.

For example, when I feel a whiff of Imposter Syndrome, I take it as a sign I’m doing something right.

I’m pushing beyond my comfort zone. I’m expanding. I’m growing. I’m birthing something new. All birth involves contraction. Friction.

And on the other side of that contraction comes creation, always. Expansion. More freedom. More growth. More joy, to the point that I revel in Imposter Syndrome when I feel it now, because I know what wonders are on the other side.

That’s just one example of what I mean when I talk about a “reframe”.

Reframes are to me like spinach was to Popeye: they unlock inner reservoirs of strength and energy to go beyond my past limits, beyond what’s comfortable.

They open my inner pipeline to receive all the ideas, all the right timing, all the right opportunities and all the divine downloads that keep me aligned, on purpose and thriving.

I decided that it’d be fun to share a handful of my top reframes from this year in the next few emails. But when I sat down and started writing them up, it quickly became clear that I had more like 18 reframes to share than 5.

So I’m issuing myself a little Challenge: to share the 18 most powerful reframes I’ve learned in 2018 with you, over the next month or so.

Here’s my #1 Reframe of 2018: The Popeye Principle.

Since I’ve somehow veered into a Popeye theme ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, let’s roll with it.

The lyrics to Popeye’s signature song went like this:

I am what I am and I am what I am that I am
And I got a lotta muscle and I only gots one eye
And I’ll never hurt nobody and I’ll never tell a lie
Top to me bottom and me bottom to me top
That’s the way it is ’til the day that I drop, what am I?
I am what I am.

2018 was a year of deeply practicing Radical Acceptance…of myself, of others and of the way life works.

I know how my body works, I know how my soul and spirit work, and I know how my brain works. And I’m leaning into all of that. Resisting less and less.

Like Popeye, I owned my strengths this year. I noted them. I named them. I harnessed them to great effect.

Like Popeye, I stayed clear on my core values and purpose. I am love. I am a creator. I care about helping people connect with their own Divine Inheritance. That’s my constant goal, always. My intentions are pure and powerful.

And also like Popeye, I know what my less-than-amazing traits and tendencies are, too.

Instead of pushing against or trying to “fix” things about myself, this year, I decided to Radically Accept them. 100%.

My habits of overwork. My tendency to create unnecessary time crunches for myself. My old, unwinding habits of perfectionism.

Instead of pushing against them or overly identifying with them this year, I just owned and accepted them, too.

I lavished my imperfect self with love.

I saw my tendency to live on the clock, got curious about that and gave myself the time and space I needed, over and over again.

I found amusement in my foibles and the old mental stories beneath them, which somehow made them much easier to accept and then, sometimes, release.

I chose to see it as a treasure, instead of a cause for self-criticism, when I discovered new stuff to release.

I allowed myself to set my business, my team, my systems and my life up in ways that work for me.

I noted my issues and named them out loud to the people around me, which empowered everyone involved to self-adjust in wonderful ways.

For instance, I told my boyfriend that I’m kinda like a terrier in that I have a high need for physical activity. If I get it, all is well. If I don’t, I kind of destroy things around me. Like a terrier.

So if I take the time to get an extra workout in on vacation or I need to grab some steps on my treadmill before bed, he gets it. He just says: “time to run the terrier!” And all is well.

I allowed myself to start listening to my inner guidance, always. Even when what it was saying seemed insignificant or weird. I allowed myself to learn that Divine Inner Guidance that feels expansive is always right.

I accepted this, radically, too.

This reframe revealed that I didn’t need fixing or healing, and neither do the people I serve.

We just need to radically accept that life is a process. It is never done and we can’t fail at it.

We just need to radically accept that we are both masterpieces and works in progress. Always.

Life gets fun when we accept that this is what it means to be human.

We aren’t broken. We don’t need fixing. We only need to start shedding the layers of inner roadblocks that have been obscuring our inborn, inner genius.

And it almost never really works to shed those layers through struggle.

We shed them by:

• letting unwanted emotions and patterns rise
• recognizing what they really are
• allowing them to point us to what needs releasing, and
• investigating that with kindness and compassion.

Then, the layers of inner roadblocks and inner criticism start to fall away.

And beneath those layers is who you really are.

Your inner genius, freed. Your light, shining. 100% of your soul, on deck in the world. Your inner critic, on mute.

In the words of Rachel Naomi Remen: “Wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten.”

Radical Acceptance is reframe #1. It helps you remember your wholeness.

And here’s a guidebook for how to do this reframe in your own life: Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, by Tara Brach.

Question: Have you experienced a powerful reframe recently? Hit reply or drop it in the comments.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Brilliant One,

Here’s the link to the AUDIO of today’s Transformation Tuesday Newsletter. Enjoy!

At church, they say that praise precedes the victory.

This is a true story.

And you don’t have to ever have stepped foot inside a church to know it.

You know from experience.

Think about praise in the biggest, most expansive sense of the word.

Praise is an inner posture of perceiving and receiving what is good, what is beautiful, what is admirable or wonderful about a thing. Anything. Maybe lots of things.

To praise means to have thoughts and words of approval, words of affection, words of admiration always on the tip of your tongue. To be a frequent praiser means that appreciating the world around you and the beings in it is your default mode.

When you praise your children or your employees or your lover or your Source or your Uber driver or your dog or your planet, you are connected with the Divine Love that created all worlds—because that Love is all about approval, affection and admiration—and you are letting that Love course through you, flowing it onto whatever target you choose.

And here’s the real deal: when you are in praise mode, it doesn’t really matter if the target of your praise is perfect or flawless or “earning” your praise. It’s more like the people and things around you become an excuse for you to flow your love over and onto.

And you already know what happens when you praise. When you are in the posture of praise, you seem to just find more things to gush about. More wonderful things catch your attention. You notice and hear your own good ideas more easily, and you resist them much less.

You go with the flow more easily.

And then you do end up having more and more victories, small and large. In every area of your life.

You start seeing or reframing the littlest good things that happen as blessings, you praise them, and they snowball into even bigger blessings.

You expand. Literally. When you ramble and revel on and on about the little breaks and blessings that came your way, it just feels good. Physically. Your head lifts. Your chest opens. You feel like the world is safer. And your life starts feeling safer to live, wholeheartedly. Your capacity for life starts to expand.

You start to realize what has probably been one of my Top 5 Reframes of 2018 (full list next week): that every person, every circumstance, everyevent, everything is a golden link in the chain of your good.

Even the ones that seem troublesome. Even the ones that were unwanted. Even the ones you don’t know are doing things that will line up circumstances to benefit you, someday. Whether they know it or not.

When you praise, life gets way more easy and joyful even when shitty stuff happens, because you are patiently awaiting the good that might be at the end of the chain. So time feels less scarce. Your days feel less fraught.

Again, you can more easily go with the flow.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. And just the same, you know what happens when you do the opposite of praising: complaining.

When you spend a lot of your time in complaint, in grievance or participating in this week’s outrage cycle, your body literally takes the posture of constriction and your world starts to feel constricted, too.

Your shoulders slump. Your cortisol spikes. Your brow furrows. Your jaw clenches. You sleep fitfully. Your gut clenches. The world feels less safe.

The struggle feels more and more real, with every moment of complaining you join in on. With every moment, you tune yourself in to see evidence of more and more stuff that seems worth complaining about.

(SIDE NOTE: Behavioral economists call this confirmation bias, the human tendency to find evidence to support our conclusions about the world—regardless of what those conclusions are.)

When you complain, when you judge, and when you bond with others over your grievances, even if they are very highly justified, you flip your own struggle switch on…sometimes before you even start down the path you think will be so hard.

All complaining is judging. You can’t judge and create at the same time, because judging and grievance gunk up your inner pipeline of inspiration and creative power.

So when you are complaining and trying to be or do or have or create or build anything, everything seems super hard.

When you judge yourself or complain about yourself to yourself, this is even more true.

Self-judgment always kickstarts inner struggle because your Divine Inner Guidance never feels that way about you. That’s why self-judgment always feels so terrible: it’s at odds with the direction of Source, Spirit and Universal love.

You start expecting struggle, and the Universe delivers. Or rather, you turn your attention and focus away from the path of creativity and love that is always lighting up before you, and you focus on the hard stuff. The struggle might jive more with what you’ve been raised or learned to expect in life, so it feels more comfortable than praise and looking for help from realms you can’t even see with your physical eyes.

This is because, as I learned from one of my favorite teachers this year, Victoria Castle: We don’t get what we want. We get what we expect.

This all came to mind for me during my time here in Mexico. I’ve extended my stay for a couple of days to avoid the smoke at home. I’ve mostly stayed offline, a deep nervous system reset I try to do a couple of times per year.

A snapshot from birthday visit to Casa Azul, the Mexico City home of Frida Kahlo.

When I got back online yesterday, my email inbox was filled with a glut of messages from personal growth teachers about how there’s still 40+ days worth of hustle time left in 2018, and offering tips for how to have a “hustle-hard/no days off” end of the year.

Listen: it’s true that there’s plenty of time to live, love and create wholeheartedly this year. More importantly, there’s time to invite and receive and begin acting on our Divine Downloads, which allow us to access the leverage of inspired action.

But often, when we start imposing super intense time crunches and arbitrary short deadlines on ourselves, we instantly flip the spiritual struggle switch on. We start thinking we have to do it all ourselves, the hard way, and fast. We start thinking we have to make it happen, versus waiting to receive inspired ideas in Divine timing and acting when they come.

All of this is contrary to the expansion and freedom and joy we were made for. Also, inherent in these sorts of super-short timelines is a self-critical storyline that we haven’t done enough yet this year and won’t earn our right to thrive next year unless we “finish strong”.

That’s why most of us don’t hit “tight” self-imposed deadlines. Or if we do, it’s very un-fun. So not fun that our energy peters out and we change our minds about continuing to write the book or start the business or whatever. It’s kind of a setup.

But there is another way.

I invite you to do this reframe with me: Instead of trying to hustle hard to the end of the year, what can you stop doing during the last 42 days of 2018 that will create space and make your life feel more like freedom, growth and joy?

Can you complain a little less?

Can you judge yourself less often? Or less harshly?

Can you stop obeying the dictates of your Inner Critic and take little concrete steps to do what is calling you regardless of what your Inner Critic says?

Can you stop putting things off? Stop withholding your true thoughts and emotions and practice speaking up? Stop letting perfectionism keep you small?

Can you stop putting yourself under unnecessary time pressures?

Can you stop telling yourself the story that a catastrophe will happen if you don’t do All of the Things right this moment?

Can you give yourself the space and time to try stopping something this year, just for the next few weeks? Even just one thing. And just see what unfolds in that space, when you subtract even a little bit of the struggle.

Give yourself 30 minutes and freely write about what you might like to stop doing for the rest of the year. Don’t censor yourself. Don’t edit it. Misspellings and bullets and sentence fragments are perfectly fine. No one else ever has to see it. Just let it rip.

NOTE: Nothing I’ve written here about complaining should be construed as grounds for judging yourself. If you’re tempted to judge yourself for complaining or grievance, first realize that just seeing this pattern is Step One to releasing it. Then, try on this classic Louise Hay affirmation I’ve used for years—we use it all the time in the School of Upliftment: “I choose to see it as a treasure when I discover something new to release.”

Key word: choose.

Head up + heart out (arriba arriba),

TNN

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

Brilliant One,

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

In the School of Upliftment, we’re focusing on Self-Doubt and Self-Expression for the month of November.

As I was re-reading one of our books for this month, How to Be an Adult, something caught my eye in a whole new way. David Richo writes that “neurotic fear is unintegrated excitement”. unintegrated excitement. He says the only way to integrate it is to engage wholeheartedly with the thing that made you feel the fear in the first place.

(Doubt is just a slightly nicer way to say neurotic fear, meaning fear that is not appropriate to the circumstances—feeling afraid of taking a step in your life that is not dangerous in any reality but in your mind.)

Let me speak for myself, here, and you see whether this resonates for you. I am very good at doing things I’m afraid of. I have developed a great level of comfort with being uncomfortable, and it allows me to spend a lot of time outside my comfort zone. This is a skill I’ve cultivated for years.

But on reading this, I had to have a frank conversation with myself: “Ok, Tara. So, you’re engaging with the scary subjects. Great. No, really. RESPECT. BUT are you engaging wholeheartedly?”

In some areas, the answer is yes. And I’m delighted with that. But in a few areas, the answer is: increasingly. Which means: 75%-heartedly. Or 90%-heartedly. And getting more wholehearted everyday on some subjects. But still holding back a bit on others.

I am a recovering overachiever. So when I hold back, it’s always a signal that on that particular subject, I still have remnants to release of the mythology that glorifies hard hustle, nose-to-grindstone and struggle. These are often areas in which I still have layers to peel back of the false limiting beliefs that say I have to do it all on my own and so I tend to hold back out of fear of depletion.

But I am recovering. Because I know the truth now, and can never unknow it: that depletion is a myth both in this abundant universe full of resources and in my abundant life full of joy, energy and the know-how to reconnect, recalibrate and rely on my Source to light up a path of open doorways and enthusiastic collaborators.

I also now appreciate the beauty of the process. And I know that the process of living, creating, leading, loving and becoming more wholehearted includes some massive growth spurts and some incremental increases in hearted-ness, by degrees.

Some days you jump into the pool. Wholeheartedly. Other days you ease in.

Some days, on some subjects, just a toe is fine for now.

I now trust Inner Guidance to let me know when to go gradually, and when I need to dive in. It’s not even a conversation or a thing I have to make happen. It’s more a feeling: expansion and space open up in my chest, during a thought or a conversation.

And I know: Wholehearted spurt starts now. That’s when I know I’m ready to pull out all the stops. Go full-bore love mode.

Because it felt so good, meditating on this word “wholehearted, I let myself go down an internet rabbit hole on the subject. There are apparently 37 scriptures in the Bible that mention the words “all your heart”. They are mostly preceded by the word “love with”.

Love with your whole heart.

And that reminded of another verse, which says “love banishes fear.”

But that’s not the whole verse,, so I looked it up. “Perfect love banishes fear.” This translates as: “well-formed love banishes fear”.

“Well-formed” love seems a lot like love with your whole heart.

“Well-formed” love seems a lot like love with attention, appreciation, affection, allowing and especially acceptance*.

“Well-formed” love seems like radically accepting love.

Not love that holds back a piece of you heart because you don’t love that part of who you are, or because someone or some cultural lie says you can’t fully earn your worthiness unless and until you <fill in the blank: perform beyond criticism, get a promotion, make more money, buy a house, get married, get skinny, or what-exhausting-ever>.

Not love that withholds a piece of your heart because your mind keeps rehearsing decades-old hurts, grievances or limitations and telling you a story of danger or depletion that is years, decades or generations past its expiration date.

So today, write what comes up for you as you consider these three questions:

• As I just shared my own marination on the concept of wholeheartedness, did anything come to mind that you are currently doing less than wholeheartedly due to doubt?
• What would you need — what would it take — for you to be wholehearted about it?
• What would you need — what would it take — for you to give a single degree more of your heart to this person, endeavor or thing than you do right now?

*These Five A’s are the ingredients of mindful loving as articulated by David Richo in another one of his books, How to Be an Adult in Relationships.

IT’S MY BIRTHDAY…THE GIFT OF YOUR REPLY IS REQUESTED:

1. I’d love to hear what the word “wholehearted” means to you. Hit reply and let me know…or join the conversation on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/transformationaltara/
2. We are wrapping up our survey on how the conscious leaders and born uplifters who get this newsletter are thinking about setting their goals, vision and intentions for 2019.

The survey should only take up to 10 minutes, and we’d love for your thoughts and questions to be included.

If you take the survey, you’ll get a report of the results (I’m already having a great time seeing the different approaches people are taking) and a VIP invitation to a live ‘Envisioning 2019’ session with me in the next few weeks.

Take my survey on New Year’s Vision, Goal and Intention-Setting here: Take Tara’s Survey

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Several of you asked how my time at Wanderlust’s new conference, Wellspring, was.

Short story: It was a flipping DELIGHT.

Yes, it was a work trip, but I came back legitimately BUZZING with all the ideas I had, BRILLIANT people I met and old friendships I rekindled… not to mention the list of partnership projects that are now in the works.

I spend most of my time in Silicon Valley, with lovely people building great, big things.

But it’s rare that I get to be surrounded with people who have made wellbeing their life’s work.

So that was a rush.

Here are a few photos I thought you’d get a kick out of. Scroll down to the end for a lesson on forgiveness from one of my new friends.

TRIP LOG:

I took a (geographically significant) detour on my way from Oakland to Palm Springs, to give a talk at the Cusp Conference in Chicago.

Then, when I got to Palm Springs, I took the first day and just rested.

De-chaosed my nervous system, as it were.

That day, I apparently had a very animated conversation with Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof Executive himself:

Then, I got a little hang time with Sheri “Boss Lady Status” Salata, the former President of Oprah’s OWN network.

Sheri is now running her own show: the This Is Fifty podcast.

During a pit stop, I witnessed some, um, situationally appropriate marketing by Poo-Pourri inside each bathroom stall:

On Day 2, I gave my first talk, to a full room, on How to Bring Your Whole Team into the Flow State.

Then on Day 3, I teamed up with my brilliant homegirl Laura Davis Gross, CMO of Wanderlust, for a joint talk on Marketing to the Transformational Consumer.

Just before leaving, I made one last, new friend — someone I’ve admired from afar: Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber.

I said: “Hi, Sarcastic Lutheran. I’m the Buddhist Black church lady of Silicon Valley.”

She cracked up.

Brilliance ensued.

And that brings us to our LESSON:

As we head into the holidays, you may be hanging with family members you don’t often see. People with whom you have history, for better or for worse.

You may also be starting to recollect the vision and dreams you had for 2018. Or you might just be wondering where the year went. Or maybe you’re starting to metabolize this year, and set vision for next year.

One theme will serve you very very well in the weeks to come, during the holidays and the transition into 2019: Forgiveness.

Any time you want to level up, forgiving yourself and everyone around you unlocks reservoirs of energy and opens up your inner pipeline of love, inspiration and creative power.

In my School of Upliftment, we even practice an old school Louise Hay Daily Declaration on the subject.

It goes like this:

“I forgive everyone around me and release them with love. They are free and I am free.”

Forgiveness is how you move forward in life. But sometimes, it seems like forgiving people who’ve done terrible things or made terrible mistakes would let them off the hook, or deny your truth. Forgiveness can seem way too nice at a time when the world needs fierce, not nice.

Here’s a 2-minute video where my new homegirl Nadia explains why we should forgive assholes.

She says forgiveness has zero to do with nice but, rather, is a weapon of the fierce: the freedom fighters.

May all beings — ALL beings — be happy and free.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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