There’s a teacher I know who says people who want to be millionaires should stop making broke ass decisions and start making decisions that move them closer to making a million dollars instead. Seems right, at least directionally. 

Money’s great. Also directionally. To the extent that money is time is freedom is energy, I’m into it. 

But the biggest million dollar decisions I’ve ever made in my life were the decisions I made to walk away from a job that offered me seven-figures to stay and to turn down several million dollars in venture capital funding for SoulTour.

There was nothing inherently wrong with that job or with taking venture money. 

But my Inner Guidance was not on board, and voiced its opposition LOUDLY. 

My biggest Million Dollar Decisions were to turn down millions and prioritize meaning. 

And as a wonderful side effect…  from these decisions, millions of dollars will ultimately flow.

Because we’re raised from childhood to perform, conform and produce our way to “success”, you might think that success is all about making the right moves, having the right strategies, making the right decisions and having the right connections. 

But I know otherwise. 

I know that what society calls success is laughable in the cosmic context, because you can’t get ahead on a hamster wheel… you can just get more and more convinced that the hamster wheel is the real world.

And I know that the moments that feel the most like success to me are not hamster wheel moments—they’re moments of transcendent connection and creation for the flow of it, for the sake of it.

Standing next to my friend Celena while we push exhilarated toddlers on the swings and revel in the redwoods around us. 

Sitting at the bar with a kale salad, some fries and a glass of champagne, watching the chapters of my next book take shape as they pour straight into me from Spirit and off my fingertips. 

Speaking the empire of my soul to life as I leave voice memos for my team about my (brilliant, if I do say so myself) business ideas.

Unapologetically speaking life into an audience, at a conference or on a Zoom session. 

Shopping with Londyn (aka letting this radiant baby goddess sprinkle love-dust on all the peoples) at the farmer’s market, in Oakland or in Mexico. 

That’s my definition of success: a life in which you get to spend a lot of your time in beautiful paces surrounded by beautiful things doing things you deem meaningful with whomever you choose (and you choose well)… a life where you feel and operate like the powerful creator you are… a life where your thoughts turn into things frequently and flowfully… and where you feel connected and creative all along the way. 

Don’t get it twisted. Even my version of success requires money, sure. 

But it takes even more time, space, clarity about who you are and what you’re about when you get off the hamster wheel and the sovereignty to hustle less, output less and still make let it rain. 

So, to my mind, the real baller decisions aren’t engineered to make you a million dollars. Real talk? That money is make-able, millions and millions of ways. 

So the real flex is not to make a million, it’s to magnetize the money to do what you want, while you are becoming the being you came here to be, fulfilling yourself as you came here to be fulfilled and having millions of big and small, mundane and peak, transcendent, beautiful, meaningful moments all along the way. And of course, as you become the creator you came here to be, you can make your life a magnet to millions, too.

But the millions are the means, not the end. 

And focusing on them AS the end? It’s seriously uninspiring and rarely works. 

Someone literally handed me a check for millions once, but it was the culmination of a long series of events which started when I chose the lesser-paying, more meaningful thing. 

Only 20% of whether you’ll be “successful” in this life has anything to do with the bread-and-butter decisions you make. 

The other 80% is based on your inner wellbeing—your spiritual wellbeing. 

That’s what determines how clear your mind is, how grounded your energy is and how consistent your actions are. That’s what determines how inspired your ideas are. 

That’s what determines how often you dwell in your zone of genius. 

That’s what determines what opportunities you see…and take action on.

That’s what determines whether you can commit and stay the course long enough to let your so-called “failures”, painful patterns, obstacles and disappointments do their work within you. 

When your inner well is full and your spiritual pipeline is expanded to wide open, you could make 490 strategically “wrong” decisions and still thrive. And every single one of those 490 decisions would have gifted you with some tasty morsel of wisdom, clarity, power or maturity along the way. 

Because in this culture’s performative obsession that says you’ve gotta meditate, pray, retreat, send love and light, go vegan and stay woke to check the “spiritual” box, what gets lost is this: TRUST.

One of the most delicious elements of mature, spiritual wellbeing is knowing FOR SURE that help is always on the way, so you needn’t fret, worry or perfectionist the joy out of the journey.

And the cherry on top of TOTAL TRUST that Divine Order and Divine Timing are real is learning how to register, recognize, allow and accept assistance to flow, flow, flow your boat gently down the stream of happiness, success and abundance. 

That’s how you do big things and live big dreams.

You don’t have to do them all alone. 

You can’t even do them all alone.  And that’s just fine, because you won’t need to. 

When you get tired of playing this culture’s bullshit unworthiness games, and you decide there’s just no other option for you but to muster up the courage to let yourself want the fullness of what you really want in life?

The heavens will open and pour out assistance, in heaping, overflowing, bucketloads, upon you. 

That was a word for someone today. So back to those Million Dollar Decisions. 

I made one this morning.

My dearly beloved Ace #1 babysitter walked in the door to cover me during this school holiday so I could run to the doctor’s office. 

And I bought out her overnight sessions… for all of 2022. 

See, remember when I said that if you tend to your spiritual wellbeing first and foremost, the right strategic moves and decisions will become clear to you, even if you take 490 wrong roads before you take the right one? 

Well, I’ve had multiple sources share the three-part message that 1) SO MUCH ASSISTANCE is trying to get to me, and 2) I’m not receiving all of it and 3) that when I do it will exponentially multiply my success, happiness, abundance and alignment. 

Listen. First and foremost: Kudos to me. 

I’m ending 2021 so, so much more resourced than I started it. 

I made an intentional effort to get much more deeply connected. Supported. In these beautiful, reciprocal relationships. And I have.

Yet I still find myself with weeks that go by, feeling like the inspirations are pent up and piling up… weeks where I’ve got this Netflix concept and that TED Tak concept that need to come out, but no time to let ‘em on out. 

But I also made a decision this year that the seemingly mundane things of life, like time with friends and respectful, intentional, attentional parenting matter to me… a lot. 

I decided to limit the baby’s hours in playschool because this is the only time she’ll ever be 4, and the opportunity to swing with her and read the goddess book to her and teach her how to ride a bike is much more fleeting and precious than the opportunities to create books and business thangs.

So I wrote in my journal over and over again: Infinite Spirit show me the way.

Show me the way I can have both ALL OF THAT and ALL OF THIS.

SPIRIT! I demanded. Reveal it! How might it look?

Well, it looks deep. 

It looks like needing hours and days to go deep and create. And it looks like two nights a month off from bath-giving and nighttime-routine-doing. 

And that’s the Million Dollar Decision I made today.

But I hope what’s become obvious by now is that making Million Dollar Decision is not about money.  

It’s about getting out of the way of your own Best Life. And about getting into alignment to what you are creating. 

If you are a person who tends to do things the hard way, it’s usually a decision that unblocks your creative power by allowing more assistance to flow. 

I share this now because I know you’re mentally, spiritually and logistically beginning the offramp from this year into 2022. 

And I know (because you’ve asked) that you’re wondering what I do to leave one year and begin the next. 

I close a last few open loops.

I slow my ass down.

I metabolize what I’m ready to leave behind in 2021 (or in 1993 or whatever).

I sit and get still and get out of FIXING or JUDGING or even DOING TOO MUCH energy.

I start to revel in my wins and bring “all is well” energy into the atmosphere.

And I start imagining. 

Dreaming. 

Giving thanks that the dream now becomes real, in a perfect way. And I refrain from acting, or action planning too much even. 

Instead, I focus my energy on ALIGNING to the possibilities I want to turn into realities. 

I ask myself what’s not in alignment. And I scan the field of possibilities for what alignments I might create.  And as a result, every once in a while, I book a twice-monthly overnight sitter for a year.  Let me close with an invitation. 

I invite you to hold all these things in your big heart as you imagine the reality you want in 2022:

1. Revel in your wins. 
2. Shed what feels bad aka what no longer serves you and don’t feel the need to spend a single moment justifying or explaining why you’re shedding it. 
3. Commit to let things take the time they take. That usually looks like doubling or tripling your timelines and halving or thirding the list of things you want to do next year. Slash away. 
4. Select only goals that seem like they’d feel super GOOD to you as you work toward them, even if you never actually reached them. 
5. Decide to judge how successful you are next year by how much joy you experience every day.
6. Remember that even INACTION is a decision, and can be a very wise one to make.
7. Prioritize alignment over action. 

As you start to make decisions that lay the groundwork for your 2022, remember that your Million Dollar Decisions are all alignment decisions. 

They are decisions to look with frank, loving, self-compassionate self-awareness at all of the elements of your life and see what is not in alignment with the reality you want, then focus on creating space and systems, receiving assistance and resources and cultivating trust. 

They are decisions to dare to take action on inspirations when they come, and not give up in the middle. 

They are unblocking decisions—the ones that take a limiting factor OFF.

They are the decisions that value as precious your time, YOUR LIFE FORCE and your zone of genius… and that replenish all of the above.

Actually, as I think of it… I would call these Self-Actualization Decisions except the acronym SAD is backwards so I’ll keep working on a better name. 

Here are a few other Million Dollar Decisions I’ve made recently:

1. I hired people and chose to work on my relationships with them and our work flows in an ongoing way instead of firing everybody like I used to do.
2. I committed over and over again to my callings, to my Best Author Life, to the vision of Farm by the Beach, to a thriving SoulTour and to the overarching transformational empire I’m here to create, for the benefit of all. 
3. I acquired a 9Round kickboxing fitness franchise that was already profitable and already had a team in place, because one thing I know I’m called to do is to build said empire without swinging a hammer. 
4. I joined a country club near my home to get off the endless waitlists for kids enrichment lessons, to have a warm pool and a hot sauna always at the ready and to have a KIds’ Club where I could take L during meetings.
5. I got a fancy iPhone in addition to my “real” phone to have a dedicated device for social media that doubles as a “Freedom Phone”.
6. I stopped coaching and fired a really wonderful, really lucrative corporate client to clear my precious childcare-free hours for the creating I need to do. 
7. I let go of some longtime, long-cherished business relationships that weren’t in alignment with what I’m creating, no matter how much I love the people involved.
8. I decided to take a sacred pause and invite the A-list to throw their hats in the ring to work with me, instead of immediately replacing the folks from line 7 with the easy choices.
9. I invested tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of time and money in leading-edge treatments for my tendons and my PTSD. 

Hit reply or come to the Spiritual Strategy Facebook Group and let me know what Self-Actualizing Investments you’re making as you get on the 2022 onramp.

Head up + heart out,

PS: Pro Tip for Kindle Readers—you can print these to pdf and email them to your Kindle address, to have them at hand for when you’re in wind-down mode. 

My friend Jonathan just shared how to do this in his 2021 Life Experiment recap. Check it out, here. 

PPS: Click here to read the last 200 (!!!) editions of the SoulTour Newsletter.

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
The Inner Critic Coach™️
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranichollekirke on FB | TW | IG | LI

Tara-Nicholle Nelson · Transformation Tuesday | How to Get off the Struggle Bus

There are two kinds of difficulty we opt into in our lives and our businesses, usually unconsciously: desirable difficulty and unnecessary, undesirable difficulty. 

Desirable difficulty is a concept related to what gamers know as HARD FUN. It’s the difficulty we choose, and delight in during the doing. It’s part of the engrossing, lose-track-of-time, drop in deep and just delight in the joy of DOING state of consciousness we call FLOW. 

The other kind of difficulty is unnecessary, undesirable difficulty.

This kind of difficulty is based in fear.

It’s a tricky little way we subconsciously stop ourselves from doing the game-changing passion projects and life changes that scare us before we even get started.

We make things way harder than they need to be. 

Over time, this kind of difficulty saves us from having to take the risks involved in doing our dreams.

Because you get perceived safety as a payoff, making things harder than they need to be becomes a pattern… an unconscious program you replay and recreate over and over again. 

This kind of difficulty becomes a pattern… an unconscious program we replay and recreate over and over again. 

This sort of difficulty–the totally unnecessary, unavoidable kind—shows up because we’re afraid of the glory of our own True Selves and Big Dreams, and because we’re even more afraid of how exposed and vulnerable we might will feel along the way.

It shows up because we’re afraid of rejection and aloneness, and because we’re afraid to even let ourselves fully want what we really want.

So we make doing our dreams much, much harder than it needs to be, proving our Inner Critic right which, in turn, keeps our books unwritten, our loves unexpressed, our liberated lives unlived and our callings unanswered.

This unnecessary, undesirable, dream-stealing difficulty shows up as difficulty we create by not seeing easier ways to do the tiniest tasks and the masterpiece project alike.

Unnecessary, undesirable difficulty looks like the habit of giving yourself a hard time about where you are right now, which creates turbulence within, saps the energy you need to create your future and makes everything feel SO DAMN HARD.

It shows up as perfectionism, the enemy of inspired ideas, joyful impulses and soul-deep callings.

It shows up as I’ll-do-it-myself syndrome when there is assistance all around us just pacing in the hall, chewing gum, waiting for us to open the door and receive it.

It shows up as choosing careers, relationships and lives that are misaligned with who you really are, which causes even the easiest thing to feel…difficult.

It shows up as a chronic habit giving yourself a hard time about where you are right now, creating a pervasive sense of turbulence within that saps the energy you need to create the future you desire, making literally every step feel SO hard.

It shows up as overthinking. Overplanning. Too much troubleshooting, too little trust. Not seeing how everything is experimental. Trying to hard to avoid unwanted outcomes. Trying too hard to get it all right under your own hard effort and power.

Here’s a House Rule of the Universe for when things start to feel too hard: The struggle FEELS real… but it’s not true.

What is true is that when you hit those moments of total alignment—thoughts, actions and emotions aligned… values, beliefs, identity and desires align… systems, relationships and environments align— nothing feels hard.

It feels like soaring on eagle wings, like when the bird catches a current and doesn’t have to flap at all but still soars higher, banks and turns, and coasts higher still.

It feels like you placed the cosmic order and now the phone starts ringing and the emails start pouring in, and the offers to work with people you love and who love you for wonderful pay just start showing up… and it feels easy.

It feels like all the dogs and all the babies and the lovers and the brilliant besties and the lovely neighbors itching to do sweet little favors for you… they all just show up and show out in wonderful ways.

It feels bustling and joyful. It feels smooth and warm. It feels open and love.

It feels pure and peace.

You feel solid and secure.

But you can’t ride the unnecessary difficulty bus and the pure peace and bustling joy bus at the same time, Brilliant One.

So today I want to offer you my go-to Spiritual Strategies for those seasons when I can feel myself missing the path of least resistance over and over again:

Spiritual Strategy #1 for these times is to take a freaking break and refuse to judge yourself for taking the break. Take a break from the subject. Take a nap. Take a vacation. Take a detour. Take a moment. Take a sacred pause. Put the topic on ice for a minute or a month. Light a candle or go have some fries and champagne. Or do both. Whatever works.

Spiritual Strategy #2 for getting off the struggle bus is to wake up in the morning, meditate and pray or do whatever you do to get your mind still, then write across the top of your journal these words: HOW EASY CAN I LET THIS BE?

Then, keep writing, brain-dump style and see what comes out.

And then, all day throughout the day, when things start feeling struggly, say to Spirit: LET THIS BE EASY.

And ask yourself again: HOW EASY CAN I LET THIS BE?

Spiritual Strategy #3 for un-struggling your life is something I use right after #2, and I call it the Unnecessary Difficulty Detector. I simply scan the struggle subject and note where I’m making things harder than necessary or where I’m doing something I could wait on, or could get help on.

This is where you get to build the muscle of shining the light of self-awareness without judging yourself for what you see.

Ask yourself:

• Where are you making things harder than necessary?
• Where are you adding false prerequisites? 
• Where are you trying to do something without first being well-resourced (or well-rested)?
• Where are you not setting a boundary that would open space and ease? 
• Where could you get some help or stretch your timelines and deadlines out? 
• What are you telling yourself has to happen right now that… just doesn’t?

Once you see it, you can cease and desist the Unnecessary Difficulty-Making, even if that leaves a temporary gap where nothing is happening at all on the topic for a while. 

In my experience, that gap is where Source/Spirit/God/All That Is/Divine Creative Power loves to show up, take the wheel and drive fast. 

Struggle-Removing Spiritual Strategy #4 might surprise you. Take the topic of your angst and just jot down your 10 Favorite Things on the subject. 

Under the spiritual law of attraction, what we focus on, we call in and build momentum around.

When we’re focused on what’s not working and we’re focused on fixing it, it almost always backfires, because what we think we’re fixing, we’re actually attracting more of. 

That’s why our unwanted patterns continue… we keep them activated and relive the same script that got us into the unwanted situation in the first place.

But catch this principle: When we focus on our 10 Favorite Things, we call in more like that, too. 

When you focus on your 10 Favorite Things about a person, or a topic, or your job, or your home, you upgrade the whole atmosphere and more components, more inspirations and more like your 10 Favorite Things begin to flow your way. 

Last week, I was perseverating on something that felt super broken and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. 

So I started to list out—on paper, in bullets and bad grammar—my 10 Favorite Things about the situation and every person involved in it. 

I kid you not, before the day was over, someone I had never even met was texting me, offering me a beautiful solution to the problem. 

Today, I want you to remember that the Divine Order path into your Biggest Dreams is decorated with moments of delectable, desirable difficulty of the flow-sparking sort… 

And I want you to remember that the definition of soul-level calling includes: 

• You’re not ready to do it, and
• You don’t have everything you need to do it, 
• Yet.

And I want to invite you to close your eyes, let yourself imagine yourself living your #1 dream in a graceful, delightful way that is so purely emotional and not at all logistical.

And I want you to fall in love with that image or story or version of yourself.

And then I want you to make a decision with me today. A decision to shift the atmosphere. A decision to let it be easy. A decision to invite Spirit to show you the way.

I want you to pull out your Unnecessary Difficulty Detector and run it along in front of your steps into this future, as you take them.

I want you to let your addiction to hard dissolve, and let Divine Order light up the least-resistance steps instead.

Let yourself be guided. Know that the timing will be longer than you think it should be. Let that go, too. Divine needs that time to line it all up for you. Stand down. Let Spirit work.

Watch for signals and wait for inspiration to act. And stay out of fixing energy. Look for your favorite things.

Look for the moments that feel bustling and joyful… smooth and warm… open and love.

When you feel pure and peace and solid and secure, whisper to Source: MORE, PLEASE.

And let it find you.

Head up + heart out,

PS: Want more like this? Become a SoulTour subscriber for just $11 a month.

PPS: Click here to read the last 200 (!!!) editions of the SoulTour Newsletter.

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
The Inner Critic Coach™️
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranichollekirke on FB | TW | IG | LI

Tara-Nicholle Nelson · Transformation Tuesday | The best growth book I read this year📙

A student-friend of mine is at a crossroads in her life. 

She recently turned 40. 

She has a great job and a great family, but has become aware that something’s missing. 

There’s a visionary dream that she’s never quite given herself full permission to pursue…until now. 

She’s in the process of taking the first few steps out of her shadow life and into her unlived life. 

And she’s hitting all the neurobiological, psychological, emotional and spiritual milestones I’ve come to know and love along the journey from self-doubt and self-sabotage to radical self-liberation and self-actualization. 

First, she hit the fear milestone… that electric fence around your current life that shocks you back into smallness and complacency anytime you try to step out. 

And I told her: The fear feels real but it’s not true. And it’s never to be obeyed. It’s just a program. And the first step to dissolving the program is seeing the program. 

In other words, you’re doing it right.

Then she hit the “untethering” milestone. The wondering of what you do really want to do with this one wild and precious life once you start to come out from under the influence of the Inner Critic and the lies of culture. The feeling of being alone and without a rudder as you begin to realize the values everyone around you is using to make their Big Life Decisions mean little or nothing to you, and it dawns on you that there’s no turning back and from here on out, you’ll have to make sovereign decisions based on what FEELS right to you.

And I coached her: The untethering is a turnaway from external guidance to internal. When you hit that, it means you’re doing it right. What you’re doing is slowly turning away from the external validation you’ve been getting on the hamster wheel and learning to navigate your life by your Inner Guidance instead.

There’s no blueprint for that life. You’ve got to build the spiritual muscle of getting comfortable doing the fearless, disorienting, experimental thing. 

So that’s disorienting. If you feel like some cosmic hand picked you up off your life roadmap and set you back down somewhere x… you’re doing it right. 

The other day she asked me if I had a book recommendation for this season of her life, and I thought I’d share my answer with you, because this book is the single best business, life, personal growth and spiritual book I read this year (and I read a lot). 

This book was published in 1998.

It is not and has never been a bestseller. 

And the title might surprise you… it’s called: You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Start and Succeed in a Farming Enterprise, by Joel Salatin. 

Now, my friend doesn’t want to be a farmer. I (not-so-secretly) do. 

But I still want her (and you!) to read this book, because it’s advice is simple, fresh, aligned with my Spiritual Strategy methods, and surprisingly relevant to any dream, desire, vision or goal you might have in your heart.

Salatin gives advice like: 

1. Be a spiritual contrarian. This book is hopeful and optimistic about what is possible from the point of view of a guy who just flat out wanted to start a farm at a time where farms are supposed to be bad business… and then did it, successfully. He starts with how to develop your vision for your farm (and life), and shares his contrarian point of view about how the farming industry’s troubles create massive opportunities for those who choose to dive in but do things a contrarian kind of way. 

In many ways, this is a book about how to prioritize your dreams over your fears. 

2. Stop trying to copy what someone else is doing and work from first principles instead. You Can Farm shares the author’s own stories about being a total weirdo and figuring out how to create a profitable farm from scratch, going back to the basics of profitable business, his own inspired ideas and values about farming in a way that is beneficial to all.

He urges baby farmers to stop comparing themselves to other farms, taking advice from banker or salespeople or doing things the way they’ve always been done. In fact, he spends more time helping the reader create confidence, vision and alignment with their loved ones than he even spends on the nuts-and-bolts of farming.

3. “Big Dream” success stories. I find that in any crowd of successful people, talk of dreams and goals almost immediately veers into troubleshooting what could go wrong (in an effort to avoid all unwanted outcomes), bonding over scarcity and fondling fear and struggle.

When you’re about to go after a visionary goal, it helps to stop talking to pessimists and immerse yourself in successful Big Dream energy like the inspiring success stories in You Can Farm. 

4. No false prerequisites. Salatin says if you want to be a farmer, the first step is NOT to go out and buy farmland. The FIRST step is to start growing something—anything—on whatever patch of dirt you have access to now… even if you live in an apartment and have nothing but a window box and some pots. That’s how you start learning what you need to learn to enlarge your territory over time.

He talks about many profitable farms that run on land rented from the people who bought the farms and don’t know what to do with the land. 

He also flips conventional wisdom on its head when he says the best farmland is very close to or IN a high-population area, not remote or rural. Reading his thoughts about that inspired me to go way bigger with my food garden on the quarter-acre I have right in the middle of the City of Oakland, vs. waiting until I acquire my Farm by the Beach. 

Let the walls of delay now crumble away, as the affirmation goes. 

5. Recipes for failure. Too big a mortgage. Too much money in single-use machines. Too much forgetting that the farm is a business. Too much working on things that don’t profit the farm, and not enough energy to grow the farm. Too little alignment between family members. Too little philosophical foundation in “why” you’re doing what you’re doing. 

Salatin’s list of “recipes for failure” is written in farm-speak, but each and every line item has a direct parallel for any kind of dream, goal or creative endeavor you may have in mind. 

6. Good enough is good enough. Part of how You Can Farm snaps you out of the paralysis of analysis is by lowering the perfectionist bar. He keeps you from majoring in the minors. He talks about farmers who spend a lot of time studying how to do things, versus his own value system of: do it now, figure it out as you go and just make it good enough. 

He reminds you that every step is an experiment, that patience is the name of the farming game, and that the joy is in the journey (not just the outcomes). 

7. Kill sacred cows to stay super flexible. The book goes IN on the American fixation with owning homes and things. He shares how large real estate mortgages and big, 100-year buildings create more bondage than freedom for the farmer, their children and their children’s children. 
His advice is to rent the land if you need to! And whatever you do, don’t mortgage it so much you have to work a job that keeps you from farming in order to pay the bill. 

Oh and don’t buy or build buildings for uses you’re not even sure you’ll want to do 10 years down the road. 

All of this is wise advice for any creator creating anything. Start with the minimum viable version. See what happens. Iterate and optimize. Just take a baby step. Trust that small things grow. 

Stay flexible for your future.

And… whatever you hold sacred? Constantly examine and reconsider whether it matters at all. 

Chances are good that You Can Farm is not about whatever your personal business or life goal is about. But that’s precisely the power of it. It’s not a self-help book, and it’s not in the normal jargon of self-help speak. 

Written for farmers, not readers or executives, the advice it gives is simple and inspiring, like this snippet from Chapter 1: 

“Write down your dreams. Write them down often. Speak of them to your relatives and friends. Seek out people who share those dreams; ignore those who do not. Don’t spend time with naysayers. As your vision becomes your passion, dreams will give place to reality. My prayer is that together we can help this happen for you.”

Here’s to confidence, vision and the easeful, joyful, Divinely assisted creation of whatever your personal “farm” may be. 

Head up + heart out,

PS: Want more like this? Become a SoulTour subscriber for just $11 a month.

PPS: Click here to read the last 200 (!!!) editions of the SoulTour Newsletter.

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
The Inner Critic Coach™️
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

Listen. 

I dwell in some wild realms these days. 

I’ve been to the other side of the game, as the good Reverend Doctor Erykah Badu said, FNAME. Or the other side of the matrix. Both, actually. 

And of course, as always, I’ll tell you all about it.

But I don’t want to wait until the next book comes out or the next program launches to share some of the rapidly, radically liberating, soul-at-ease-putting, expansively transformational moments of clarity I’ve had. 

So I’m just going to get a little cosmic here for a minute, then I’ll bring some strategy up in here. 

Here’s the basis: 

Everything in this Universe is possible, Brilliant One.

There are literally INFINITE possibilities for how your life might play out, for better or for worse. 

I vote for better. 

It’s not binary, like people think. It’s not like, do you “make it” before you croak… or not?

There are trillions of scenarios and life plotlines along which your highest good could come to pass. 

Only a couple of the “highest good” scenarios are hard effort scenarios. 

The other trillions are “grace” scenarios. Avalanches of abundance scenarios. You-in-the-right-place-at-the-perfect time scenarios. Help-shows-up-in-surprising-and-wonderful-ways scenarios. 

What flips any possibility into a likelihood, into a probability into a tangible reality is focused attention, practiced thought, beliefs and expectations. 

These things all emanate conscious and unconscious patterns of energy you broadcast out into the world and action you take or do not take. 

If you are investing most of your spiritual energy and brainpower retracing traumatized expectations in an effort to avoid bad things happening to you, thinking up all the ways something could go wrong in an effort to achieve or perform your way out of unwanted possibilities, then you are unknowingly strengthening the possibility that the unwanted will recur. 

The legacy of past disappointments, failures and traumas—whether they happened in your lifetime or in your ancestral line—is a nightmare of intrusive, negative storytelling by your own neurobiology, your mind and your spirit—that weaves the limited, unwanted or stressful possibilities into your present and your future over and over again. Your demoralized, disappointed, traumatized expectations become what you recreate over and over again, without even knowing you’re doing it. 

That’s why I say – hey – you can have a high self-esteem and high self-love even, and still have a harsh, hindering Inner Critic.

Because your Inner Critic isn’t just a voice that’s negative about you… it’s negative and critical about the world, about what’s possible in it, about your customers, your employees, your loved ones, the dating prospects.

If you’ve had trauma in your history, or if you have a strong ancestral programming that conditioned you to have a limited view of what’s possible in the world, you may not be able to just talk therapy your way out of this, or even journal or insight your way out of it. 

You have to work to face it and embrace it, mourn it and grieve it, and integrate it into your understanding of the world.

You have to get it out of your body, with yoga or breathing or other somatic medicine. 

And you have to reset your thought habits, first seeing your shadow thoughts and doing the shadow work. 

You can’t just bypass your shadows, y’all. Whatever remains in there remains very, VERY active in your life and is magnetizing in the people and things that keep your self-limiting, self-sabotage patterns in place. 

(And side note: Dr. Jung said that 90% of what’s in your shadow is golden, so that’s the VERY bright side of doing your shadow work, like we do in The Inner Critic Cure. You get into your shadows and you get your unique spirit and vitality back in return.)

And as you do the shadow work, you also have to do the daily rituals and practices involved in telling new stories and thinking new thoughts and creating new momentum. That’s what we do in my Life and Self Mastery program.

So listen. This culture says that anticipating all the bad ways things COULD play out is intelligent. Learning. Science. Some would even call it wisdom or experience. 

But the truth is that the only way you can get to real, deep wisdom is by taking risks and making mistakes and being willing to take another risk and make more mistakes.

That’s why the growth mindset people say MISTAKES ARE HOW YOUR BRAIN GROWS. (Wanna give your children a golden gift? Teach them this saying now.)

Putting your mighty brainpower to work anticipating all the bad ways things could play out doesn’t minimize the likelihood bad things will happen. 

It actually INCREASES the likelihood that you’ll unconsciously recreate the old shit you don’t want to repeat.

But I want you to catch this principle: Your Inner Critic loves to be proven right, even if that means you stay living a smaller, sadder, more limited life than you came here to live. 

So if you have a relational template with your own dreams of “unfulfillment” or “delay” or “unfruition”, and you DON’T actually do your dreams, your Inner Critic will issue you a hit of “see I was right!” juice that feels validating, feels like certainty and feels like relative safety within that certainty. 

Your traumatized brain or your disappointed Inner Child will continue to think low-expectation thoughts as a way to protect you from future disappointment, not really knowing or caring that by virtue of THINKING those thoughts, it makes your highest-good possibilities way, way less possible than they really are.

The solve ain’t simple OR easy, but it is available to you.

And I promise, it’ll only take you like 40 or 50 years to complete it. 😀 

You have to do the shadow work, psychologically.

You have to do the somatic work to train your brain and your breath out of hypervigilance, downregulating your nervous system and recalibrating it over and over again. 

And you have to do the thought rewiring—the declarations and affirmations, the revelry in what is beautiful and abundant and good, taking new risks and making new neurons fire together and wire together, using Spiritual Strategies like limiting the number of times you let yourself tell your traumatized version of a story—you have to learn and practice the rituals and strategies to reclaim your brain, your mind and your soul.

These practices upgrade your understanding of what’s REALLY possible in the world and what’s really possible FOR YOU.

These practices give you a process through which to find new meaning and insight that gives you the courage to stop avoiding and fearing your old traumas and dramas, and instead integrates them into new understanding, new strength, new powers and new wisdom.

These practices upgrade your expectations by helping you build new wiring in your brain, new thought habits in your mind and new awakenings in your spirit. 

They help you build the muscle of plucking from the (cue ethereal 528 hertz music here) quantum field of the infinite things that are possible… the things that are actually in your highest good instead of continuing to reconstellate the different-faces-different-faces-same-old-pattern of limited possibilities..

With practice becoming aware of when you’re telling the traumatized expectation story…

With practice downregulating your vigilant nervous system…

With practice reveling in your wins and looking for the pronoia moments in life… 

With practice upgrading your beliefs and expectations…

Your power as a player of the creation game begins to come more and more fully online.

You’ll start to dwell more in the zone of your Big Dreams than your Big Fears.

You’ll start to flip your highest good possibilities from intangible possibility energy into probability, then into likelihood, then into tangible reality.

And you’ll start to do this more and more frequently, with more and more speed and with less and less effort.

The Big Dream Deferred Energy you might have lived under for as long as you can remember will start to dissolve and dissipate. 

The old stories you used to tell about yourself TO yourself will begin to feel ill-fitting and chafe.

And your Big Self—the True, Sacred Self you came here to be—will emerge.

And when that happens? Don’t mind me… I’ll just be sitting back here feeling VERY validated about all the times I declared over every Being who reads my newsletter that “the Divine Genius within you is now released in wonderful ways.”

All is very well with you. 

I have it on the highest authority, Brilliant One.

So, here’s a question for reflection, journaling and conversation with your revelry buddies: 

Having read this, what NOW feels possible to you?

Hit reply and let me know.

Head up + heart out,

PS: Want more like this? Become a SoulTour subscriber for just $11 a month.

PPS: Click here to read the last 200 (!!!) editions of the SoulTour Newsletter.

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
The Inner Critic Coach™️
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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Today, I’m here to remind you that no matter how much you feel like you have to perform, conform, produce or achieve in the world…
 
You have a True Self. 

It is sacred and it is golden.

And you have a purpose. 

Your purpose is not necessarily a big-ass one-and-done thing you can do and then take a nap or just… die. 

Your purpose is a verb. A thing you do over and over again, for your whole lifetime.

It’s something you’ve probably been doing—and doing well—since childhood. 

Something that actualizes your inner genius and lights you up, too.

And the only way to discover and align to your purpose is to fulfill your sacred contracts—a long list of things you came here to be, do, have, learn or create in this lifetime… unique spirit and personality that came here to impact the world. 

Lately, I’ve  been approached by a number of smart, successful people who know they aren’t living their Best Lives… and they don’t even know what to do about that, because they’re not even clear on what their highest purpose is. 

Some people, on some days, medicate the pain away. Numbing with consumption: food, alcohol, buying and buying and buying. Binge watching. Narcotizing.

And that’s okay… until it’s not. 

But some people, on some days, decide to get their sh!t together, sit down and wrack their brains trying to figure stuff out. 

They might even hire a coach or a therapist. 

They might even take a personality assessment or start writing a business plan. 

But they feel stymied, stuck and blocked—all that inner gold pent up and piling up within— by their unclarity of what they REALLY want to do.

Here’s the epiphany: 

You will never figure out the meaningful, joyful vision for what’s next in your life sitting in a room, wracking your brain. 

To get clear on what’s next for you, you have to start taking baby steps and bigger leaps.

You have to let everything be an experiment, and stop trying to get it all right or avoid unwanted consequences. 

And then let the natural next steps continue to light up. Let Divine Order and Timing lead the way. 

I know it’s tempting to think you can just sit in a room and put out a meticulous, can’t fail action plan in place before you take Step One.

People hire me to help them create a What’s Next roadmap all the time. 

But very often, that roadmap ends up saying that What’s Next needs to be a season of exploration and experimentation. 

Anything else defies the way life really works. And defies the way Divine Order and Divine Timing unfold, which is always perfect and in your favor. 

Trying to come up with super clear and tightly laid action plans does you the disservice of making total and complete clarity into a false prerequisite for your own joy. 

The truth is that commitment to discovering and living a highly-aligned life IS clarity.

Commitment IS clarity. 

Commitment to hear your Inner Guidance and head it.

Commitment to your own wholeness and joy. 

Commitment to let the Divine Genius within you be RELEASED without further ado. 

Commitment to let shackles on/shackles off be your decision rule on everything from which school your kids go to, to what city you live in, to who you choose as life partner, to what career or business you create.

When you commit to these things, you set your Inner Guidance system GPS to these things: 

Wholeness.

Joy.

Liberation. 

Your Genius.

Expansion. 

She who desires these things and commits to these things, seeks out these things… and finds them. 

If you want to get clear on what’s next for your life, there’s really nothing you need to be figuring out.

If you want to engineer a real breakthrough into your watershed season—think less and feel more. 

Think less and take more action TO EXPLORE your inspired ideas, impulses and instincts, when they speak.

Set down the notion that you have to think your ideas all the way through and set yourself up to successfully execute them before you can take a single step in that direction. 

The truth is that Divine Timing may slow you down so other circumstances in the world can ripen in readiness for you.

The truth is that Divine Order might take you one step toward one idea just so that you can build a skill, meet a person or learn a thing that will take you joyfully and rapidly into a destiny that hasn’t even occurred to you yet.

And it won’t occur to you until you take the step. 

That’s why we talk about letting the steps light up before you. 

So I invite you to set down the notion of action planning and 5-year-planning and productivity and “thinking it through”.

And feel your way into what FEELS like the natural next step. Then take it. 

What feels exciting, expansive, yes a little bit scary and also like a liberating gift you would give yourself? Do that. 

What feels binding, shrinking, constricting? Don’t do that. 

I know it’s tempting to want to sit in a room and sort yourself out before you make any changes to your life or start investing your time or money in a course of action. 

But the truth is, literally 100% of smart, successful people already have a solid-enough idea of what you would LOVE to do with your life to take some step in the direction of getting even clearer.

You already know.

You may have been overruling it and overriding it.

You might have some inner conflicts or roadblocks blocking it. 


But you know. 

You have an inkling. 

I know you do. 

It might be the thing you won’t even let yourself utter because it breaks your brain a little bit.

It’s probably related to the thing that sparks the most fear in your heart, when you think about doing it. 

That’s always a good bread crumb to what you’re here to do.

Tell me what you’re afraid to do, and I’ll tell you what you would LOVE to do. 

Then, just take a tiny, natural next step.

If it’s both terrifying and energizing when you think about it, that’s probably the right step for you to take.  

And feel how that feels. See what you learn. Watch what happens next, as your step sends out sparks to other people, opportunities and principalities that YOU’RE READY. 

That’s how you invite more and more clarity. 

That said: Over the years, I have guided thousands of people into cultivating clarity, removing inner roadblocks, setting powerful intentions and taking powerful action to do their dreams. 

Back in the day, I created the 10 Day Writing Challenge to gently reset your nervous system and guide you into the rituals of clear-minded, intentional self-transformation. 

Today, I’m honored to announce that I’m bringing the 10DWC back to help you start 2022 off with clarity and momentum. 

This time the theme will be WHAT’S NEXT, with writing prompts that guide you into a clear vision, intention and inspired roadmap for 2022.

BUT unlike my previous Writing Challenges… this one will NOT be open to the public. 

My upcoming 10 Day Writing Challenge will be an EXCLUSIVE program for existing SoulTour students and New SoulTour Subscribers!

If you’d like my guidance to: 

• Get grounded, centered and focused
• Get clear on what you really want next for your life
• Get out of your own way
• Discover your own Zone of Genius
• Start taking inspired action against a backdrop of abundance and ease
• Learn a few Spiritual Strategies 
• And start Doing Your Dream…

Become a SoulTour Subscriber today, for just $11 a month.* 

Let the coming year be a year of clarity and purpose… let’s take this SoulTour together.
Head up + heart out,

*Includes full VIP access to the upcoming 10 Day Writing Challenge. 

P.S: Click here to read the last 198 (!!!) editions of the SoulTour Newsletter.

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
The Inner Critic Coach™️
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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

I’ve had an affirmation practice for the better part of 20 years. It’s one of the ritual practices that serves me the best when I travel. 

Years ago, when I started traveling extensively, I decided I would not be a fussy traveler. I would take what I needed and assume that anything I forgot would likely be available for sale wherever I went, given how many billions of humans don’t live where I live and seem to make it through.  I suspended my family’s germophobia.

I suspended the need to get it right, to plan it right or to even plan my trips out too much. I decided if I found someplace I loved, I’d just keep coming back until I had my fill, so there was no need to be persnickety about trying to fit all the sights in. 

Some of my Daily Declarations serve me particularly well when I travel, like: 

I am in love with everyone and everyone is in love with me. (You might think that’s crazy, but it basically builds a force field around you.)

And….

Everything is always working out for me. 

And…

I give thanks for the Divinely planned, Divinely financed, Divinely protected journey and look ahead with wonder for the traveling mercies that befall me. 

So… during the pandemic, Londyn and I took her first international trip, to Mexico. We kept it short by design, and I had a bunch of business and personal tasks to take care of throughout the timeline. 

Our first flight was from San Francisco to Baja California Sur. Three hours seemed easy-peasy lemon squeezy, and I even had a travel nanny along to help. 

So we piled into our row and kept Londyn entertained with books and magnets and such the whole way along. 

She was happy the whole time… until the pressure change of the landing. She started whining, then crying, then pulled off her mask and refused to put it back on. We were just a few moments from landing, so it seemed like it’d be over soon. 

And then it happened. A woman sitting in front of us, who’d perhaps had a few too many of those tiny bottles of vodka for a 3 hour flight (I don’t judge), turned around, red in the face and screamed at Londyn WE DON’T WANT TO WEAR OUR MASKS EITHER!!!

My eye started to twitch, my very Oaklandish alter-ego came out and immediately leaned my body over between the woman’s face and Londyn and said: “Seriously? HEY. SHE’S THREE. I’mma need you to turn back around.”

And then something even better happened. 

The nanny, who’d been a bit anxious herself, swooped in and corrected the woman: “Ma’am! You are NOT allowed to speak to this child – this PERSON – again. Do you understand?”

The woman’s husband pulled her sleeve and hissed something at her. 

Another passenger across the aisle said “Oh, uh-huh. That’s a BABY. You can’t talk to her like that.”

The two women behind me tapped my seat and said “You guys are doing EXCELLENT. We’ve been watching you the whole time. Don’t listen to that.”

(Some of y’all might be tripping that I got angry with this woman. This culture wants some women to never be angry, and wants others to be kind of holding in a pent-up anger at chronic injustice and unhealed trauma. That shows up as gastric distress, connective tissue problems, heart disease… I’m not kidding. So I’m not talking about that kind of anger. But ANGER can be a very, very righteous emotion. It gives you the energy and the information to do exactly what needs doing in a moment. So when it comes, let it do its work. Even Jesus flipped a few tables, and in all the other world religions there’s a face of God that is incredibly destructive and violent at clearing out stuff when it ain’t right. That’s all I’m saying.)

Okay, but back to the plane. 

Soon we were taxiing to the terminal, and gathering our materials, but the woman, chastened, never said another word until we saw her in the restroom, where she sheepishly said: “You guys can go ahead of me.”

But that’s not the end of this story.

Days later, when we’d left Baja for the Yucatan, Londyn asked me and the nanny: REMEMBER WHEN THAT LADY ON THE PLANE TRIED TO BOSS ME?

Nanny looked sad and stricken at the thought that Londyn would be forever damaged by this memory. 

I said, I DO REMEMBER! 

And then I asked Londyn: Do you remember what happened next? 

Londyn said YES! as her eyes lit up and the Nanny looked confused. 

She said, excitedly: EVERYBODY ON THE PLANE YELLED AT HER!! YOU yelled at her, Lily Rose (the Nanny) yelled at her! Then she stopped trying to boss me! 

And I replied: That did happen. And I want to make sure you know that you don’t have to let big people boss you. If you feel sad or mad, you get to cry and you get to feel that. Big people don’t get to tell you what to do just because they’re big, and you don’t have to follow instructions of people you don’t know. 

She smiled contentedly and grabbed my hand. We went on about her day. After her bedtime that night, the Nanny knocked on my door to check in about the incident. 

She was still shaken that Londyn remembered the incident, and wanted to know how I was feeling about it. 

She was worried that Londyn would always remember her first plane trip as the day this tipsy lady screamed at her. But I had a different take. 

“Actually, it seems like what she remembers is that everyone had her back. I did. You did. Strangers did. It was kind of like our declaration – everything worked out for her. Everyone stood up for her, even the tipsy lady’s own husband. That’s what she remembers.”

She remembers that everything worked out for her, just like in the affirmation. 

That she was in love with (mostly) everyone and everyone (who mattered) was in love with her. 

I remembered that we were protected, provided for and safe during every moment of that journey. 

The inspirations, ideas and whole life plot twists we had on that trip? They were like miracles following miracles and wonders that never ceased. 

That’s kind of how things go when you know for a FACT that you’re one of the most blessed beings that ever lived. Even when things go quote-unquote wrong, you know it’s just a setup for some blessing to chase you down. 

We went over the incident with Londyn a couple more times like that, and I’m certain that’s what she remembers. How everyone had her back, more than anything else. 

And I love that. Because I love for kids to know that they are real and that they matter. I love for them to know that the grownups who have a sacred contract to protect them have their back and are not embarrassed by their self-expression, but will protect their right to it. 

Kids need to know that they will not earn more love or approval from their parents by squelching their voice or shutting up. And they need to know that they won’t lose love or affection from their parents by being loud or showing their emotions. 

You might be wondering why I’m sharing this story with you now.  Is it a lesson about parenting? Mmmm, I guess so… maybe 20%. 

But the real principle I want you to catch here is this: that your own Inner Child needs you to stand up for her, too. 

Your Wise Inner Child is the intelligence within you that cries out and kicks the seat when your life is veering into a territory that is misaligned from your own highest good. Your Wise Inner Child sees you still stuck in that shadow job and kicks the seat. Your Wise Inner Child witnesses your self-silencing habit stopping you from speaking up, saying what you mean and asking for what you need … and howls. 

The cries of your Wise Inner Child might look like a chronic feeling of inner conflict. It might look like a struggle switch within that stops you from doing the things you think you want to do. It might look like overeating or narcotizing with wine, chips 

And very often, the “tipsy lady” that tries you shut your Wise Inner Child up… is your own Inner Critic. 

Your own Inner Critic will say, no… all marriages feel like this, do you want to end up alone? 

Your own Inner Critic will shush your Wise Inner Child, telling you to stay put at that job, stay small, stay under the radar to stay safe.

Your own Inner Critic will tell you you don’t have time to write or create, even though you spend hours a week surfing Facebook or meta or whatever that nonsense is trying to be. 

Your Inner Critic will say WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE when you even think about acting on your inspired idea, causing you to set the same old New Year’s goals you really don’t care about (and thus, never actually follow through on) like losing 20 pounds or finally doing your estate planning. 

If you’ve ever heard me talk about the process of healing and transforming your Inner Critic thought habits, you know that the second step involves reparenting yourself. 

You get to be the parent to your Wise Inner Child that I got to be to Londyn that day.

You get to stand up for your Wise Inner Child… to your harsh Inner Critic.

You get to say NO MORE.

No more self-silencing.

No more tolerating disharmony and dysfunction. 

No more waiting to be heard or to experience joy until after the kids grow up, after the husband retires, after the school year is out, after the medical treatment is done. 

You get to ensure that your Wise Inner Child has the ability to fully express her truths, observations and emotions. 

And your Wise Inner Child will do what Londyn did. 

She’ll feel heard. 

She’ll stop howling. 

She’ll get on board, even if the path into your Best Life is slow and gradual, like most paths are. 

She’ll feel like you’re on the same team.

What has felt like inner conflict for so long will begin to feel like all the intelligences within you are allies, teaming up for your benefit. 

And you’ll get all the energy that was going into the inner struggle back. It won’t be long before you’ll feel more energized and more available to yourself and the things that matter to you. 

Try listening to your own Wise Inner Child—to it’s “shackles on/shackles off” messages, or the feelings of contraction or expansion, or the inspirations or nudges to SPEAK UP AND SAY SOMETHING in the moment—just try it.

Then, hit reply to this email and let me know how you feel.

Head up + heart out,

PS: If you’re wondering HOW to listen to your Wise Inner Child, that’s exactly what I teach in the Actualization and Alignment modules of The Inner Critic Cure.

Feel free to join me there: The Inner Critic Cure

But journaling is also a good place to start. 😉 Write a question you have for your Wise Inner Child at the top of a journal page. Then turn off your Inner Censor and just start brain dumping. If you let it rip, by page 2 or 3, your Wise Inner Child is usually present and ready to speak.

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
The Inner Critic Coach™️
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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Quiet as it’s kept, “‘till death do us part” will jack your life up. 

My Dad is an entrepreneur in his spirit. He’s always got a business idea, and most of them are good. Some are great. But he doesn’t always read the room when he pitches these ideas. Here’s what I mean. 

Last time I took someone home to meet my Dad, he was flush with the exhilaration of a new concept. 

“Ok – here’s the idea,” he said. “What if marriages were 5 years long, and just expired every 5 years, unless the people decided to renew them.” Bam. 

It was a quintessential Randy moment. And it wasn’t really a business idea. While I wished he maybe hadn’t brought that up within 10 minutes of meeting my then-beau, he wasn’t exactly… wrong. 

I was reminded of this moment over the weekend, when an old friend started to share how much she was still struggling with her divorce a decade ago. The story of her divorce had become warped into a self-shaming monster that was dwelling in her mind. She said she was “scarred for life.” 

At that the coach in me rose up and I had to stop her. I had to interrupt. “I won’t even let you be scarred for life. We have to get you a new story about these events. I know you’ve been in therapy, I know you’ve grieved and mourned. And I know it doesn’t feel like it, but EVERYTHING is heal-able. All trauma. Everything. It’s time.”

“Till death do us part” is a toxic remnant from a toxic time when a toxic power structure purported to be speaking for God, this was before we knew that the voice of God speaks to us, through us and within us all day everyday, in the form of our intuition, inner guidance, inner wisdom, inner intelligence, shackles on/shackles off feelings.

The problem is that ‘shackles on’ can also indicate trauma that’s still in your system, and shackles on can feel like home, so if we had a parent or caretaker who was withholding, distant, abusive, narcissistic, shaming, judging, violating of our boundaries in a chronic way… that energy will feel like home to us as adults, and we’ll think that’s love.

My teacher Dave Richo once told me that if you ever meet eyes with someone across the room, and you feel drawn to each other like in the movies… you should hand them your therapists card.

So if you’re still at the place in your journey where your early life trauma is active in your neurobiology, your psychology, your brain-mind-soul-or-body, and that’s when you lock eyes with someone across the room, the magnet you have to each other is a sacred curriculum of learning… not something you are supposed to be saddled with and burdened by for the rest of your wild and precious life.

And when you learn what you need to learn in that magnet, it’ll feel like the poles on that magnet reverse. They will literally repel. You’re not supposed to overrule and override that repulsion in favor of external approval or some vow you took spiritual light years ago. 

Part of what you’re in relationships to learn is how to hear and heed your inner guidance and live in ever-increasing alignment and joy as you learn to follow the sacred, God-given intelligence that is wired into your spirit, that is in your cells.

I coached a wise, wonderful woman the other day who has spent the last 9 years out here second guessing their own intuition and telling a story of brokenness and “sin” where what they really did was exhibit the courage to make a very necessary ending.

For about 50 years, my grandmother lived with the mental narrative of religion-based self-judgment for getting a (very warranted) divorce that probably changed the course of many lives for the better.

But you know what, Brilliant One? We know better now. 

Because now we know that the idea that ‘till death do us part’ is even desirable is a lie of a culture that promotes bondage, constriction and repression. 

And we know that the origins of the word SIN is the concept of misalignment from the Divine, Genius plan for our lives. Many, many necessary endings actually help resolve painful and intensifying misalignments, creating space for wholeness, alignment, free-and-clear relationships, beautiful boundaries, real, respectful love that you can feel in your nervous system… and joy.

“Till death do us part” is wildly incongruous with the House Rules of the Universe that say everything changes… there’s a season for everything… everything is born and everything ends and that is both normal and natural… and the House Rules of the Universe favors those who can resolve disharmonies and misalignments in obedience to their Wise Inner Being, not the external validation or rules of some very flawed institution.

I’m not saying every relationship must end. But I am saying the most thriving love relationships, partnerships and marriages have seasons where some dynamics begin and end, and the most thriving humans are those who can engage wholeheartedly in a partnership through the lens of a commitment to promote each other’s thriving—knowing that will look different in different seasons, and knowing that some seasons of growth are painful— vs. each others bondage to some construct even if or when the disharmonies and misalignments grow grave.

I went on a first date the other day, and the guy asked me if I’ll ever get married again. I said, maybe so… and I already know exactly what our vows will be.

His eyebrow rose. 

I said… I got it from Abraham-Hicks and it goes like this:

“I really like you. Let’s see how this goes.” 

Let’s see how this alignment adventure goes.

Let’s see how we can play the game of invoking and activating Divine Power and Grace around and through each other and whatever we create together.

Oooh and yeah that… let’s see if we can play the creation game together. 

How much fun can we have doing that. 

Let’s see how we can invite Spirit into this game and help us create for each other an ever more wonderful life.

Let’s see how soft we can make each others’ pillows….and crowns. 

Let’s see how liberating and lavish we can help each others’ journeys be.

Let’s see how much energy we can activate and share with each other.. And with our children and our communities… and with the world.

Let’s see how much beauty we can surround each other with. 

Let’s see how much space we can provide and co-create.

How much openness and warmth and attention and affection and approval and appreciation we can extend to each other and let overflow onto the other beings in our lives and our world. 

Let’s see how much more play and ease and joy we can each add to each others’ transformational Empire-building adventure and journey into even more love, more joy, more life, more liberation. 

Let’s see how awake and alive we can be. 

So yeah. I really like you. 

Let’s see how this goes. 

Head up + heart out,

PS: Yes, I’ll officiate your ritual or ceremony lol – reach out to me.

PPS: This is not only about relationships. A disdain of ending things that aren’t working in any area of your life is a hot mess, coming in hot. I ask every one of my students to read, study and implement Henry Cloud’s Necessary Endings to grow your capacity and skills to identify and make the endings you need to make.  It’ll change your life. It changed mine. 

Did you miss last week’s newsletter? Want to listen or read again? Here you go! 

Transformation Tuesday vol. 196 | Spiritual Beast Mode

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/tara-nicholle-nelson/ttnl-audio-102621
Read: Transformation Tuesday vol. 196 | Spiritual Beast Mode

NOTE: I promised you a Transformation Tuesday on the subject of how to interpret illness and injury and Spiritual Strategies for those seasons, and one you shall have. As my own real life experience unfolds in real time and as I work on that piece for you, the insights Iare ripening and dropping in powerfully and in Divine Timing. Look for something soon!

As I sat in my Daily Ritual today, what follows is was what wanted to come through me to you. It happens to be a lesson that comes from when Londyn and I got COVID, but it’s not all about that. I’m a big fan of following Inner Guidance, so…here we go!

***

A while back, Londyn and I holed up for 10 days with COVID. I’d been vaccinated months before, and our cases were pretty mild. It was much less stressful than you might imagine, for a bunch of reasons. 

When our tests came back positive, the stress of wondering was almost instantly replaced with the relief that so often comes when the worst case scenario you’ve been dreading actually happens… and catastrophe does not, in fact, ensue. 

Then a ripple effect of more and more relief unfolded, as I realized I would now be extra immune, and she would get a natural immunity that was unavailable to a 3-year-old in any other way. 

So I sat her on my lap, touched my forehead to hers and said, “Bun, we’re going to stay at our house for awhile. Let’s make it magical. Okay?” (insert fist bump and major fist bump explosion with sound effects here.)

And we did. We made it magical. 

We dressed up in tutus (her) and Dior dresses I’d bought in Paris and on the Riviera (me). 

We made up a new nightly ritual where I turned on the “ballet music” (aka Classical Relaxation station on Spotify), while she pirouetted around the living room. Then we’d find our coziest blanket and snuggle up to read every story in The Goddess Book, until she fell asleep. 

I ruthlessly cleared out one closet every day, generating five contractor bags full of wonderful things I eventually posted on my neighborhood’s Buy Nothing site, watching them disappear off my front porch into the hands and homes of grateful neighbors. 

We cooked and baked wonderful things for the joy of it (because we couldn’t really taste them.)

Our friends and neighbors (and local delivery angels) dropped off yummy dinners and groceries and flowers and ibuprofen at our front door, waving and blowing us kisses through the window. 

We took leisurely naps. We slept more than normal. We ate dinners on the back deck, savoring both the food and the gratitude for the space and place that we’ve been blessed with. 

But for the first 6 or 7 days, I still worked. Just a few hours a day, but intense hours. I did a round of executive interviews for a client. I reported back on them. I wrote and shipped that week’s Transformation Tuesday newsletter. 

Until Day 7. 

On Day 7 of quarantine, I had my regular therapy session. My therapist, a wonderfully sage and smart Jungian, asked me how we were faring. I reported that our respiratory symptoms were all but gone, with just the fatigue and mental fogginess lingering. 

Oh, and the headaches, I said. The headaches are terrible.

She asked me a few more questions and I shared about our glorious week, and the work I’d been able to still get done during quarantine. 

This gave her pause. At first, she gently suggested that I consider whether I could move some things off my calendar and stop working for a few days. 

But by the end of the conversation, she said much more forcefully than she’s ever spoken to me before: “Tara, stop working. For a week. No more. I insist.” She wasn’t playing around. 

So I stopped, which was very hard to do. I had to withdraw from a meeting that was very important the very next day after my “no work” order came down. I couldn’t help but see how often my mind veered to work, over the next few days, to a point I’d almost describe as obsessive. 

When I let that time of illness be a time of REAL stillness and focus, I could see how much of my Life and Self were dedicated to work in ways that I was no longer even totally in control of, and no longer totally approved of. And that very next week, I made some key shifts at SoulTour that would kickstart a ripple effect of alignment. You’ll hear much more soon. 

What a gift Miriam (my therapist) gave me by seeing my misalignment and saying what needed saying to me: Don’t work. 

One moral of this story is to make sure you have people in your life who, no matter how powerful you are and what a badass you may be, will commit to seeing what needs seeing and saying what needs saying, in a graceful, constructive, iron-sharpens-iron kind of way. 

And moral #2 is to receive what they say not with blind obedience or harsh self-criticism, but with the commitment to self-compassion, self-awareness and feeling what your Inner Guidance knows is resonant and true. 

But Moral #3… and the real point of all this… comes from something Miriam said to me just before we got off our Zoom therapy session that day. 

She said something that I’ve been thinking about, acting on and sharing with my students ever since: 

She said: “Tara, you have been responsible for other people and for big things for so much of your life. People will always want more of you, and you love to do so many different things that there’s a never-ending flow of things you could be doing.

You are a very reliable, responsible and available person. But I think you will benefit from becoming much, much more selective about what you agree to be reliable, responsible and available for.”

Me, silently: Well, damn. 

When she dropped the mic—reliable, responsible, available—my very next thought was of a sacred line of Scripture I’d just read in a new (to me) translation, about how our Divine Inheritance is to live a “wide-open, spacious life.”

Reliable. Responsible. Available. 

Catch this principle, Brilliant One: Practicing discernment and sovereignty on these subjects is the key that unlocks your wide-open, spacious life.

I’d never thought of these qualities as things you can overdo. 

But the moments after she said that were moments of rapidly snowballing clarity. 

I could see how so often I’d agreed to be overly reliable, responsible or available. 

I could see how I’d created whole programs, projects and businesses over the years where I was very responsible and reliable, but  was requiring little or nothing from the other side. 

I could see how the breakdowns and not-thriving areas were often areas where I was bearing way too much load myself, not asking for help or support and straining my system and spiritual infrastructure. 

I could see how I have a habitual pattern of creating new commitments by saying yes to incoming people, opportunities and things that are WONDERFUL and beneficial opportunities in general, but strain my system and spark struggle. 

I could see how the projects and relationships I struggled with were the ones where my over-reliability, responsibility and availability was maxing out capacity. X My wise Inner Being was saying a hearty “no ma’am” and pumping the brakes, without my conscious consent x. 

And over the next few days, this recognition did what all good spiritual alarm-clocks do, when you live with a commitment to hear and to heed them: It gave me permission to commit to my wide-open, spacious life and to living it deeply-resourced, deeply-connected, and all the way in my Zone of Genius.

And that acted like a spotlight on the things in my life that were not in alignment with that x. 

And that emboldened me to tell my team and my vendors I’m cutting my workload almost in half, permanently, effective now. Not so that I can free up the time and energy for other projects. So I can keep our ballet music ritual going, and spend more time with my friends, and get into nature more…and read more, and write more deep, delicious things…and take swim lessons with Londyn instead of using that half hour to answer 10 emails.

And that emboldened me to stop a bunch of wonderful projects cold.

No, seriously. 

I called up people who had paid thousands of dollars for things and told them transparently about my reset. And we worked it all out… effortlessly.

I called up vendors and said, you know all that stuff we planned to build next year? Nope. Not doing it. We’re going all in on this ONE thing we already do well. 

We’re going Beast Mode on OUR ONE THING.

And they LOVED it. 

It alleviated our Zerissenheit, that feeling of torn-to-pieces-hood. 

It sharpened their focus. 

It sharpened my focus. 

It increased our space and the size of the vision for the SINGLE thing we ARE deciding to do.

It deepened my depth. 

I suspect that this COVID revelation will turn out to be the thing I reflect on 20 or 30 years from now, as having been pivotal in reshaping my life, and my empires, in wonderful ways. 

So I wanted to share it with you.

You can be too reliable, responsible and available. 

Those are generally good things to be. But you can do them too much. And when you do, you strain the system, and limit your joy.

So the real flex is this: Discerning what to be reliable, responsible and available to. Being very, very selective. Being courageous enough to say no to people, projects and things that are very money making, or even fun and fulfilling so you can pour into your most important things, including … your very own wide-open spacious life. 

Head up + heart out,

PS: There’s a whole after-story about what happened next, which you’ll find resonant, eye-opening and heart-opening, especially if you have any trauma or trust issues. I’ll share it soon.

PPS: I  have a bunch of announcements coming down the pike. I kickstarted them last week with the announcement that my adoption of Londyn is now final! 

Here’s the post from that, with a bunch of photos from our last two years together, which I promise you is content you need today.  Transformation Tuesday | What do you worship?  Watch: www.instagram.com/tv/CUXuo67FOKk Listen: https://soundcloud.com/tara-nicholle-nelson/transformation-tuesday-this-comes-after-crisis Read: www.taranicholle.com/transformation-tuesday-what-do-you-worship/

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
The Inner Critic Coach™️
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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There’s an Old Testament story that people always tell the wrong way. (According to me.)

In the story, King David’s beloved child—a tiny infant—gets very, very sick. 

For 7 days, David sits vigil. He refuses to eat. 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 creature comfort. 

And then the little 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 child was just sick. But now he’s dead and you’re good?” 

David said something to the effect of: “Before, I was hoping that my cries and pleas would help him survive. But now that he’s gone, all the tears in the world won’t bring him back. I’ll see him again 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 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 got pregnant and eventually gave birth to another son, Solomon. 

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 a grave crisis… after a season of loss… after death and mourning comes creation and wisdom. 

x

All the ancient spiritual traditions had the principle of death preceding rebirth and creation, or the destruction of war being paired with the blossoming of wisdom.

The Hindu goddess Kali was a dark mother, representing death and destruction of the ignorance, ego and illusions that keep us trapped in our cycles, including and especially the delusion of permanency, aka the fear of change. 

Kali’s black skin symbolized “primordial”, meaning she was present before the Earth and before human time began. And so she holds the primal balance of the Universe in her symbolic hands: death before life, darkness before dawn, destruction before creation. 

Paintings of Kali have four hands, two for destruction and two for creation—her right hands held out to bestow blessings, and her left hands holding a sword to destroy illusion and a severed head (no big deal).

Kali destroys demonic forces in order to liberate, then creates fresh blessings and possibilities each and every day.

The Egyptian goddess Neith the Terrifying? Same. She wielded the power to destroy all things… then weaved the sun into the sky and re-create the world each morning.

The Greek goddess Athena? Same. Goddess of war strategy… and wisdom.

Destruction. Creation. Death. Rebirth. War. Wisdom.

They go together in spirit… and they also go together in 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 and prepares the space for fresh, new things to be born. 

But more importantly, all your past “endings”—the death, the destruction, the collateral damage of the wars within you and around you—they create clarity and wisdom.

But please catch this principle: You can’t start receiving and leveraging the clarity and wisdom of your crises or losses until you acknowledge them, grieve them and open yourself to the creation that wants to flow to you and through you next.

Only you can leave the death season, and only you can know when the time is right.

A good sign is when you’re getting bored of telling your own (rightfully) sad stories… or when you’re feeling drawn to a new thing.  

But only you can elect to emerge from the dark season, and you must make that election in order to emerge.

Only you can decide not to let your traumatizers have any more of the precious moments of your life.

You will have to step out of your Comfort Zone and into your Discomfort Zone, sit down at your loom like the goddess Neith and begin to weave your new world into life. 

And there’s no exact instructional PDF for this. There is no exact instruction manual for this. So you may feel untethered and the process may feel messy.

It might even feel terrifying. 

But radical liberation is, by definition, untethering. 

You’ll find ground again, eventually, and it will be higher ground.

And anytime you’re in a dark season, or you feel the darkness beginning to lift, know these things: 

1. The darkness will end. It’s the cosmic balance. 
2. The end of the darkness is not the end of the story. It’s the beginning of the next chapter.

Let things take the time they take. Grieve what needs grieving. Process what needs processing.

And then, when the time feels right… begin your gracious, graceful, grateful exit from the grief story. 

Gather up the pieces of yourself you may have rediscovered in the shadows. 

Collect the clarity that is always trying to come to us during a crisis.

Keep everything from your past and current circumstances that establishes wisdom and clarity and Divine Order in your mind, body and affairs, beginning now.

And ask the power within you to sweep everything from your consciousness, mind, body and affairs that is not Divinely planted or beneficial to you.* 

Decide to forgive everyone in your life and release them with love so they can be free and you can be free.**

And allow your wise unconscious to reorder your understanding of what has happened in a way that bypasses nothing and distills the wisdom you’ll need to feed and fuel your future.

Let nothing be lost on you.

Then, slowly or exuberantly, participate fully and joyfully in weaving your new world—your new projects, your new body, your new relationships, your new ways of being, your new life—into creation.

Head up + heart out,

*If you’re upset at the idea of one child “replacing” another, remember this: The way to get the most out of any sacred text you’ll ever read is to read it symbolically. David’s “children” were historical, but also symbolized any important precious thing we create: our most sacred contracts, callings, relationships and realities.

**Adapted from a Florence Scovel Shinn declaration in Your Word is Your Wand

***Adapted from a Louise Hay affirmation in You Can Heal Your Life

P.S.: Did you miss last week’s newsletter? Want to watch, listen or read again? Here you go! 

Transformation Tuesday | What do you worship?

Watch: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CVA2ysbM3uF/
Listen: soundcloud.com/tara-nicholle-nelson/transformation-tuesday-what-do-you-worship/s-DSXqPKRiOYb?si=73546ddd0a5844468896fe294f2d81cc
Read: taranicholle.com/transformation-tuesday-what-do-you-worship

This came straight out of my journal, unfiltered – note that the audio and video versions have a good amount of additional commentary this time, in case you want to watch or listen:

What do you worship? 

So many who claim to worship sacred things actually worship the fear of death and rejection, and because of these fears commit spiritual suicide ten times a day, aborting their own creations before they can even take root in unseen realms.

So many put scarcity, unworthiness and discomfort on the altar, letting the fear of both run their lives. 

We all have things we most fear, and by so doing create.

The good news is that both the mythic victory and the mythic monsters live within.

We are the hero. 

We are the villain. 

We are the mentor. The aide. The guide. The tools.

Reuniting all these parts of us with each other and with Source… that’s the quest.

The process of reclaiming these parts is the job description. 

Sooner or later, we assent to the adventure.

Sooner or later we realize that it’s time to decide who we’re going to be.

*****

So, I want to leave you with these questions for reflection or writing today, [First Name]:

What does your current life reveal that you’ve been worshipping? 

Be real with yourself, without judging yourself: To what do you give most of your attention, affection, adoration, appreciation? 

What about that is not in alignment with who you really are, and why you’re really here? 

May the light of awareness dissolve what holds you back. 

P.S.: Did you miss last week’s newsletter? Want to watch, listen or read again? 

Here you go! 

Transformation Tuesday | Goldilocks

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/tara-nicholle-nelson/transformation-tuesday-goldilocks
Read: www.taranicholle.com/transformation-tuesday-goldilocks