Londyn is a Montessori kid so she loves to sweep. But she’s graduated to a penchant for vacuuming, and she wants to use the real one, not a toy. She’s also a Super Baby, so she can lift the vacuum out of the closet and move it around on her own.

I watched her do that the other day, and pretty instantly she moaned: “Ugh. It’s not working.”

I said, “I know, baby girl. We’ve got to plug it in.”

She said, “First, vacuum. Then plug it in.”

And I said, “Well, my love… the vacuum won’t work unless we plug it in first.”

Cut to: this morning, as I grabbed all of the things for Londyn’s day and my own, I made extra sure to grab my headphones… but somehow forgot my phone. 

Imagine my surprise when I got to the park to walk the dog and had the accessories I needed to listen to something energizing and inspirational… but I didn’t have the power source. 

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Do you see the moral of these stories?

You’ve probably had the experience of lying awake at night, stressing about what needs to get done the next day, then oozing out of bed with the thought: “I didn’t get enough sleep” or “I’m dreading this day” or “I’m dreading fighting with the kids to get them ready.”

And you’ve probably had the experience of getting right into the day before you’re really ready: getting breakfast on the table, kids to school or on Zoom, getting your own day of meetings or work going, but not feeling in the flow or like you’re even thinking clearly yet.

You might even have had the experience of going to great lengths to set aside time to work on your book or your business, but feeling blocked or stuck when that precious time arrives.

I’m hearing all of these fact patterns now more than maybe ever, especially among those who feel overextended or under-resourced (which is real common, these days)…that pervasive sense of “Ugh. I’m better than this. I want to do this. I want to do this well. This is not working.”

My advice is what I told Londyn and what I learned myself today: Don’t even try to play your A-game unless and until you plug in first.

Plug in first. 

Plug in to your power source.

Plug in to your Source.

Now if you don’t even know what ‘plugging in’ means for you, personally, then finding out what recharges and replenishes you is your #1 mission. Because not plugging in is a major limiting factor.

But chances are that you do know what gets you in the zone and on top of your game, and your Inner Critic is just telling you that you don’t have time or aren’t deserving of regularly doing it.

Maybe your “plug in” is a little earlier bedtime.

Maybe it’s a little more “me” time. Stretching. Taking a bath. Even at lunchtime. Whenever, man.

Maybe your ‘plug in’ is getting up before the circus begins and finding a quiet time and place to slow your thoughts down, even 10% or 20%, before you start the day.

Before you let other people into your space.

Maybe it’s making the decision to always always always take a 15 minute walk outside before you start work instead of plopping right down at the laptop, knowing that your plug in walk will undoubtedly multiply your creativity and focus far beyond what you’d get from 15 more minutes at the computer.

Maybe it’s working out or doing yoga at the beginning of the day.

Maybe it’s praying. Or free-writing. Or affirmations. Or pulling a card.

You do you, homie. 

I’m just asking you to do what you’ve gotta do to get yourself plugged into the energy you need — and the energy that runs this Universe — before you start putting demands on your system. 

Do whatever it takes to connect to Source.

Whatever it takes to open your heart. 

Cleanse your mind. Open a new compartment for this fresh, new day and let it be fresh and new.

Stop beating the drum of trying to control stuff you can’t control and ain’t never going to be able to control. 

Do whatever you’ve gotta do to drop your resistance to how the world works. 

Drop whatever grudge you’ve gotta drop about what so-and-so said yesterday. 

Drop whatever anticipation of the nonsense they might say today or tomorrow.

Write it down, burn that mess, do what you’ve gotta do to open your heart and plug yourself in.

And here’s the key: Do whatever you’ve gotta do to plug in before you start trying to be creative, generative or fruitful for the day… even if you’re a night owl. (And I have the utmost respect for night owls.)

There’s a viral idea in pop psychology on the Internet right now, something commentators on China’s specific burnout work culture call ‘bàofùxìng áoyè’: revenge bedtime procrastination. 

Journalist Daphne K Lee defined this as a phenomenon where “people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late-night hours”. Gu Bing, a Shanghai marketing professional, says she rarely goes to bed before 2 am because, in her words, “I want to steal back my time.”

If you struggle with getting to bed on time, in enough time, to feel rested in the morning, you might ask yourself whether you’re retaliating against your perceived lack of control over your time and the choices you made about how to commit your time in a previous edition of yourself. 

If your answer is YES, then now is the time to reclaim your time. 

When you plug in first, when you pay yourself first with your time… it’s not about revenge at all. 

It’s lavish to pay yourself first with your time. It counters and contradicts the lies of your Inner Critic that say you aren’t worthy of your own time. 

It’s liberating and a tiny bit radical to give yourself your most rested time of day… to prioritize yourself and your energy ahead of every other person, place and obligation you have all day.

You’ll quickly find yourself resenting your life and your colleagues and your calendar and even your kids way less… because you paid yourself first.

You’ll feel the inner peace that comes from not wishing you could be on a walk when you’re in a meeting because you took your walk first.

So this is my PSA for the day, requesting and insisting that you plug yourself in first… and plug in well. 

Plug yourself in as frequently as you need to do without judging yourself for needing to plug in.

You don’t have to steal your own time. 

Reclaim your time. 

After all, it belongs to you.

Head up + heart out,

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq., The Inner Critic Coach™, is a Master Coach, author and the Founder of SoulTour’s School of Spiritual Strategy.

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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The average smart, successful person has around 20,000 hours of negative thoughts involuntarily whirring through their mind, playing on a loop.

And these thoughts aren’t just negative thoughts about yourself. They’re narratives about the world being hard, resources being scarce and wrong-thinking about how and why you shouldn’t do things that make you feel exposed or vulnerable… which includes most things that would improve your life or fulfill your dreams.

Through lifelong practice, these thoughts become habits, and soon they harden into what I call The Trance of the Inner Critic: a low-grade, constant stream of mental narratives about yourself, your world or your prospects in life that are so constant you may not even realize you are thinking them. 

They become a pervasive worldview that limits your possibilities and causes self-sabotage anytime you try to improve yourself or your life. 

If you’ve ever tried to smash, slay, silence or mute your Inner Critic, you’ve probably realized that efforts to do so always backfire. 

Instead, the name of the game is to soothe, befriend and transform your Inner Critic, and here are 7 affirmations I use with my students to do exactly that: 

1. How easy can I let this be? 

Your Inner Critic has been fed for years by the cultural lie that struggle is virtue. 

On top of that, you may have been conditioned as a child to get dopamine hits of external validation and the illusion of continuous approval by doing hard things and suffering in silence. 

As a result: 

• You might not be in the habit of asking for or receiving help. 
• You might chronically take on way too much or spread yourself too thin.
• And you might frequently set yourself up with unsustainable, superhuman standards and goals.

I used to have these patterns, and one of my teachers offered me the mantra “let it be easy”. But I soon realized that I’d been getting validation and approval for doing hard things for so long I couldn’t even see easier ways to do what I wanted or needed to do… even when easier ways seemed obvious to other people.

So now I teach my students this twist on “let it be easy”: “How easy can I let this be?”

This question invites a path of ease, flow and way less resistance to light up before you, whether that be stretching out your timelines, saying no or getting more help.

2. Things take as long as they take. 

Time scarcity is a primary sign that you may have a harsh, dominating Inner Critic even if you don’t feel like your self-talk is self-critical. 

Your Inner Critic will tell you that you’re always behind or never quite productive enough, which only compounds the stress of the near-universal tendency to underestimate how long tasks will take. 

I started saying this one to myself years ago, when I first began to heal my own Inner Critic, and I say it to my team often, too: especially when it comes to building or creating anything with deep meaning or soulful substance. 

Things take as long as they take. 

It’s a beautifully elegant reminder to try practicing radical acceptance of the way life really works, and stop rushing yourself all the damn time.

3. Small things grow. 

One particularly insidious thought habit of your Inner Critic is the idea that you have to spin all the plates and pull all the levers and be troubleshooting, thinking, planning and doing All of the Things, All of the Time or Something Very Bad will happen.

We call that worry. And it’s a lie of the Inner Critic. 

It’s what makes you feel like, even when things are going good for you, there’s another shoe perpetually about to drop. 

So sometimes it’s helpful to remember that the sun rises and sets whether you lift a single finger… that the plants grow from seed to tree without you directing the Universe… that there is a Divine Order and Creative Power that fuels the engine of this Universe, and that things improve and ripen naturally with time… whether you work your fingers to the bone or not.

This affirmation is a super quick reminder that you don’t have to make everything happen through hard work and effort, contrary to your Inner Critic thought habits.

4. Divine Order and Divine Timing are real and in my favor. 

The Law of Divine Order says all components of this Universe will line up and light up to assist you, and says that they will line up and light up for you at the perfect place and the perfect time. 

It says you’re not alone and you’re constantly being assisted by higher powers and forces, and even other people.

Divine Timing will accelerate your progress at some times and slow it down at others. But I like what Tosha Silver says, which is that in Divine Timing even your delays benefit you. 

When your Inner Critic shames you for falling behind or not doing enough, these affirmations remind you to stop rushing all the time and to know that help is always on the way.

Here are a few more of my favorite, Inner Critic-soothing affirmations, declarations and mantra from my own teachers: 

5. I give thanks that the Divine Genius plan for my life now comes to pass. 

— Florence Scovel Shinn

This one dials up trust, which in turn deactivates fear. 

The essence of your Inner Critic is fear, so you can feel it dissolve and dissipate as you practice this affirmation. 

6. Everything is always working out for me. 

— Abraham Hicks

This might be the most soothing affirmation ever, as it reminds you that most of the things you fret about never, ever come to pass, and reminds you to look for the ways things might be trying to work out for you right now… right before your eyes.

7. I expand in success, happiness and abundance every day as I inspire those around me to do the same. 

— Gay Hendricks

In The Big Leap, author Gay Hendricks offers this as what he calls the Ultimate Success Mantra. 

In my practice, I’ve learned that your Inner Critic is a misguided, wrong-headed, but well-intentioned force within. 

Its aim is two-fold: to protect you and motivate you. 

That’s why some people worry that without their Inner Critic shaming and disparaging them, they might not be able to get motivated or take action at all. 

But the contrary is true: Your Inner Critic is fear, and fear always shuts off access to your highest brain functioning and your unique, sacred genius. So whatever you’ve been able to achieve in life with a harsh Inner Critic, you’ll be able to do exponentially more when you transform your relationship with this part of your shadow. 

Know this: Your Inner Critic gets activated and goes on attack anytime you attempt to do things that make you feel exposed or vulnerable, which is almost everything you want to do to improve your health, answer your callings or self-actualize your sacred potentials. 

Hendricks’ Ultimate Success Mantra helps prevent your Inner Critic’s resistance to all your own dreams and goals by wiring in a continuous growth way of being. Use this to flip off your struggle switch and embody a little bit more of your wise Inner Being every single day.

Head up + heart out,
 

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq., The Inner Critic Coach™, is a Master Coach, author and the Founder of SoulTour’s School of Spiritual Strategy.

On March 14th, Tara is teaching a FREE Live Masterclass on the 3 Secrets to Transform Your Inner Critic (for smart, successful people). Reserve your seat here.

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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I got an email from a client the other day, telling me how dramatically her income had risen since we worked together, and thanking me for helping make that happen. 

I was thrilled, because that was a core objective we’d worked on together in a dozen different ways. We’d worked on her packages, her pricing, her messaging, her positioning, her money blocks, and her ability to easefully deliver an enlightened “no” and trust that abundance was on the way.

But when I asked her what, specifically, had helped increase her income she said “I started consistently following Londyn’s rule.” 

(Londyn is my 3-year-old.)

She went on, “You told me once that Londyn just decides what she wants and doesn’t participate in anything else.”

And it’s true. Londyn is not much of a tantrum thrower, unless she’s tired or hungry. And she’s living her baby best life, y’all. We program really beautiful days full of beautiful activities and places and people, so she’s generally pretty enthusiastic about doing whatever we’re doing, most of the time.

But she’s also very, very clear on what she wants. 

Maybe clearer than anyone I’ve ever met. 

And she doesn’t participate in anything else.

As part of this, Londyn is exceptionally good at speaking up for herself, asking for what she wants and needs and saying what she means. (I’ll share more on how I try to foster her inborn clarity, self-knowledge, self-sovereignty and self-expression next week.)

Here’s an example: We live in a hilly neighborhood, so there are maybe a dozen places where instead of alleys, we have stairs that take you from one street to the next. Neighbors leave beautiful chalk art, painted rocks and even little displays of toy cars and airplanes out in the various staircases, and every weekend, we climb up a bunch of them, see what’s there and just explore. 

The other day we climbed up and were skipping-to-my-Lou down the street above our house. It’s a fancy street, lined with big beautiful homes, old and new. There’s one gorgeous, sprawling Mediterranean mansion, with a low, long, curved driveway and unobstructed views of the San Francisco Bay. 

I have probably walked past that house a thousand times in my 12 years here, and I have never seen anyone outside that house.

But someone was out front that day. 

As Londyn and I walked by, an elegant, white-haired woman stood deep in conversation with the gentleman who was tending the grounds.

They noticed us passing. I nodded and raised my hand in a silent hello. 

Londyn… took a different approach. 

She stopped walking abruptly and yanked on my hand for balance so she could lean over the down sloped driveway. 

“HELLOOOOO!!!!” she screamed gleefully (and at the top of her lungs) through her panda bear mask. “I’m Londyn! What’s your name?”

“I’m Katherine,” the woman yelled back, seeming startled but amused, then resumed talking with the landscaper.

“Kathyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!” Londyn yelled. Screamed, really. “You got any animals down there???”

I tried to distract her and keep our walk moving. “Ma choupette, let’s go see what’s happening up the street! Over there!” I said, pointing to the next staircase on our route.

Londyn stood still. She looked at me soberly, shook her head and replied: “No, honey.” 

In other words: Londyn had asked Katherine whether she had any animals down there… and Londyn wanted an answer.

Katherine paused for a moment, looked at her gardener, turned back to Londyn and said: “Yes, I do. Come down the driveway, and down that staircase (pointing) and I’ll meet you over there.”

And so… we did. 

Down the loooooong driveway.

Down a flight of stairs into some breathtaking gardens that seemed like they slowly descended to … the Bay.

A few moments later, Kathy appeared and walked us over to a little cove with a little clearing, pulled off a metal grate to keep the kitty cats out, and revealed dozens of glistening, fat, black-and-white, orange and red koi fish that have been wriggling and swimming around in there for a couple of decades. 

Kathy… I mean Katherine… poured some fish food in Londyn’s hand. 

Katherine showed her how they would swim right up to your fingers if you stuck your hand in the water.

And that’s how we came to spend the next 45 minutes playing with animals and her new friend Katherine, which was the cosmic order Londyn had apparently placed.

In fact, when we were done with Katherine and the koi, Londyn said she was ready to go home and take a nap… even though (a) Kathy’s house was at the beginning of our walk, not the end and (b) Londyn is 3. She never asks to go home and take a nap. 

The moral of the story is this: Let yourself want what you want. 

Don’t negate your own desires. 

Don’t keep them small out of some misguided sense of humility or virtute.

Don’t judge what you want or judge yourself for wanting it. 

As Rumi wrote, don’t analyze your enthusiasm. 

Want what you want without shrinking it down. 

Please remember that your heart’s desires are part of your Inner Guidance System. They are how the Divine speaks to you, within you. Even your seemingly “small” soul-level desires are part of how you are guided to the right place at the right time to be, do, have and learn what you came here for. 

Following your heart’s desires, following your bliss (as Jo Campbell would say), is part of how you learn to live a powerful masterful life. 

Next: Speak up for yourself. Say what you mean. Ask for what you want. 

Whether you’re asking yourself, another person, All That Is or your neighbor Katherine/Kathy. 

From there, you only have three jobs to get what you want:

Job #1: Get in receptive mode. Stop blocking yourself from receiving what’s trying to come to you.

Job #2: If you get a Divine Download to take an inspired action like charging more, investing in yourself, taking a different route to the grocery store or yelling your request to see some animals NOW at a total and complete stranger who seems busy at the moment, follow that download and take that action.

Job #3: Participate in nothing that is not part of or aligned with what you want. Participate NOT your own self-sabotage. Participate NOT in your Inner Critic’s naysaying narratives or in anyone else’s reasons why they think you can’t have what you want. That ain’t got nothing to do with you.

This is how you cause the Universe to yield to you.

Get after it, homie. 

Head up + heart out,
 

The Inner Critic Coach™
Spiritual Strategist for smart, successful people

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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Last week, we started to rewrite the cultural myth of productivity: the lie that says your work is your worth so if you want to earn the right to feel good in your own skin, you’d better perform better, conform yourself, and produce more and more and more and more and more. 

Know this: Productivity culture is slavery culture. 

I’m not exaggerating.

When you look back at the overseer’s books for measuring the value of their “human assets”, they tracked how much cotton each enslaved human picked every day of the week and extrapolated each enslaved person’s value from there. 

Those plantation logbooks looked just like every productivity planner on the market today.

Exhibit A: Thomas Affleck’s Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book from the 1800s.

Note: You do need to have images turned on in your email system to see the above image. 

During slavery, the goal of all this tracking was to get more and more and more “productivity” out of each human “asset” every day, every week and every year. 

And this is still the goal of productivity culture, which is toxic, extractive, and not even that effective, when you consider the data that says most corporate employees are only “productive” for a couple hours a day.

It’s savage and inhuman to treat people (including you) as assets whose work determines their value. 

It’s soul-killing to expect ever-increasing output from any sentient being. Again, including you.

To track and measure and obsessively optimize your monetary “value” contradicts the Divine realities of who you are, how you best work and why you’re here. 

And on top of all of that, productivity culture feeds your Inner Critic, which will tell you that:

…productivity is success, even when it’s making you miserable

…you’re not getting enough done

…if you keep it up you’ll lose your job

…you’re falling behind (again), and in fact

…you’re just generally behind in life, because I mean look at HER life and she’s SO organized AND she’s way younger than you.

Your Inner Critic will make it hard to rest when it’s time to rest, causing you to feel like some vague, catastrophic shoe will drop if you don’t get up and do something. Start with the dishes, your Inner Critic will say.

Catch this principle: Productivity culture is burnout culture, powered by fear. 

The antidote is fruitfulness: a natural rhythm of creation that aligns with how the world works and how humans operate in a best case, best life scenario. 

Fruitfulness is the rhythm of inspired action, collaboration, and rest. 

Fruitfulness aligns with the truth that human energies ebb and flow. 

Fruitfulness is seasonal, just like this Universe. There’s a time for sowing seeds. There’s a time for cultivating. There’s a time to let the sun and the rain and the soil and the bees take over and do their part, while the farmer takes a break. There’s a time to let the field lie fallow, be tilled by the hooves of the goats (and the pugs) and be replenished.

There’s a time to harvest your fruits.

And by the way, it’s not always harvest season 100% of the time. (That’s a lie of productivity culture, too.)

Fruitfulness makes great use of the shit and the compost of life, your past disappointments and traumas providing nutrition and preparation for your fruitful, juicy now.

Fruitfulness gracefully grows what you want to grow, in Divine Timing. 

Fruitful people know that sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is be still.

Stand down. 

Sit down.

Take a moment. 

Get quiet. 

Get still so you can hear with the ears of Spirit and see with the eyes of Spirit.

Listen. 

Be still so you can perceive and receive your Divine Downloads. 

Be still so you can see your own patterns of hiding and holding back. Know that your patterns might look like superheroic action, but underneath all that activity you might find patterns of chronic reaction, distraction, perfectionism and self-sabotaging your own passion projects and dreams in exchange for the dopamine hit of external validation and the false soothing of staying in your comfort zone.

Be still so you can see how you habitually blow up or complicate relationships with the people that want to help you. 

Be still so you can see the opportunities right in front of you to have what you want right now.

Be still so you can see what in your life is not in alignment with where you want to go.

Be still so you can discern what your Inner Guidance Committee is saying from what your Inner Critic is saying.

Let me tell you something: If you’re actively engaged in commerce in western culture in 2021, you probably need more quiet time than you are giving yourself.

You think that action is how things get done. 

But you’re not here just to get things done. 

And the biggest, best things get done through alignment, not through sheer action. 

You can accelerate your progress by taking a freaking break. 

Give yourself some space for the dots to connect.

Give yourself time for your brain to work in the background.

Be like the plum tree I planted and forgot… the tree that bore hundreds of plums last year. 

Give yourself time for the collaborative components to show up and help you out, like the rain and the sun helped the tree.

Stop rushing all the damn time. 

Stand down.

Make your life a place where natural rhythms and seasons of fruitfulness are respected and even revered.

Make your soul an environment in which fruitfulness thrives.  

Fruitfulness thrives where there is radical trust and radical acceptance of how life and this world works, especially these truths:

• small things grow
• seasons change
• some endings are necessary and
• things take the time they take.

Fruitfulness requires that you stop the madness of “I’ll do it myself” and begin tapping into the power of other people and other forces.

And fruitfulness requires rest, which gives those other people and forces a chance to show up and do what they do. 

It’s time to liberate yourself from the lies of productivity culture. 

I give you permission to begin noticing when and where your Inner Critic is telling you that your value is based on your output, busy-ness or activity and just see that thought for what it is: false.

Don’t believe everything you think.

Instead, let’s get fruitful.

Fruitful people plant seeds. 

Fruitful people create when they’re inspired.

Fruitful people rest without judging themselves for resting. 

And fruitful people radically trust that everything will come together and light up and line up, so they have a whole lot more fun in life x. 

Fruit doesn’t grow overnight, and neither do the most soul-satisfying books, projects, businesses, or careers.  

There’s a process. It takes time. And it’s co-creative.

Thanks for co-creating my vision with me. 

Know that across time, across distance… I’m co-creating yours with you, too, Brilliant One.

Head up + heart out,
 

The Inner Critic Coach™
Spiritual Strategist for smart, successful people

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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

Perform. So that you might have nice things and have nice things happen to you.

Conform. Be a certain way. Stop being that other way.

Produce. More. Even more. No days off. 

Perform. Conform. Produce. After all, you have to work hard if you want to make something of yourself.

These are the dictates of culture. 

And they are in direct contradiction of Universal law. 

Universal law says you are a blessed, beautiful, beloved something now, and you were before you even made your debut here on planet Earth.    

Universal law says you came here perfect, whole and complete, born with the express destiny to be loved, cherished and adored.

However challenging love has been, and even your very early relationships were, please be reminded that you were born trailing clouds of the glory and love that applied to you when you were just a perfect idea in Divine Mind. So your very first relationship was one of perfect love.

So yeah… culture has lied to you, Brilliant One.

Let me clear some things up. 

You need never “be productive” to “create value.” 

You are not a human “asset” to be measured, tracked, and optimized. 

You are valuable just because you exist, even if you never crank out another iota of work product, never hit another goal, never lose another pound, write another word or make another dollar. 

Now…

…with that out of the way, I want to offer you another way to look at The Issue of Productivity. This is a teaching story in the tradition of my spiritual lineages. I call it the Parable of the Plum Tree.

About five years ago now, I planted a plum tree in my backyard. There was no big intention behind it. I wasn’t trying to be deep. I just saw a plum tree at the nursery and thought it seemed like a good idea. 

So I brought it home, took it to the top part of my backyard, dug a hole and dropped it in. I may have watered it for a few days. 

But then I forgot about it. 

I traipsed off to Croatia to ride my bike through the Dalmatian isles for my 40th birthday. MyFitnessPal, where I was leading marketing at the time, was acquired. I wrote a book. Linked up with a new boyfriend. Traveled a bunch. Got a (delightfully unexpected) surprise baby. Broke up with that boyfriend. 

I’ve been busy.

Seasons changed.

Along the way, I forgot about the tree. 

More than four years went by, and in all that time I never even went up to the top reaches of my backyard. 

Until Londyn started really walking and exploring, and tugged at me one day to go up there. 

So imagine my surprise to see this truly, fully neglected tree laden with shiny, sweet, delicious, plums. Within moments The Dimple Queen had both hands full of them, purple juice running down her arms, pausing between bites only to yell: “AMMA!! This GOOD!!”

What does this have to do with the toxic cultural messages that you must be ever-more productive to earn your place on the planet? 

Everything.

Productivity culture says that your results in life are directly proportional, linear, and logically related to how much work you put in. 

And that lie of culture feeds your Inner Critic, which says that you’re never, ever, ever productive enough.

Never working enough. There’s never enough time to do all of the things. You’ll never really make it. You’ll never get it all done. You’ve always gotta be doing more or you’re doing it wrong.

We even pass this PRODUCTIVITY culture down to our children, when we stress about how much progress they’re making during the pandemic when it might be more peaceful and soulful to prioritize connection and love for learning over academic achievement in this season. 

Listen, I know how your Inner Critic works. As soon as I invite you to set PRODUCTIVITY down, your Inner Critic spins this mental narrative: “Tara are you kidding me? If I don’t track my productivity, manage my time minute-by-minute and push hard toward deadlines, I’ll fall behind and I’ll never get anything done.”

So let me be clear: I’m not suggesting you stop taking action. 

I’m inviting you to shift paradigms. 

Release the need to be PRODUCTIVE. Instead, be FRUITFUL.

Think about my plum tree. I got the idea to plant the tree. I bought it, brought it home, planted it and watered it a little. 

And then Divine Order came in to help. The soil germinated and took hold of the roots. The rain came. The pollinators came. I’m sure my dogs and the foxes helped with fertilization. 

The sun shined.

The fruit this tree bore was neither logical, linear nor directly proportional to my personal efforts. I had a lot of help, and I didn’t personally make all of those plums happen. 

This is true in life, too. You’re not alone in answering your callings. There’s a piece or a zone of activity — a zone of genius — that is uniquely yours to inhabit. 

And if your vision or calling is big, many other people, events and forces will show up, and co-create it with you, whether you ask them to or not.

When you learn to trust this truth  — which is to say, when you learn to trust in Divine Order and the assistance of others — it shifts the atmosphere.

Because PRODUCTIVITY culture creates a prevailing atmosphere of scarcity and fear. 

But FRUITFULNESS and fear can’t coexist.

Fruitfulness is an atmosphere of radical love for yourself, your potentials, and the people and ideals you serve by stepping into your dreams…

I’m talking enough love to wholeheartedly engage with your golden, inspired ideas and take what feels like your natural next step without hesitating, overthinking, second-guessing or analyzing your enthusiasm.

And I’m talking enough love to follow Divine Order, take a pause and let others play their roles, too, when Spirit moves. 

I’ll share more on how to cultivate an atmosphere of fruitfulness next week. 

Head up + heart out,
 

The Inner Critic Coach™
Spiritual Strategist for smart, successful people

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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You know those yard signs that say: 

“In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter | Women’s rights are human rights | No human is an alien”… and so forth? 

We have one of those signs.

And every time I see it, I think we need another line that would read:

“In this house, we orient to joy.” 

Londyn (age 3) showed up knowing how to do this. She knows what feels like joy and doesn’t participate in anything else. 

I (age 45) took most of these 45 years to learn how to orient to joy and make my decisions based on what feels like joy, but I’m never looking back.

Today I want you to write your own sign, in your journal or in your heart: In your house… in the temple that is your life… you orient to joy.

And then start orienting to joy.

And do it without the need to convince or explain to anybody else why you’re doing what you’re doing… or why you’re not doing what you’re not doing.

Orient to joy and do it unapologetically.

When taking inspired action feels like joy, orient to that.

When action feels grindy and getting some rest feels like joy, orient to that.

When you’re clear about what’s next and moving forward feels like joy, do it.

And know that it won’t always feel that way, so let dwelling in great expectation and eagerness for the mystery of what’s ahead x feel like joy sometimes, too. 

Think about joy as the Inner Guidance navigation system you were given at birth by the Divine. 

One of my teachers is known for taking breaks from Q+A by announcing: “This is a perfect time for a segment of refreshment.”

When it’s hard to get clear on a goal or the going gets super grindy, that’s always a sign that it’s time for a segment of spiritual refreshment.

A segment of recalibration… a time to refill your trust tanks.

You get spiritual refreshment by taking a break from worrying, troubleshooting and trying to avoid the unwanted hypothetical situations you’ve been trying to avoid your whole life.

You get spiritual refreshment by pressing pause on your need for things to be fast, difficult or perfect.

You get spiritual refreshment by practicing radical acceptance of the fundamental truth that everything good involves a process of becoming and that you’re not the boss of what that process looks like.

You get spiritual refreshment by orienting to joy. 

You get spiritual refreshment by taking in the artistic endeavors and beautiful creations of your fellow human beings.

You get spiritual refreshment by getting out into nature and taking in the creative output of the Divine… All That Is… Source… Spirit… the Creative Power that formed all worlds.

You get spiritual refreshment by playing with dogs and babies and by playing, in general.

You break your holding patterns and hard hustle patterns by gently, compassionately receiving my reminder today that you did not come here for a 90-year slog on the treadmill of checking off the boxes of a societally approved, “successful” life. 

You came here for joy.

So when things get grindy, take a sacred pause and let your nervous system downregulate a little bit. Recalibrate and replenish by reorienting to things that feel good, soothe your spirit and feel like joy.

One more way to reset what needs to be reset is to suspend all judgment of your process of personal growth and your progress on your goals.

Reset and replenish yourself by refusing to rush yourself…

…by doubling the time you think any step will take…

…and by radically accepting the truths that (a) things take as long as they take and (b) Divine Timing means that even your seeming delays are actually beneficial to you.

So wherever you’re at in your journey on whatever subject, goal or desire has your attention right now, take a deep, delicious segment of spiritual refreshment.

And reorient… to joy.

Head up + heart out, 

The Inner Critic Coach™
Spiritual Strategist for smart, successful people

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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I get it.

You’re smarter than the average bear. You do pretty freaking well in life. People who know you think you’re very successful.

So you might be thinking: “I relate to having a harsh Inner Critic, but I think it might be what keeps me in line. Sometimes it even pushes me to do better. I probably just need to be a little more grateful for what I have.” 

I put my Inner Critic masterclass on February 4th together for smart, successful people for a reason:

The most successful people I’ve met often have the harshest Inner Critics. 

Which brings me to a super-important principle: Having a harsh, hindering Inner Critic is not the same thing as having low self-esteem. 

In fact, for many high-achievers, the recipe for a harsh Inner Critic looks like this: high self-esteem + LOW self-compassion. 

High self-esteem (meaning: high expectations and standards for what you believe you can do), PLUS low self-compassion.

And that can make you feel like you’re always behind, never productive enough, and like you’re responsible for fixing other people’s problems.

High self-esteem plus low self-compassion can make you extremely perfectionist with your work and cause you to set unsustainable goals for yourself. 

It can cause you to be hypervigilant and feel like you have to overachieve and just be DOING stuff all the time, as insurance against bad things happening to you. 

You can feel like you’re never organized enough, productive enough or making enough money, even if you are financially successful. And it can cause you to do things the hard way, missing out on opportunities to get more help, have more ease and have more fun. 

Your Inner Critic is the voice of fear, so it actually shuts down access to the most creative, most genius areas of your brain. 

Even if you think your Inner Critic is making you perform better at home and at work, the truth is otherwise:

Your Inner Critic is holding you back from reaching the highest heights of your full potential… and from living with a prevailing sense of inner peace and joy. 

PLEASE catch this principle: Whatever you’ve been able to achieve with a dominant Inner Critic is a fraction of what you’ll achieve when you reclaim control. 

Take a look at how these other ‘successful’ people said their lives changed when they did the work of transforming their Inner Critic:

“Tara has helped me put my Inner Critic in the backseat instead of letting her drive.”

Joy Danner Lehman, Educator, Minneapolis

“What I found through my journey with Tara was, first, how to calm my Inner Critic. Then I learned how to laugh at my Inner Critic, and now I can let go of my Inner Critic most of the time.”

Anne Marie Petersen, Realtor®, Windermere Real Estate Seattle

“Through my work with Tara, the voice of my Inner Critic has been replaced by the voice of my Inner Wise Woman. Rather than simply reacting to my past, I am creating my desired future and growing myself into the version of me I want to be.” 

Dr. Evelyn Young, Educator, California

“Tara has helped me literally stop negative self talk in its tracks.” 

Eric Barnes

“Tara helped me to tackle Imposter Syndrome by helping me realize I deserve to be where I am and giving me more confidence. Not feeling like my work has to be perfect has been so freeing. I’ve made way more progress on my goals than I would have without being in her program.”

Sonia Dong, CEO, Henkaa, Toronto

“I have discovered areas of myself that once held me back from my true potential. I have met my Inner Critic and now I can turn her volume and influence down. I have learned to accept myself for who I am right NOW and experienced joy and peace in this journey.”

Dr. Laura Munkel, MD, Physician, Indiana

“Tara helped me tame my Inner Critic. Since I started working with Tara, I’ve changed the way I think about myself — I’m no longer a victim. She helped me establish a routine that brought the sacred to my everyday life. I no longer feel dominated by my old “knee-jerk” reactions.”

Emma McKay, Executive Producer, Montreal

Join me and 600+ other smart, successful people just like you on February 4th where I’ll be LIVE for 90-minutes for showing you the How to Transform Your Inner Critic.

[Sign me up (it’s FREE!)]

Head up + heart out,

The Inner Critic Coach™

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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

Four percent. 

That’s all I ask of you. 

That every day you seek to move 4% closer to doing the thing that scares you the most, which is usually the same as the thing you would find the most deeply fulfilling, exhilarating and liberating… if you could do it.

Let me tell you about a conversation I had with one of my favorite coaching students the other day. 

She has a calling on her life. A calling for greatness. She is an uplifter to the core, and trails a cloud of genius around her. 

She’s got a wildly successful career that is lucrative and high-status, but less than fulfilling. 

And together, we’re starting to invite a clear vision for her next season to drop in. 

We were talking about what it might look like for her to hop off the treadmill of checking the boxes of what society says is a successful life and realign her life with who she really is and what she really cares about, in a way that integrates her spiritual and entrepreneurial journeys. 

And she had a golden thread of an inspired idea drop in. It was the kind of thing we call a Divine Download: a gorgeous vision for what she’d like to create and how it might look.

So I asked her this question: What feels like the natural next step to you? 

She got thoughtful and said, as the smart ones often do: 

Well, let me break it down into a 100 point action plan for the next 5 years… 

I’ll need to do this and do that and choose this and oh my goodness I have to build that and figure this out and do that, too, and fly there and probably shop for the exact linens and then 2,300 other things.

And I was like ok cool cool cool…. 

But I didn’t ask you all that. 

I only want to know what FEELS like the single, natural next step.

Because I’ve worked in the transformation business for about 25 years, y’all. 

And I’ve been a human being for 45. 

So I know this: Those detailed, logical, linear, step-by-step action plans for years out in the future almost never work. 

Because that’s not how your brain works.

That’s not how your spirit works, either.

And that’s definitely not how life works. 

Life never goes according to those plans. 

Anytime you get attached to your action plans and timelines, you feed your Inner Critic. The troubleshooting is fodder for fear: fear something will go wrong, fear of not being able to predict your outcomes with certainty, fear that you’ve missed one step so you’ve already screwed it up, or fear that you’ll miss one step or twenty or only do something partially instead of all the way.

So I almost never want you to start down the path to your most inspired idea by laying out a super detailed, granular, long-term 100-point action plan. 

Especially in the earliest stages of your dreams, I never want you to think the long-term action plan all the way through with your mind. 

Instead, I want you to tune in — listen within — to what FEELS like the natural next step. 

And take that. 

And then do the same tomorrow. 

What I’m about to say may seem counterintuitive, but just hear me out: Having a harsh Inner Critic doesn’t always show up as having low self-esteem or low-achieving in life. 

The most successful people I work with often have the most dominant Inner Critic, but it shows up in a very different way. 

Among smart, successful people, the Inner Critic often shows up as a spiritual emergency brake that stops you from getting off the treadmill of a culturally approved life. So you can be very high-performing and powerful at things that don’t matter that much to you, but feel like you hit a wall of hesitation, delay, mixed mind and Resistance any time you try to step out of that corporate life and into a soulful life outside of the box. 

One way the Inner Critic does this is by pretending to be the voice of reason and logic, setting you up for self-sabotage with uninspiring action plans and unsustainable goals when it comes to your soul-level callings and dreams. Against that backdrop, the shadow life of checking off boxes feels much safer and simpler. 

So you just keep doing that, checking off boxes, day in and day out.

That’s why when you get those Divine Downloads, those beautiful inspired ideas that feel so exhilarating for a moment, you may have a habitual arc that looks like:

1. Get big, beautiful idea for how life can be different
2. Have a honeymoon period with your dream
3. Start thinking about all the action items it would take for you to be/do/have/create/learn that dream and start feeling the bigness, start imagining how difficult it will be
4. Start troubleshooting all the things that could go wrong if you step into your dream, and feel the inner shackles start encircling your heart
5. Visualize yourself being vulnerable and feel your spiritual emergency brakes activate
6. Feel your inspiration and self-respect dwindle
7. Feel sad and wonder why you can’t seem to get it together
8. Go get busy doing housework or work work for a dopamine hit of worthiness, to remind yourself that you are a competent person and maybe get some external validation from someone who appreciates that work.

So, if you have a big inspired idea or dream or unique, electric vision for your life, my challenge to you is this:

Don’t plan it all out.

You wanna stack the decks in favor of your dreams???

Don’t plan them all the way out.

Not yet.

I know you think that doing so makes you a good, rational, responsible grown-up.

I know you think doing that kind of action plan is a prerequisite for making your dream come true.

But it’s exactly the opposite. 

So today, I just want you to tune into your inner awareness about what feels like the natural next step.

Identify that. 

Find a version of that step that feels just 4% more challenging than anything you’ve ever done before. 

And just take that step. 

Maybe today’s 4% step poses a challenge to your comfort zone around being vulnerable and visible.

Maybe tomorrow’s natural next step challenges you to be 4% more organized than normal.

Maybe the next natural next step challenges you to be 4% more free in your self-expression than normal, speaking up for yourself, saying what you mean, asking for what you need.

Just 4%.

Because 4% isn’t scary enough to give your Inner Critic the hook of “that’s super risky are you out of your mind????” or “you’re being totally irresponsible and your children will starve. Get it together.” 

4% doesn’t feed your Inner Critic.

And here’s the happy side effect of challenging yourself to focus 4% more on your dreams than on your fears every day. At a glance, it seems like 4% x 25 days would have you double your capacity roughly once a month.

But that’s bad math. You have to think of it like compounding interest. Because if you grow your capacity to fulfill yourself 4% today, then tomorrow you don’t start back over with 100%. Tomorrow you start with 104% of the capacity with which you started and grow that by an additional 4%. 

So, if you grow your capacity to do your dreams by 4% every day, your capacity grows by over 1 million percent in one year’s time.

And that’s how you become free.

And that leaves you, in one year, with a 1 million percent higher threshold for the scariness of challenges you can face before you set off your Inner Critic. 

That leaves you with 1 million percent more inner peace, more of your inner landscape, that you can explore hand-in-hand with your Inner Being – your True Self – the voice of the Divine that speaks to you within you… instead of having your mental airwaves dominated by that loud, fear-spouting Inner Critic. 

Spiritually speaking, 4% is the precise incremental difficulty that results in: your natural next step. It keeps your dreams from feeling so scary that the fear feeds your Inner Critic. 

Neurobiologically, 4% harder than your current capacity puts you in a flow state sweet spot. 

Neurobiologically, 4% is just challenging enough for you to get into blissful creation mode, lose track of time and become joyfully absorbed in the desirable difficulty of your challenge without your brain flipping its internal struggle switch on and tapping out of the project entirely. 

And here’s another beautiful thing about 4%: It’s just enough of a step to put the higher powers and forces of this Universe on notice of your commitment. 

It’s enough to spark the assisting forces that are all around you all the time, so that they know you’re open and willing to move forward, meaning you are open and willing to receive their help.

And as a result, when you take a 4% step you can rest assured that help is on the way. Always and in all ways. Ways that will surprise, please and delight you.

Four percent is enough to activate Divine Order and Divine Timing, which are real and always in your favor. Four percent tells Divine Order and Divine Timing to start weaving their golden threads together into a magic carpet of momentum beneath you that adds to your energy, adds to your focus.

(By the way: That’s why stepping into your callings is actually energizing as you go, not depleting.)

Four percent is just enough to start re-educating your spirit that you actually can trust yourself, trust your ideas and trust that everything is always working out for you. 

Four percent starts to re-train your fearful holding patterns and break their pull.

Four percent will trigger momentum in your brain, in your mind and in your soul, but also in your relationships and in your ability to see opportunities all around you that you couldn’t see before.  

The right doors begin to open. 

The wrong ones start to close.

The path of possibility lights up before you.

Your co-creators show up and raise their hands. 

Four percent teams you up with the creative power that formed all worlds, and wants to flow through you, too.

I don’t care whether your inspired idea is to move to Spain, to write a book that forever changes its readers, to unschool your kids or to leave your job and start a profitable, influential,  transformational business…

Know this today:

You are poised and powerful.

Your True, Sacred Self is timeless and tireless.

You are radiant and magnetic to wonderful things.

They now begin to flow to you by grace, over calm seas, in perfect ways.

Get open.

Get receptive.

Get willing. 

Stop overthinking it. 

Just take what feels like the natural, next step… 4% beyond your current comfort zone. 

And with that step, climb up onto your magic carpet of momentum.

I’ll see you there.

Head up + heart out,

The Inner Critic Coach™

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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

Every decision you make is just an experiment.

All of them. 

Ain’t nobody out here in these streets handing out promises that if you wait until you think you’re perfectly ready to shoot your shot, you’ll get an A+ for preparedness and everything will work out exactly according to your plans.

That’s not how life works. 

In fact, it actually works the other way around. 

Haven’t you heard the saying “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”?

Haven’t you heard the saying: “Woman plans, God laughs”?

I’m sure you have. And I also know that these are the kinds of sayings you can know must be true in your mind, intellectually, and still feel like you’ll vomit or die if you even think about trying to live by them.

So I’m here today to offer you some tricks to living this ‘shackles off’, radically liberated, ‘let the chips fall where they may because it’s all an experiment anyway’ kind of life.

The first trick is to just take the natural next step. 

If you have an idea that feels really big to you, don’t try to plan everything all the way out. That’s the fastest way to overthinking, overhwhelm-ment, to creating false prerequisites and flipping your struggle switch on. 

It’s also the fastest way to suck all the inspiration out of your big, beautiful, uniquely YOU idea. 

It’s the fastest way to talk yourself out of taking even the first step. 

You win if you take one step. Even if that step is as small as researching something, making a call, changing your bio on LinkedIn.

The next trick is to notice how you feel when you daydream about the various options before you. If you have an idea that just feels like liberation in your spirit? If one option feels expansive in your chest, even if it seems ridiculous, logically speaking? If one of your choices feels like awe and wonder and exhilaration and expansion and enthusiasm? 

Pick that one. Because the things you do that feel like that are always a link in the golden chain of your highest good. This is true whether they work out the way your thinking mind would deem “successful” or not.

Because the Divine Mind — the infinite intelligence that runs the show in this Universe — is speaking to you and through you all the time. 

And the Divine Mind speaks within you, to you in the form of your soul’s callings and intuitions and nudges and hunches of Inner Guidance, and those shackles OFF feelings and those brilliant golden threads of inspired ideas. 

And the Divine Mind knows more than your intellectual thinking mind will ever know. 

Catch this principle: Your Inner Guidance knows 100% of the things your human, intellectual mind knows, plus plus plus plus plus.

Oh and catch this principle, too: the Divine Order is neither logical nor linear. 

I have worked mightily in my life, I did all the things. I got the grad degree, I went to law school I had a great plan. I worked the plan.

And it did work.

But the best things that happened in my career, the best things that have happened in my life, I didn’t plan any of that.

It was not a logical or linear process to get to those many many hundreds of thousands of peak realities and experiences that I’ve been blessed with.

Because the Divine Order is neither logical nor linear. 

So don’t limit it to what is logical and linear or understandable to your intellectual human thinking mind.

Because your thinking mind might lay out an action plan that goes from A to B to C and step-by-step on to Z.

You put a time frame on it. And you will start telling yourself that you are behind if you don’t accomplish, achieve, hustle and make it happen by that timeline.

But the Divine Mind will take you from A to B to F, back to B a couple times, and then fast forward you on to Z and beyond. 

To where you can’t even imagine where the Divine Mind will take you. 

Not only can you not even imagine the destination of the Divine Mind, the Divine Mind will light up all these brilliant steps before you and line up all these opportunities and co-creators for you, step by step. Sometimes it will accelerate you. Sometimes it will delay you. 

But all of the time it will benefit you.

And you stand to miss that benefit and those opportunities and those co-creators if you’re too fixated on what you think the action plan should be or what the timeline should look like.

Woman plans, God laughs. You dig? 

Seriously, your Inner Critic is the voice that says you’re falling behind, that says you should be an overnight success already, that says you’re getting too old to ever really make it. 

Your Inner Critic is the voice that says “hurry up!” “what’s taking so long”, “you need to set tighter timelines” “be more productive”. 

And in that way, your Inner Critic is the enemy of Divine Order and Divine Timing.

Because if you listen to the time scarcity lies of your Inner Critic, you’ll rush through your action plan and you’ll miss all the brilliant serendipities and wonderful perfect place-perfect time alignments that will surprise and delight you when you tap out of the race against the clock. 

Oh and the other trick to living this shackles off, liberated, inspired, self-actualized life… the trick to making decisions about what to do next and the trick to break your inner stalemates about those decisions… the trick is to zoom out, zoom out more… zoom waaaay out.

Because if you zoom out from yourself in this moment, just for a minute – most of the time I’m going to ask you to live in day-tight compartments, but in this particular issue, when you’re facing a decision and if feels like a stalemate – you’ll see that nothing in life is guaranteed, not even the results of playing small and what seems like “safe”. 

If you zoom out from your current goals, you can look back and see how many of the glorious realities of your current day life came to you by grace and in surprising ways you could never have planned or even imagined. 

And if you zoom out from this moment to the stretch of your whole life, you’ll see that very, very few decisions you’ve ever struggled with in the past now warrant more than a mention in a paragraph in the book of your life, not even the ones you agonized over at the time.

And if you zoom from this moment out to the 300,000 years of human evolution, you’ll see that there’s no decision you can make in your life today that will read as “total catastrophe” through that lens.

And maybe that allows you to give yourself a little bit of a break.

Every decision you make is just an experiment. 

But if you have a strong Inner Critic, it may be telling you that you are courting disaster if you do any of the things you dream of doing that feel like exposure or vulnerability.

Because your Inner Critic is generally a protective mental pattern. It’s trying to protect you from whatever you’re afraid of, often whatever your family of origin deemed the Very Worst Thing to be or experience. 

It’s trying to protect you from looking stupid.

It’s trying to protect you from making mistakes. 

It’s trying to protect you from being fat, poor, ugly, ignored, insignificant. 

It’s not doing a great job of protecting you, to be clear. It’s a bit of a bumbler, is the truth. But it’s trying. 

And in its trying, your Inner Critic is definitely protecting you from being, doing, having and creating the things you’ve always wanted.

It’s also protecting you from learning what you need to learn to become who your Inner Wise Being is trying to become. 

And it’s definitely protecting you from freedom, growth and joy.

I don’t even think you want to be protected from those things.

How it works is your Inner Critic will either immobilize you entirely or cause you to live in an eternal state of hypervigilant delay, perfectionism, busywork, planning and procrastinating, and always working on something but never quite ready to do your own personal dreams and soul-deep callings. 

Because if you pull the trigger… if you go all-in? 

You could fail. 

…And then what? 

But here’s what your Inner Critic is missing…the fundamental truth that all your decisions are experiments. 

Including and especially the decision not to make a decision. 

Perpetual delay is a decision. Inaction is a decision. And when you make that decision habitually, you wire your spirit and your neurobiology into a template where incompletion, unfulfillment, dissatisfaction and disappointment all feel like normal.

Hiding your light is a decision.

Holding yourself back is a decision and, as such, it’s an experiment. 

Haven’t you run that experiment enough to see how it plays out?  

Taking a natural next step that feels scary or untethering but also exhilarating? That’s a decision and an experiment, too. 

What I find in coaching very smart, very successful people is that most people who habitually make the decision to stop hiding their light and start taking the natural, next step toward fulfilling their deepest desires — they almost all have the same experimental “result” regardless of whether the step they take technically succeeds or fails.

The “natural next step” experiment produces a wave of worthiness, self-respect, and the feeling of inner peace because you’re no longer fighting yourself, shoving parts of yourself down, resisting your own ideas and battling your Inner Genius.

Taking the natural next step and letting the chips fall is an experiment that produces a few other results, too. 

It opens the door to a little magic. 

It issues an invitation to good luck and good fortune. 

It breaks the curse of habitual indecision and delay.

It rewrites and rewires the template of disappointment, unfulfillment, and dissatisfaction.

It opens the door to the assisting forces of this Universe that are on pause until you reactivate and reanimate them by taking that step forward and running that experiment. 

It somehow broadcasts a signal of “I’m ready!” to other people and events that all unknowingly show up to co-create with you, in the zone of genius you stepped into when you got that bright idea in the first place and decided to move forward.

So, if this first month of 2021 finds you facing any decisions that feel difficult at all, my advice to you is this: 

Zoom out.

Get quiet. 

Feel for “shackles off”.

Choose that.

Take what feels like the inspired, natural next step. Don’t try to figure out a 5-year-action plan, unless that happens to be the inspired, natural next step.

Then take the natural next step after that.

Run the experiment. 

Let the chips fall.

Feel the wave of worthiness.

Watch what lights up.

Head up + heart out,

The Inner Critic Coach™

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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

Feeling untethered by the news in Wild, Wild Washington? 

I have a few reminders that might serve you well in this season.

Remember that contraction always precedes expansion.

And remember that we asked for expansion. 

This is the contraction that always comes first. 

Remember that we asked for change. 

We requested a revolution in the old ways, the old systems, the old power institutions. 

Remember that the powers that currently be were built on foundations and pillars of patriarchy, white supremacy, a toxic, extractive flavor of capitalism and a corrupt system of so-called religious authority that is warped and unrelated to the true Divine Power of All that Is, Source, Spirit, God, Infinite Intelligence, the Great Giver, the Creative Power that formed all worlds and the Limitless Love that applies to every single hair on your head.

Remember that the expiration clock is ticking on those rotten institutions.

Their time is up.

Remember that we requested an evolution. 

This is what evolution looks like. 

Old power structures always kick and flail before they die so new ones can be born. 

So anytime you’re feeling untethered by the news, I want you to remember all these things.

And anytime you’re feeling untethered by the news, I invite you to come out of the headlines, and back into your own life. 

Come back into your skin.

Your reptilian brain wants to alert you that there is danger-danger-danger so you stay contracted in fight, flight and fear.

Your mammalian brain wants to bond with others in the outrage and in the struggle, despite that it feels really shitty and pulls you out of your purpose and your callings. 

Your human brain and your limitless soul are desperate for you to get back into the realm of your own sacred contracts so you can put your considerable genius to bear on the problems of human evolution that you came here, to Planet Earth, to help solve. 

I want you to remember one more thing during this time. 

I want you to remember that your nervous system was not wired to take in all the mayhem and bad things that happen to anyone anywhere in the world at all times, 24/7.

But your technologies are feeding your nervous system exactly that.

They are feeding your fear. 

I invite you to use this season to practice sovereignty, and make your technology your servant, not your master. Whatever that looks like for you. 

If you feel guilty or like a bad citizen at the mere thought of averting your eyes, I’d like to remind you that you’re no help to anyone, anywhere, on any subject if you’re curled up, contracted in fear, depleted and doom scrolling the news all day.

If you feel like reclaiming your sovereignty to live beyond the fear industrial complex is abdicating your civic duty, let me assure you that you don’t need fear to get motivated to play your role in human evolution.

Your fear is not making you a better citizen of the world. It’s actually narrowing your view on what you can actually do to play your role in a more beautiful world, and immobilizing you from doing it. 

Whatever you can do with fear you can do much more brilliantly, fluidly, creatively and powerfully without it. 

You don’t need fear.

You just need a little space and time to hear what you are being inspired to do in this season…and to answer that  calling — those callings— when they come. 

As you sit with all these things, please keep in mind the following: 

• The sun set last night and rose this morning and you didn’t do anything to help make that happen.
• Your heart has continued to beat every day and night for decades now, with zero input from you. 
• And your lungs breathed life into you 22,000 times in the last 24 hours, again, without any work on your part.

Don’t get it twisted. Every one of these things is a miracle on an order of magnitude greater than every single event that has ever been reported on any news site ever. 

Here’s what sovereignty looks like: If it feels right and energizing to you to be immersed in the energy of these current events, go for it. The next season of your personal callings might be born out of these events.

But if you’re watching out of compulsion and you want to break the hold that current events have on your time and your emotions, I hereby issue you an invitation to come out of the headlines and back into your own life.

Come back into your own life.

Come back into your own skin.

Come back to your own callings.

Stop holding your breath and waiting to unpause your life until something changes in Washington or until your kids grow up or until you hit your income goal or until you lose 10 pounds.

Your life is now. 

So, please, I implore you: Come back into your life. 

And when you get there, remember what my teacher Clarissa Pinkola Estés said: that the single most radical, powerful, transformational thing you can do in troubled times is to stand up and show your soul. 

Because “soul on deck shines like gold in dark times.”

Head up + heart out,

The Inner Critic Coach™

P.S.: Related — my last Instagram post.

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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