The other day in my favorite Peloton rider community, a new rider asked for help. She was struggling just to get through a short beginner workout, and asked if anyone had any helpful tips for how to get motivated to ride.
The key piece of information she’d included in her post was this: She said she was a runner in high school. She used to have great cardio conditioning.
But she grew up and life did what it does, and she was fearful she might not be able to have a healthy heart again.
Here’s what I said: “Here’s the thing: Your heart is a muscle. And it has muscle memory, just like your other muscles. Don’t wait to get motivated: Just get on the bike. If you do this frequently, even for 10 minutes at a time at first, the day will come when your heart remembers what it already knows how to do, and you’ll be back in the game.”
I thought this was a word for someone today, and I don’t mean the fitness advice.
Your heart is a muscle.
And it has muscle memory.
So whenever your heart feels broken, or you’ve experienced loss, betrayal, disappointment or that gaping, heavy, breathtaking feeling that you might be unloved, know this:
Your heart has not forgotten.
It has not forgotten how to love.
It has not forgotten how to be loved, either.
If you’ve ever looked at a puppy, a baby or a pajama-wearing goat, and felt the unconditional wave of warmth and openness flood through you, your heart remembers how to love.
If you’ve ever seen the twinkling, crinkling eyes of someone who loves you regardless of how much you make or how much you weigh, whether it was your life partner last week, your best friend last year or your grandmother when you were four, your heart remembers how to receive love without the condition of performing or conforming.
In fact, if you exist as a human being on Planet Earth and you can’t recall that feeling of all-encompassing love from another human, take a walk in nature as soon as you can, even if it’s for 10 minutes.
As you walk, be reminded that you are beloved by All That Is, by Source, by what some of us call the Divine or God. And if you need evidence, take a pause and try to count the leaves on the trees you pass that are conspiring with the sun, to create the oxygen that, in turn, conspires with your body for you to live.
You are beloved.
Unconditionally.
Whether or not the people around you are stable enough in their own sense of being loved to be able to communicate that to you in word or deed.
You were born to be loved. Adored. Cherished.
If you haven’t been feeling that way, turn your attention inward and upward.
Tune yourself to the channel of Universal love.
Remember that it is already yours and do whatever you’ve got to do to get receptive to it. Bestow it on yourself first. Extend openness, warmth, appreciation, affection and attention to everything about your own, inner experience.
Like the song says, stop looking for love in all the wrong places.
Like the children’s book says, let yourself be who you are. Stop rejecting and disowning parts of yourself.
Like Rumi said, stop wandering from room to room looking for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck.
Like Bapuji said, “break your heart no longer.
Each time you judge yourself, you break your own heart; you stop feeding on the love which is the wellspring of your vitality.” He said: “The time has come. Your time to live, to celebrate. And to see the goodness that you are.”
He didn’t say the good acts that you DO.
He said the goodness that you are.
You are beloved.
You are love.
And no matter how broken your heart has ever been, your heart has muscle memory.
Your heart has not forgotten.
And it will not forget.
Neither has your Source.
So don’t you forget, either.
With great love and appreciation that you are riding this rock that is hurtling through space right alongside the rest of us…
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: My leaderboard name on Peloton is SoulTourCEO, if you’re a rider and want to connect there!
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
Catch this principle: Hesitation is the enemy of your self-actualization.
Think of it this way. Inspiration is an interruption in your regularly scheduled programming. An inspired idea is like a nudge from the Divine that says: “It’s go time. Get after it. I’ll help.”
But when you hesitate to move forward on a bolt of inspiration you’ve received, you give your old patterns the chance to take over.
Old patterns like seeking approval and validation from other people before you give yourself permission to move forward on your own callings.
Old patterns like perfectionism and procrastination.
Old patterns like getting super excited about the idea you’ve had… then losing steam as you think about why it might be hard, how embarrassed you’ll be if it doesn’t happen, or all the times you’ve tried and been disappointed before. Old patterns like failing to see how all those disappointments were part of your preparation, part of your process.
And that’s why hesitation is the enemy of self-actualization. Hesitation weasels it’s way into your habits of thought and becomes a treasured way of being (TWOB) by lying to you, telling you it’s going to keep you safe from making bad decisions, embarrassing yourself or failing.
But what hesitation actually does is keep you stagnant and small.
When you say “I’ll think about it”, you allow your Inner Critic to masquerade as the voice of reason, giving it a chance to cook up all sorts of imagined, terrible, unlikely outcomes of whatever action you were feeling inspired to take.
“I’ll think about it” usually means you’re not convinced you’re really ready, capable or deserving of whatever you’re hesitating on. You’re still litigating against yourself in your own mind.
When you decide what you really need is a more detailed plan, more credentials, more money or more time, you create false prerequisites for your own fulfillment. And you cause your best ideas and goals to get stuck in your inner pipeline, where they start to congeal and wire into a template of unfulfillment, incompletion, despair and disappointment.
Hesitation interrupts your natural cycles of growth, creation and soul-level fulfillment.
Most people who know they have a hesitation problem try to whip themselves into shape with more action and more accountability.
But the antidote to hesitation isn’t always action.
Sometimes, the antidote to hesitation is simply inviting inspiration, trusting that it will come and allowing inspiration to power your action when it does.
And that’s about getting consistent and intentional with your morning routine.
That’s about keeping your mind, your calendar and your relationships free and clear of grudges and grievances.
It’s about carving out a little time and space to be able to take the first step toward your inspired ideas, in small ways, as they arrive (versus just adding them to your “someday” to-do list, never to be seen again).
It’s about reclaiming sovereignty over your own spiritual wellbeing, your capacity and your calendar, instead of feeling like you live at the whim of the mood-of-the-day on Facebook and the calendar commitments that no longer serve you.
That’s what a masterful life is. It’s not a life where nothing unwanted ever happens to you.
It’s a life where you regularly receive inspired ideas and do your role to bring them to life, all the time, without getting blocked and stuck.
It’s a life where you know your own patterns of self-limitation and hesitation, and when you see them arise you recognize them, salute them, and gracefully continue moving toward the callings of your soul, with self-compassion and appreciation for the wisdom and clarity you glean every time you make a new, graceful choice.
When was the last time you had an inspired idea or received an opportunity that made your heart leap to say YES, but your mind and your mouth said: “I’ll think about it?”
What would be possible for you if you were willing to unlearn your hesitation habits?
I invite you to get curious about that.
Head up + heart out,
P.S. If you want to overcome your hesitation habits, I’ll help you gently, gracefully unlearn them in Life and Self Mastery.
Next session begins Monday, July 6th, and you’ll start out receiving my soothing, energizing, inspiration-sparking Daily Ritual emails, six days a week.
Twice a month, you’ll get invited to a live master class that’ll contribute to your inner wellbeing and your success in life.
I’ll teach you my Spiritual Strategies for releasing the treasured ways of being (TWOBs) that no longer serve you, like hesitation, as we focus together on a different area of your life in each month’s curriculum.
I’d love to support your journey into the masterful, magical life you came here to live.
On Easter, an old friend texted to ask whether we’d done an egg hunt at my house. I said “Yes, but we did it very Tara-style.” I meant that we had put on our Easter dresses and done a video shoot all around our neighborhood.
But before I could explain, she wrote back: “You did an Easter egg hunt with egg whites????”
See, she remembers back when I was a total health obsessive. After an unhealthy few years as a young Mom, I’d lost 60 pounds. In the process, my pendulum swung in the way opposite direction. I survived mostly on chicken breasts, egg whites and vegetables for years. I didn’t drink… alcohol or milk. Or milk substitutes. I didn’t eat sugar, most fruits or grain.
For years.
I used to say things like: “cow milk is for cows” and “grain is for livestock.”
And, if asked for my exercise philosophy, I would share my Dad’s old rule about working out: “You don’t work out every day. You only work out on the days you eat.”
So, I ran and ran and ran and Versaclimbed and lifted. I wore 70 SPF all day every day.
For years.
Until one day, crossing the street, I slipped a bit and shattered the side of my foot. Freak accident. Then a few years later, I slipped a bit and broke the other one. Bizarre.
I switched from running to spinning, to minimize the impact on my feet, sometimes taking two classes a day. My feet still hurt, but it was tolerable… until it wasn’t. One day I had to climb off the bike and limp into the office of a new doctor, who held up the x-ray film and counted out all the stress fractures in my feet: One, two, three, four.
He put me on total foot rest. No walks, no workouts. I came back six weeks later.
He found 3 new stress fractures.
Turned out, I had early osteoporosis, from a severe, chronic Vitamin D deficiency I’d probably had forever.
The new doctor counted off her own list of reasons I had nearly no Vitamin D in my body: You’re Black, and melanin makes it harder to get your Vitamin D from the sun You wear SPF 70, blocking the sun You wear long sleeves all the time, even to work out. Blocking the sun. You work inside. No sun. You don’t eat dairy or dairy substitutes, most of which are fortified with Vitamin D You don’t eat grain, which is also often fortified with Vitamin D.
It turned out that a lot of the things I was doing in the name of ensuring my health were actually harming my health.
She went on and on, then gave me 500,000 units of Vitamin D to take that week, to at least get a little traction started on the bone matrix I needed to rebuild.
I’m fine now, of course.
But this story is not about Vitamin D.
This story is about what happens when you distrust your own body, and your own Universe.
See, when I was doing All of Those Things in the name of “making myself healthy”, it was like I’d decided I was the Director of the Universe, as my friend Victoria would say.
I was solely responsible for my health, in my mind. So I pulled every lever I knew how.
And in so doing, I blocked the most fundamental gift this Universe bestows every single day on every single human: the sun.
And, in trying to run the Universe, I blocked my body from doing what Infinite Intelligence had already programmed my cells to do: convert that sun into Vitamin D.
Since then, I’ve discovered that the idea that we must control and manage everything we possibly can or catastrophe might occur is an unworthiness story. The idea that we’re not worthy of a wonderful life if we’re anything less than superheroic in our efforts to tame the Universe, including but definitely not limited to our bodies, is oppressive and flat-out false.
So the next time you think you need to inventory all the things that you want to fix, edit, change, optimize or make happen about your body, your self or your life, I invite you to try this reframe which has a funny name: pronoia.
Paranoia is the idea that everything in this world is out to get you.
And pronoia is the opposite. It’s the idea that everything in this world is conspiring to bless you.
But pronoia is not just an idea. If you reflect on the logistics of your existence, you can’t help but find the proof points for pronoia.
Your lungs and your atmosphere conspire to breathe you to life about 22,000 times a day, with no assistance or instruction from you.
Your connective tissues keep on negotiating a series of agreements between your skeleton and your muscles, all conspiring to hold you together even if you release your clenched jaw and those little muscles between your eyebrows. They conspire to keep you all together, even while you sleep.
Your cells keep re-creating the new version of the old you, like the rapper says.
Your skin and the sun conspire to continuously re-create your skeleton in a process that continues even at night, even if you live in the Arctic. Your sweat even plays a part in this chemical miracle.
Unless you block yourself from receiving your pronoia blessings like I did, by refusing to trust that all could be well with my body with a more joyful, less superhuman performance on my part.
I still take really great care of my body. But I move and nourish it in ways that feel like a gift, not a superhuman, neverending chore.
I’ve reflected. I’ve connected the dots. And I’ve learned that you can get a lot done in your life the very hard way. I did, for years. I used to have an addiction to doing things the very hardest way possible.
But the best things in my life didn’t come to me that way.
They happened when wonderful things lit up before me.
And when I trusted my Inner Guidance.
And when I decided I can’t lose. I can only win or learn, because that’s all there is.
And when I learned how to get out of my own way and take action, when inspired, from a stance of total trust that everything would always work out for me.
And it does.
That’s the thing: You’d think that a trusting, receptive mode would make you lazy.
But it totally works the opposite way.
Trust actually opens you up to those golden threads of inspiration and gives you the energy to act on them when they come.
Trust and inspired action go hand in hand.
Trust is the masterful way to live.
Stand down. Stand still. Stop achieving so much. Stop blocking your own blessings.
Start receiving.
Decide you’re not willing to participate in feeling unworthy anymore.
Get receptive.
And watch what lights up for you.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: Tomorrow I open the doors to my cornerstone program, Life and Self Mastery, for the first time since March of 2019.
I’ll tell you all about it soon, of course. But know this: The students in that program learn my proven Daily Ritual and build the mindsets to silence their inner critic and break their patterns of negative thinking and self-sabotage.
Just 30 days in, they report feeling clear-minded, positive and focused on what really matters to them.
<< Learn more or sign up here.
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
Contrary to what you’ve been taught or conditioned to believe, when you want to create something or contribute to its creation, your job is not to hustle hard, make it happen or wrestle your goal to the ground.
Your job is to envision it vividly and viscerally, with the full power of all your senses.
Your job is to daydream about all the beautiful, wonderful ways the idea in your mind might become tangible and real. This is true whether what you are daydreaming about is your next home, your new lover, having a thriving business or helping create a wonderfully just and equitable world, the likes of which humanity hasn’t even seen… yet.
Your job is to get yourself into alignment with what you desire, and to stop contradicting what you desire. Get your identity and your beliefs into alignment. Get your actions and inactions, the way you spend your time, the words you use, get all of that into alignment. And whatever you do, get your systems and relationships into alignment, too.
Your job is to get still and quiet your mind enough for at least a few moments every day so that you can receive your own inspired ideas.
Your job is to take care of your precious self and learn the art and science of practicing boundaries, so that you may have the energy to act on your inspired ideas when they come.
Your job is to note your touchy subjects, to welcome the coming awareness of your self-sabotaging patterns and to see the things about yourself that you hate to look at. And your job is to move toward them instead of recoiling from them, so you can integrate all of who you are into a whole you, withholding nothing.
Your job is to take inspired action. To squeeze every ounce of juicy momentum out of your inspiration when it strikes. And your job is to back off from taking action when things feel super grindy or you hit hard resistance inside. Sometimes your job is to investigate and explore that resistance, so you can receive the gifts of clarity and fuel it exists to give you.
Your job is to trust that Divine Order and Timing will bring you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.
Your job is to unlearn the lies of culture: the scarcity, the fear, the unworthiness, the better-keep-quiet-and-play-small-to-stay-safe. Your job is to release your old, chafing templates of self-limitation, unfulfillment and disappointment. Your job is to stop practicing the stories that keep you small and to upgrade the habitual thoughts we call beliefs.
Your job is to receive and allow your desires and dreams to become real, without opposing them in your own mind.
Your job is to remember that your so-called selfish desires are planted in your soul by the Divine, and that you will have Divine assistance as you seek to answer those callings, because when you do step into the callings of your soul. you will discover what is yours to do in our world today… and you will help power human evolution in that way.
Your job is to refrain from participating in patterns, relationships or even conversations that are inconsistent with what you desire.
Your job is to refrain from judging, tracking or rushing your own journey or path or progress in life because all that just clogs up your inner pipeline of clarity and inspiration.
Your job is to request and receive assistance from the safe people in your world and from the higher forces of your Universe, and to revel in the magical-feeling perfect place, perfect time moments when they light up and line up for you.
Your job is to allow what is yours to do in any given season of your life and of humanity to be as unique and sacred as the unique and sacred gifts and talents you came here with.
Your job is to let the Divine handle the specifics of how, what and with whom you step into your next season of expanded wholeness, joy and liberation.
And your job is to focus on why you want it, how you want to feel and what your dream or goal will make possible for you. Then just stay loose and detached from your own idea of what it will look like as you allow “The Divine How” to surprise and delight you.
Now, don’t get me wrong. You can make a bunch of stuff happen in your life the hard hustle way.
Most of us do that most of the time.
I used to do that 100% of the time.
But at some point, I realized most of the things I “made happen” weren’t satisfying at all. And the more I relaxed my grip on my life, I realized that all of the best things that have happened in my life — the beautiful work, meaningful relationships, joyful adventures, creative fulfillment, blissful family moments — all of those things came to me through my steady practicing of receiving and allowing, listening to the Divine voice of Inner Guidance and following what that lit up, step-by-step.
The best things in my life came to me when I started following that feeling of inner resonance and shackles-off, step by step. (Not by following some detailed 5 year action plan for life.)
So I’ll just leave you with this question: How easy are you willing to let the creation of your new, next season be?
Oh! One more thing: Your job is also to allow yourself to desire what you truly desire – not for status, money or other people’s opinions, not for achievement or atta girls – just because it feels right in your soul.
And that might be your work for awhile: To allow yourself to desire the fullness of what you desire, with your whole heart, without exception, even if you can’t see how that fits in with the bigger picture of what is happening in our world right now.
Because your soul’s callings will ultimately play a role in the evolution of our world for the better. They always do.
Head up + heart out,
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
There’s an Old Testament story that people always tell the wrong way. (According to me. 😂)
In the story, King David’s beloved child gets very, very sick.
For 7 days, David refuses food. He prays and pleads with God for his son’s recovery. He wears sackcloth and sleeps on the floor, refusing all his normal luxuries and conveniences.
And then the boy dies.
David’s servants are so concerned about how he’ll take the news that they’re scared to even tell him. But he figures it out.
And when he gets confirmation that the boy has died, David gets up off the floor, takes a shower, washes his face, gets dressed and asks for a meal. Then he eats.
David’s household staff was like: “Wait what? You were sooooo devastated when the boy was just sick. But now he’s dead and you’re good?”
And David said something to the effect of: “When I was stressed out before, I was hoping that my pleas would help him survive. Now that he’s gone, my stress won’t bring him back. I’ll see him again in the afterlife someday.”
Every time I’ve ever heard that story, I’ve heard it told as a story of resilience. When you hit the rough stuff, when you lose something precious, when a season ends against your will, don’t wail and moan.
Get up, wash your face, get back in the saddle.
But I think the most powerful part of the story hasn’t even been told yet.
After David ate, he went to comfort his wife. And during all this “comforting”, she gets pregnant and eventually gives birth to another son.
That baby would eventually become King Solomon, the historical Jewish emperor whose very name symbolizes wisdom, clear-minded discernment and incredible prosperity.
So, as I read it, the moral of the story is not “get up and wash your face”.
The moral of the story as I read it, is that after grave crisis, after a season of loss, after even death and mourning comes creation and wisdom.
If you let yourself receive them.
Every spiritual tradition has the principle of death preceding rebirth and creation.
So does science.
The elements of everything that has ever lived and died on this Planet are recycled into the new things that now live.
Including you and me.
And everything you’ve ever wanted that didn’t work out, everything you’ve ever tried and failed at, every season of your life that’s ever ended… all of that creates space for fresh, new things to be born.
But more importantly, all your past “endings” create clarity and wisdom.
Catch this principle: You can’t start receiving and leveraging the clarity and wisdom of a loss until you let it go, grieve it and decide to get back in the game.
So yeah. Wash your face.
But that’s not the end of the story. Wash your face so that you can collect your clarity. So that you can expand in wisdom.
And so that you can see what wants to be created in your life next.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: Doors are about to close on my Do Your Dream program, the 21 day online workshop where you learn how to overcome old patterns of procrastination, perfectionism and negative self-talk so you can take unprecedented, wholehearted action on your self-care and life goals.
The program begins June 1st. Join us if you’re ready to start seeing what’s next for you.
My house has 40 stairs from the sidewalk to the main floor.
Every day, usually several times a day, I have to get a forty-pound 2-year old and all our groceries, bags and other belongings (i.e., pugs) up and down those stairs.
So as soon as she could walk, I made it my personal mission that Londyn be safe and self-sufficient on the stairs, as soon as humanly possible.
And most of the time, it’s all good.
But once, when she was with a nanny, she had an accident on one particular staircase in our home.
She’s fine going up, 100% of the time. But every single time we go down together, I hold her hand tight to make sure she doesn’t fall. On top of that, I walk one step ahead of her, so that even if she were to stumble, she’d fall right into me and no harm would come to her.
Ninety-five percent of the time, she’s perfectly happy to go up and down this particular staircase, hand in hand with me.
But occasionally, she’ll realize that the dogs aren’t coming with us, or that she’s left her doll or her hoodie upstairs, and she’ll look backwards.
When that happens, she gets wobbly and pulls against me. Her safety is my number one priority, so immediately whatever I’m carrying gets wobbly as I start attending to her. And I have to slow way down to coax her back into looking in the same direction as we’re walking.
I hear myself saying in a cheery, sing-songy voice: “Look in front of you!” “Watch your steps!” “Watch where you’re going!” “Don’t look back!”
Eventually, we get on the same page.
But twice since her accident, something has happened where she has a little flash of a memory and freezes up. She just stops, cold in her tracks. The first time this happened, she actually just shook her head “no” and sat down on the steps, before I even realized what had happened. I had to drop all our stuff to the floor and just pick her up.
But the second time, I didn’t pick her up.
Just the other day, she had one of her fright moments. Instead of picking her up, like she wanted, I stopped and set all our stuff down on the stairs.
Then, I sat right down next to her, picked her up and put her on my lap, making sure I was exactly eye to eye with her.
I made sure she was calm and paying attention. I smiled at her. And then I said:
“Listen, Londyn. Do you know Amma will never leave you on these stairs? I will always be RIGHT HERE. You hold my hand tight, and I’m going to stand RIGHT HERE, right in front of you. I’m right here with you. Your Amma always has your back. Always always always. I’ve got you. Okay? ”
She smiled the smile of a thousand toddler teeth, nodded, and then walked right on down the stairs holding my hand, like the baby boss lady she is.
Why am I telling you this?
Because you are like Londyn.
And your Inner Being is like me, holding your hand on the stairs of your life.
Your Inner Being knows exactly where you are going.
It is guiding you into the full flow and current of life, through the experiences that will form the most joyful, successful and abundant version of you.
Your Inner Being speaks to you through those “shackles on” and “shackles off” feelings you get at every decision point in your life.
Your Inner Being speaks to you through the impulses and inspired ideas that come to you, the ones that put you in the perfect place at the perfect time.
Your Inner Being speaks to you through the beautiful options that light up before you with ease, when you step out into a life goal or direction that feels resonant to you, even though you have no idea how you’ll pull it off.
And your Inner Being speaks to you through the desires, dreams and callings you’ve had your whole life: the ones that won’t go away, even though you run from them or hold yourself back from fully fulfilling them.
They just keep coming, no matter how small you want to play. No matter how much you want to get in your own way, with procrastination and chronic distraction.
And as long as you hide and hold yourself back from your own dreams, you live in a chronic state of inner tension. It’s like an inner tug of war. That’s what it feels like when you refuse to go where your Inner Being is calling you to go.
You don’t have to live that way.
When you get a dream or desire in your heart, your Inner Being is like me with Londyn: it always has your back.
You will be guided as you step forward. But you can only be guided when you step forward! You can only see the magical, masterful next steps in your life light up before you, step by step.
I can’t protect Londyn if I stand at the bottom of the stairs. I’m right there with her. Step by step.
When you have a soul-level intention, but you resist it by looking backwards at all your past so-called failures, traumas or disappointments, not only do you hold yourself back, you also obscure from yourself all the assisting forces that are always trying to help you.
And when you have a soul-level intention or goal, not one you set based on status or money, but one you set because it felt like a gift you were giving to yourself when you committed to do it… when you have a goal like that and you resist it by just sitting down on the stairs, you deny yourself access to the steady, stabilizing stream of Limitless Love and Infinite Intelligence that is trying to help you get where you’re going.
Now, stopping to take a seat isn’t actually the end of the world, because in that place of stuck and struggle between you and your own Inner Being is where you begin to learn exactly how covered and safe you are, exactly how much help you really have.
If you get still during those times, and turn your attention inward with the right practices and focus, you’ll see exactly how safe and abundant this Universe and your life really, truly are.
Every time you have an eye-to-eye with your Inner Being like this, you come out like Londyn did after our conversation: with new clarity, calm and confidence: a new sense of your own power, safety and excitement about the adventures ahead at the bottom of the stairs .
Listen: I know the stairs can be scary.
But on the other side of the stairs — on the other side of your fear — is the whole rest of your wonderful life.
So as you start envisioning the changes you want to make to your life NOW so things never go all the way back to normal after this pandemic, please catch these principles:
#1: Don’t look back.
When you’re tempted to tell yourself all the old stories of struggle, disappointment and incompletion, just say to yourself: “that was then this is now.”
Say it gently, with great compassion and warmth for yourself .
And then start looking for the revelations, insights, clarity or new realities that came to you through your past disappointments and are coming to you now, on the other side of this crisis, too.
#2: And don’t sit down. (Unless you really need to.)
Keep taking little baby steps to go where your Inner Being is calling you to go.
It helps if you keep your nervous system in good shape.
It helps if you keep your spiritual system in good shape.
It helps if you stay connected to your Source and your resources.
And you do this by building the muscle of a soothing, grounding, energizing Daily Ritual, like the one I teach in Do Your Dream.
Catch this principle: You CAN get very far in life without ever running down the stairs.
Just keep taking one, imperfect step at a time, and the occasional bigger, bolder move… and soon, you’ll feel the wave of self-respect and inner peace that comes from aligning your vision, your identity, your beliefs and your actions.
That’s how you get in the flow, and start fulfilling your potential as you were designed to be fulfilled.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: If you’d like my help overcoming old patterns of self-sabotage so you can come out of this quarantine taking better care of yourself, no longer playing small and finally fulfilling your potential, join me in the Do Your Dream program starting June 1st.
In this 21 day program, you’ll learn how to overcome the fears, distractions and negative mindsets that have held you back in the past, so you can build beautiful momentum on your self-care and life goals.
I recently surveyed 1,000 Americans and 77% of them said that they were RELIEVED when they learned of the shutdown.
One of them even said: “This is the break I didn’t even know I needed. But I did.”
NINETY-FOUR PERCENT said that they don’t want their lives to go all the way back to normal, after all this.
If you’re anything like them, you’d like to be healthier, wealthier, closer to your loved ones and closer to fulfilling your lifelong goals after this is all over.
Maybe you’d like a slower pace of life.
But you’d also like to feel like you’re fulfilling the potential you know you have inside.
Fear, self-doubt, your inner critic and the hectic nature of your everyday life may be stopping you from taking even one step toward this vision of a new-and-improved life.
The truth is, YOU may be holding yourself back in all sorts of ways without even knowing it.
And that can create a self-defeating shame spiral, where you’re constantly thinking about all the times you’ve tried and failed, so you don’t even try anymore.
It’s time to hit reset.
If you’d like to reset your vision, intentions and priorities for the rest of the year, join me this Thursday for this incredibly powerful, LIVE online workshop.
Topic: The Great Reset: Learn 3 secrets for setting intentions that work
When: Thursday, May 14th, 2020 at 11 am Pacific | 2 pm Eastern
Here’s how you’re repressing your unique, sacred gifts and keeping your beautiful, visionary ideas trapped inside:
Creating unnecessary drama by doing everything the hardest possible way or ignoring important details in your life
Creating chaos and crisis in the periphery of your life so you don’t have to focus on the scary inner work or intimidating parts of your life goals (e.g.: by picking arguments or clumsily having accidents)
“I’ll do it myself”: not letting others pull their weight
Perfectionism (which: exhausting and self-repressive)
Futzing around ad nauseum with the name of your business, brand, platform, book, blog, etc. so you never really get it launched instead of diving deep into the substance and content and launching meaningful, imperfect things
A chronic pattern of intervening between others and the natural consequences of their behavior (aka codependency)
Mating and pairing and partnering and hiring and teaming up and raising people who underperform so you have to do All of the Things, All of the Time
Incessantly seeking love and approval from others instead of giving it to yourself, in the form of prioritizing title, status, money, achievements, approval, awards, “wins”, shout-outs and even competing with others over just doing what really matters to you
Chronically getting bored and moving onto other projects when things start to feel too easy
Chronically trying to delegate, outsource or sidestep the parts of your most important projects that spark your own Inner Resistance (the parts that spark Resistance point to your most transformational soul work — that’s why they feel scary)
Believing the lie of culture that says you have to prove your worthiness by being perfect or working your heart out
Refusing to focus on one of your many brilliant ideas because you feel like you’ll choose the wrong one and miss out on something
Shiny object syndrome (which: also exhausting)
Majoring in the minors: keeping yourself distracted and depleted on the things that don’t actually move the needle on your business, creative or life goals
Saying you’re confused or unclear about your life purpose, what you really want and what you want to spend the precious moments of this life doing (you’re not)
Saying yes when you mean or FEEL “NO”
Telling the story that you don’t have time, energy or money you really do have but simply aren’t prioritizing in alignment with what you actually care about.
Listen.
There is a calling on your life.
There is a transformational empire that wants to be built through you. A book. A blog. A special system. A business.
And you’ve always known it.
During quarantine season, you’re probably starting to hear your soul’s calling a little more urgently…. or maybe a lot.
Maybe you can even feel your calling in your body. It feels like a great tension within, as you hold yourself back from going where your Inner Guidance is telling you to GO.
PLEASE hear me right now, as I speak for all of humanity: WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR YOU TO KEEP PARTICIPATING IN YOUR OWN SMALLNESS. You = small is a lie.
If you’ve been asking yourself why you can’t ever seem to get traction on your business dreams or life goals, and any of the things on that list come up as answers, now you know the truth: these are all just various methods of self-repression you engage in to keep yourself small, safe and out of the tension, out of the fear.
But if you’re ready to have your own, personal Great Reset and become an unapologetic leader of your own thought leadership platform, your own message, your own business or your own life, please hear me when I say that you are ONE EPIPHANY AWAY from feeling the fever of self-repression break.
And when that fever breaks, you will feel like I feel right now: LIKE I’M BREATHING FIRE.
Unapologetically, DEEPLY in love with yourself, your purpose and the people you serve.
You will feel poised. Prolific. REAL. Resilient. Powerful. Able to make your lifelong dreams REAL, without any further delay or hesitation.
You’ll feel a wave of self-respect that feels like unprecedented, perfect love.
You’ll feel radiant. Magnetic. Masterful in your life because you’re just always listening to Inner Wisdom and moving in the direction of whatever feels like: shackles OFF.
You’ll feelon purpose, EVEN IN QUARANTINE. Even when all you’re doing is resting or connecting with friends, or nourishing your body or your family.
You’ll feel clarity and power, but also relaxation, knowing that Divine Order and Timing are so real that you can’t even GET it wrong. You go from success to success. From glory to glory.
If you KNOW you could live a magical, extraordinary, blessed life, and you’re ready to start getting real results, then I’m making the time to show you how it’s done.
Here are your next steps, depending on who you are:
If you’re a human being on Planet Earth, your next step is to join me at my LIVE intention-setting workshop, The Great Reset, on May 14th at 11 am PT | 2 PM ET.
If you’re a human being on Planet Earth and you also have a vision for a thriving, business, book, personal brand or thought leadership platform — CLICK HERE to book your one-on-one epiphany session with me (it’s totally free).
FYI: I’m opening up just a handful of spots and this message is going out to thousands of people.
The madness of you repressing yourself stops now.
My personal un-repression journey — the journey into my powerful, magical, masterful NOW — started during the recession back in 2008, when I lost everything.
So I speak with total clarity and authority when I tell you that as crazy as this year has been, it can STILL be the year you stop holding yourself back and your life explodes into TECHNICOLOR success, happiness and abundance.
It doesn’t have to take forever and it doesn’t have to be a struggle.
Head up + heart out,
PS: This email is going out to thousands of people. Spaces WILL fill up fast, because… that’s how life works.
Click here now and book your session before it’s too late.
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
My name is Tara-Nicholle Nelson, and I’ve been here before.
I’ve lived through a global crisis that turned my entire personal life upside down.
If we’ve met in the last 10 years, it might seem like my existence is nothing but pugs, cashmere, businesses and trips, soul and spirit.
But it wasn’t always like that. In 2008, I lost everything: my business, my home, my marriage (and I’m not even done, but I’ll stop there).
When I reflect on that time now, 12 years later, I think of it as The Best Crisis Ever. Best thing that ever happened to me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the exact events that seemed like they would do me in ultimately turned around to my great advantage.
As I lived through and surrendered to those losses, I was being groomed. I was being prepared to become who I have now become.
And I was learning to be unapologetic about my unique genius and putting 100% of it out into the world.
In 2008, I learned one more thing I want you to remember in the coming weeks and months:
There are people who thrive in every crisis, and come out of it better than they were before.
If you want to be one of those people, you’ve got to get a handle on your own thoughts, actions and emotions.
You’ve got to get skillful about managing your own inner wellbeing, nervous system and boundaries.
There is no shortcut. It’s the only way.
It’s the only way to stay calm and grounded enough to not spend every day on the coffee-wine-Facebook overconsumption rollercoaster.
It’s the only way to stay out of the breath-holding fear, anxiety and worry that stop you from seeing the opportunities and help that is all around you, even right now.
It’s the only way to stop running around in frenetic, ineffective, anxious activity and trying to control your world by doing more than your fair share of things, so you can come back to center and get recharged.
It’s the only way to stay energized and inspired enough to tap back into your own natural strength and power.
You’ve got to reset your nervous system. You’ve got to recalibrate your insides.
If you want to make this your Best Crisis Ever, you’ve got to get intentional about your life again.
It is possible. And, let’s be real: It will be uncomfortable. There’s a strong pull to stay in the patterns of your crisis reaction “type” and the coping mechanisms you feel powerless to resist.
There’s a strong pull to stay bonding with others over fear and negativity and stress and overwhelm. And hey… if that’s where you need to be for awhile, no judgment. Seriously.
But when you want things to be different you have to reclaim your sovereignty from your unconscious patterns of self-medication and self-limitation.
It’s the only way.
I’m going to start sharing some action steps you can take if you’re ready to reclaim your energy and your life, so you can start living your upgraded priorities.
But before those steps can even work, you have to put a stake in the ground.
You have to decide that you’re willing to let the disruption of pandemic season disrupt your old ways of being, and that you’re open to gracefully trying on some new, empowering ways.
And you activate that decision in two steps:
Step 1: Let go of whatever you thought 2020 was going to look like.
Step 2: Set a resilient, new intention that is calibrated to help you thrive, even in current conditions.
If you want me to show you how to take these steps, you’re in luck.
I’m hosting a free, LIVE intention re-setting workshop:
Topic: How to reset your intentions for 2020 and set yourself up to thrive Date: Thursday, May 14th Time: 11 am PT, 2 pm ET
I am limiting the number of attendees so I can answer as many questions as possible, and I’m giving my Transformation Tuesday readers the first shot to sign up.
If you’re willing to invest an hour of your time to make the most out of this year, I’m down to show you how.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: I’ve been working from home, running businesses and writing books with kids, for the better part of the last 15 years.
If we have time at the end of the intention-resetting workshop, I”ll share a handful of strategies that work for me to create some boundaries and get my shit done.
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
When I was a kid, I hated group school projects, but I loved getting straight A’s. So any time we were assigned a group project, the voice in my head immediately replied: “I’ll just do it myself.”
As an adult, though, my callings required more of me.
When you want to create big things or truly impactful things, you can’t do that on your own. And in the process of exorcising my inner resistance to collaboration, I realized that doing it all myself was one way I’d been repressing my own inner genius, depriving it of the resources I needed to put my soul fully on deck in the form of my work.
Cut to: Quarantine Season 2020.
One of the things I hear the most from my executive and entrepreneur coaching clients is how urgent their lifelong dreams have become as they’ve sheltered at home.
This is an urgency that feels bodily and almost aches: so many brilliant ideas, writhing in a mass within their chest or their throat to come out. Books. Talks. Brands. Businesses.
Movements, even.
And in Quarantine Season 2020, maybe the 2nd most frequent pattern I’m detecting among the badass boss ladies in my world is a mind-blowing list of All The Things they’re doing everyday, at home and at work.
They’re running businesses and business units.
They’re dealing with layoffs or dealing with being laid off.
They’re ramping up their companies and their customer loads.
They’re trying to organize curriculums and Crisis School kids.
They’re working out and baking, or stressing about not working out and ordering in.
They’re walking the dogs and walking the kids and walking themselves.
They’re tending the tender emotions of their children, their parents, their mates, their employees, their employers, and their customers.
They’re writing and creating. They’re envisioning and dreaming.
They’re feeling what Anne Morrow Lindbergh described as “zerissenheit”: the feeling of torn-to-pieces-hood, pulled in every direction, all the time.
And then they say: I feel like I’m so busy. Like my hair’s on fire all day. Then I crash, without feeling like I’m getting almost anything done, even though I don’t even have a commute anymore. And I haven’t paid attention to my own goals or dreams at all since the quarantine began.
Let me say this: However you’re doing this quarantine, you’re doing it just right.
You can’t sleep “too much” or do “too little”. Give yourself the grace you would give a stressed out toddler.
But IF you are pulling more than your weight at home or at work, and IF you feel like you have an urgent, deep dream or desire inside that you can’t quite get out, I need to break some sobering news to you:
You are using your codependency to repress your own brilliance. And it’s keeping you from playing the bigger game you came here to play.
See, codependency isn’t what it sounds like. It’s not being dependent on another person. It’s actually the exact opposite: It’s being addicted to fixing other people’s problems.
It’s a chronic pattern of interfering between others and the natural consequences of their behavior.
Doing it all ourselves one way we deplete and distract ourselves so that there’s nothing left to invest in our own callings, passions or visions.
Then we “get to” tell ourselves the story that there’s just no time to do our own dreams, or that life is so chaotic you’re not sure how you’d ever do anything else in addition to All The Things You’re Already Doing.
It’s an addiction because it is toxic and very, very difficult to stop doing, even when you know it’s toxic.
And the truth is: To take little, beautiful steps toward what you’re called to do, you don’t need to add them to your existing plate. You need to take some things off your plate, like the things you’re currently doing at work or at home that others could reasonably be asked to share in doing.
Your kids can do more than you think. Even the little ones.
Your team can do more than you think. Even if they never have before.
If you find that hearing this sparks resonance and resistance, hear this:
All inner resistance to your own dreams and soul-level desires and all resistance to what would free you up to foster them is a form of self-repression.
One of the gifts of the current crisis is that it will disrupt your cherished, dysfunctional ways of being, giving you an opt-out opportunity: a chance to reclaim sovereignty over your old story and start gracefully being a new way.
And in fact, for some, that will look like a system breakdown at first. If you’re living the lives of 5 people or doing the work of 12 people right now, the moment will come when the urgency of all that working and living and the urgency of your callings will reach a collective fever pitch, and you’ll realize the only option you have is to stop.
Stop asking yourself to do more.
And hopefully, you’ll also stop stressing because you can’t do more.
And then, it’d be great if you also decided to reclaim a tiny corner of sovereignty over your own time, your own power and your own life.
Hopefully, you can stop telling that old story of being the fixer, being the superhero, being chronically stressed and overextended and under-assisted.
Because you get to change this story right now.
And you don’t do it by wheedling or convincing or controlling or trying to force other people to do things you used to do, or by wheedling or convincing or controlling or trying to force other people to do things the way you used to do them.
You do it by holding the others in your life as sacred and powerful. Even your toddlers and your elders.
You get to change your old story of “so much potential, perpetually unfulfilled” by deciding to sit with the initial, disorienting, disturbing, discomfort of requiring the people in your life to experience the consequences of their actions or inaction.
You do it by trusting life and the universe, and by trusting your team and your family.
You do it by holding yourself as sacred and your dreams and goals as sacred, too.
You do it by reading Boundaries.
You do it by stopping your toxic, crippling patterns of fixing and living other people’s lives for them.
You do it by trusting me when I say that you DO have plenty of life force and energy for YOUR life and your desires, for the callings of your soul. If motherhood is one of those callings, you have plenty resources to be a wonderful mom, too.
But wonderful moms create self-sufficient kids.
Wonderful bosses create self-sufficient teams.
Wonderful entrepreneurs create thriving, interdependent customers: not co-dependent ones.
And when you decide to sit with the darkness and disturbance of disrupting your toxic pattern of fixing, very, very soon, you’ll start to recoup the incredible wells of energy and life force you’ve been using to spin other people’s wheels, maybe for decades.
Maybe forever.
And with that restoration, you’ll find yourself receiving your Divine Downloads at an unprecedented level of fidelity, so that all your old mental fogginess and inner chaos will gradually subside and allow you to hear whatever your soul is calling you to that day.
Maybe it’ll be a book, a business or a movement.
And maybe it’ll just be to curl up with your pugs and take a long-needed, well-earned nap for a few weeks.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: Did this resonate? Let me know.
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
