I’ve been teaching and coaching a lot lately about how to find your Zone of Genius and how to spend as much time in that Zone as possible, once you find it.
This mostly requires that you understand your Divine Coding: the unique pattern of power, motivations, strengths and challenges you were wired with when you arrived here on Planet Earth.
My students are learning how to identify their unique powers and stand in them, unapologetically.
There’s one particularly powerful thread of Genius that we all possess, but give short shrift to:
You possess the superpower of knowing whether a relationship, person, job, project, conversation or experience is in alignment with your highest potential or not.
And you possess this power right now.
You know.
As children we were taught to be deliberate or politically correct about these things.
We’re taught to be rational, reasonable, strategic, or talk ourselves out of what we know in the name of obedience or social harmony or some other nice name for domestication or letting somebody else’s priorities trump our own Inner Genius, our Inner Guidance.
But you knew back then when something was in alignment with your Inner Guidance or not.
And you know now.
You are not confused.
Stop saying you are, if that’s a thing you say.
Because, real talk? Confusion is just a case of competing priorities.
Let me rephrase: Confusion is almost always a case of you trying to prioritize something or someone else’s feelings or approval ahead of your Inner Guidance.
Confusion is almost always a case of you doing an inner calculation of the cost of following your own Inner Guidance system, and getting all hung up because your logical, rational, verbal mind — your domesticated mind — is trying to talk you out of going in the direction your deepest wisdom, your Inner Genius, is pointing.
Your logical mind and your trained, domesticated thoughts are trying to convince you that the cost of following your Inner Guidance is too great or that the payoff of going the other way is worth shouting down your Inner Genius.
So when we talk about tuning to yourself utterly unresistant, we’re not just talking about utterly unresistant to the callings you hear with clarity.
I’m talking about tuning yourself to be utterly unresistant, fully in surrender, to the Divine urgings and callings that are softer or that you’re not allowing yourself to hear with clarity because you’re focused on that feeling you’re calling confusion but is really just letting someone else’s opinions or priorities matter more than they should.
You know what to do.
You might not hear it clearly yet.
But you do know.
Your Spiritual Self knows.
Because you know what feels good when you think about it, envision it or daydream about it.
You know what feels like bliss.
And despite all the talk we do about all of this, you really can boil down a huge piece of this enterprise of awakening to the order our old Uncle Joseph Campbell once gave us, when he said FOLLOW YOUR BLISS.
Follow your bliss.
Your bliss is your Genius.
Your bliss is your Inner Guidance.
And your Inner Guidance is Infinite Intelligence.
Infinite Intelligence is a Divine Resource.
And that deep down feeling of friction, of ARGH, of “that ain’t right”, of disconnection, or shame or guilt or shackles on?
THAT IS INNER GUIDANCE, TOO.
That is how the Divine, Genius path for your life lights up, step by step.
When a step feels like bliss get after it.
And when a step feels like shackles, move away from it.
It doesn’t always have to be more complicated than that.
In fact, making it more complicated than that, practicing the story that you don’t know what to do or you’re confused or whatever… that’s the same thing as talking yourself out of listening to your Inner Genius: the voice of Divine Intelligence that speaks to you, through you.
And making the commitment to listen to that still, small voice that speaks through your bliss on one end of the spectrum and through your angst on the other?
That’s standing in your power.
Head up + heart out,
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
I love you. And you know me. I have all these spiritual insights into the current global situation and how the human collective can use it to create what Eisenberg called “the more beautiful world we all know is possible.”
But let’s be real. That’s probably not the most pressing issue on your mind right now.
You’re probably trying to figure out how this will impact you, your family, your business or career, your employees and your ability to make your living.
Or, if you’ve already been impacted, you might be trying to figure out what’s next for your life.
The other day, I was talking with a friend who works at a massive company whose products you know and probably use, daily. She was telling me about a meeting of their leaders, after this crisis started, where one of the leaders flat-out said: “I’m a wartime executive. We have a war chest that will never be depleted. We will be okay, regardless of how long this thing lasts. You can count on that.”
And I think that’s what everyone wants.
Everyone wants someone smart, strong and strategic to have their back.
Just about everyone wishes they had someone who they could count on, 100% of the time, to be clutch in a crisis, kind of like a wartime consigliere to help you make the right decisions and be in the right place at the right time as things play out, in real time.
Everyone wishes they had a war chest that could never be depleted.
How would you feel, if you had those things?
Relaxed? Relieved? Safe? Secure?
I’m here to tell you that you do, indeed, have those things.
But your wartime advisor is not another person.
And your war chest isn’t the cash you have on hand, even if you have a ton. Let me tell you, I know people with many millions stashed away and most of them don’t feel safe right now, either.
Because as long as your wartime consigliere is someone else, and as long as your war chest is some external resource, you will feel insecure, because your ability to access that resource could be limited by a circumstance or event beyond your control.
So take a sacred pause. Stop looking out there. That’s not where security is to be found.
I’ve had my life turned upside down a couple of times, and I can tell you that there’s no security like the security you feel when you realize where your real war chest is.
It’s within you.
Your war chest is within.
Your war chest is your unique skills and genius, talents and resilience, your inborn potentials and the wisdom you’ve acquired over your lifetime. Your connection with Source and All That Is.
Your Inner Being, Inner Guidance, Inner Wisdom, Infinite Intelligence: that’s your wartime advisor.
I was an entrepreneur during the last recession. And I know for a fact that there are people and companies who thrive in every economic climate.
My desire is that you be one of those.
So today, I’m just going to give you a rapid-fire set of spiritual and practical strategies for:
Becoming your own wartime consigliere, and
Tapping into the war chest of wisdom you have within you, so you can
Make clear-minded, wise decisions and move forward in your business and your life, even during this apocalyptic-feeling season.
Spiritual Strategy #1: Practice rapid, radical acceptance. The faster you accept the rapidly shifting realities around you, the faster you can get your footing and feel your way into the right, next steps. Sometimes, like when you’ve literally been ordered to stay at home, there’s not much of your normal way of operating at work or in your business that you can do.
So practice Zen-style equanimity, cultivating the ability to keep an even keel regardless of circumstances.
And practice Buddhist detachment from how you expected your year to play out, your product launch to go, or your customer base to grow. Let go of how you thought your business or your career would look. And let go fast. When you do, you create an opening for something even better, potentially, to come to you.
Don’t resist the reality of what is. Allow it. Feel what you need to feel. Then get organized and move forward in whatever today’s new normal looks like, without judging or bemoaning it.
Spiritual Strategy #2: Feed your own meter first. Stay prayed up and worked out, or whatever your preferred equivalents are. If you want to be on top of your mental strategy game, you absolutely must tend to your own inner wellbeing and physical wellbeing, especially when it feels like there’s no time for that.
Tend to your own state of wellbeing first thing in the morning, even if you’re feeling like you slept in too long. Get a walk or a workout in, stretch or do The Five Tibetans, nourish your body, and meditate or journal… whatever works for you.
Make these things non-negotiable in this season, and you will find that your thinking is clearer. Your insights are more uncanny. Your ability to influence and inspire will level up. And you will be able to sell in whatever you need to sell in to get done whatever you need to get done.
Spiritual Strategy #3: Third time’s a wrap. Count your blessings, not your struggles. We all want to feel understood in our outrage at the level of personal hits we’ve taken. And we want our super-heroic efforts just to keep the freaking trains running on time right now to be recognized.
But the solution to a problem is never found in the same energy as the problem. And what you focus on grows. So when you focus on listing off your problems over and over again, it becomes easier to see even more problems and harder to find any solutions.
I know, I know. Listing your struggles is tempting, because our human brains are wired to focus on what’s wrong. On top of that, our culture loves and rewards a martyr. And on top of that, it’s very normal in our world to bond with others by pulling out and showing off all the files in our struggle portfolios.
Here’s what to do when you have legitimate grievances, instead of repetitively airing them: When you hear yourself listing off all the shit that’s gone wrong, refrain from judging or shaming yourself for venting.
Best practice when you need to vent is to write it all down, brain dumping your grudges, grievances and guilt trips every morning. Julia Cameron once said to “put your dramas on the page… and leave them on the page.” Do that.
But if you find yourself venting anyway, vent away, without judging yourself. But when you hear yourself tell your tale of woe the third time, decide that the third time’s a wrap. The next time you’re tempted to tell that story, you either need to tell the story in a way that feels more powerful or change the subject entirely.
Here’s a script for when you’re tempted to bond with a friend or colleague in venting your grievances: “Things have been intense here, too. And also… I know that every crisis is a portal. So I’m appreciating all the clarity this situation is creating for me about what really is and is not important. And I’m trying to stay ready and open to see what is mine/ours to see/learn/embrace/realize/uncover during this time.”
Spiritual Strategy #4: Notice what you’re afraid of. What are your nightmares about these days? What catastrophic narratives do you play out in your mind? If you’re not sleeping at all, what’s keeping you up?
Write it down. Get the swirl out of your head. Don’t worry: You won’t make it happen by writing it once.
The subject of your fears is often pointing you to an inner shadow, repression or touchy subject that needs your attention or is calling you to do some inner work.
When you notice your fears, instead of repressing them, you will get a flashlight on the exact subject matter you’ll need to wholeheartedly engage with in order to grow and evolve as a person and as a leader.
Spiritual Strategy #5: Get crystal clear on your Zone of Genius. Read The Big Leap, or take my Sacred Money Archetypes workshop to understand exactly what you’re the best in the world at, and how to make sure your business or career is in alignment with that.
Spiritual Strategy #6: Take it all in… then take a sacred pause. I know so many entrepreneurs who are feeling pressure right now to take action, do things, put things out there and react to the crisis. But they’re also feeling pulled in so many directions that the net result is scattered and the net output is small potatoes, compared to the impact they are capable of with intentional, strategic action.
Take in what you need to take in, informationally. Talk with your customers. Listen to your employees. Let the dots connect. Let all this material marinate.
And then take a sacred pause. Take an hour or a day to feel what you need to feel. Allow yourself that, so the fearful feelings can pass on through. Investigate your feelings and brain dump every new idea or project you think you may need to do out onto the page.
And don’t track or rush your own progress, or anyone else’s. Judgment of any sort just creates turbulence in your system. So let that go.
After a day or so, you might be surprised to feel the spurts or even the steady rush of inspired, right ideas and the flow of creative power that comes in to fill the vacuum you create when you take a day or two off from rushing into action.
When you’re done with your sacred pause, get organized and prioritized, then communicate the clear vision to your team at work or at home.
Spiritual Strategy #7: When you get a golden thread of an inspired idea, download it, capture it and run with it then. When you’re inspired with the right next step, don’t put it on next week’s to do list.
Take that step, or some part of it, now.
Spiritual Strategy #8: Implement frequent Mini Monk Modes. Reclaim sovereignty over your mind and your inner peace. Don’t outsource that to the media or the worriers in your world.
Even if just for an hour or two a day, or a day or two a week, dive inward and isolate yourself a bit, so you can focus on the things that matter the most to you.
Withdraw from the news and social media. Set aside a sacred space in your heart, your home and your calendar. And then turn the magical power of your focus on the deep work or easily neglected work that you know will make a difference, moving forward.
Spiritual Strategy #9: Live in “day-tight compartments”. This is one of Dale Carnegie’s rules for how to stop worrying: Visualize yourself as the captain of a ship with the power to shut off any part of the boat into a water-tight compartment in the event of a leak anywhere else in the ship.
But in your Inner Being, the compartments aren’t water-tight. They close off the present so it isn’t impacted by “leaks” from the past or the future.
Anytime you ruminate or worry about what happened yesterday, last week or last month…. and anytime you fret or stress about what may come tomorrow, push the button.
Shut yourself off into a “day-tight compartment”, locking off the past because you can’t change anything about that… and locking off the future, because the only way you can positively impact that is to be 100% present in your now.
Spiritual Strategy #10: Make no assumptions about what is and is not possible. Lean into beginner’s mind, over and over again, every single day. Just keep asking yourself: “What is mine to be, do, have, create, see, uncover, allow… today?”
And you’ll find it.
Before I go, please catch these principles:
Every crisis is a portal for your awakening.
Every crisis is a portal for you to actualize your God-given potential a little more.
Every crisis is a portal through which you can become a little bit more of who you need to become to answer your callings.
Whether you walk through the portal or not… that’s up to you.
Head up + heart out,
TNN
P.S.: Entrepreneurs and Executives: Here’s how to work with me right now. I guide and coach startups and companies through the fearless, intentional decisions you need to make in order to survive and thrive during this crisis.
I also brief companies and leaders on the post-virus Transformational Consumer Trends they need to be aware of now…. before they can even be seen in the data.
Just email tara@soultour.com to inquire about ways to work with me to thrive during and after this season.
P.P.S.: Rumi said there are two kinds of intelligence, and I think you might appreciate what he had to say. He wrote:
There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired, as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says, collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
There is another kind of tablet, one already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of the chest.
This other intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid, and it doesn’t move from outside to inside through conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you, moving out.That fountainhead — your inner wisdom — is your war chest. And every crisis is also a switch that can turn the fountainhead of your inner wisdom on.
I had a beautiful email written to you, all about how and why it’s worth taking a sacred pause while you’re still in the eye of what feels like a hurricane.
Instead, I’ve decided that the video and photos below are actually the content we all need the most right now.
I present… Life with Londyn, Homeschool Recess Edition:
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: If you’re wanting to read some wise, inspired thinking on the state of your mind, business and soul right now, here are a few links:
This weekend, 2-year-old Londyn had a nasty fall. We spent much of the weekend at the ER and the doctor’s office.
(No need to worry. She’s in great shape now, and all is well.)
But on Saturday, during our ER visit, I was all the way on the edge.
I was worried about the baby
She was still shaken from the fall
I’d forgotten to bring water, snacks or a phone charger
I was watching my phone light up as conferences and travel plans got cancelled, one after the other
In the actual ER, people around me were coughing and wearing masks, and
The staff wasn’t being as responsive as I wanted them to be.
Fortunately, she got a clean bill of health.
Also fortunately, by Sunday I’d remembered who we are, Londyn and I.
We are offspring of the Divine, like you.
Wellbeing is who we are.
We don’t participate in fear, scarcity or panic.
We do exercise sovereignty over our own minds and bodies and emotions.
So by the time we went to the doctor on Sunday, we had elevated our own waiting room experience in a big way.
I’d brought provisions.
I’d brought a phone charger.
Londyn (who I call My Little Chickadee) and I sat in the waiting room watching videos of actual little chickadee birds singing their pretty little songs on YouTube.
And every other human in the office sat watching Londyn, mesmerized by her magic and enchanted by her adorably unsuccessful efforts to replicate the birds’ calls.
The nurse came to get us, and I pushed Londyn’s stroller into the doctor’s office.
The nurse sat wearily and heavily down to gather our information, then she sighed and closed her eyes for a brief moment as she listened to the chickadees.
She opened her eyes, smiled and said: “That is so soothing.”
It was a sacred pause.
And that is my action item for you during this media cycle of fear, scarcity and panic: Take a sacred pause today.
Or take a million sacred pauses.
Take as many as you need, anytime you need one.
Come back into this moment, over and over again.
Come back into this moment from Googling about past stock market trajectories and how the bird flu spread… and come back into this moment from fixating on what “might” happen, once you’ve done what you can reasonably do.
Come back into this moment, over and over again.
Feel your butt in the seat. Feel your feet on the floor. Feel the breath of life in your lungs, right now, in this moment.
Once you’re here in this moment, tune yourself to the channel of soothed.
Get your cardio in. Stretch your body more than usual.
Soothe your skin with something that smells wonderful.
Drink more water than normal.
Treat yourself like you’re in the middle of an endurance race, because you are (spiritually speaking).
Take a bath before you go to bed. Wear something soft and cozy when you go to bed.
Watch things you love that feel good to you.
Talk with people you love, and have conversations that feel good to you. Cook yourself things you love, that feel good to you.
Soothe yourself.
At the same time, place a limit on how much time you’re willing to spend on news or social media.
Reclaim sovereignty over your mind and your emotions.
Cleanse the timeline of your mind.
Replace the trances of fear, scarcity and panic with beautiful topics and observations and conversations.
Then, as you start to feel solid in your soothed state, radiate the golden, glowing light of your inner calm out to at least one other person.
Or maybe to 5 or 10.
If you need some declarations for emotional soothing and physical wellbeing, here are a few my students and I are using this month:
Wellbeing is the natural state of my body.
I live and thrive in perfect health.
Divine Wellbeing now streams through my immune system, my digestive system, my muscles and bones, my heart and my veins, my brain and every cell of my body, dissolving everything that is not of itself.
I give thanks for my radiant health.
All is well in my world.
Head up + heart out,
TNN
P.S.: Fear is a culturally programmed trance that almost everyone you know is living under the influence of, without even knowing it.
But you can wake up from it.
Scarcity is also a pervasive, cultural trance, that looks like this: “Better buy that toilet paper fast!”
And unworthiness is, too.
Most people don’t even know they’re thinking it, but there’s a common mental narrative in our culture that says you have to take actions, perform well, buy a bunch of stuff, prep for disaster or scrub the skin off your hands in order to “earn” or “deserve” your way out of catastrophe.
I saw someone say you should wash your hands like you just chopped jalapenos and you need to take out your contact.
Now, that’s just a highly effective visual.
But I saw someone else say “YES, we have to get very OCD about washing our hands now!!!!”
That’s the trance of unworthiness.
You don’t have to be stressed, anxious, extreme, overly disciplined or harsh with yourself in order to prove that you’re worthy of exemption from trauma or disease.
You are worthy of a life that feels and is good to you. Period. Without doing or proving anything. We all are.
By the same token, no one can “earn” their way out of every unwanted circumstance. That’s not how life works. And it is often the unwanted events of your life that set you up for your highest good.
The wonderful news is that you have the power to refuse to participate in any or all of these trances: fear, scarcity and unworthiness.
They feel real, but they aren’t true.
You can wake up from them.
And your life will start to feel magically impervious to whatever is in the headlines when you do.
Consider this your wake-up call.
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
One of the most powerful Breakthrough Questions we ask our members and coaching clients is this:
“What’s not in alignment?”
“What’s not in alignment with your calling or your desires that feel blocked or stuck?”
It might be their values.
It might be their identity: who they see themselves as and what they think they are (or are not) capable of.
It can be their beliefs or the decisions, actions and inactions that flow from those beliefs.
For high-achieving women, it’s often their systems, tools, relationships and environments that are out of whack.
I think of this particular Breakthrough Question as the “cut the line to your breakthrough” question, because most people know the answer (or at least one good answer) instantly.
The most powerful breakthrough Spiritual Strategies™ aren’t about spotting the misalignment.
The most powerful breakthrough Spiritual Strategies™ help you know what to do next.
See, this world’s unworthiness messaging has programmed us to believe that if we’re not getting what we want, we have to find what’s wrong with ourselves and roll up our sleeves.
We need to change or fix whatever is wrong with us.
We need to “heal” it.
Get more disciplined.
Exert more willpower.
Work longer hours.
Date more.
Work out more.
Real talk? That “go harder” approach, alone, rarely works in a sustained way.
Because what you focus on grows.
Because: MOMENTUM.
Focus on what’s not working, and you get more of what’s not working.
When you focus on what’s not working or feeling good in your business or your life, you tend to honk your insides up with the double-whammy of seeing what’s out of alignment, then applying more power and force to that same, misalignment.
Or you honk yourself up with the triple-whammy of seeking the misalignment, putting more energy on top of that and then judging yourself for getting the same bad-feeling results as you’ve always gotten.
As Esther Hicks would say: “The worse it gets, the worse it gets”.
So the Breakthrough Spiritual Strategies™ that work involve doing the opposite of rolling up your sleeves and working harder, grinding it out or fixing yourself:
Breakthrough Spiritual Strategy #1: Radical Acceptance: See it, shine light on it, radically accept it and investigate it with kindness and compassion, without identifying with the “problem”. (These are Tara Brach’s steps of Radical Acceptance.)
Breakthrough Spiritual Strategy #2: The Pattern Interrupt, aka Take a Freaking Break: Take a break, take a walk, take a nap, take a vacation, change the subject, hug a baby, hug a pug, get into nature, go to the gym, workout, make out, break the momentum of problem and refocus on a subject that feels like soothing and just GOOD to you.
Then: Wait, watch and see what inspirations come to you, without rushing, judging or tracking your progress.
Breakthrough Spiritual Strategy #s 3 and 4: Divine Order and Pronoia. It’s a mastery level strategy to keep in mind at all times that everything is always working out for you, even your setbacks, troublemakers, problems and obstacles.
They are collaborating for your ultimate thriving, whether they know it or not. Whether they want to or not.
Even your delays are beneficial to you.
What’s important is that you know it and tune yourself to the channel of seeking and finding the wonderful things are trying to come to you, even through your frustrations and disappointments.
Breakthrough Spiritual Strategy #5: Focus on What is Working.
I coach myself… in business and in life… with these same exact methods.
We have a business question that has felt sticky and unmoving for a long time, so we’ve tried lots of different solutions.
But today, I posed this question to our General Manager, Tierra: Can we inventory all our assets on that subject that we know DO work?
What resulted was this SUPER fun, fresh, energized conversation and a beautiful reset on a piece of our 2020 SoulTour strategic roadmap, complete with simplified, super-clear marching orders for our vendors.
Will this reset work? Yeah, probably.
The data suggests it will.
But way more importantly, the reset feels wonderful, partially because it gave us a reason to celebrate all our wins instead of dwelling in the energy of what seemed like a problem.
It also gave us a beautiful guardrail, a beautiful constraint.
As any artist will tell you, creativity loves constraints.
See, there’s a trap of the multipassionate and the multitalented, which overlaps with the shadows of the Ruler and Maverick archetypes, both of which run strong in my own inner wiring.
The trap is defaulting to making new things, writing new things, producing new things, creating new things to solve business and life problems as they pop up.
But this is a shadow. And we knew it. So instead of trying to “fix” or change that about ourselves, we leaned into the strengths of those Archetypes, too.
And we course-corrected ourselves to stay out of the shadows by putting two constraints on our strategy session:
What might be a wise solution if we couldn’t create even one single new thing?, and
How might we optimally use, integrate and leverage the assets we already have that really, really work? Put differently, how can we fully inhabit the resources we already have?
And because creativity LOVES constraints, this historic tour of that part of our business gave birth to a beautiful new strategy… and the momentum of fresh, new energy for the things we already do very, very well.
To recap, anytime you find a misalignment, here’s what you do:
Ask yourself what’s not in alignment: feel what needs feeling, investigate what needs investigating, grieve what needs grieving, see what needs seeing
But don’t hammer away at the misalignment, once you see it.
Instead, practice Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach-style. Do a Pattern Interrupt. Invite Divine Order to take the wheel. Look for the wonderful things that this so-called “problem” is flowing your way.
And then focus on what is already wonderful and good and really, really working for you in that area or on that topic, no matter how seemingly small and tangential
Then lean into that.
That’s how you’ll play your role in human evolution, my friend.
Awakening from the paralyzing, self-defeating inner war of trying to fix or change yourself.
Actualizing your own divinely granted resources, those within you and those without, and then…
Answering the calling of your soul, no matter how trivial or non-world-changing that calling may seem at the time.
Awaken. Actualize. Answer.
And enjoy yourself, all along the way.
Head up + heart out,
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
Last night, I was sitting in a (fancy) bar in San Francisco with one of my soul sisters, who happens to be a badass boss lady in her own right.
As always when we meet, the whole conversation was fueled by and centered around soul and Spirit.
We reveled with each other in how consistently and beautifully Divine Order is always working things out for us.
She told me of her delight in attending Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. (Look it up — this place is an historic epicenter of revolutionary, radical love… and it’s also run by the Glide Foundation… where I’m on the Board of Trustees.)
We traded silly stories and baby pictures and business updates and deep blessings.
We talked about this journey of fully integrating business and real estate and spirit.
We traded our visions and shared the Divine Downloads we’ve both been receiving, rapid-fire.
We saw that our visions overlapped significantly.
And we reveled in that, too.
At some point, the guy next to us said:
“Excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear you.
Can I ask you something?
My son is dating a woman who comes from a family of so-called spiritual leaders.
And they talk about some really out there things.
And hey… I believe in love and energy, too.
But they get really extreme.
And also: Can we talk about organized religion?”
(Homeboy was all up in our business.)
“If organized religion would focused on the things you guys were just talking about, everybody would be into it.
But they try to control and….”
I had to interject.
“Hi, there! Ok: hang on one second.
Here’s the advice I’ll give you about your son and about the religion thing.
But it also applies to every subject ever.
Here’s what you do:
You’ve just gotta eat the meat and leave the bones.”
“Ahhhh.” he said, instantly understanding my meaning.
And that’s the advice I’ll share with you today.
Whenever you’re faced with new concepts, thoughts, systems or ideas, paradigms or new ways of being, and you’re drawn to some parts of them but disagree with other parts, you don’t have to prove how smart you are by critiquing or “sciencing” them until all the energy, juice, joy and delight is gone.
A science guy I once knew used to talk about how science sparks more questions than it settles, anyway.
Let that sink in.
Science is about questions, explorations, wonder, awe. Not settling everything. It’s not even the right lens for understanding most human things.
And misapplying the scientific method will jack you up.
It’ll make you miss your blessings.
One of my beloved clients is fearful of flying, and working through that as we speak. She recently shared an article with what she felt was a disturbing headline:
No One Knows Why Planes Stay in the Sky.
This might be true, though many can describe the forces that keep planes aloft.
But know what else is true? No one knows why the Earth stays suspended in space, either.
Or why you stay on the ground.
Science labels these phenomena, and creates predictive rules for understanding and leveraging them, but you don’t have to understand gravity to be secure on the ground where you stand.
It just is.
Gravity was a reality that humans lived and benefitted from way before anyone called it a scientific law.
You can experience something as real without science having validated it.
I’m certain that 1,000 years from now, humans will look back at what we call scientific fact and call it “cute”.
We don’t even KNOW what all we don’t know.
So when I say this Universe is abundant, that it is conspiring for you to thrive and that you can trust life to be good to you, you can choose to find and argue evidence to the contrary.
And you’ll find it.
Or you can choose to look at the fact that your lungs and the atmosphere of our Earth have been conspiring to keep you alive for all these decades —without your effort, knowledge or participation — as deeply resonant evidence that this Universe is conspiring for your good.
And when you appreciate your body in this way, your body will reward you with vitality, energy, and even more life.
I meet so many brilliant, thinking people who live in a chronic state of depression, disconnection and disdain because their brilliant, thinking minds are squeezing the beauty out of the unprovable concepts and imperfectly stated but beautiful wisdom that would give them life if they could let it in.
Your life is giving you abundant proofs that all is well with you.
But your culture is giving you abundant messages that say all is scarce.
Don’t let culture win.
Don’t let culture convince you.
See, culture has convinced many “thinking” people that intelligence and spirit can’t coexist.
Culture has convinced many “thinking” people that they are consumers, even of ideas, so that they must receive perfectly packaged “products” of even wisdom and spiritual insight and reject anything that doesn’t meet airbrushed, polished standard of consumer packaged goods.
Yo.
That ain’t even hown spiritual wisdom works.
You are the master and sovereign of your own thoughts, beliefs and connection with the Divine.
You don’t have to accept anything that doesn’t sit well in your spirit. Ever.
No matter WHO says it.
But you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
You don’t have to choose sides between intellect and Spirit.
You DO get to take what works for you.
And you DO get to leave the rest right where it is.
And when you do, you’ll find yourself being your own inner nurturant parent, giving yourself the spiritual nutrition you, personally, want and need to experience inner wellbeing, actualize your potentials and answer the callings of your soul.
When you start eating the meat and leaving the bones, you become spiritually independent.
When you start eating the meat and leaving the bones, you opt out of the people-who-believe-that-vs-people-who-believe-this industrial complex.
You opt out of the perpetual hunger of your soul. Always hungry. Always seeking.
You opt out of waiting to be spoon-fed the “just right” spiritual porridge that is palatable to the other “smart ones” and unoffensive and limp and devoid of the energy and charge and radically loving, counter-cultural truth it takes to give yourself a shot at true awakening and actualization in this life.
Listen: It is a waste of precious life force to constantly critique, litigate and try to prove or disprove matters of soul and spirit anyway.
They aren’t provable.
So why not adopt a default rule of taking things in, trusting your own Inner Guidance, feeling for inner resonance, eating the meat and leaving the bones?
Or, as my student Jeanne says: “Eat the candy and leave the wrapper.”
Try this out. See if you can’t let a little more spiritual nutrition in.
Let me know how it goes.
Head up + heart out,
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
When I free write every morning, my #1 priority is to offload anything that feels like a grudge or grievance, no matter how small.
I’ve learned that if I let them grow, they almost always turn into creative blocks. Or money blocks. Or love blocks.
So I follow the advice of our dear Patron Saint Julia Cameron: I put the drama on the page, and I leave the drama on the page.
A while back, I noticed a pattern: When I tracked these baby grudglets to their roots, almost all of them started out with a moment in time when I felt misunderstood.
Here’s a pretty common fact pattern:
In conversation with someone, they say something about what I must be thinking, feeling or doing
And they’re wrong
But the context is so trivial it doesn’t make sense for me to try to correct them
Or I do correct them and they still don’t seem to get it
So I’m irritated
And the next day, I’m still irritated
So I write it out.
Over the years, I’ve learned that living a masterful life requires practicing the fine art of minding my own business.
My business is my thoughts, my emotions and my actions.
My business is my relationship with myself and my Source.
My business is not to persuade, cajole or beg anyone else to understand me.
I’ve chosen instead — and I continue to practice a million times a week — to practice releasing the need to even feel understood.
Follow me here:
Taking things personally is the #1 source of drama between humans.
Being able to move through life independently of the opinions of other people is the #1 liberation lever from that drama.
When you expect others to understand you and they don’t, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll take that personally and get in your feelings (this is what the kids might call ‘butthurt’).
No one — not even the people who love you unconditionally — can fully understand you 100% of the time, even if they try very hard.
Because no one else is you.
No one else has the exact mix of experiences, beliefs and talents you do.
No one has the relationship with your Inner Being, Source, Spirit and All That Is that you do.
No one has your intuition or your calling.
No one has learned exactly what you’ve learned about life.
No one possesses the precise, brilliant mix of inborn Divine Coding for Genius, personal history, ancestral potentials and collective wisdoms that your existence represents.
So when you’re seeking to be understood, you’re asking someone to do the impossible.
Which means you’re setting both you and them up for inevitable dissatisfaction.
And that’s not all.
In the effort to feel understood, you almost always end up telling a struggle story, which is the opposite of the story you want to practice if you want to live a magical, masterful life.
Now listen: Everyone loves to feel held, heard, seen and understood.
But I want to open up a new possibility: that you can feel held, heard and seen by people in your life even when they do not fully understand you.
In fact, you can feel and be approved of and loved by people who actively misunderstand you or disagree with your decisions.
Don’t believe me?
Think about the times you extend affection and approval to others, even when you don’t 100% understand or agree with them.
The desire to feel understood is often just a pretext for the need for approval or the need to be right.
These are just different ways of asking permission to make the moves you want to make in life.
If you’re waiting on approval, validation or permission, you’re watering down the edge you have access to: the pure power that comes from moving forward in life based on the Infinite Intelligence that flows through you in the form of inspiration, resonance, Inner Wisdom, intuition.
Three things happen when you stop seeking to be understood:
You begin to move through life much more freely and easily.
Your interpersonal drama decreases.
The joy and speed of your personal expansion increases.
Oh and one more thing:
Your relationships get better.
Way better.
Because when you practice your way out of needing to feel understood all the time, you do everyone around you a massive favor: you take them off the hook for your feelings.
This feels weird at first, especially if you have a history of being an approval seeker, people pleaser or achievement junkie.
But when you stop focusing so hard on getting people to understand you, over time, you’ll naturally begin focusing instead on the most important relationships in your life:
the relationship between you and your Source, and
the relationship between you and you.
And soon, you’ll learn how to feel good regardless of whether you feel misunderstood or not.
You’ll learn skills for returning to that good feeling whenever you want to or need to.
You’ll learn how to build on that feeling good momentum, so you can go from occasional, fleeting moments of goodness to a continuous drumbeat of freedom, ease, growth, joy and love.
That’s how you become invincible.
P.S: Is it possible to become totally free of the desire to be understood?
Maybe so, maybe not.
But you can definitely release a lot of it.
Visualize it as a ball you’ve got clenched in your hand.
And now: drop it.
And now: Sit still and feel all that energy, all that life force, flowing back into you.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: Want more like this? Become a SoulTour subscriber for just $11 a month.
Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq. The Inner Critic Coach™️ Founder + CEO of SoulTour
>> Here’s the AUDIO of today’s Transformation Tuesday.
When I free write every morning, my #1 priority is to offload anything that feels like a grudge or grievance, no matter how small.
I’ve learned that if I let them grow, they almost always turn into creative blocks. Or money blocks. Or love blocks.
So I follow the advice of our dear Patron Saint Julia Cameron: I put the drama on the page, and I leave the drama on the page.
A while back, I noticed a pattern: When I tracked these baby grudglets to their roots, almost all of them started out with a moment in time when I felt misunderstood.
Here’s a pretty common fact pattern:
In conversation with someone, they say something about what I must be thinking, feeling or doing
And they’re wrong
But the context is so trivial it doesn’t make sense for me to try to correct them
Or I do correct them and they still don’t seem to get it
So I’m irritated
And the next day, I’m still irritated
So I write it out.
Over the years, I’ve learned that living a masterful life requires practicing the fine art of minding my own business.
My business is my thoughts, my emotions and my actions.
My business is my relationship with myself and my Source.
My business is not to persuade, cajole or beg anyone else to understand me.
I’ve chosen instead — and I continue to practice a million times a week — to practice releasing the need to even feel understood.
Follow me here:
Taking things personally is the #1 source of drama between humans.
Being able to move through life independently of the opinions of other people is the #1 liberation lever from that drama.
When you expect others to understand you and they don’t, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll take that personally and get in your feelings (this is what the kids might call ‘butthurt’).
No one — not even the people who love you unconditionally — can fully understand you 100% of the time, even if they try very hard.
Because no one else is you.
No one else has the exact mix of experiences, beliefs and talents you do.
No one has the relationship with your Inner Being, Source, Spirit and All That Is that you do.
No one has your intuition or your calling.
No one has learned exactly what you’ve learned about life.
No one possesses the precise, brilliant mix of inborn Divine Coding for Genius, personal history, ancestral potentials and collective wisdoms that your existence represents.
So when you’re seeking to be understood, you’re asking someone to do the impossible.
Which means you’re setting both you and them up for inevitable dissatisfaction.
And that’s not all.
In the effort to feel understood, you almost always end up telling a struggle story, which is the opposite of the story you want to practice if you want to live a magical, masterful life.
Now listen: Everyone loves to feel held, heard, seen and understood.
But I want to open up a new possibility: that you can feel held, heard and seen by people in your life even when they do not fully understand you.
In fact, you can feel and be approved of and loved by people who actively misunderstand you or disagree with your decisions.
Don’t believe me?
Think about the times you extend affection and approval to others, even when you don’t 100% understand or agree with them.
The desire to feel understood is often just a pretext for the need for approval or the need to be right.
These are just different ways of asking permission to make the moves you want to make in life.
If you’re waiting on approval, validation or permission, you’re watering down the edge you have access to: the pure power that comes from moving forward in life based on the Infinite Intelligence that flows through you in the form of inspiration, resonance, Inner Wisdom, intuition.
Three things happen when you stop seeking to be understood:
You begin to move through life much more freely and easily.
Your interpersonal drama decreases.
The joy and speed of your personal expansion increases.
Oh and one more thing:
Your relationships get better.
Way better.
Because when you practice your way out of needing to feel understood all the time, you do everyone around you a massive favor: you take them off the hook for your feelings.
This feels weird at first, especially if you have a history of being an approval seeker, people pleaser or achievement junkie.
But when you stop focusing so hard on getting people to understand you, over time, you’ll naturally begin focusing instead on the most important relationships in your life:
the relationship between you and your Source, and
the relationship between you and you.
And soon, you’ll learn how to feel good regardless of whether you feel misunderstood or not.
You’ll learn skills for returning to that good feeling whenever you want to or need to.
You’ll learn how to build on that feeling good momentum, so you can go from occasional, fleeting moments of goodness to a continuous drumbeat of freedom, ease, growth, joy and love.
That’s how you become invincible.
P.S: Is it possible to become totally free of the desire to be understood?
Maybe so, maybe not.
But you can definitely release a lot of it.
Visualize it as a ball you’ve got clenched in your hand.
And now: drop it.
And now: Sit still and feel all that energy, all that life force, flowing back into you.
Head up + heart out,
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
>> Here’s the AUDIO of today’s Transformation Tuesday.
Our dear old Uncle Rumi wrote:
I must have been incredibly simple or drunk or insane to sneak into my own house and steal money, to climb over my own fence and take my own vegetables. But no more. I have gotten free of that ignorant fist that was pinching and twisting my secret self. The universe and the light of the stars come through me. I am the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival.
This — this idea of an ignorant fist of your own, pinching and twisting your own secret self, full of Universal light — this might be the best description of the Trance of Unworthiness, the best description of self-judgment, that I’ve ever heard.
How have you been pinching and twisting your secret self?
How have you been judging yourself? How have you been critiquing yourself?
What have you been anticipating that “they” won’t approve of about you, so you’ve been withholding your own approval of yourself?
Let me tell you something:
I know that this world says “the struggle is real”.
The struggle is not real.
If you can read or listen to this lesson, “the struggle is real” is a lie.
However, the struggle feels very real.
It feels real, but it’s not true.
As long as there is anything about YOU: your body, your life, your ways of being, even your feelings and reactions that you are treating with anything less than warmth, hospitality and radical approval, your struggle will feel real.
And that’s because your Inner Wisdom — the voice of God that speaks to you within you — knows the truth that you are a perfect drop of the Divine, made flesh.
You are created in that image.
You are offspring of the Divine.
So anytime you judge or shit talk yourself, anytime you resist the reality of who you are or what you are or how the process of life works, you will feel like the struggle is very real, because to judge and critique yourself or your reality is to create an Inner War between the Divine You and the conditioned you, the programmed you, that is shaming or judging or critiquing yourself or pushing against your realities.
During this Inner War, you will feel like the struggle is real, because to judge yourself, track your progress, judge your process or rush your process creates turbulence in your system that shuts yourself off from all the assisting forces and powers of this Universe, which are multitudinous and desire to benefit and help and assist you.
This is the case even if whatever you are observing about yourself or your life that you would like to change or would like to be different is true.
The only way to move powerfully and expand easefully from this season to the next without feeling like the struggle is so damn real is to find the Inner Peace that only comes from radical self-acceptance, self-care, self-compassion and self-love.
The only way is to cultivate a deep satisfaction and joy with your life as it is right now, to bloom where you’re planted, as the old church ladies used to say.
The only way is to suck the vast clarity and power and wisdom out of your current circumstances.
The only way is to hold the paradox of being deeply satisfied with what is and to simultaneously allow yourself to eagerly desire the fullness of what your soul desires in your next season.
Then you can just go with the flow, even through unwanted circumstances and plot twists, without the struggle feeling real.
The Indian saint Bapuji wrote:
My beloved child Break your heart no longer
Each time you judge yourself you break your own heart You stop feeding on the love which is the wellspring of your vitality
The time has come, your time To live, to celebrate and to see the goodness that you are. . .
Let no one, no thing, no idea or ideal obstruct you If one comes, even in the name of “truth”, forgive it for its unknowing
Do not fight Let go And breathe into the goodness that you are
He didn’t say breathe into the goodness that you have.
He said breathe into the goodness that you are.
Catch this principle: Goodness is what you are.
And when you judge yourself — the goodness that you are — you break your own heart.
This is a tragedy every time, because your heart is where all the resources of this Universe flow.
Judging yourself includes:
Chronically feeling like there’s something a little bit wrong with you
Chronically believing that you have to be perfect or you aren’t worthy of doing a thing at all
Sucking it in or poking your cellulite in the mirror
Constantly tracking your own progress against your goals or other people’s outer appearances
Frequently engaging in self-deprecating humor
Silencing yourself in meetings because you’re not sure your ideas are worth voicing
Being paralyzed when it comes to marketing or promoting your own products or business or writing
Deferring fun, joyful experiences until you’ve lost a certain amount of weight
Wishing you didn’t feel how you actually feel
Holding your breath until you have a certain amount of money in the bank, and
Feeling behind or ashamed that you haven’t achieved some goal yet.
When you judge yourself, you shut off the pipeline of your sacred resources, including your own inexhaustible inner reservoir of love and intelligence and energy and including the creative power that formed all worlds.
Self-judgment shuts off this inner pipeline by blinding you to millions of golden opportunities for you to be, do, have, learn and create exactly what your soul came into your meat-covered skeleton for.
These golden opportunities are all around you, in your current, life right now.
Because you can only detect, energize and activate those resources through the lens of who you think you are, what you think is possible and what you deem yourself worthy of.
That’s what Uncle Rumi was talking about when he exclaimed: “You wander from room to room. hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!”
And that’s what Jesus was talking about when he got frustrated with the people who were going on and on about the coming harvest like some people you know: It’s always coming. It’s never now.
Jesus got frustrated. In my mind’s eye, he got in their faces and clapped his hands as he said, very loudly: “LOOK. UP.”
Don’t say 4 months until the harvest.
The fields are ripe right now.
Look. Up.
So, first put on rose-colored glasses of openness and warmth and hospitality and affection and attention and affection and approval of yourself.
Then… look up.
And ask yourself these breakthrough questions, if you’re really ready to start actualizing your potentials and living the realities you daydream about:
What opportunities to do the callings of your soul are before you right now?
What resources that you need to do the callings of your soul are available to you right now?
Are you willing to take one natural-feeling next step toward fully inhabiting your life, your current opportunities, your current resources?
And finally: What is that natural-feeling next step?
Don’t write it on your list of things to do.
Don’t put it on your calendar.
DO IT NOW.
Head up + heart out,
Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq. Founder + CEO of SoulTour
>> Here’s the AUDIO of today’s Transformation Tuesday.
Ram Dass wrote that throughout your life, you should “keep death on your shoulder and identify with your soul.”
I definitely agree with the soul part. That’s what you really are.
But whether you like it or not, occasionally life will put death right on your shoulder. That happened for many of us this weekend with the transitions of Clayton Christensen, Leila Janah and Gianna and Kobe Bryant: all beloved in various communities in my world.
This seemed like a good time to share my own process for taking stock of your life..
About 9-and-a-half years ago, I was 35 years old and had lots going for me in life, but I had a whole lot of drama, too.
So, on my 35th birthday, I decided to take stock. I could see that 40 and 45 were going to come, fast, and I could see that unless I put some sort of change process in place, momentum would continue to carry me into more of the life results I was already getting.
So I took the day, sat down and got really real with myself.
I played the movie forward of what my life was shaping up to be.
And I looked at every part of my life, systematically: Health, Relationships, FInances, Career, and so on.
I was proud that I’d not let being a teen mom stop me. I’d gotten Master’s and law degrees. I’d left the law, which I didn’t love, and gone into real estate. I’d learned how to make more money than I ever thought was possible.
And… I’d also made Very Bad Decisions with men… a couple of times.
And I’d allowed myself to develop some Very Bad Financial Habits, because I could always just make more money.
So the great recession had hit very, very hard.
I’d lost a lot of weight, but I’d done so with some very restrictive, command-and-control food and fitness practices that were flat-out unsustainable and unjoyful.
My marriage was failing. My kids were unhappy and acting out.
I was super susceptible to the opinions and approval of other people, so I just kept working harder, butI I felt like I was spiraling, mentally disorganized, pulled in different directions all the time, and not even really doing meaningful or truly fulfilling work.
I was just doing a lot of work.
I felt proud that I’d exercised a lot of freedom in my life, but I could also see that I ha’d used that freedom to create a lot of bondage for myself.
So on my 35th birthday, I called an audible.
I said “Thanks, God.” And: “I quit.”
I decided to quit the business of doing everything in my life my way, the hard way, on my own.
I decided to begin practicing trust and receiving grace.
I decided to withdraw some of my life force from all the outer endeavors and people and tasks and projects and started to reclaim it and bring it back inward.
I decided to envision my 45 year old self, and what she might want from me, and to start orienting my daily decisions and actions in that general direction.
And very soon, the specifics that were to become the direction of my path, began to reveal itself to me. By grace and in wonderful ways.
At first, my 45-year-old self required some hard things from my 35-year-old self, including making some difficult in the moment choices.
I chose to get divorced.
I chose to move out of my big, beautiful house and into my investment property.
That meant I chose to call that investment a wrap.
I chose to start sitting, praying, studying, reconnecting.
I chose to stop overruling my own Inner Guidance.
I chose to stop ruminating and picking the scabs of my old wounds, and start speaking up, saying what I mean and asking for what I need.
I chose to declare that my parents were good enough and to become my own inner, nurturant parent.
I chose to give up my maverick lifestyle of a real estate agent (temporarily), and at least be open to a day job that would create some guaranteed, bread-and-butter income while I got divorced and got my bearings.
And I chose to take a bunch of writing side hustles, to get myself out of debt.
This process was deeply spiritual and intensely practical.
Was it hard to get that real with myself?
To see what needed seeing and say what needed saying to myself?
It was hard to take the first few steps, sure.
But what began as a series of gifts I was trying to give my 45 year old self turned out to feel like gifts in the moment I began making those shifts.
When I turned 35, I reclaimed sovereignty over my life.
And things started changing immediately.
This reclamation of sovereignty became the first season, the first stage of a journey into the masterful, magical life I now get to live.
Am I saying that my life now is perfect?
Actually, yes. I am.
I find myself in the perfect place at the perfect time, all the time.
Things happen that are not in my control, but when they do, I know for sure, in the moment that Divine Order is being established, that I am going from success to success, and that even in my unwanted or stressful circumstances I can find wisdom, power, clarity and often even higher and better outcomes than I could have cooked up myself.
When shit gets real in my life now, I know to look for what I stand to learn.
I look for what wonderful things might be coming to me.
Even when my plans are disrupted.
Even when people die.
That’s what life mastery feels like.
It feels like having the courage to take things out of your “unconscious shadows” pile and shine the light of consciousness on them.
It feels like reclaiming sovereignty over your own thoughts, emotions and actions, and not feeling blindsided or at the mercy of your life events.
It feels like understanding, knowing, loving and caring for yourself always, first and lavishly, so you have an ever-clearer understanding of what you want , who you are, how that would feel and clarity about what is getting in the way.
It feels like freedom from your past disappointments and traumas.
It feels like freedom from the trance of chronically seeking other people’s approval. (Trust me. It’s possible.)
It feels like being skillful in how you communicate.
It feels like practicing boundaries and holding others as powerful enough to fix their own shit and live their own lives.
Life mastery is not at all about controlling life or preventing unwanted things from happening.
It’s about awakening. And allowing. And actualizing your potentials.
And doing all of the above with joyful surrender and radical acceptance of how life really works.
Now I’m 44.
And last year, life handed me a bunch of surprises that honestly 10 years ago would have done me in. But, I was able to dive into and thrive through, largely because of the path my 35 year old self set me upon: the gifts I gave myself 10 years ago.
So I’m taking stock again.
I’ve been asking myself for a few months now: “What gifts can I start giving my 55 year old self, right now?”
And I got some clear answers.
They helped me know what I was in the market for.
And I didn’t have to start working hard to make a detailed action plan or figure out how to start real-izing the gifts I envision giving my 10-years-from-now self.
Because as soon as I knew what I was in the market for, the clarity of what gifts I wanted to give Tara in 10 years, all sorts of specific ways I can begin giving these gifts to my 10-years-from-now self started to just light up and line up.
That’s how easeful expansion works.
NOTE: I’ll share more about the gifts I’m now giving my 55 year old self in a few days, but for now I wanted to give you this Life + Self Mastery Checklist I just created.
This Life + Self Mastery Checklist guides you through a 15-minute exercise of systematically taking stock of your life, so you can start giving yourself.
