I’ve been teaching and coaching a lot lately about how to find your Zoneof 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?
“You’d better be damn near perfect and hustle very hard or you might lose everything.”
Lies.
Propaganda.
Should you need some evidence that this Universe of ours is *actually* wildly abundant in resources, LOOK UP.
Look at the leaves on the trees. That’s what the creative power of this Universe does.
And it flows through you.
But back to those leaves.
As I drove home from the gym this morning, I looked at all the trees around me and wondered: How many leaves are in Oakland?
Then: How many leaves are in this world?
So I asked Google: How many leaves are in the whole wide world?
Estimates ranged from 120 quadrillion and 1 quintillion.
Guys: 120 quadrillion was the low end.
The same Power that created all those leaves flows through you.
That same Divine Creative Power is waiting for you to stop resisting and let it flow through you.
It wants to team up with you to turn your ideas and your dreams into your real life, creating whatever it is you came here to be, do, have, delight in, create and (most importantly) learn.
But wait: there’s more.
You know what this Universe has even more of than leaves?
Bugs.
If 1 quintillion leaves seems like a Very Big Number, wait till you get a load of this: There are an estimated 10 quintillion bugs on the planet at any given time.
That is 10 to the power of nineteen.
That is this many bugs: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000.
And you think there’s not enough money, love, happiness, success, or whatever else in this Universe for you????
For real?
Nah.
This Universe is limitless.
And so are you.
I have it on Divine Authority.
You can stop telling that scarcity story now.
Use every excuse possible, every leaf on every tree or bug you see, to tune yourself to the station of abundance.
Do this and abundance will become the story of your new reality.
Here’s a micro-challenge:
For the next 24 hours, act and make decisions as if you will have access to everything you need, exactly when you need it.
Act and make decisions as if everything is always working out for you.
Act and make decisions that you feel called and led to make as if you’ll survive if you do them, even though the fear and voices in your head make you feel a tiny bit like you’ll die.
Hit reply tomorrow and let me know how it goes.
Head up + heart out, Tara
P.S. Few quick caveats:1. You might find that reading this stirs up some thoughts you have to the contrary, like the belief that the world cannot be as abundant as this.
If so, excellent . Those thoughts of lack can’t come with you into your season of abundance. Best that you see them now, so you can release them sooner than later.
2. Lest you be tempted to argue with this evidence of abundance by pointing to all the poverty in the world, keep this in mind: The solution is never found on the same level as the problem.
In other words, you can’t eliminate lack by focusing on lack.
In other words, the most helpful you can be to the poor is to live a generous and abundant life, taking inspired action to be part of the solution whenever you feel called and led to.
3. This worldview ain’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to enjoy their lives and are willing to set down their struggle portfolios in exchange for a shot at joy.
4. One of the number one reasons we keep our struggle stories around is that we think we’ll be all alone in the world if we give them up.
You will, indeed, seem weird to others around you if you adopt this point of view.
Some of them won’t be able to deal, and they’ll opt out of your world. Try this Dave Richo mantra to cultivate independence from other people’s opinions: People go and people stay, and I’m okay.
Others will see your life change unfold over time, and they’ll want what you’re having.
And many others, the other joy trippers of the world, whole squads of people you didn’t even know were right there, will become attracted to you, like a magnet.
>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday.
In our Book of the Month, The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks shares that every human on the planet — no matter how successful they are — has what he calls an Upper Limit: the final barrier between you and your ability to live in thriving and success in every area of your life, at the same time.
He writes:
“Each of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success, and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. When we exceed that inner thermostat setting, we will often do something to sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old, familiar zone where we feel secure.”
He shares the moment he discovered his own Upper Limit, retelling of a time when he’d had a wonderful day at work, his relationships and job were humming along well and his daughter was at summer camp. As he sat in his office chair, savoring the good day, he began to have thoughts and images of his daughter being lonely, then even bullied, at summer camp, and the joy he’d been feeling dissolved away.
He called the camp and was surprised to hear the staffer report back that not only was his daughter thriving and well, but he was the third parent to call with this kind of concern that day. The camp supervisor guessed that the parents missed the kids and were projecting their discomfort onto their imaginings of what the kids must be experiencing.
The epiphany came when he explored why he’d begun to feel so bad when, just moments prior, he’d felt so good. What he realized was, it was precisely BECAUSE he’d felt so good that he’d begun to manufacture these unwanted, unpleasant thoughts.
He went on:
“When I reached my Upper Limit of how much positive feeling I could handle, I created a series of unpleasant thoughts to deflate me. The thoughts I manufactured were guaranteed to make me return to a state I was more familiar with: not feeling so good. .. if I hadn’t pulled up those particular worry thoughts, I would have used some other train of thought to dampen my mood.”
When he applied this idea to other areas of his life – and to humanity in general, he started to see the pattern:
He’d eat healthy food and work out for a few days, feel great, then binge and stay up late, feeling bad. He’d be getting along well with his wife, then pick a fight or criticize her. Even countries tend to cycle up and down between prosperity and depression, or war and peace. So it came to be that he realized we humans are just now beginning to evolve — psychologically and spiritually — and gain the capacity to let ourselves feel good in an ongoing, extended way.
We are just now realizing that we can make a choice about how much love and abundance we’re willing to allow, and that we can also choose to see how we get in our own way… and stop doing that.
We are — you and I are — just on the brink of learning that we can actually extend the periods of positive energy, contentment, prosperity and plain old happiness in our lives, living in a steadier and steadier state of success, happiness and abundance, as we go.
Like in our affirmation: going from success to success, from glory to glory.
Our New Reality goal, Hendricks says, should be to spend 70% or more of our lives solidly, firmly in our personal Zone of Genius, which we’ll talk about and actually find in the next few days, but it’s a place of joy.
Discovering and dissolving your Upper Limit is your next step on the journey into that kind of a New Reality.
At the same time, intentionally finding and focusing on what in your current experience of life feels good… now, and now, and now and also now, will begin to get you used to that feeling of good. Then you can work on extending the periods of time you can stay in that place before hitting your Upper Limit or starting to manufacture unpleasant thoughts, like fear or impatience.
So get to your favorite spot to sit, and get as comfortable as you can.
Slowly, gently close your eyes.
Feel the pull of gravity on every part of your body, just asking you to let yourself be fully supported.
Take a few grounding, deep breaths and just feel your forehead relax, your jaw relax, your neck and shoulders relax, and even your chest open up and relax a bit as you breathe.
As you take an inhale, tilt your head up a little bit and let the glowing, warm, liquid light and the totally unconditional and abundant love of this Universe stream into your head and into your whole Being. Feel it flowing down your body, warming and thawing out any kinks or tight spots as it goes, cooling what needs cooling. Unconstricting what needs to unfurl. filling you up from the tips of your toes all the way up.
Feel it make its radiant way from your bones and organs out to your skin, and even beyond.
Feel yourself becoming even more poised and even more powerful than you already are, even more radiant and even more magnetic than you already are.
Sit like this, focusing on the words: ALL IS WELL.
Inhale, exhale: ALL IS WELL.
Finding the passing ideas and thoughts and excitements and Beings you love, as your thoughts come and go, at a slower pace than normal, but still coming and going.
As you see them, sort of grab the one that feel especially good and hold them in your heart and mind for as long as you can.
And then, take a deep inhale, receiving Divine Light, occasionally bring your mind back to the phrase: ALL IS WELL.
Allowing and accepting that whatever is going on right now, ALL IS WELL with you and your soul in this season, in this day, in this moment.
And all throughout the day today, circle back to the ALL IS WELLNESS of you, of your life, finding good feeling thoughts and people and focusing on them as often as you can today.
>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday.
Answering your callings is not exhausting or depleting.
Refusing them — resisting them — is.
When you answer your callings, you begin to fulfill your Sacred Contract and purpose for coming to this planet, which is to learn some sacred lessons; to turn your thoughts into tangible things and to live in freedom, growth and joy, for the upliftment of everyone who watches your life unfold.
As part of that Contract, you were assured to have access to everything you’d need to do what you came here to do.
All the time.
All the energy.
All the money.
All the connections you need.
(You might not get everything you want exactly when you want it, but you will have access to everything you need to fulfill your Sacred Contract, exactly when you need it.)
The more you refuse your callings — and real talk: we all do at first — the more depleted and disconnected you feel. Because you are literally refusing to connect with and receive from Source.
But the more willingly you answer your callings to be, do, have or create whatever you came here to be, do, have or create, the more energized, charged up and inspired — fueled by Source, Spirit and All That Is — you’ll become as you go along.
This is where pronoia comes in.
You know what paranoia is, right?
The idea that everything in the world is out to get you?
Pronoia is the opposite of paranoia.
Pronoia is the principle that every person, place, thing, resource and atom in this Universe is collaborating and conspiring to bless you.
If this seems implausible to you, let me just insert one quick thing.
You are a powerful storyteller.
All humans are.
We make meaning of our lives by telling stories about what has, is and will happen to us, and why and how it’ll happen.
Through a phenomenon known as confirmation bias, we also have the power to find and even create evidence for any story we tell.
So if you choose to tell and believe and live into the story that the world is a hard, cold, scarce, harsh place and you never get what you need?
That will become your reality.
And if you choose to believe that every atom in this Universe is conspiring and collaborating for your highest good?
If you choose to tell the story that everything is always working out for you?
Then that will be your experience of life.
Up to you.
Head up + heart out, Tara
P.S.: Hit reply and let me know which story you choose: paranoia or pronoia.
Lest you be tempted to email me arguing for your limitations and the power of the unwanted things in your life, take note: I am relentlessin my optimism and my revelry is highly contagious.
You’ve been warned.
Also take note: What you focus on grows in your experience of it.
So choose intentionally what you focus on when you email me back.
>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday.
Your life is a river.
You were born a being of flow.
Every bend in the river — every plot twist, calling, adventure, transition, even the so-called obstacles and crises in your life — can create a logjam… or a watershed season.
You get to choose.
What do you choose?
Hit reply and let me know.
Oh, one more thing real quick: Keep in mind that often what starts out as a logjam becomes a watershed, as soon as the logs get tweaked back into alignment.
I’ll leave you with a beautiful poem I love to share with my students. It’s called Last Night as I was Sleeping, and it was written by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado.
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt — marvelous error! — that a spring was breaking out in my heart. I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me, water of a new life that I have never drunk?
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt — marvelous error! — that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt — marvelous error! — that a fiery sun was giving light inside my heart. It was fiery because I felt warmth as from a hearth, and sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night as I slept, I dreamt — marvelous error! — that it was God I had here inside my heart.
Picasso said that “every act of creation is first, an act of destruction.”
And he wasn’t alone.
Every sacred tradition has a story of sacred destruction as part and parcel of acts of creation.
Parvati — the Hindu goddess of fertility, divine strength and power — is married to Shiva, aka The Destroyer.
In the Kabbalah, the world of chaos and confusion dissolves and gives birth to a new world of Tikkun, which means rectification and correction.
Shoooooooot, Jesus Himself spent some of His time flipping tables and tearing veils to create a new, unmediated relationship between God and humanity.
In the sacred texts of our lives, this principle of Sacred Destruction is critical.
There are three categories of Resistance we must actively destroy in order to create our New Realities, or we risk staying stuck for a lifetime.
1. The first of these categories is LOW EXPECTATIONS: through a lifetime of trauma or so-called learning, we tend to practice, retell and wire in self-fulfilling stories of how certain subjects always play out to our disadvantage.
Then, we repeat our cycles and patterns of trauma.
Not because we don’t ACT differently, but because we don’t THINK differently.
We don’t expect any better, so we don’t get any better.
On some subjects, we don’t even allow ourselves to want more or better than what we already have.
So: low expectations have got to go.
2. The second set of stuff we must actively demolish are our UPPER LIMITS, the name given by Gay Hendricks in his book, The Big Leap, to the patterns of self-sabotage that serve as a ceiling on how good we’re willing to let our lives get.
[In my School, our entire month of June is devoted to studying The Big Leap, learning how to identify your personal Upper Limits and using this self-knowledge to leverage your Zone of Genius… with the benefit of your Sacred Money Archetypes!]
Catch this principle:Your Upper Limits must die for your New Reality to live.
3. The third and last set of things you must actively destroy for your New Reality to live is ENTANGLEMENTS.
Entanglements are what I call the exhausting:
relationship patterns
codependent habits of borrowing and “fixing” other grown folks’ chaos and
extreme tendencies toward over-self-reliance (I’ll do it myself) or
unworthiness (thoughts like: “I’m not enough”, or “who am I to deserve this??”).
These things have to go because they are exhausting.
They pose the danger of depleting the very energy you need to create your New Reality.
Oh… the other reasons entanglements have to go is that they are escalating: these particular patterns get harder and harder, less and less likely to break, over a lifetime. (Not impossible. But harder.)
If you are on the path of releasing the Resistance to your callings and taking awakened action instead, you are on the path of destroying some or all of these things.
Catch this principle: Destruction is a sacred component of creation.
Hit reply and tell me: What are you ready and willing to destroy now so that your New Reality can come to life?
Someone said to me the other day: “I really want to be disciplined, but I’m just not good at discipline.”
And I said, “I’ll bet you don’t really want ‘discipline’ per se.
Just hear me out.
I think what you really want is joy.
And freedom.
And continuous cycles of growth that expand who you are.
I think you want a body that feels wonderful and complies easily with your wishes.
And you want a whole life that feels delicious and like a series of gifts you gave to yourself: gifts that keep on giving.
You want relationships that thrive and juice you up, and you want to feel satisfied and eager, and you want to create and live in flow mode.
And you think that good habits are the way to get there.
And you think that discipline is the way to get to good habits.
But what actually keeps happening is your efforts at “discipline” keep flipping on your struggle switch, and what feels like self-sabotage follows from there. Shame spiral ensues. You set new discipline goals. Struggle switch flips to “ON”. Rinse and repeat.
Am I right about any of this?” I asked, checking in.
“Yeah. All of it.” my friend said.
The objectives of this human life are freedom, growth and joy. So anything that feels the opposite of freedom — like, say discipline — is likely to flip on the same struggle switch, over and over, that nearly ensures you either won’t stick with the effort to change or won’t be happy, even if you do.
Sound familiar?
So, if discipline isn’t the answer to everyday behaviors that facilitate our thriving and creating, then what is?
Rituals.
Rituals are the answer.
Rituals are habits made sacred.
Rituals have meaning. They create containers of meaningful, sacred space and time.
They are elective. We don’t have to do them. We choose to do them.
We can use them to make any area or task or project in our lives special, and they can turn any so-called “goal” or desire into a delicious, transformational romp.
Laura Day writes that “rituals are an external equivalent of embodiment. Just as embodying imprints your wish in your conscious and unconscious minds as well as in the energy of the Universe around you, rituals imprint your wish in your environment, everyday actions, and outer life. Rituals give form and shape to the events that you are creating now and empower them with sacredness.”
Habits can become, as she puts it “soulless reflexes.”
Habits connote “unconscious”. Autopilot.
And this is fine for some healthy habits. We don’t have to give a ton of thought to every single thing. You don’t have to make a super sacred ritual out of brushing your teeth… though you could (and I’d be into it, so hit reply and let me know if you do)!
My point is, to do that with everything would overburden our brains. So there is a proper place for habit.
But if you want to be a real-life transformation athlete, you need to carve out time and space for rituals, too.
Healthy habits, sure. But also sacred, meaningful moments.
And I’m talking about more than your morning ritual, though that’s a good start.
Building rituals throughout your day is the way to build a whole-life of your conscious creation.
Bringing sacred new everyday ways of being and special sacred moments into your life is how you dissolve and dissipate stubborn old, unwanted habits of thought and default ways of being without forcing or self-shaming or “discipline”.
So, get to your favorite spot to sit, and cozy on up. Sit with your feet flat on the ground, your weight equally distributed on your seat, your back fully supported.
Take a few breaths while your eyes are still open, and just feel the weight of your entire body settle in.
Feel the contact between your body and your seat.
Feel the contact of your feet on the floor.
Feel the contact of your arms and hands on your lap or on the chair.
Let every part of you be supported.
Let your body and your mind settle in at their own pace.
Take a few slightly deeper than normal breaths, and let your breath naturally slow down and settle in as well.
Feel the warmth in your body as you inhale, and feel your body relax and release tension, percent by percent, degree by degree as you exhale.
When you’re done, with your eyes closed, visualize that just above your head is a golden stream of flowing liquid light.
This is the light of love and of life.
This light represents of all the Resources of this Universe, straight from Source.
Allow this liquid, golden, molten love to pour and flow into the top of your head and just coat and infuse every cell it touches on its way through your body.
Allow it to fill you from your toe-tips all the way up.
As it streams into you, let it warm what needs warming. Let it cool what needs cooling.
Anyplace that is tense or tight or constricted or clenched, this liquid light simply soothes it open, coating it, filling it, infusing it with Limitless Love, with Infinite Intelligence.
This light knows where to go.
And as you sit and receive it, and breathe and open to it, every cell of you is filled with wellbeing.
You are filled with total and complete wellbeing from the very deepest nooks and crannies of your body and your organs, to your bones and connective tissues, all the way out to your skin.
Just feel what it feels like to be filled up with this light and love and life.
Just watch and feel it happen, you don’t have to make it happen or do anything for it to happen.
Just watch it happen. And feel it happen.
Let it soothe open your pelvic floor, your shoulders, your jaw.
And especially let it coat and fill and penetrate the innermost chambers and vessels of your heart. Let every cell of your heart be filled with this light and love from above. Allow any tightness in or around your chest to open up, degree by degree, and receive Source-level
Sit like this and be filled with this for another 10 minutes today.
Then, for the rest of the day, simply allow rays of this love and light to peek out from behind your eyes, to shine out from your fingertips to any other person or being you touch, and just to radiate this light and love out from your actual heart, all day today.
>> P.S. I’m delivering a keynote on the Recalibration Rituals of Conscious Creators at The Athena Pack, a 2-day summit for women entrepreneurs and business owners in Bozeman, Montana this THURSDAY! Click here to learn more + register.
>> Here’s the AUDIO of your Writing Prompt for today.
Prompt of the Day: The Revelry Game
Let’s take stock: What deeply satisfies you right now, when you choose to focus on or look at it?
Think or write about as many things as you can conjure up that cause you immense satisfaction when you hold them in your mind.
Here are some thought starters:
What about your life is thoroughly satisfying?
What about your history? What memories? What decisions you’ve made? What surprises you’ve experienced?
What have you created in the past or in your present that just feels so good to think about?
What about the world? What about nature satisfies and nourishes you?
What experiences deeply satisfy you?
What other beings on this planet and in your life cause you deep satisfaction and grounded joy when you consider them?
NOTE: Write your answers with no buts, no caveats, no exceptions. Don’t give into the urge to put conditions on your own happiness or to show off your intelligence by making it clear that you understand all the suffering in the world that coexist with the things that satisfy you.
>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday.
Most school days when I was a kid, my shoulders were sore.
They were sore because of this funny mix of emotions I had going on inside.
I was so 👏 freaking 👏 excited 👏 to get to school.
And at the same time, I was totally and completely engrossed in whatever I was reading or thinking about in the moment.
So I’d be moving forward with full speed and momentum, but also deeply captivated with the present moment, often reading or cooking up A Brilliant Idea.
As a result, as I was rushing around in my eagerness to get to school, I’d often miss the mark on getting through the doorway of my childhood home. I’d hit the door jamb hard with my shoulder 4 or 5 times before I even left for school on any given day.
This memory came to mind last week when I did exactly the same thing, at 43 years old, as I used to do when I was 9.
I was so excited to capture this inspired thought that had come to mind for one my School, and also so eager to get to a Co-Creation Session I was about to do with a client that I hit the door jamb with my shoulder, sparking this muscle memory and triggering all the associated emotions: exhilaration, satisfaction with this moment, eagerness for the moments to come, alignment, joy.
I was on one, as they say.
And I was wise enough to take a moment right then to jot something down in my journal.
A micro-revelry.
A reminder.
A reminder that this moment — this feeling — is *exactly* how I love to feel about work.
I love to feel like my projects and customers and relationships are a series of gifts that Past Tara has given Now Tara and her Now Customers: a series of moments creating in the flow and moments of creating even more flow.
Today I invite you to dwell in this possibility right here with me: That you can feel like your work is a gift to yourself and to the people you serve. Frequently. Regularly. Even consistently.
Whether you know it or not, it is possible to feel so delightedly satisfied with right now and eager about what’s next that you run into stuff trying to get to do whatever it is you do.
First, time for some real talk: You may not feel this way about work right now.
And a little more real talk: I’m not suggesting everyone can or even should desire to joy-trip through every moment of every workday.
But remember: The reason we’re all here is for freedom, growth and joy.
These are the strategic objectives of the human experience.
So, if you are not regularly experiencing freedom, growth or joy in connection with your work, your work strategy is ineffective.
Doesn’t mean you’re not bad or wrong. Doesn’t necessarily even mean your job, company, or line of work are bad or wrong for you.
Realizing your work strategy is spiritually ineffective is no reason for regret, shame, self-judgment or self-critique, nor is it cause to run away and join the circus tonight.
It’s just an ineffective strategy. That’s all. It’s not creating what you want.
But it might be a step on the path right into what you want.
See, it turns out that some of our most ineffective strategies for living in freedom, growth and joy — the jobs we take, the way we do them, our habitual relationship and self-management styles, our patterns of hiding, playing small, self-silencing and holding back our best work and best selves from the world — these ineffective strategies can be some of the most valuable strategies, in the long run.
Because they get us clearer and clearer on what will be effective.
Because they get us closer to fulfillment or clearer on what will get us closer to fulfillment.
And because, along the way, we might even learn something about ourselves.
We learn that full self-expression is how we create our best work.
We might learn that our sacred purpose in life is not actually to check things off on some cosmic list of achievements.
Or, along the way, we might unlearn a bunch of old, played-out family and cultural conditioning about what success looks like and what work can feel like. We might allow life-zapping scarcity, fears and perfectionism, for example, to dissolve and dissipate.
And when we do, what remains is the beautiful, fine-tuned, tuned-in core of who you really are and why you really came to the planet in the first place: a new clarity about your purpose and the thick skin, soft heart, relationships, skills and character you need to move into your new season and new projects boldly and unapologetically, finding satisfaction and also eagerness for what’s to come.
If you’re feeling like your past and present career choices and experiences haven’t been effective at lighting up your next steps into more freedom, growth and joy, I’ve got three things for you:
1. One thing to do: Focus on what is working and what does feel great about your work. Look back at your calendar for last week (or last year, if need be) and revisit what really floated your boat.
What was joyous? When did you feel in the flow?
What moments and meetings felt like you were in the perfect place at the perfect time?
What projects felt like you were downloading golden threads of inspiration from some other realm?
What were you doing and who were you being when you got your best and brightest ideas, or when you acted on them?
When you look back at your calendar for the last week or so, what work memories create the feeling Martha Beck calls “shackles off”?
What recurring elements, relationships or parts of your work now spark feelings of satisfaction, eagerness, freedom, growth or joy?
Be totally transparent with yourself.
Don’t give into the urge to resist the answers.
Allow them. Let them be true and okay and be heard, just by you.
You might be very surprised at what you find.
2. One thing to refrain from doing: Master the natural tendency to fixate, focus and ruminate on what’s not working.
Because what you focus on grows, period and point blank. Even if it’s unwanted: if you fixate on it, you’ll get more of it.
Getting deep into the problem is almost never the platform for receiving, allowing, downloading or experiencing a bolt of clarity as to the solution.
And it feels shitty, too.
So. If you’ve got a grudge or a grievance around your work, redirect the urge to play into that habit loop of calling your complaint buddies to chew on that cud again.
Instead, try this: Write it out. This allows your inner whatever to come up and flow out without being repressed or stuffed down.
It dissipates the emotional charge of frustration or anger or fear.
It creates some space into which solution energy and insights can flow. You might get a download to consult with someone else on a solution, but even that kind of conversation will be much more fruitful and uplifting than the grudge-fest sort we call “venting”.
If you need to vent, vent on your journal pages. Allow yourself to feel what you feel. Investigate your feelings for the gift of insight they might contain, as needed.
Wipe your emotional windshield clear, in this way.
Then keep it moving.
To paraphrase the brilliant Julia Cameron: Put the drama on the page, then leave the drama on the page.
3. One inspired viewpoint to breathe in:Your life’s work, your best work and your best life are all the same thing.
My work, my life and my sore shoulders are Exhibit A.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s Exhibit B, from my dear, old friend Kahlil Gibran.
Maybe you’ve heard him quoted before, on the point that “work is love made visible.”
But you’ve likely not heard the rest of his take on work.
I offer it to you now as an invitation to breathe the spirit of love into your work, starting today.
Starting simply, by ceasing the rehearsal of what’s not working and reveling in what is.
That’s all inspiration is, after all. Breathing spirit in.
From Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet — On Work (1923):
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,
even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection,
even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead
are standing about you and watching.
It is to write the code or create the marketing campaign or build the business or lead the team as though you are downloading love and possibilities and clarity and transformation directly into your users, even as if your beloved were to use your app or product or work for your company.
(NOTE: I added that previous paragraph. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — Tara)
