>> Here’s your AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday. 

There’s a suggestion I’ve been offering a lot lately, and it goes like this…

“Set down your struggle portfolio.

Revel in your wins instead.” 

Usually when I teach this, we’re talking about an area of life we’re trying to improve, or we’re focused on a goal or a project. 

See, lots of people feel the need to argue all the reasons why they haven’t yet gotten where they want to be in their lives by listing off their past limitations and disappointments which — as you might imagine — only keeps the energy of past unwanted experiences alive in their present. 

That’s what I’m usually talking about, when I give this advice.

But I’m not here to talk about goals this week. 

This idea of trading in the laundry list of your struggles for some reveling in what is working, instead is also very useful on the subject I do want to talk about today: LOVE.

Here are a couple of quick premises: 

1. Love belongs to you. 
2. You are entitled to it by virtue of having been born on Planet Earth. 
3. You never have to earn it. 
4. And you can’t ever mess up, fail or screw up enough to lose your entitlement to love.
5. Ever.

That said, most of us do not feel that we were totally, completely, one million percent adored and accepted as very young children the way we’ve always known, deep down, we deserved to be. 

Even if we had wonderful parents. 

And most of us have never really grieved those old feelings of unlove. 

So those feelings harden and calcify into chunks of grievance that clog up our hearts. 

Grievance causes us to act in all kinds of ways that replicate and perpetuate that feeling of unlove. 

Grievance causes us to block ourselves from creating a love-riddled life, full of thriving work and play and healthful food and sleep and habits and relationships that fully nourish and love ourselves. 

Grievance also causes us to engage in patterns of thinking and acting in ways that block others from loving us the way we deserve to be loved. 

So here’s the question of the day: 

Is there any chance you might be ready to set down even some of your grievance so you can let more love in?

See, unlove is an entire mood. It’s like a life operating system where we view the world through grievance-colored glasses. 

Grievance can cause us to see the whole world through the lens of what is wrong, broken and not working, despite the relentless evidence of beauty and wellbeing that is all around us, all the time.

Grievance can cause us to think that the way to love other people is to commiserate with them or to fix them. 

Grievance can cause us to find and fixate on what’s broken and what’s not working for them or in them, and to rail away at the perceived cause of that brokenness, whether it be poverty, tough breaks, sickness, social injustice or the injustice of life itself. 

When your prevailing story around love is tinted through the filter of grievance, you think that’s how you love someone. 

You find their suffering and pick the scab of it. You pick something you see as “broken” about them and dive into the depths of that brokenness with them, try to “fix” them, or offer resources they didn’t ask for, which is actually the same exact thing as judging them Not Okay Just As They Are.

All of this fixing and fixating on what’s not working in our loved ones lives or in the world at large simply reinforces the mood of unlove: our own sense that others or the world or life or the universal powers that be don’t love us, or don’t love us as we are.

There are many definitions of love, and many of them are gorgeous and expansive. 

But for now, let’s try this one, from John Welwood: Love is the recognition of beauty and goodness. 

One way to be the Being of love you came here to be is to play this game I’ve been playing the last couple weeks: Walk through your life and your town looking for what is beautiful, what is good, and what is working, even in situations that are unwanted. 

And one way to love someone — yourself included — is to seek out and recognize their innate beauty and the goodness in them.

As they are right now, and also with all the limitless, vast potential they possessed when they were born and still do possess.

How might your relationships change if you consistently reset your concept of who your parents and your kids and your dates and your mates really are through the lens of love instead of the lens of grievance? 

If you could release the need to see or focus on their weaknesses, release the desire to control what they are and aren’t doing, and instead, revel in their wins? 

…their actual wins, the things that have gone right for them and are going right for them today, even if you have to dig very deep to find a few.

…and also the “wins” they represent, just by existing. 

Just by showing up and playing the game of life. 

My bff and I were reading an article the other day in which a young man was explaining that he doesn’t eat natural food anymore because lunch doesn’t hold “value” and in fact, the time it takes to eat real food limits his ability to be “of value” at work. 

My immediate thought was WOW. It’s going to be a wonderful day, the day this young man learns that he is of value because he is, not because of the tasks he gets done at work that day.

So, let’s revisit the question of the day. 

Are you ready to set down even a little bit of your grievance so you can let maybe 10% more love in than you have before?

Before I go, here’s a Pro Tip: In order to be a lover of life and people, you have to make a choice that you prefer to live a love-riddled life over focusing on the “objective”, outrageous facts about your loved one or the world news. 

The bright side is that if you make this choice, you’ll start to experience life in a transcendent kinda way. It’ll feel something like heaven on earth. 

Love,

TNN

Sign up for my Transformation Tuesday newsletter, here: http://www.taranicholle.com/transformation-tuesday

Friends,

>> Here’s the AUDIO of today’s Transformation Tuesday.

This morning, I sat perched in the window at my favorite cafe, writing away.

A wonderful little old lady sat next to me. But I couldn’t tell if she was 70 or 90, because she had a very intense tremor in both of her hands.

She carefully, painstakingly brought her scone and drink over and set them down at the seat next to me. I smiled and went back to my work. A few moments later, I noticed her struggling quite a lot in the effort to reach for her cane. 

I offered to help, but she quickly said, “I think I’ll be okay,” and then tremulously shuffled out the front door, without the cane. 

Before I could even think to wonder where she might be going, I glanced up from my work and saw for myself: she was standing in front of the restaurant, having spotted a fire truck making its way down the street, just beaming and waving at the crew. 

She waved wildly, joyfully at the driver in the front. Then she just stood there, smiling from ear to ear, and watched them pass by. Before they were out of view, she waved gleefully, with her whole entire body, at the driver in the back.

And they beamed and waved right back. 

Soon as the fire truck passed, she shuffled back inside, sat down and ate her scone. 

During this week of love, my wish for you is that you find something you love like that every day — something to revel in and frolic with at the same level of sheer joy that my coffee shop friend felt for that fire truck this morning. 

May you find that level of joy as you meet eyes with your loved ones… or as you meet new loved ones.

May you find that level of revelry and delight in the process of anticipating the wonders and adventures before you — including your adventures in love. 

And may whatever you find to love like that this week return the love you shine its way, multiplied.

Head up and heart out,

TNN

Sign up for my Transformation Tuesday newsletter, here: http://www.taranicholle.com/transformation-tuesday

Carl Jung is the source of my current favorite spiritual mic-drop. 

He said: ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Meaning: Deep-seated beliefs and parts of your personality that you aren’t even aware of are controlling the events of your life, and you don’t even know it. 

Until you make them conscious, you’ll just think that life is hard, that the struggle is real or that the world is an unfriendly place.

We call the most pervasive, most deep-seated, unconscious beliefs that pave the landscape of our lives “trances”, because: 

• they are constant and absolute
• they are so unconscious that they run in the background of all our waking — and sleeping — moments, and 
• they direct our own actions, emotions, decisions, perspectives and even the events and circumstances we create or attract.

Here are just two of the most common, most devastating trances:

1. The trance of scarcity. This is the trance of “there’s not enough to go around” and “life is hard.”

The trance of scarcity is opposite of the truth that, actually, billions of miracles occur every single day simply to support your personal, individual survival, existence and thriving. 

It also opposes the reality that this world is totally riddled and abundant with resources, that there are plenty to go around, and that actually the less we strain and struggle the more easefully the resources we need flow our way.

You can make your own unconscious trance of scarcity conscious by noticing the storylines in your head that chronically go like this: 

“I didn’t get enough sleep.”

“I never get enough sleep.”

“There’s no time for that.”

“The struggle is real.”

“Adulting is hard.”

“I’ve got to be perfect or act perfect or work my heart out or over-perform to keep Really Bad Things from happening.”

You can also notice how often you clench your teeth, grind your jaw, hunch your shoulders as though bracing for catastrophe or (and this used to be my personal go-to) hold your breath.

2. The trance of unworthiness. Any belief that you “should be” different than you are is a page from the book of unworthiness. The trance of unworthiness will convince you that it’s not okay to relax all the way, ever. Or that there’s a little bit something wrong with you, so you have to be perfect. Or that people will reject you if you’re anything but totally beyond criticism, 100% of the time.

This often shows up in perfectionism, self-criticism and the resulting symptoms of overeating, over-drinking and over-working.

The trance of unworthiness also shows up as what John Welwood calls the “mood of unlove”: the failure to understand that you are deeply lovable, exactly as you are. This can make it very hard to let love all the way in. 

Welwood says people with a mood of unlove “imagine that they are insignificant, unattractive, deficient, lacking in some essential way. And all human greed, jealousy, aggression, and violence arise from there.”

You wake up from the trance of unworthiness by radically accepting yourself, your history and your life and even the way the world is and works. 

This does not mean you can’t transform your life — and impact the world — in wonderful ways. 

In fact, the most powerful platform for changing your life is to practice being what one of my teachers describes as “satisfied with what is andeager for more.”

Waking up from these trances is possible. Just by making the unconscious conscious, you begin the process of learning to see the world very differently and upgrading your beliefs.

Upgrading these beliefs is a journey of moment after moment of clarity, as you see the inner narratives that have been guiding your life. (These stories might even have been controlling your whole family or culture, sometimes for generations.)

Upgrading these beliefs is a process. And it takes time. And you must be gentle and easy with yourself along the way. Because each step of this process feels a little like the end of the world as you know it .

Let me rephrase. Each step of awakening from these trances is, actually, the end of the world as you’ve known it if the world as you’ve known it has been cold, mean or struggle-filled. 

This can be disorienting, and can even make you occasionally yearn for the comfort of your old, harsh, limiting, stressful worldview. 

But then one day, or maybe a little bit at a time on a thousand different days, it will occur to you that you’ve acquired the ability to intentionally choose how you live your life. 

Albert Einstein laid out our options for choosing how to live very clearly. He said, “there are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”

Head up + heart out,

TNN

Sign up for my Transformation Tuesday newsletter, here: http://www.taranicholle.com/transformation-tuesday

Friends,

>> Here’s the AUDIO version of today’s Transformation Tuesday newsletter. Enjoy!

Have you ever heard the saying that we’re all spiritual beings in physical bodies?

This is true. But it’s incomplete. Here’s my version:

“You are a spiritual being, in an ever-evolving, ever-expanding psychobiological system, living in and around a multitude of other ever-evolving psycho-bio-socio-technological ecosystems.”

In other words, I love to learn and think about how the insides of our minds, bodies and souls work. 

Recently, I was reading about one such subject that’s of great interest to me personally: allergies. 

I knew that allergies are misfires of our immune systems. For years I’ve blessed my allergies, knowing that they’re just a false positive reaction by the same system in my body that does a wonderful job warding off all the Really Nasty Stuff. 

But a while back, I read this article about an all-new allergy that is evolving in humans as we speak. It goes by a very sexy name: Mammalian Meat Allergy. 

Mammalian Meat Allergy came to mind as I was talking to a couple of college-aged entrepreneurs the other day about the fear and self-doubt which stop them from taking the right next steps for their projects. 

I said, “Think of it this way: All fear is a spiritual allergy.”

Allergies are physical responses that evolved to keep us safe from dangerous substances, mistakenly triggered by non-dangerous substances like peanuts, pollen and now, apparently, meat. 

Fear is also a response that evolved to keep us safe from danger. But in our lives, most of the time, fear is triggered by scenarios which, like peanuts, pose no real danger to our safety.

Here’s the lowdown: The deepest, oldest part of your brain is the brainstem or limbic system. (It’s very similar to the entire brain of a modern-day lizard.) 

This piece of your brain evolved to send fear signals throughout your body to alert you to dangers in your environment so you can keep yourself safe. 

Your lizard brain triggers physical fear responses like holding your breath, rapid heartbeat, bracing and clenching your muscles and narrowing your field of focus to exclude everything but the Supposedly Dangerous Thing.

Then your thinking brain tells a story about the connection between this non-dangerous thing and the fear you feel in your body. The fear-based story and your physical fear reactions wire together over time.

Fear was designed to keep us safe when the beast that lived in the cave next door charged at us, way back when.

But in both cases — allergies and fear — our bodies haven’t kept up with our world. 

Allergies are misfires. Peanuts and pollen are not dangerous to humans, other than the allergies they trigger.

And the vast majority of our fears are misfires, too.

Nothing about giving a speech, speaking up in a meeting with a creative idea you’re not sure will be well-received, putting yourself up for a promotion or putting a book out into the world is truly dangerous.

But they feel dangerous, because they are outside of the comfort zone you’ve erected around yourself and your life. 

So all of these things trigger your brain’s fear responses.

And just like different people have different allergies, in some people the “fear allergy” might be really intense, causing you to fear non-dangerous things like:

• speaking up and asking for what you need
• expressing how you really feel
• making needed relationship, career and life moves
• criticism, disapproval or rejection 
• or even fearing that catastrophe will result if your life plan or even your day doesn’t go exactly how you want, so you try to control the specifics of your life, including what other people do and say. 

So much devotion to “making things happen” exactly the way we want. 

So much breath-holding. 

Fear prevents us from joyfully pulling out all the stops, and just fully being who we came here to be.

Knowing that fear is just your Lizard Brain doing what it does is the first step on the path beyond fear and its first cousin, self-doubt.

Fears are just spiritual allergies. And most allergic reactions go away fast.

Neuroscientist Jill Bolte-Taylor says that when you think a thought that sparks fear, the fear feeling lasts only 90 seconds. 

Unless you keep thinking that thought, which is what happens when we try to talk ourselves out of being afraid, keep old fear-based storylines alive in our minds, or judge ourselves for feeling fearful in the first place. 

Fear-based thought habits are learned patterns that you have the power to rewire.

Fear is not who you are. 

I know fear can feel very real. But it’s not true, almost ever. 

It’s very temporary, if you let it pass instead of struggling against it.

Almost every successful spiritual or practical strategy for living beyond fear will tell you that arguing with your fears in your own mind is not the answer. 

The answer is to understand what’s happening when you experience fear and find ways to leave the conversation with your lizard brain entirely. 

P.S.: In my next couple of emails, we’ll cover the two types of fearand how to opt out of the fears and doubts that limit you.

NOTE: Upgrading our inner wellbeing by learning about our inner workings is something we do all the time in the School of Upliftment. 

I want to introduce you to SOU student Christine Casillas, who shared a bit about her experience in the School recently. She said: 

“What I like about the School, is that it brings together the psychology and the science and the whys and the wherefores of why people act the way they do.

Actually, more importantly, of why you act the way you do. It brings all of that together and integrates it with your spiritual side.”

After sharing about her own personal transformation, she closed like this: 

“I recommend the School of Upliftment for anyone who is ready to lead the life they were always meant to lead.”

I’m re-opening enrollment in the School of Upliftment soon. If you’re interested, just hit reply and say: “Put me on the interest list, Tara!”

Here’s the rest of what Christine had to say (3 minute video): 

Click to watch Chrstine’s Testimonial on YouTube

Head up + heart out,

TNN

Sign up for my Transformation Tuesday newsletter, here: http://www.taranicholle.com/transformation-tuesday

I just had this thought on my dog walk, and thought I’d share.

With our thoughts, our actions, the way we hold our bodies and what we choose to focus on with our minds, we’re all practicing something all the time.

So it’s a good exercise to occasionally un-click autopilot and pay attention to what you’re practicing, because that’s what you’re wiring in. 

Are you practicing stories of scarcity and struggle or stories of prosperity and wellbeing? 

Are you practicing holding your breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop or hiding behind perfectionism?

Or are you practicing engaging with life, wholeheartedly: taking risks, taking inspired action, doing your best and letting the chips fall where they may? 

Are you rehearsing an endless, soul-sucking litany of the terrible, no-good, very bad or unwanted things that happen in the world? 

Or are you consciously choosing to focus on the trillions of wonderful things that happen in and around your body and your world every single second of every single day? 

(Catch this principle: When you focus on something, you’re saying “More, please!” of that thing. Whatever it is.)

Are you practicing putting all sorts of conditions on your own happiness, refusing to be satisfied unless and until Some Other Person acts the way you want them to?

Or are you practicing joy-tripping through life, regardless of other people’s behavior and opinions?

Are you practicing arguing for your limitations, desperate not to feel misunderstood? 

Or are you practicing giving in to the natural trajectory of your own expansion, asking timidly at first… how might I be able to be, do or have THAT?… then taking what feels like the right next step, doing your best and watching expectantly as the other elements of your future fall into place and light up before you?

We’re all rehearsing something all the time.

So it pays to be intentional about what we choose to practice.

Note: Last week, I put together something I call The Big List of 96 Transformational Intentions for Conscious Leaders and Creators: 2019 Edition — complete with instructions and optimized for impact. 

Thought you might enjoy it — here you go! 

DOWNLOAD THE FREE PDF: The Big List of 96 Transformational Intentions for Conscious Leaders and Creators: 2019 Edition

Head up + heart out,

TNN

Sign up for my Transformation Tuesday newsletter, here: http://www.taranicholle.com/transformation-tuesday