Friends,

[Read on, or listen to today’s Transformation Tuesday newsletter, here.]

“I’m behind” is what, in my School of Upliftment, we call a Scarcity Story.

I know “I’m behind” sounds like an almost meaningless verbal tic that ambitious people say all the time, because everyone really is so busy. But it’s not meaningless, by a long shot.

Chronically saying “I’m behind” both reflects and wires in a sneaky, silent, low-grade belief in unworthiness and scarcity.

“I’m behind” is a script that keeps you feeling like who you are is not enough, like what you’re doing is not enough, and that there is never—and maybe there will never be—enough time or enough of you to allow you to relax and experience the fullness of life.

This particular script—”I’m behind”—keeps you out of alignment with the ‘total trust’ way of life: total trust in divine order and timing, total trust that everything is always working out for you, and, especially, total trust in the process and experience of life, which always brings you exactly where you need to be, exactly when you need to be there.

“I’m behind” is a chronic judgment of yourself as not measuring up to what you think you should be doing or should be producing in a certain time frame, based on who knows what standard.

And lest you be tempted to judge yourself for judging yourself, “I’m behind” is not just something you made up. It’s a cultural lie. It’s a trance—so deep, pervasive and unconscious that we can operate a whole lifetime unaware that we’re holding our own breath, recklessly running to some deadline or waiting for the catastrophe we suspect we’ll create if we miss the deadline. Even when the deadline is self-imposed or imaginary.

Our nature is freedom. So when we start imposing all sorts of deadlines and timelines on ourselves, we almost always internally feel the rise of internal Resistance, our Inner Roadblocks: procrastination, perfectionism, self-criticism, crises, dramas, certain addictions and all manner of playing small ensue. The early evidence that we’re dealing with the Resistance that nearly always arises when we try to live, be or do better is that we start parroting the cultural mantra: “I’m behind.”

“I’m behind” is related to the cultural lie of: I’d better hustle and be perfect and achieve and perform and produce, or Something Very Bad Might Happen.

It’s a cousin of the lie of always waiting for the other shoe to drop, because life can’t really be this good.

It’s a first cousin of the lie that there’s never enough to go around: not enough time, not enough energy, not enough love, not enough money, and the list goes on.

And it’s definitely related to the lie that you don’t really deserve for life to be full of health, wealth, love and self-expression, so you’d better put yourself up to totally unreasonable standards so you can prove to your unworthiness, prove your limitations, prove your hypothesis that you’re going to disappoint yourself, yet again.

Chronic “I’m behind” keeps you tensed up. So it never really helps you bust past an inner roadblock of procrastination or perfectionism. It just keeps you in struggle mode, in breathless mode, in not enough mode. It keeps you entangled in the struggle between you and you.

On the flip side, unlearning the lie of “I’m behind” releases the struggle, so that (a) you instantly feel better and can appreciate the brilliant reality of your life right now, and (b) you re-open the limitless pipeline of inspiration that is trying to flow to you and expand your access to the incredible efficiency and leverage of inspired action. The end result is that you do create (without hard effort or forced so-called productivity) a higher volume of brilliant output than you did before.

Here are a few of my strategies for unlearning this lie of “I’m behind”—in my mind, they bucket pretty neatly into two categories: (1) Spiritual + Personal and (2) Practical. These two categories go hand in hand.

Spiritual + Personal

1. Embrace your inner contrarian. Be counter-culture. Understand that consumer and media culture are built on messages that you’re not enough, and decide to reject these messages. Understand the vast, life-creating power of your words, and stop using them against yourself. Above all else: Stop saying you’re behind, even when that’s what the people around you seem to want to talk about the most. If you need to, think up a new script for redirecting the conversation or affirming that you’re in the just-right place at the just-right time in advance, for when the “I’m so behind, how behind are you” conversations arise.

2. Remind yourself of the rightness of divine right order and timing… and relax into it. In my Writing Challenges, we do this exercise of writing and telling our personal breakthrough stories backwards, so we can connect the dots and remind ourselves of how often we’ve been surprised and delighted at how things turned out in life—how seemingly crappy circumstances turned around, and how when it looked like all was lost, help was actually on the way, all along.

Divine order and timing are real. They are not linear or logical. When you feel chronically behind, it’s because you’re trying to do everything in this life 100% on your own, without the assistance of Source, Soul, Spirit and even the other people that are on your path, waiting to collaborate to assist you. When you learn to radically accept that wellbeing is the order of our universe, that life is a process and that everything really and truly is always working out for you in divine timing and order, you can’t help but relax a bit and dial down the “I’m behind,” because this: you can’t bebehind.

You are always in the right place, at the right time, to meet the right people, get the right idea, receive the clarity or experience the learning you need to. Period. Always. The only way you can be cut off from this Infinite Intelligence is to crank yourself up with tension, doubt and anxiety. Your job, in fact, is to relax enough to receive your divine downloads, and then to act when inspiration strikes—no matter how small or insignificant the “inspired” idea seems to be, at the time.

3. Practice opening the Pipeline, at least daily. There’s a Pipeline of limitless energy and inspiration flowing through you and to you at all times. Only you, your anxiety, your chaotic calendar and self-talk can pinch yourself off from it. But you can widen it and trigger the flow, too. Meditation opens the Pipeline. Free-writing opens it, too. So does movement, and many other processes and practices, and even certain types of interactions with certain types of people.

Your rule is this: Do things that make you feel spacious and expansive, inside your body, instead of constricted and tight.

When you practice opening the Pipeline every day, inspiration flows more readily and you are less resistant to acting on it. This is critical, because when you are working, creating, crafting from a place of inspired action, you are exponentially more efficient than when you are working in a state of time-terrorized nose-to-grindstone. You actually create more, and more quickly. So you find yourself resolving the “I’m behind” dramaturge from both ends—releasing unrealistic expectations of what you can do in a given time and also actually creating more, brilliant things at the same time.

Practical

4. Don’t try to do more than 5 things a day. I literally limit my task lists to 5 things a day, and 6 larger projects per every 6-week period of time. More than that is untenable and starts the day off with that breathless “I’m behind” feeling. I do allow one of my 5 things to be an email hour, during which I tie up loose ends, reply to emails, and make quick calls.

And no: I don’t return all my emails every day.

But I do write somewhere between 10- and 20,000 words a week, I teach a bunch of live courses, I speak all over the world, and I create beautiful programs and attract incredible students and participants to them. And despite my never getting to (or even aspiring to) inbox zero, the sun somehow continues to rise and set.

5. Use decathexis to create time and space for what you want to do. Cathexis is the time, money and energy you put into any project, relationship or initiative. Decathexis is what we call the time, money and energy you recoup when you put an end to doing something—anything.

If you never feel like you have time for the things that you want to start doing, here’s my super deep and profound lesson for you: stop doing other shit. Prioritize, and stop doing the stuff you’re doing that you don’t care about to free up the time and life force to pour into what you do care about. You’ll find that once you’re doing the life-giving things, they endlessly renew your energy to do more of that.

Call B.S. on yourself, if you hear yourself saying “I don’t have time” to do X, where X is something you really want to do and takes less than a half-hour (like: meditating, or reading).

Seriously: Is that really true?

Are you on Facebook or Netflix, ever? How about this: Promise yourself that every time you feel the urge to check Facebook, you’ll take a 5-minute walk first, or journal or read for 5 minutes, or plank, or whatever it is you say you’d like to do. Do that for a week.

Report back.

6. Seal the leak of context-switching. Bucket deep-thought projects all together, and bucket light-attention projects or meetings together. Switching from meetings to writing, for example, takes a lot of time: up to 45 minutes, according to neuropsychologists. So instead of booking yourself strictly an hour here or there to write and being frustrated that you’re not making progress, book all of your meetings on certain days or in the morning or afternoon, and then book your deep-thought/deep-work time all on certain days, or in the morning or afternoon.

The momentum you’ll create is another way to open the pipeline. And you’ll find yourself being less distracted both during your meetings/light work and your deep, focused, thinky work, too.

7. Don’t try to catch up—reset instead. There are times when deadlines are very important and very real. But we often set them arbitrarily, and then self-flagellate when we miss them.

When you set a schedule for a project and pieces of it take longer than you expect, don’t try to “catch up” if there really is flexibility. Instead, anytime you can, just reset the project calendar and the expectations. Otherwise, that need to catch up will just snowball into a more and more intense inner constriction and you’ll continue to feel further and further behind. “Catching up” almost never really works to stop any procrastination or perfectionism that’s going on, either: It just intensifies the struggle, and shuts off your access to your brain’s highest centers of creativity and inspired innovation.

If you have the power to reset the calendar and the expectations, you’ll find yourself feeling more spacious and also in less judgment of yourself, and you’ll also find that those around you relax, too. So you open up not just your own internal Pipeline of energy and inspiration, but the Pipeline of your vendors, partners, team members, even your family members, at the same time.

Thoughts? Hit reply…I’m all ears!

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Friends,

Listen to the AUDIO of today’s Transformation Tuesday newsletter, here.

Buddhists say there are only three ways to deal with an unwanted situation and stay sane. You can leave the situation. You can change the situation. Or you can accept every single thing about the situation.

Scan your world. Are there any situations in your life right now, no matter how big or small, that are taking up undue mental bandwidth or causing you unwanted stress. Anything you keep fixating on, fretting about or just spinning on.

Are you willing to leave this situation? We’ll talk more about how to know when the time is right to make a necessary ending in another email. (Till then, I strongly recommend this book. It changed my life.)

If not, can you change the situation? Not change another person’s behavior, but change the situation? Most often, I find that really translates to this question: Can you change the way you operate within this situation, or the way you look at it?

Or, finally, if you’re not going to leave the situation and you’re not going to change the situation, can you accept the situation? If you decide to stay in it, can you stop pushing against it inside your own mind and body andstop pushing against your feelings about it? Acknowledge that it is what it is, accept your own unwanted emotions in reaction to it, and then investigate the whole thing with curiosity and kindness (which, oh by the way, might lead you to make a change further down the line).

Can you do that?

Note: There are many other things you can do. You can accept 75% and push against the other 25%, like when you are in a situation, don’t like it, don’t leave it or change it, but then judge yourself for having the emotional reaction you are having to it.

Or you can stay in the situation, detest it at the core of your being and then spend all your time fixating about it, talking about it, or dreaming about how perfect your life will be when the situation resolves. . . someday.

You can do any and all of these things, and many more. But you can’t do them without paying a toll in terms of your inner peace.

Leave, change, accept or live in internal—and possibly eternal—unrest. Those are your options.

I’d love to hear how this one sits with you. Hit reply and let me know.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Friends,

[Read on or listen to the AUDIO of today’s Transformation Tuesday newsletter, here.]

I read something the other day about how a Nike engineer helped a designer colleague get unstuck. The designer had been tasked with building the self-tying shoe, something Nike eventually did.

But at that moment, stuck he was. Spinning. No progress. Confounded. Burnt out.

The engineer told the designer to stop working on the self-tying shoe for a moment and make a running shoe for the engineer instead. The shoe had to hold up for at least 5 miles, and the designer could use any equipment on the Nike campus to make it.

But the engineer told the designer to flip one variable: The shoe had to be made 100% out of materials sourced from Home Depot.

A few days later, the designer showed back up, presenting the engineer with a shoe that wore well during a 5-mile test run. The designer reported feeling a new wave of energy and inspiration, too.

The engineer’s topline takeaway was that when you get stuck on a thought problem or you’re facing creative burnout, flipping one major variable can shift the whole atmosphere and refresh your energy for the project. It can make you creative again.

And I’ll add one more takeaway today: The single most powerful variable you can instantly flip in these situations is the way you wield your words. What are you speaking over your projects and desires? Are you constantly affirming the struggle, the grind and hard-ness? Are you endlessly planning for what happens if things don’t work out or talking about your fears with your complaint buddies (you know who they are)?

Your words are powerful indicators of your inner reality. They reveal the thoughts you have practiced so much that they are now deeply held beliefs, maybe so deep you’re not even aware that you hold them. If what you deeply desire is an inspired, easeful, conscious way of creating your work and your life, but you’re constantly speaking in the direction of difficulty, grasping or grievance, you may be talking yourself into a standstill. That internal struggle of having a split mind is exhausting and self-fulfillingI it does make everything you ever want to do or be much harder than it has to be. And that, in turn, creates stuckness and burnout.

Your own words—and the beliefs they represent—can present progress-stopping inner roadblocks. Fortunately, you don’t have to figure out how to make a shoe out of home improvement supplies to get around these roadblocks, starting now.

The first step to unlearning an unwanted belief is to see it, or at least to be aware of the inner discord of your mixed mind. Step two is to stop rehearsing and rehashing it with your words. Stop saying you’re stuck. Stop saying you’re behind. Stop saying “impossible.” Impossible is a lie.

Give your unwanted beliefs the chance to peter out as you focus deliberately on fresh, powerful ways of being, doing, thinking and especially speaking.

Then you can use the power of your words to build expansive new thought habits, and to speak possibility, life and energy into your projects.

Say things like: “Everything is always working out for me.”

Or: “I look with wonder at that which is before me.”

Or say: “I don’t know the how, but I am clear on the vision. And that’s enough. I’m receptive. I’m open. I’m learning. I’m listening. I’m growing. I’m good.”

If those are too extreme to be true for you (for now), just say: “This is going to be a fascinating process. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to work out, but I do know that everything is possible. I’m just going to stay flexible, have fun with this and see what happens.”

Yeah, that’s a good one. Say that.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Friends,

I’m super inspired by this thing I read (via Seth Godin) that Miles Davis recorded 48 albums before Kind of Blue — Davis’ masterwork and the bestselling jazz record of all time.

Kind of Blue was Davis’ really big break.

And sure, he was an undisputed creative genius. This record was improv, after all. Not painstakingly planned and played with precision. It was improv. And it was inspired.

But here’s the deal: The people we celebrate as creative geniuses generally create a lot of things not everyone thinks are genius before they hit it big. Way before. Everyone I’ve ever known or studied who was a so-called overnight success had been creating or practicing for years before they made it big—even in this Internet age.

Then, their so-called big break arrived because of two things:

1. The sheer mastery that’s born of practice, and
2. The practice of inviting inspiration then acting on it, without hesitation.

Inspired action sounds flukey and spooky. Sounds like something you have no influence on making happen, something that only happens to creative genius types.

But that’s just not true. Getting receptive to inspiration and obeying it when it comes are muscles built with practice, too.

Catch this principle: The way you trigger your big break is with practice.

And the prerequisite to practicing something is starting it. Now. Whatever it is.

What’s amazing about the time we live in is that if you want to sing and put it out into the world, you can start doing it, start practicing, right now. You can find a coffee shop with an open mic. Or a church choir. Or get a $50 mic on Amazon and record some YouTube videos. Or sing into your phone and put something on SoundCloud.

If you want to write, you can just write. Put it on Medium. Reach out to publications. Build an audience, slowly, then: snowball.

If you want to do anything creative—if you want to create anything—there’s no need to wait for your big break or ask for permission from some bigwig to get started anymore.

My friend, the entrepreneur Katherine Krug, worked on a series of companies early in her career, cultivating clarity all along the way. As she got clearer and clearer on what kind of life she wanted to live, she got receptive to receiving a truly divine download. When it came, she listened. And she got started. She built a product she knew people needed (BetterBack) and crowdfunded to get it marketed and sold. Then she did that again, to the tune of multiple millions of dollars.

Along the way, she made it to Shark Tank, though she ultimately turned down the funding she was offered. And last week, she was on QVC, continuing her conversation directly with her customers: the people who need what she makes. Big breaks? Yes. But they didn’t just float into her email box magically. She got in alignment with her own desires, and got started. . . attracting her big breaks.

Counterintuitively, your most inspired creations—whether it’s software, a business strategy, a book or a blog post—will come with practice. And your big breaks will flow from there. They will come after you start creating. Not before.

By “start now” I don’t mean making lists. Or checking them twice. Or trying to get a perfectly crystal clear plan of action down in spreadsheet format.

I mean sitting down and doing something. Allowing yourself to take that inspired idea and start working on it, giving yourself permission to change course along the way.

It’s very common that the moment you even decide to take a step in the direction of what you want to create, internal resistance and roadblocks may rear their heads. Resistance can show up as a crisis, an addiction (including the addiction to drama), negative self-talk, overwhelm or just plain old procrastination.

But the single most common way internal resistance shows up in my people (that’s you) is perfectionism. Perfectionism is just a bad thought habit: the thought that you can’t or won’t start unless and until you can be really, really good. It’s a bad habit of thought that gets you stuck so you don’t ever have the chance to practice and get good. Perfectionism is tightly related to unworthiness (the idea that if you’re not performing perfectly, something is wrong with you) and to the dread of others’ critical opinions (caring too much about what others think). More about both of these later.

Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird is a perfectionism cure, and applies to anyone who wants to create anything. She says that a shitty rough draft (SRD) is the only way to ever get to anything good, which means it behooves you to hurry up and get your SRD done. Meaning, get it started.

Having now used this model over the years to write 3 books of my own, I can tell you there is a secret side effect to the SRD: because you’re trying for shitty, you get out of your head and often create something that’s not actually shitty at all. Maybe it’s even good. And even if you don’t, in the process of allowing yourself to create shitty things you create MORE things, which gets you the practice you need to create something great.

Once you’re creating, your great work and big break might come all of a sudden, or maybe your overnight success will take a few years. Maybe it’ll take a couple of decades, and you’ve already lived almost all the way up to the tipping point that will trigger your big break. Maybe you’ve been getting ready all this time.

Which leads me to the other important thing here: It’s worthwhile to invest some attention to making sure your creative process is intrinsically enjoyable. Make sure it’s fun and flowing and easeful and expansive. Learn how to get into the flow state as often as you want, then do that as often as you can. And learn how to relax and trust the process: We’ll talk more about trust in divine order and timing, and how to build it next week.

If you fall in love with the process, you’ll create more beautiful things. More elegant solutions. More thriving teams. More magnetic things. But also, if you fall in love with the process, that process will become a bigger and bigger part of how you live your life. It’ll become part of who you are. And you’ll stop living from a place of grasping, yearning and desperation for particular outcomes.

You’ll do it for the love of it. You’ll learn to surf the waves of life, instead of trying to fight them. (h/t Jon Kabat-Zinn)

That, in turn, will feed and perpetuate a virtuous cycle of inspired action in your life. Inspired creation. Because you love the process of creating, you’ll continue to create great things. Impactful things.

It’s why Saul Bellow said “You never have to edit anything you write in the middle of the night.”

It’s why Billy Joel said, “When an album is fun to make, it’s usually good.”

It’s why Miles himself said of his own records: “‘So What’ or Kind of Blue, they were done in that era, the right hour, the right day, and it happened. What I used to play with Bill Evans, all those different modes, and substitute chords, we had the energy then and we liked it.“

And these things you’ll create from this place, from this beloved, joyous creative process, they aren’t just great things. They are powerfully magnetic. They beacon out to the collaborative components that will come together to create even more inspired, impactful things: the prospective partners, customers, employees, co-creators.

What you create when you feel this way are the magnets for your big breaks. So, if you want to trigger your big break? Start creating. Start practicing. And start now.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Friends,

There’s a weird thing about coffee and tea. They are liquids, which is usually what you drink to hydrate. But they are also diuretics, so they actually have the opposite effect. They dehydrate you.

Certain spiritual self-care, creativity and personal growth practices are just the opposite. They take time to do, so most people think they would have the effect of cutting into your already rare spare time.

But the opposite is true. With a little practice and a little skill, some of these practices invite inspiration in. They trigger flow. They spark divine downloads: Those moments you have when you’re in the shower, on a run, sleeping or playing with your dog and all of a sudden, you get a sudden bolt of clarity or flow of words on some problem or project you’ve been working on.

Dots connect. Clouds part. Angels sing.

Brilliance ensues.

And I mean it. The answers and insights that flow in these moments are truly inspired: There’s spirit in them. They’re just way better than what you would write or create if you were putting your nose to the grindstone to do it.

This is what made Saul Bellow say: “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”

Catch this principle: There is nothing as efficient as inspired action.

When you get in the habit of inviting inspiration every single day, listening for and capturing those golden threads when they come, and turning them into inspired action, immediately and without self-editing, self-sabotage, procrastination or perfectionism, you start taking advantage of this fundamental truth.

You stop dithering. You become decisive. You communicate more clearly. You handle your whole life more masterfully.

And anything you want to create, whether it’s a business, a program or a course, a book, a new lifestyle or even a family, you will create everything more quickly, powerfully and beautifully. So you can create more of what you want, and do it with more joy, ease and flow than you might even have known was possible. It’ll be more fun. The right ideas and opportunities to create what you want will flow to you, and your timing will get very, very good.

You’ll enjoy the process, instead of dreading it. You’ll find rest and expansion and space and joy in your projects, instead of feeling pressure and constriction, or stuckness, through your creative process.

In short, your whole life will level up. Your power to turn your ideas and thoughts into tangible things. Your career. Your finances. Your love life.

I’d love to teach you my own morning ritual for inviting inspiration and acting on it, and help you personalize it to work for your calendar and your personality. In the School of Upliftment, I will teach you a morning practice you can’t wait to do every morning—and I’ll also email you every morning to remind, nudge and prompt you to do it!

In the survey I sent around last week, many of you mentioned the nagging worry that you might be behind where you think should be in life, and the anxiety that you might not fulfill your potential and your dreams before you die.

If this resonates even a little bit, let me reiterate something:

There is absolutely nothing more efficient than inspired action.

And more importantly, flow feels GOOD.

You only have to experience this once to see what I mean. Let me show you, along with the other brilliant souls who have already joined the School of Upliftment.

To learn more and join, go to → soultour.com/school

Note: This enrollment window is only open until this Friday, July 27th. School begins August 1st.

Head up and heart out,

TNN

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

Brilliant One:

Read on, or click here to listen to the audio of today’s Transformation Tuesday insight on Soundcloud.

Most of us find ourselves in the optometrist’s chair at some point in our lives. You know that drill: you smoosh your face up to the machine whilst the doc flips various corrective lens combos in and out, manually checking to see precisely which lens gets you closest to clarity.

“This one, or this one?”

“This or this?”

“Number one or number two?”

Some of the lenses make things clearer, some go the other way. But even the fuzziest lens combinations help the optometrist narrow down the vast realm of possible prescriptions, eliminating options until she finds the just-right lens through which you can see clearly.

Life works the same way. It’s easy to feel like we’re behind where we should be in life, to feel like life keeps making it impossible for you to get a clear line of sight on your purpose: who you really are and why you’re really here. You can’t take a retreat. You can’t go sit in a cave and just meditate. You’ve got bills to pay. A home to manage. A job. A life to live.

But the opposite is true: every situation in life, every circumstance, every job and relationship, every crisis and obstacle and especially every bit of spiritual and personal growth we experience is a lens. Even the most unwanted experiences and emotions are a lens. Because, as one of my teachers likes to say, “when you know what you don’t want, you learn what you do want.”

And with every flip of the lens, we either get more of what we want in life or we get clearer on what we want.

It’s great to take a sabbatical, go on a retreat or write a book in order to get clear on your purpose. If you can swing any of the above, do it. These can be powerful, pivotal experiences. But many, many people go on retreat, learn amazing stuff and come back to their real life and find it hard to turn what they learned into real habits and new ways of being and doing, over the long run.

Let me say something that might surprise you: you don’t have to do anything wildly disruptive in order to get clear on your purpose in life. You don’t have to go on retreat or sabbatical. You don’t have to run away and join the circus, blow up your life or quit your job to get clear, though you might feel called to do that at some point. Life and experience will bring you the clarity you seek, if you sit still, connect the dots and listen to your inner guidance system with some regularity.

What you do have to do to get clear on your purpose is give yourself permission to be counter-culture. Be willing to protect your mind and spirit from the chaos of the day and from the overwhelm of your digital life.

You do have to be willing to stop regurgitating the same old struggle stories and put your attention elsewhere. Let a new story emerge, even if the uncertainty around what that new story might be is very uncomfortable.

You must be willing to take a sacred pause and get still, ideally for a few moments every day. (I’ll share more on how to do that consistently, for the long run, tomorrow.) You must be willing to listen to your inner guidance system, invite inspiration and act on it, when when it comes. You must develop a way to reset, recalibrate and reconnect with the wisdom that is always trying to get to you: the wisdom and clarity that you’ve been cultivating your whole entire life.

If you want to get clear on your purpose, the most efficient way is to figure out how to settle down, down-regulate your nervous system and get in receptive mode. In that place, it is inevitable that you will receive the clarity you’ve been getting ready for your whole entire life.

Catch this principle: you’ve been sowing the seeds of clarity as to your purpose your whole entire life. With every experience you’ve had and enjoyed or liked, you’ve planted seeds of “more, please.” And with every unwanted experience, small and large, you’ve planted seeds of ever-increasing clarity about what you don’t want, which—news flash—is the same exact thing as getting clearer on what you do want.

In your coming season, you will harvest and act on the clarity you’ve been cultivating your whole life. Clarity of purpose. Clarity of thinking. Clarity in the way you speak and interact with others. And you will just continue to get clearer and clearer, as you live out your next 200 years.

Sometimes we impatient, ambitious uplifter types want our clarity to come in a big, overnight dose. Epiphanies sound fast and easy, so we gravitate toward people who tell us stories of their own sudden shift from chaos to clarity, usually because they had some sort of great crisis or trauma that shook them out of the trance they’d previously been walking around with their whole lives.

The problem is that this keeps selling the false storyline that you have to experience something traumatic or do something dramatic in order to get clear on your vision and purpose. Sure, that’s how some people’s journey unfolds. But as quiet as its kept, some of the most on-purpose people you know got there through a lifetime of moving forward, saying yes, trying things, seeing how that feels and continuously course correcting: incremental clarity, with a spurt here and a spurt there, over time.

Even when it seems like someone has gotten an epiphany, what has usually really happened is that the shift in their circumstances gave them permission to make a sudden shift of their lens. They decided that life is precious. They realized that they are, actually, limitless. They released that lifelong internal resistance to what they’ve always known, deep down, they were here to do. They stopped telling themselves tired old stories of why they can’t and starting looking at themselves through the lens of what they do have and can do and what they will create, instead.

When you set down an old, smudged, scratched outdated pair of lenses you’ve been using to look at your life, you gradually stop telling the old stories because you gradually begin focusing on a bright, new vision that is frankly waaay more fun to look at. When you start gazing lovingly forward with wonder at what is to come, your old limitations dissipate and disintegrate.

It’s just like what happens in the optometrist’s chair: when you reach out and grab a new frame filled with a new lens, in that moment: clarity comes.

More like this from my blog: You are a creator

P.S. Over 4,000 brilliant souls participated in my first-ever 10 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders. . . and tomorrow is their last day! I thought I’d share one of their favorite prompts from this Challenge with you.

This prompt is called: Third Times a Wrap. READ | AUDIO

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Head up + heart out,

Dear Sabrina,

I am a long-form woman living in a short-form world.

You read my emails, so you know this.

But today I’ll be brief.

Here’s your prompt of the day: what’s your breakthrough story?

Think about a time you had an incredible breakthrough, comeback or turnaround. Then, write out or tell yourself that story, but do it backwards.

Like this: what event preceded the breakthrough? What happened before that? And before that?

Were there any moments along the way when you thought you were down for the count, or thought things might not work out?

Describe the surprising people and moments that turned out to be golden links in the chain of events that led to your ultimate breakthrough.

One quick thing: don’t limit yourself to doing this about pastbreakthroughs. You can also write out or tell yourself the breakthrough story you’ve been dreaming of, wishing for, waiting for or desiring: the breakthrough story that’s about to happen in your life.

Who are the allies, mentors, guides and tools you will encounter along the way to your next big breakthrough moment? What unwanted situations or circumstances might very well turn around to your advantage, in the long run?

Linger over the details and, if you can, let yourself feel the excitement you’ll feel all along the way.

Keep in mind that every story has these things:

• a beginning, middle and an end
• a setup, a struggle and a wrap-up
• a hero (that’s you)
• a villain (which can be abstract, like fear or trauma)
• people or things that aid, guide or mentor the hero
• one or more trials, battles or quests
• an end state in which the hero is changed, for the better, by virtue of having gone through the struggle.

Make sure you describe how you were changed—or will be changed!—for the better on the other side of the struggle.

P.S.: My first-ever 10 Day Writing Challenge started yesterday, July 9th! And I’m going to close registration before I go to bed tonight. Because this one is a single 10 day sprint, we’ll be super focused on soothing our nervous systems, building a grounding morning ritual, and creating the headspace and heartspace we need to get clear on our purpose and next steps.

As always, it’s free. Sign up here: 10 Day Writing Challenge Signup

Please share this link with anyone you know who is willing to spend 30 minutes a day for 10 days taking a big first step toward getting clear on their purpose and changing their life.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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

Brilliant Souls,

I want to tell you about a little game I play, in hopes that you’ll play it with me someday. Or like, maybe now. I must warn you that this game has very real, very contagious and extraordinarily uplifting consequences.

For context, I live in the Bay Area, where all real estate is a precious resource, including the car-sized plots of real estate that we call parking spots.

Here’s where the game begins. I roll around town with an imaginary Spiritual VIP Parking Pass in my car. And it is fully transferable to any vehicle I’m in, even as a passenger.

This means that I operate on the assumption that there will be a parking place for me immediately in front of any venue I’m heading into, whether it’s an office building, a retail shop or a sold-out concert. Rush hour? Doesn’t matter. Metered and restricted? Irrelevant. Only two spaces on the whole block? NBD. I’ve got my pass.

My friends and loved ones find it uncanny just how frequently I roll up on Market Street in San Francisco or in front of the Peet’s on Grand Lake (on Farmer’s Market Day, no less) only to have a perfectly prime parking spot sitting wide open or for someone to be pulling out of an A-1 spot just as I pull up.

(I know they were holding it for me. We’re all in this together, guys.)

Catch this principle: this pass is not just for parking spots. For the past few years I’ve been playfully shifting my entire default worldview into something you might describe as a Spiritual VIP Pass. This pass is worldwide and lifewide. It is born out of a belief system I’ve written a lot about—pronoia, which is the opposite of paranoia. Pronoia is a worldview that sees every person, place, thing and circumstance as actually conspiring to bless you. Everything collaborating for your highest good, all the time. Even the things that seem super terrible. They are all a setup for our expansion, as individuals or as a human race, says this way of looking at the world.

When I share that this is my worldview, my super-smart, super-skeptical friends often raise a brow. But when I tell about the last 20 years of my life, they start to open to it. When I share how I was a teen Mom from Bakersfield not so long ago, when I share about my two divorces, my past health problems, my kids’ disabilities and troubled teen years and almost losing everything in the Recession and then walk them, from there, into the part of my life story they know: the bon vivant story, the fit-and-flare-dresses-and-cashmere-cardis story, the world-traveler/tech exec/serial author/entrepreneur/madly in love story, well? Then, they at least understand why I think this pass is real.

I tell them about the pivot point in my story, which was the point at which I realized who I really am, and what my divine inheritance is: all the creative power, all the energy, all the love.

It was the point at which I stopped looking for love in all the wrong places, as one of my teachers says, and started to sit still and BE love. Because that’s what I am. It’s when I started to practice radical self-acceptance and realized there is actually nothing I have to achieve or accomplish to be worthy of my place in this world, that’s I’m ok and worthy just because I am.

It’s when I stopped trying to make things happen through the sweat of my effort, and got really still and started to receive divine downloads of inspiration, which I could turn easily into things small and large because all things were working together to bring them to life, with the momentum and clarity I’ve developed over my entire life serving as the wind at my back.

I tell them about the bliss and clarity and energy I tap into, every single day, in my quiet sitting time. And prayer. And writing. (Some people call this meditation. I don’t. More on that later.) I tell them about the stack of miracles that I live everyday, and they start to get it.

But then I drop the real bomb: that they also have a Spiritual VIPParking (and also Whole Life) Pass. We all do. It is not something we earn because we’re good, and there’s nothing we can ever do to lose it, not even if we do something terrible or make a bad decision.

Then I give them a few of the guidelines I’ve learned for how to use it:

• Expect it. I don’t take the first parking spot I see open if it’s a country mile from where I’m going, unless I just love the idea of the walk. I pull right up near the front door in expectation and anticipation that my VIP space will be there.

The most common blocker between us and our opportunities, collaborations and just plain old blessings is our own internal resistance to receiving them, especially when they show up and don’t look like what we wanted them to. Especially then. This often requires that we get uncomfortable and do things that spark something like resonance or expansion inside us, but seem crazy to everyone around us. It may also mean we say no to opportunities and partnerships that seem dreamy to others but don’t feel right to us. This is called listening to your inner voice, your Inner Being.

You can always circle back to the outer 40 if you pull up and don’t see an open VIP spot. But if you settle for what someone else says is the right spot for you too soon, you’ll never even give yourself the chance to get the truly right spot that is waiting for you.

• Cultivate Buddhist Detachment from it. About 80% of the time I score something everyone would agree is a A Perfect Spot. Ten percent of the time I what might rate as a Really Good Space. On very rare occasion, I might end up in a Very Very Distant Space, far from the entrance to my destination.

You must expect the “best” spot to even be in position to score it. But the Pro Tip here is to both pull up to the front row spot and have no emotional attachment to whether or not you get the front row spot on any given day. In other words: don’t get upset if you don’t get it, and always still show up with time to spare, just in case. More importantly don’t get stuck on the expectation of it, circling the lot ad infinitum when you could just go grab a space a few rows out. There’s almost no parking lot that takes more than 5 or 10 minutes to traverse, anyway.

Catch this principle: What seasoned Spiritual VIP Parking (and Life) Pass Holders know is this: whatever spot you get isthe VIP spot. If it’s not the closest spot, it might be that parking way out allows you to avoid some sort of accident or nasty experience. You don’t know what inconvenience or drama you’ve been saved from. The far-out spot might not be the quickest way to get to the critical pitch meeting, but it allows you to have a meditative walk that relaxes your mind just enough that you get a wild bolt of the exact inspired idea you needed to win the account.

Or maybe, like my friend Michelle, on the parking shuttle to get back to your Very Distant Spot, you meet the man you marry and, later, start a family with.

When you don’t get the first row/so-called VIP opportunity you were expecting, don’t keep circling and whatever you do, don’t stop expecting VIP treatment. You might find it in the outer rows.

• Own it: use your benefits. I’ve stopped being shy about claiming my VIP Status. I own it. I appreciate it. The older I get, the clearer I am that life is supposed to be good for us, joyful and fun for us, among other things. Savoring and reveling in the little and big, beautiful moments of our everyday lives is part of how to do that.

When I see people moaning and stressing entirely out on Facebook, I can’t help but think: “Hey. You have a phone, a laptop and Internet service. You have a Facebook account. Don’t you know that makes you part of the global wealthy elite??? Disseminate some light, dammit.”

I love the double-entendre of the word appreciate. What we appreciate (meaning savor or delight in), appreciates (meaning grows, in our awareness of it and also in frequency). Appreciate your physical body regularly, and I defy you not to notice more and more how good you feel. Call it a mental placebo effect if you want. The reason we call them placebos is that they actually create a perceived difference.

So why not look back over your life and delight in all the synchronicities? All the times help really was on the way? All the unearned favors you received, and miracles that lined up for you? Things were not perfect then, and are likely not perfect now. Literally, c’est la vie. But why nottune yourself in to how really good they are?

• Share it. The only reason I don’t make Spiritual VIP t-shirts is that I’d have to make 7.6 billion of them, one for every person on the planet, and I just don’t have storage space for that (yet).

Everyone has one of these Spiritual VIP Passes. It’s basically the same thing as the universal law of expansion and wellbeing, and the “law” of pronoia.

But is something we can stop ourselves from taking advantage of. If you’re fortunate enough to be reading this and you don’t feel like you have a VIP Pass, perhaps you just forgot to pick it up at the desk or someone told you, as a kid, that you didn’t qualify unless you did X or achieved Y. This is a toxic lie, that you are anything but completely and totally ok, exactly as you are, and it’s pervasive.

It creates something Tara Brach calls the trance of unworthiness, and it’s why we so often pinch ourselves off from receiving the ideas, opportunities and even love we have coming to us by grasping tightly to our limitations, idolizing our struggles and telling ourselves stories of fear, scarcity, grievance and rage. Very much more on this to come. . .

Here’s a prompt for writing or reflection:

If you had a Whole Life Spiritual VIP Pass what would you use it for?

What would you use it to get access to? What experiences, skills and opportunities would you use it to obtain?

What would you use it to get out of? What limitations and troubles would you use it to get resolved?

And finally: are you sure you don’t actually have a Whole Life SpiritualVIP Pass? It doesn’t necessarily mean that every single thing always goes exactly the way you want. But it could mean that everything, in the long run, can work together for your ultimate highest good. It might mean that sometimes when a door closes, it’s because you’re being steered in a direction that will serve your eventual expansion, in the long run.

What one piece of evidence (e.g., a grace you lived through, a miracle or blessing you received unexpectedly, a time everything worked out when it looked like it might not) suggests that you might already possess a Whole Life Spiritual VIP Pass?

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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