The #1 word people use when describing their vision, intention or goals to me is this: “SCARY”.
#2 is “BIG” and #3 is “terrifying”.
I’ve definitely detected a fear theme here.
My general rule is that if you have a deep calling to a thing like being drawn to a magnet and it terrifies you a tiny bit, you should definitely be trying to do it.
See, anytime someone mentions fear as they describe a thing they’d like to do in their next season, I’m reminded of what Tara Mohr says when she lays out the traits of a true, deep, soul-level calling.
She says you know when something is truly a calling when, among other things:
1. You aren’t yet who you’ll need to become to fulfill it, and
2. You don’t yet have what you’ll need to have in order to carry it out.
The gap between who you are now and who you’ll need to become to answer your soul’s callings is precisely the part people find scary.
But that gap is also how your callings transform you.
Catch this principle: Your callings call forth your greatness.
But you can’t become who you need to become to do your callings by:
sitting in a room thinking about them
talking to your friends about them, or
making plans to do them after you handle whatever the Life Issue of the Day happens to be today, or this week or month or year
You can only become who you need to be to do your callings by doing your callings.
I also like to point out to those who are feeling the urge to retreat on the brink of stepping into their callings that it’s very easy — tempting, even — to confuse fear with awe.
It’s easy to confuse fear with the exhilaration that meets you on the precipice of your expansion.
It’s even easy to interpret your deep, thrilling excitement at the adventure before you as fear.
The only way to integrate that excitement is to do what Dave Richo teaches, which is to “pretend you’ll survive” and do the scary thing anyway… to wholeheartedly engage with the subjects of your fear.
That’s the Spiritual Strategy I use and teach.
As a practical matter, for me that means that when I look at my own vision for my own season, when I see the components and subjects that take my breath away or seem the most daunting, those are the ones I’m already beginning to:
Explore,
Learn more about,
Upgrade my beliefs about,
Speak into existence and
Build skills and team and resources for right now,
…even for projects I envision being 1, 2 or 3 years out.
Here’s a playful way to do this for yourself:
Just envision the character you want to become in the next chapter of your life story.
Just put yourself in the shoes of the author.
As the author of your own life story, ask yourself: What will this character need in the next chapter?
Ask yourself: What skills, tools, guidance and mentoring will your character need?
Then: Start resourcing the character you are becoming… now.
And as you put these resources in place, occasionally consult this poetic roadmap for navigating fear from Khalil Gibran:
It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.
Head up + heart out,
PS
My teacher, Florence Shinn, said that “All big ideas are met with opposition.”
So what feels like opposition is actually validation.
A Quick Note from Tara:
It’s August, so I’m in Monk Mode. Working on my book, remodeling my business and … letting some new places woo me.
I’ll fill you in on that later….
While I’m gone, I’m re-sharing some all time favorites from the Transformation Tuesday archive. Enjoy!
Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq. The Inner Critic Coach™️ Founder + CEO of SoulTour
My general rule for moving forward on your most important projects, soul callings and life goals with ease and spiritual alignment is this:
Stretch, not struggle.
Start living your intentions by creating goals that feel delicious to you — like a gift you’re giving yourself — and also feel like they would stretch you to new levels, sparking joyful growth and learning.
Here’s the deal: Your eternal soul came here, into this meat-covered skeleton of yours, specifically for three things.
Growth and joy are two of the three.
Stretching yourself to do the callings you’re not yet ready to do facilitates growth and joy. (And, as quiet as it’s kept, the only way you can become ready to do your callings is to actually start doing them.)
But the lie of our culture says you’re unworthy of living a wonderful life — with meaningful work you love, beautiful surroundings, financial wealth, a thriving family, and a delectable love life — unless you prove your worthiness via hard hustle or grind. The kind that creates burnout.
And the lie of our culture says even if you do work your heart out to do what you love, you have to continue keeping all those plates in the air in a perfectionistic way or the other shoe will may drop.
So you’d better not take a break.
Better not sit still too long.
Better not enjoy yourself too much. Or celebrate your life too much. Or even allow yourself to spend a little money without fretting and worrying about it.
And you’d certainly better not act too happy without placing exceptions, limitations and caveats all over your own joy.
When all is well with you, you’d better take pains to make sure everyone knows that you know how hard life is for other people or how hard it used to be for you, how far you come, how hard you’re still working or how difficult your life still is.
Celebrating your life without caveats seems like tempting fate, when you are still under the influence of this trance.
Catch this principle: All of that is all a lie of culture.
Even though everyone you know might believe it: all lies.
That’s why we call it a trance… most people you know believe it because it seems that’s the way the world works.
But here’s the truth: You are worthy of wonderful things, now, with no further ado.
No further delay.
No further conditions.
No further performing.
No more struggle.
No more prerequisites.
You can relax now.
Relax into this truth: You were born to be joyful, loved, and to breathe life into your beautiful ideas… and you’re not just worthy of feeling wonderful when you check the boxes of your Big Goals off of that bucket list in the sky.
You’re worthy of a wonderful life now… and all along the way.
But until you wake up from the cultural lie – the trance of unworthiness – it feels normal and even virtuous to set your vision and goals in ways that flip your struggle switch straight to ‘on’.
Sometimes, struggle-switch goals are goals you don’t even care that much about, at soul-level. You just set them because you think you should or you are supposed to.
And sometimes, struggle-switch goals are goals you do actually have some innate soul-level desire to do, but you set your action plans for realizing them in such a restrictive, harsh way that just thinking about them sucks all the life force right out of what was originally a beautiful, inspired idea.
So YES. Growth and joy are your objectives, as a being of soul and spirit in this electrical, chemical, beautiful physical body.
But there’s one more spiritual strategy objective of the human experience, and it’s really important: Freedom.
When you set struggle-switch goals for yourself, you basically exercise your freedom in the direction of creating more bondage for yourself.
You fail to honor your own Inner Guidance.
You divorce your own sweet self when you fail to honor the reality of your own feelings: the voice of the Divine that speaks to you and within you.
You also set yourself up for failure when you set struggle-switch goals because, catch this principle: Whatever you force or restrict, you fixate on.
(Want to know what happens when you decide to eat no carbs? Not only do you want to eat all the carbs, you think about all the carbs all the time.)
On the other hand, when you meet your own inner experience with 100% openness, warmth, approval, hospitality and compassion…
When you say “YES, ok Self, that’s real, I hear you”, when the struggle switch flips on, and you dial back all that forcing so you can focus on inspiration instead…
When you practice radical self-acceptance, radical self-compassion, radical self-care, and radical self-love, even as you take steps toward building your transformational business empire, writing your book, co-creating an elevated family, or creating a platform of personal financial wellbeing…
Then, you can expect two things to happen:
First: Your goals will quickly start to seem beside the point. Because you’ll have already started living in freedom, growth and joy.
You’ll realize you’re already living in a paradise of your own creation.With no further delay.
No further ado.
No further hard hustle.
No further conditions.
No further prerequisites.
And, second: Your goals start happening.
Fast.
Your daydreams and childhood dreams start to become your actual real life, by grace and in perfectly wonderful, surprising and delightful ways.
Your whole world starts to change because when you practice radical acceptance and self love you are getting into agreement with your Source, who lovesyou.
As you team up with the creative power that forms all worlds, everything in your Being that is not consistent, compatible or aligned with your soul’s desires either get fully on board with your desires or shed like a snake’s molten skin.
You are worthy of the very best in life.
You’ll begin to receive it the moment you release resistance to your own magnificence… the moment you stop believing in your own unworthiness.
You are worthy of the very best in life.
And that life it begins now.
Head up + heart out,
A Quick Note from Tara:
It’s August, so I’m in Monk Mode. Working on my book, remodeling my business and … letting some new places woo me.
I’ll fill you in on that later….
While I’m gone, I’m re-sharing some all time favorites from the Transformation Tuesday archive. Enjoy!
Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq. The Inner Critic Coach™️ Founder + CEO of SoulTour
“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,
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 abundantlife, 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.
A Quick Note from Tara:
It’s August, so I’m in Monk Mode. Working on my book, remodeling my business and … letting some new places woo me.
I’ll fill you in on that later….
While I’m gone, I’m re-sharing some all time favorites from the Transformation Tuesday archive. Enjoy!
Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq. The Inner Critic Coach™️ Founder + CEO of SoulTour
I recently attended a dinner gathering, and was seated next to this wonderful, wise woman who’s been a professional nurse midwife for 20 years.
She has delivered thousands of children.
In fact, she teaches the doctors of her medical system how to deliver babies.
There’s something she said that night that has been with me ever since.
She said the young docs show up very purehearted…and very eager to Get. The baby. OUT.
But in their eagerness, they often think they need to do something to make the process move along. Sometimes they worry and wonder (prematurely, in her sage opinion) whether something’s wrong when things seem to be lagging.
When this happens, she said, she reminds the physicians that billions of humans have been born. And most of them got out without any medical intervention at all.
Human bodies — the mama ones and the baby ones — have an inbuilt intelligence that knows how to get babies out.
She said she regularly reminds them that “patience is an intervention.”
Patience is a strategy.
In other words, sometimes just waiting and letting things play out… letting the chips fall where they may… trusting that it all works out in the end…is the only wise thing to do.
Sometimes patience is the most intelligent way to participate in creation.
By the same token, sometimes rushing things to happen before they’re ripe is the road to ruin (or at least the road to unsatisfying results).
Here’s an example: I have this beautiful tree outside my window. It’s an olive tree. But people often ask me what kind of tree it is.
That’s because the olives that grow on that tree do not look like olives.
They look like little hard rocks.
The olives you eat sit in brine for months before you eat them.
Premature consumption would be somewhere between unsavory and a wildly tooth-breaking experience.
This is a word for someone reading this or hearing the sound of my voice today.
You know who you are.
Stand down.
Don’t rush it.
Don’t force it.
Don’t judge your progress.
Don’t rush yourself or your life.
Don’t try to get in there and start fixing.
Sometimes what the situation needs is time to play out.
Let Divine Order and Timing do what they do.
Let the chips fall where they may.
Let the olives ripen and the brine sink in and soften them.
And if this felt like it was a message I wrote and sent directly to your heart… may your patience turn out to be an intelligent intervention that takes you further than your hard effort, force and rushing ever could have.
So let it be.
Head up + heart out,
Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq. The Inner Critic Coach™️ Founder + CEO of SoulTour
In 2001, when I was 21, I bought my first house, just outside of Oakland.
I was a single Mom raising two boys, who were around 7 and 8 at the time.
I’d just graduated from law school at UC Berkeley (Go Bears). And I’d just decided I loved it here, and could live in the Bay Area for a really long time.
I’d been watching home prices skyrocket the whole time I was in school. In June, at graduation time, I decided I would pass the California Bar Exam on the first go-round. So I did.
And then I decided that, despite having roughly $3000 to my name… despite everyone crowing about how expensive homes were… I had better buy a house asap if I wanted to
avoid paying all my baby lawyer salary out in income taxes,
be able to stay in the Bay Area, and
get on the side of the game that benefits when home values rise.
So, I started work in September. Home values were still on a tear… every house got a dozen offers, and it seemed like every buyer made a dozen offers before the market beat them into submission, too.
But I — with the relentless optimism of youth — I decided I would find a house, get into contract and close escrow by December 31, 2001.
And you know what? That’s what I did.
We closed one day early, on December 30th.
I decided. And that’s what happened.
At the time, my real estate agent thought I was smokin’ that funny stuff. My friends thought I was not paying attention, though I was actually very well-versed in real estate. My parents had bought over 20 homes in their 22 years of marriage, and I’d been paying attention.
So I made 3 offers and succeeded on the fourth try.
And that home tripled in value in the next three years.
Which fueled my next home purchase. And the next one, the home I live in now.
Ever since 2001, I’ve always owned the place I call home.
That single focused, positive, present and specific intention I set back then was one of the three most liberating, profitable decisions I’ve ever made.
Now, hey… I may have to make some more real estate moves and shake some stuff up here soon. I’ll keep you in the loop.
But that’s not the point… this is.
When I was on a mission to buy my first home…I was like a very cute dog with a bone.
I literally spoke my homeownership into existence.
Every time someone told me about an obstacle, I nodded and was like GREAT, so how will we get around that?”
Every time someone tried to manage my expectations or said I was being unrealistic, I sort of chuckled to myself.
“Awww, that’s cute,” I thought to myself. They didn’t understand.
They didn’t understand that my job was not to swing the hammer and make it all happen…
My job was to decide what I wanted, line up to that and participate in no other version of reality.
My job was to see every offer that didn’t get accepted… every house I “loved” that I didn’t get… and every condition from the mortgage lender was just another chance to see how Divine Order would unfold and unfurl in my favor.
Now.
I want you to think back to when you were younger. You might have a story like this, too.
You might reflect back and remember a time when you felt fearless and unstoppable.
And you might feel really different than that right now. You might even wonder what happened?
Well, over a lifetime, you got good at making things happen under your own steam.
And the more you do through hard effort, the easier it is to forget that your job is not to be the Logistics Director of the Universe.
Maybe you got so used to fixing problems that you forgot that every problem is serving up a softball for Divine Order to knock it out of the park… and upgrade you in the process.
Maybe you just got attached to your comfortable life that it seems like tempting fate to step outside of what you know.
Or maybe you tried for something and failed a few times, and you swore you’d never make another mistake like that again.
Or maybe you’ve had some traumas, losses and disappointments in life.
And over time, fear crept in.
The fear that taking a risk or exposing yourself to criticism will trigger Very Bad Feelings and other unwanted consequences.
That fear is the favorite food of your Inner Critic.
Your Inner Critic eats it up, and causes you to hesitate. To dither. To be less decisive. To be uncertain. To sabotage your own dreams and goals.
To dim your own light.
That fear causes you to question your Wise Inner Being for having the dream in the first place, instead of pushing back against the mere mortals who would call you foolish for wanting what you want.
So, fast forward to now. I’ve decided at 45 years old I need a body reset, so I can feel as physically fresh and new as I do on the inside.
And I’ve enrolled myself in a program of this very intensive, deep tissue physical manipulation called Rolfing. It’s kind of like if deep tissue massage and WWF had a baby. The (incredibly strong) therapist lays you on a table and uses their hands and elbows and body weight to break up the old muscle adhesions and scar tissues that keep your body in bad patterns, and they release the sheath of fascia that covers your entire musculature.
Rolfing is no joke. It ranges from uncomfortable to LORD HAVE MERCY, in terms of pain level. The New York Times described the modality with a headline that blared “Excruciatingly helpful.”
Sometimes I literally think I’ll have to crawl from the office to my car.
And you know what? 10/10 would recommend.
When I first started, my Rolfing practitioner said, “Look, your body actually made itself. It has all the optimal programs already encoded in its cells. All I’m doing is challenging the patterns you’ve acquired over the years, through injury and bad posture, and repetitive use, and even trauma holding patterns. When we break those patterns, you can trust that your body will find its way back to its highest and best functioning.”
And that has been my experience.
In one session, I got access to my heels and toes… parts of my feet I never normally even feel touch the ground.
In general, I’ve found myself holding my body and moving my body very differently. Calmer, somehow, but more powerful and much steadier.
So, if you’ve been feeling hesitant or wistful for your youthful fearlessness, you might need to do a little spiritual Rolfing.
You might need to challenge your old patterns.
Interrupt your ruts.
Change your scene.
Practice moving more calmly, but also more boldly, more powerfully, in the world.
When you have a choice to make, make the fearless choice if for no other reason than to break apart your old sticking points and release the thin layer of hesitation that might have grown over your life.
Decide what you want and be like a very cute dog with a bone.
When it gets hard, remind yourself that you’re not creating your life through hard effort. Back off, take a break, and let the Divine handle the how for awhile (or maybe forever).
When the naysayers naysay or point out your limitations, don’t let it knock you off your game. Don’t argue and agree with them. Just smile and say to yourself: Cute dog with a bone. That’s me.
I promise you, you can trust that your inborn inner intelligence — that youthful optimism, exuberance and exhilaration — will take over, if you give them the chance.
Worst case, you’ll try for something and all you’ll get out of it is a life lesson.
Best case? You might even just set yourself up for a lifelong cascade of success that flows to you in wonderful ways.
May you go from success to success, and from glory to glory.
Head up + heart out,
Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq. The Inner Critic Coach™️ Founder + CEO of SoulTour
Most coaches decide to coach because they’ve had a journey.
They fought some battles, went on some quests and returned victorious and transformed.
They learned some things along the way.
They see things now they couldn’t see back then.
And they feel called and led to help others along a similar path.
To be clear: Most coaches do not coach because they think they’re perfect or think they’ve figured it all out.
In fact, on many topics the best coaches are just a few steps ahead of their Best Fit Customers on the transformational journey from where they’re at… to where they’re going.
I say that all as context for the #1 piece of advice I give coaches, which is this:
If you hear yourself giving your clients the same piece of advice over and over again, chances are good that advice is also meant for you.
Here’s a little story to explain:
The other day, Londyn was supposed to be getting ready to get out the door to attend her friend Joaquin’s birthday party in the glorious Oakland redwoods.
She had a few little tasks left before we could leave, and we had a whole day of exciting fun planned once we left the house.
But instead of sitting down straight away and putting her shoes on, she kept excitedly spinning around in an adorably ineffective little circuit. She’d spend a minute futzing with her sandal, then pop up and squeal over Joaquin’s gift, then run to her room and happy-dance in the mirror, then go pet her doggy, Sumiko The Pug.
Around and around she went. And occasionally, she would do this thing where she’d look backward but walk forward a few steps, before stumbling and then switching to the next stop on her circuit. She was going nowhere. And nothing was getting done.
I called: “Londyyyyyyn! Bum! Sandalias!” (Sometimes with little kids, telegraphic speech works better. So I was saying: “Sit down on your bum and put your sandals on.”)
She squeaked from her little circuit: “But MAMAAAAAAA!! I don’t have time!”
I laughed, and gathered her little squirmy body into my arms, snuggled her cheek and said “My little cabbage…
“You have plenty of time to do everything you need to do.” “You only run out of time when you run around in circles and keep looking behind you.”
Immediately, she seemed relieved. In the new “no time pressure” environment, I watched her plop right down on her bum, get her sandals on, grab the dog’s leash and stand at the door. She was ready to go, just like that. Time scarcity feels bad, whether you are 3 years old or 43 years old. And relief from time scarcity always feels like alignment, because discovering that you have all the time in the world aligns with the fundamental truth that we all DO have plenty of time to do what we came here to do.
Of course, to feel the truth of that, you have to realize that we didn’t come here to check off the boxes on some taskmaster’s checklist in the sky. That list of sheer tasks will never stop growing, so you’ll never get it done.
Here’s the good news: that’s not what you came here for. What you came here for was liberation. Love. Joy. Engagement. Absorption in wonderful conversations and wonderful creations. Experiencing beautiful realities with wonderful people. Having delicious-feeling ideas and bringing them to life. You came here to experience the contrast of life, too, and through it to get clearer on what you really do want, and want to be about, and what you really did come here for. And for that Brilliant One, you have all the time in the world.
Funny enough, I give that advice to others all the time.
I watch it down-regulate the stressed-out nervous systems of my clients all the time.
I witness them easefully stop spinning in circles of indecision and ambivalence once they get off the “I’m behind” treadmill … I watch that happen all of the time, Brilliant One.
And I see how they, like Londyn, start taking bold, deliberate, smooth steps into success on their own terms once they click out of the cultural lie of time scarcity and get off the treadmill of doing the things other people call “success”.
But that particular day, as I heard myself give that advice to Londyn, I felt and received it myself, too. That might be the thing I love the most about coaching, to be honest. As I co-create a new way of being with my clients, I am transformed myself.
… back to my story.
Londyn, Sumiko and I gathered our things and climbed into the car.
And as we pulled away from the curb, Londyn had one more question that turned into a coachable moment for her (and a self-coachable for me).
She asked: “Mama, can I be a fruit bat?” For context, her favorite animated character is this little dog, Bluey, who transforms into a fruit bat at night, in his dreams.
Me: “Yes, absolutely.”
Londyn: “But I don’t know how to flyyyy.”
Me: “But love, you don’t have to know how to fly, in your dreams. You just decide you want to and you can do it.”
She nodded and took that in, then continued: “Will you be the Mama Fruit Bat?”
Me: “Of course. Where you go, I go.”
Ok, so this is where the conversation took a whole turn I won’t tell you about here.
But I thought it was worth sharing with you the full set of lessons Londyn and I both took away from our conversation that day.
“You have plenty of time to do everything you came here to do.”
“You only run out of time when you run around in circles and keep looking back.”
When you doubt your own power.
When you talk in opposition to your own dreams and goals.
When you rehearse the evidence and explanations of why you don’t have what you want and why you can’t get what you want.
When you believe that because no one in your family has ever done it, you can’t either.
When you stay in the energy and the trauma of your own past disappointments and failures.
I invite you to set these thoughts down, when you see them arise.
And instead… refocus on what you want your future to look like.
Focus yourself into the energy of that.
Daydream about that.
Let your resistance go, and go with the flow instead.
Become aware of what you truly desire.
Allow yourself to desire the fullness of it.
The both/and of it.
If you feel inner conflict about the choices that you’re trying to get yourself to make, maybe the answer is that you want it all.
Don’t worry about whether you know how to do everything you’ll need to do to have what you want to have.
Because, Beloved, in your dreams, you don’t need to know how to fly.
Just decide you want to and let the Divine handle the how.
Open your eyes to see the help that is trying to get to you.
Open your arms to receive the help that is trying to get to you.
Take the natural next step.
See your Resistance arise when it arises…
Allow it to rise and fall.
Take a little pause to shed it, rewiring your thinking and your thought habits to become more and more obedient to your own Inner Guidance.
Keep in mind all along the way that your desire, your bliss signals your unwanted emotions, and the disharmonies that arise are all Divinely wired traffic signs that say “go here” and “don’t go there”.
You have that guidance within you, so you never have to fear getting lost on your journey.
Stand in the lovely, blessed life you have right now, satisfied and reveling.
And feel your own eagerness to spot more evidence of the lovely blessed future that is coming to you and flowing through you.
So let it be.
Head up + heart out,
PS: If you want to go deeper into how to stop spinning in circles and looking backwards, come to my free LIVE workshop, 3 Secrets to Stop Self-Sabotage (for smart, successful people).
It’s this Thursday, July 15th at 12 noon PT | 3 pm ET.
A few years back this book came out called Becoming a Supple Leopard, by Crossfit dude and mobility expert Dr. Kelly Starrett.
I loved the story behind the book’s title.
As a child, Starrett became enthralled with leopards after learning about their movement patterns.
See, leopards are not the fastest big cats. They run about 40 miles per hour, which sounds fast, but actually makes them slower than most of their prey.
The real wild thing about leopards isn’t their speed… it’s their strength and their stealth.
Leopards don’t have to warm up.
They don’t stretch. And they don’t work out, either.
They just hide in the grass until they spot their prey, then they accelerate from 0 to maximum speed in the blink of an eye.
And that’s what fascinated Starrett: The fact that leopards have access to 100% of their power, 100% of the time.
And that inspired his life’s mission to help humans get:
more access to
more of their physical power
more of the time, too.
Now, let’s bring this full circle.
My job is to help you access and actualize the fullness of your powers, too.
My job is to help you not just so you can pounce on some prey (meaning: survive). My work is to help you unpack the powers you’ve been dragging behind you* your whole life, so that you might do the things you’ve always wanted to do… and so that you might feel the wholeness, the joy, the delectable self-respect and the radical liberation that flows when you real-ize that you can create new worlds and speak new realities into existence with the power of your mind and your soul, and your connection to All That Is.
But before I can truly help you do all that, you’ve got to stop looking for liberation in all the wrong places.
And this culture will have you looking in the wrong places.
See, with Starrett’s work, Crossfit culture says you’ve gotta focus on strength. And you do.
But what makes a supple leopard a supple leopard is strength and stealth.
So Starrett teaches strength, but he also focuses on mobility and flexibility. Kind of counterintuitive in his culture.
And the same goes for our work together…. along your journey to fulfill your potential and your dreams, and your heart’s desires, this culture says you’ve gotta focus on strategy, accountability.
You’ve got to perform better, go harder, be a more productive Business Barbie, achieve more, make more, do more… and all of that programming can cause this whole life that just looks like frenetic, often inconsistent, frequently depleting action.
But what makes you highly successful and highly aligned is not just strategy and it’s not just activity.
It takes:
the right strategy… one that is aligned with who you really are and why you’re really here…
inspired action… the kind that feels super energizing and lights you up (instead of depleting you), and
and it takes deep inner work… of the sort that helps you deactivate your internal limiting factors so you can actualize your True Self, this work takes place deep in your mind, your psyche, your body, and your spirit.
If what you want is to build a business and a life that creates freedom, joy, alignment with your callings and wealth… I promise you that success is not a mystery.
It’s a system. A method.
The highly aligned success formula includes: strategy + inner work + inspired action.
All three. Fully integrated. Remember that part.
We’re back to the leopard.
There’s one more advantage leopards have that we can learn from on our quests to fulfill ourselves and our dreams as we came here to be fulfilled:
Leopards don’t hunt in packs. They are solitary beings, unless they’re mating or raising their young.
That means leopards move in silence.
Leopards do not go on Facebook and announce all their goals.
Leopards do not go on Instagram to tell you all the behind the scenes and inner workings of what you intend to do, three, five, ten years from now.
Leopards move in silence.
And moving in silence has its privileges.
Moving in silence allows you to invest your energy internally, on your visions, your dreams, your goals, your intentions, and keep it from being scattered.
Moving in silence allows you to feel your own resonance and hear your own guidance without getting interference – static – on your channel from others.
It keeps you from doing anything you’re for the ‘gram, so to speak.
And that’s a really good thing, because I know the online business gurus say you need to be creating 9 million pieces of highly visible social media content every hour, but the truth is that the things that will get you social media likes are often NOT the same things that will ultimately create an easeful, profitable, powerful, transformational business.
But social media ‘likes’ deliver an instant dopamine boost to your brain, so there’s that.
And so does commiserating about your struggles with your friends. Which is a thing that often happens when we start a conversation with sharing goals that we haven’t yet reached.
Sharing the struggle feels good. And comforting. Feels like acceptance from the tribe.
I know that sharing your struggles sounds like something you should do for the sake of connection and getting support. But the truth is, sharing your struggles with your friends reinforces your brain’s negativity bias and creates a complaining rut that’s hard to get out of.
And I know that sharing your goals sounds like something you should do for accountability.
But goal science says otherwise.
Studies show that talking about your goals significantly reduces the likelihood you’ll achieve them.
That’s because when you talk with your friends about your goals, you create a new social reality in which the goal “feels” like it’s complete before it is.
And that decreases the chances you’ll take the inspired action you need to take.
Even if you hang with very positive people… they may, with all the best intentions, remind you of all the strategies you’ve tried and failed at before…
…encourage you to list out the pros and cons, which is the same as giving as much power to your Inner Critic as you give to Your Wise Inner Being, which is calling you to set and do the goal in the first place
…try to help you see pitfalls and troubleshoot problems you’re not considering, which ain’t exactly what you need to hear right now or even
… try to get you to focus on something that’s important to them, but may not actually matter that much to you, your business or your goals.
They may want to know why you feel so positive when you haven’t made progress they can see yet.
They may want to prepare you so you’re not disappointed by reality… when what you are actually doing is creating a new reality.
And you won’t get there by paying too much attention to what is right now.
Now, in fairness to your friends, they may do all of this because they are projecting their own perceived limitations on you.
They may do these things because your vision is big and scary to them, and they unconsciously feel your relationship would be changed if you succeed.
Or they might just do these things because they’re used to seeing overnight success stories on social media, so it feels like something’s wrong if your success takes weeks, months or years.
But let me surface part of my point with this question:
Do you know why we see so many overnight business success stories on social media?
Because those folks… the ones who seemingly have wild, incredible overnight success at building transformational businesses… they spent the last 3, 4 or 5 years accessing their powers, fine-tuning their strategies and, yes, moving in silence.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: I’m returning to in-person teaching for the first time since 2019! I’m about to open my SoulTour-certified Coach Training program for five days of live, in-the-flesh training this November in Oakland!
P.S.: I’m returning to in-person teaching for the first time since 2019! I’m about to open my SoulTour-certified Coach Training program for five days of live, in-the-flesh training this November in Oakland!
The single most common self-sabotage concern I hear from brilliant people with a million-dollar calling is this:
“I’m inconsistent. Help.”
And real talk? I’ve said this about myself at times. In the early days of building SoulTour, I tried this strategy and that one, created a bunch of different products instead of steadily working on one, and often didn’t stick with my own roadmap for optimizing a specific marketing plan.
I can look back and honor that sometimes, those pivots were me following my inner intelligence, and I can look back and honor that I am really good at following my inner intelligence.
But sometimes it felt more frenetic than guided.
That frustrated my vendors.
Honestly, it frustrated me, too.
At one point, I even heard myself describe myself as inspired, but inconsistent.
And something about describing myself that way just rang wrong, as it rolled out of my mouth.
Immediately, the wise witnessing voice of self-reflection in my own mind asked: “Is that really true?”
And immediately, my wise Inner Being said, “Nah, fam. I’m consistent at a lot of things.” and started rolling out a list:
I meditate, write and pray every day and have for over 10 years.
I work out consistently and have for 20 years.
Londyn and I go to the farmer’s market, get croissants, then go to the park every Sunday we’re not out of town.
There’s a lot of routine and ritual in my life. These things feel delicious to me as I do them. They don’t feel like chores or tasks to check off a list. They feel like gifts I give myself every week, which is why it’s so easy to be consistent with them… and is why I teach my students how to set intentions and goals that feel delicious to them, too. Because those are way easier to keep and they’ll take you everywhere you want to go in life anyway.
Anyhow, all these exhibits of evidence that I’m actually consistent reminded me of a Tony Robbins CD I listened to 20 years ago.
In it, he pointed out that we’re all very consistent at a bunch of things, to the point where we can honestly say “I never do this” or “I always do that”:
I always brush my teeth.
I eat every single day.
I always park my car at the curb or in a space… I never just hop out and leave it in the street.
Those were some of his examples… extreme, but effective.
His upshot was… if you “always” brush your teeth or “never” leave your car in the middle of the street, then you can begin to integrate “consistent” as a defining part of your self-concept and identity.
And from there, you can flow your consistency onto other goals and actions you want to take more consistently than you have been taking them.
So, back to me and you.
I’m not inconsistent.
And you’re not inconsistent, either.
Chances are, if you’re reading this, that you’re super consistent at many things… but you might struggle with making continuous progress and doing the things you want to do in order to:
follow through on your best, most meaningful and most profitable business ideas,
fulfilling your potential,
moving to a new place, or
generally doing the authentic, outside of the box things you’ve always wanted to do.
Even if you feel like you’ve been taking 2 steps forward and 3 steps back for years, or you feel like you’re constantly giving in to the urge to retreat on the brink of your breakthroughs, I assure you that you are not inconsistent.
You are not inconsistent.
You’re impatient.
And you’re especially impatient when you are facing an overwhelming, uncomfortable emotion.
Like most people, you’ll do anything to make the feeling go away, now.
That unwillingness to sit with and sit in and be with uncomfortable emotion for long translates into being impatient and, thus, inconsistent when it comes to the subjects and projects that spark financial fear, existential dread or the sensation of feeling untethered, exposed and vulnerable.
Here’s the epiphany: trying to fulfill your biggest potential, take action on your soul’s deepest callings and start your most delicious, authentic dreams MAY SPARK ALL OF THESE FEELINGS. For a bunch of reasons
Reason number one is that may be because you were a gifted child. So you learned very early that we could score a dopamine hit of love, attention, affection and praise from our parents, peers and authority figures by performing, achieving, confirming and producing things they deemed important, like getting good grades, getting into the right college or getting a promotion at work.
When you even think about getting off the dopamine drip of external validation and shifting your time and inner resources to start creating success on our own terms… it can feel like you’re flirting with rejection of the tribe we needed to approve of us in order to survive when we were young.
Reason number two is that sometimes, your soul-level callings spark existential dread because you’re so used to being excellent at everything we do that you’ve internalized the idea that your work IS your worth. So the idea of doing something we could be bad at (at first) is truly untethering and disorienting, and sparks fear and dread.
Reason number two is that sometimes, fear and self-sabotage of your own dreams and goals are trauma responses that have been wired into your brain.
All creative endeavors and big, beautiful ideas expose you to the prospect of public failure, and may even feel unsafe. If you’ve experienced trauma in your life, that unsafe feeling can spark a traumatic responses in your body, like: trembling, the feeling you might die if you speak up in a meeting and sound stupid, or the feeling that you’ll vomit if you put yourself out there and nobody wants to buy what you’re selling.
Your skillful, smart brain doesn’t want to feel that way one second longer than it needs to, so as soon as you take one step toward your Best Most Fulfilling Most Meaningful Most Profitable Life, you might find yourself freezing, fleeing, feeding yourself compulsively, fighting with the people around you or distracting yourself with all manner of “life getting in the way”.
Here’s the key: If you’re really consistent or even hyper-responsible at work or when taking care of others, but you are very indecisive or inconsistent when it comes to working on your own dreams and goals, chances are good that…
You don’t have a consistency problem.
You are NOT inconsistent.
Your fearful parts — in particular, your fearful inner child — are simply hijacking your brain, your best ideas and your life.
And you can stop the hijacking self-sabotage by:
Seeing your patterns and not giving into them when they arise.
Noting and naming what’s happening without self-shaming or labeling yourself “inconsistent”.
Feeling the feelings you need to feel and letting them do their work within you, so that you’re transformed and liberated from the inner angst and your own self-sabotage patterns over time.
Soothing those feelings and coming back into the present moment.
And then, when you can soothe yourself back into present time… gracefully, gently continuing to take the steps your Wise Inner Being wants to take, and often DOES take… steps toward fulfillment, meaning, love, happiness, abundance, your dreams, your goals … success on your own damn terms, not somebody else’s.
Sometimes, these steps take years or decades. And honestly, that’s cool. Because Divine Timing is real and in your favor, which means that even things that seem like delay actually, ultimately, always benefit you.
But with some guidance and some practice, you can go through that entire process — from struggle switch to peaceful, powerful progress — in a month, in a week, or sometimes even an afternoon.
INVITATIONS:
If you want to start seeing your patterns and stop giving into them so that you can take peaceful, powerful, consistent action on your best business ideas and most authentic personal goals, my Sacred Money Archetypes program is for you.
As a Transformation Tuesday reader, you can now enroll for $197 (over 70% off the public price of $749).
If you want my instruction and guidance to accelerate the process and systematically deactivate your self-sabotage patterns, I’ll be opening the doors to my latest deep-dive program, The Inner Critic Cure, soon.
This is the work we do there, powered by neurobiology, depth psychology and spiritual law.
I’d love to see you there and show you how to become as consistent as you want to be on the things that matter the most to you.
I have been greatly blessed by applying the principles every farmer lives by and knows for sure to my own, decidedly digital, decidedly city mouse life.
Principles like:
Everything in life is seasonal. Planting, or harvesting or cultivating. There’s a season for these things.
Everything comes to an end. That is natural and necessary, not a catastrophe to be avoided at all costs. When you know that endings are normal and healthy, you don’t fear beginning as much.
Prune what isn’t flourishing, so that it can’t drain resources from the optimal growth that wants to happen.
Growth takes the time it takes.
Growth is a co-creative process with the rain, the sun, the soil… and the Divine. You just play your role.
Don’t be productive. Be fruitful.
These are just a few of the lessons that I’ve learned and taught from trying on the lens of a farmer, over and over, over the years.
And any single one of the above principles is a whole entire sermon for somebody reading or listening to or watching this today.
But last week, I learned about another principle from farming that landed with the ‘chink’ of inner resonance when I heard it (from Brad Dieter).
This principle comes specifically from the work of bamboo farmers, and uses bamboo as a model for how we grow, in business and in life.
Apparently, bamboo can grow 90 feetin sixty days.
This is a plant, y’all. And it grows to the height of a nine story building… in two months.
There’s just one thing you need to know to understand this seemingly supernatural, very natural phenomenon.
The farmers who tend this varietal of bamboo water every single seed for three years before it begins to shoot up.
Three years.
And during those three years there is an entire work being done unseen in the ground. There’s an entire root structure and infrastructure that is being built and being formed and growing and being established that you can’t even see from above the surface.
They’re bamboo farmers.
So they know what’s happening beneath the surface.
They know and trust in the natural order and divine timing of things.
They don’t get impatient and try planting kale instead.
They don’t give up and stop watering.
They don’t dig up the seed, deem it a failure and toss it in the garbage.
They just keep watering.
They keep tending.
They keep trusting.
They keep letting time, the sun and the soil collaborate and co-create with them.
And that’s a word for those of us who have businesses, dreams, goals and visions and even just best life goals, self care goals, self actualization calling to us with increasing urgency and resonance.
Overnight success is possible.
It just takes a few years. Or a few decades of cultivation.
It takes trust.
It takes patience.
It takes the sovereignty to stay in your zone of genius and keep watering your dream, your vision, your goal, your calling when the people keep asking you when the fruit is gonna show up.
And… if the dream or vision is big the more it takes cultivating your dream and the team. So you’ll have to do whatever inner work you, personally, need to do in order to attract, inspired and lead and activate a team to help you build the vision.
If the dream or vision is big… it will require you to plant seeds, water, weed, prune and cultivateyour own inner landscape.
You’ll have to shed what no longer serves you along the way.
You’ll have to shine light on your own self-sabotage and to begin gracefully deciding to stop giving in to the urge to retreat on the verge of your breakthroughs.
You’ll have to see what needs seeing within you.
And you’ll have to stop overruling and overriding your own inner wisdom and guidance to please others or protect yourself from feeling exposed and vulnerable, which is how answering your callings makes you feel (at first).
Brilliant One, whatever your personal seeds of genius and greatness happen to be, please keep watering your bamboo.
Head up + heart out,
P.S.: My Sacred Money Archetypes® program is now enrolling. It’s for spiritual entrepreneurs and leaders who want to do their inner work and stop sabotaging their own business, income or career goals.
It’s also perfect for anyone on a journey of spiritual and psychological maturity who simply wants to take a deep dive into understanding their unique gifts, talents and self-limiting patterns so they can reach more of their potential.
For a few more days, I’m offering this $749 program to Transformation Tuesday readers for $197.
Your unconscious patterns are limiting your life in ways you can’t even see.
You just think that’s how life is.
You just chalk it up to the “fact” that the struggle is real.
You just think you’re trapped in that shadow career because it pays well and you have obligations… or because you’ve been doing it so long there’s really no other logical option for you.
You just think you can’t start the business you want because you would die if you actually put yourself out there, publicly, and no one wants to buy what you’re selling.
You just think you can’t grow your business past where it is because it’s so hard to know what to do next, so you keep trying different strategies.
You just think you have to get more experience or lose 10 pounds before you can level up your career… or start the business… or publish a book of your ideas… or command a higher salary… or charge your clients more.
Listen… I’ve personally been there, on every single one of these subjects.
I knew the struggle like I know my address.
I had this massive wall of Inner Resistance to my own dreams and goals, and it showed up in some wild ways:
I would leave a great job, start a great business, then go back to another great job… on repeat.
I kept hiring people as employees who were really wired to be entrepreneurs, because we vibed and they wanted to “learn from me”. But then I’d coach them, their businesses would improve and they’d leave my business to go do what they really wanted to do…leaving me as the Ringmaster of things I had no business doing on my own. Over and over again.
I would overpay my vendors, then get very resentful and fire them when they didn’t QUICKLY deliver the value I demanded.
I would create beautiful programs, launch them once, then forget I’d created them and never market them again. Like, ever. I’d be onto the next program, and never really leverage the assets I’d already built. I couldn’t let things be easy.
I would start executing a strategy, hit a wall of doubt when it didn’t immediately work, and then start frenetically doing a bunch of new things because achieving, earning and activity is how I’d always “proven” my worth.
I would field conversations with recruiters and companies about amazing jobs I didn’t really want, then after 4 (precious) hours of conversation turn them down, citing my commitment to SoulTour.
I would add so much live teaching and so much content into my programs that my own calendar was brutal and students couldn’t even keep up. Overdelivering. Doing too much. Addiction to doing things the hard way. Lose-lose!
Inner resistance to your own dreams and goals is real. And it’s a powerful limiting factor on smart, successful people who feel destined for more.
But resistance looks really different in different people.
And that’s where the Sacred Money Archetypes® come in.
Your 8 Archetypes reveal your unique gifts and strengths… and your most challenging patterns of psyche, emotion and behavior.
The Sacred Money Archetypes® make the ancient wisdom of the collective unconscious user-friendly so you can see and break your patterns of resisting more success, happiness and abundance.
These patterns are like a lens: They are unconscious, but you can only see and activate opportunities through the lens of your Archetypes.
Some people are Alchemists, transformational visionaries who can turn lead into gold… who also have a love-hate relationship with money.
Some people are Accumulators, who are trustworthy and meticulous with their finances, who can also be frugal to a fault.
My #1 Archetype is Ruler, which means I was born to build an empire.
Rulers think about business all the time.
Rulers are very good at creating businesses that create value for other people. You could drop me anywhere in the world and I’d figure out how to make money.
Rulers are meant to be visionary leaders of transformational empires that benefit all… and they are at their best when they inspire a team of geniuses to do the building.
But in their shadows, Rulers (like me) try to lay every brick of the empire themselves.
Because Rulers have limitless energy for work, it’s very common Ruler shadow behavior to:
burn employees out
burn themselves out
move onto new projects too soon and
do things the hardest possible way.
The beauty of the Archetypes is this: Once you make the unconscious conscious, you can see your own self-sabotage patterns, and watch them dissolve like smoke in the light of your own awareness.
It’s like turning a camera lens into sharp focus: You can see new opportunities and resources to have the business and the life you want to have… opportunities that were right in front of you the whole time.
Let me make one thing clear: We don’t study the Archetypes to fix or change a single damn thing about who you are and how you’re wired.
We study them so you can stop getting blindsided by the subtle ways your own patterns blow up your best ideas and limit your influence, your income, your love life and your possibilities.
We study them so you can forgive the old grievances you have with yourself as you become aware of why you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing to keep your life and your business smaller than they want to be… and start reclaiming your sovereignty.
So you can gracefully, gradually break the pull of your self-sabotage patterns because once you see them, you really can’t unsee them… nor do you have to just be yanked around by them any longer.
So I can give you exercises, tools and strategies to bring your most vital energies and deepest powers to the things you’ve always wanted to do, but haven’t yet done.
And so that you can start gradually, gracefully making new empowered decisions on every subject of your life that set your True, Sacred Self up for maximum success on your own terms.
************* For the first time in over a year, I am opening my Sacred Money Archetypes® course for enrollment.
The program is fully online and will be fully unlocked when you register, so you can do it at your own pace.
I’ve been working with the Archetypes with my students and coaching clients for several years now, and it’s a powerful game-changer.
Jessica said: “Doing the Sacred Money Archetypes® work with Tara turned the lights on some of the struggles I’ve felt internally for as long as I can remember.”
B.A. said: “A year ago I made the quantum leap to take all the money I had left and invest it in your Sacred Money Archetypes® program. I remember the anguish I felt. Your program, you, helped me change the course of my life. I’ve upleveled in so many ways I am still in awe of my strength. GRACIAS”
NOTE: I’m opening this program for a few days at a deeply discounted rate, just for Transformation Tuesday newsletter subscribers.
Ready to start fulfilling your income potential and your dreams?
Head up + heart out,
Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq. The Inner Critic Coach™ Spiritual Strategist to smart, successful people.
