Ok… sooooo… say a person has a dominating Inner Critic that sparks fear and doubt every time she tries to change her life or her career for the better.

Just…hypothetically speaking. 

Every time this person tries to write a book, start a business, get a better job, take better care of herself or even improve her relationships with her children or mate… something always stops her.

She has the vague, gnawing, growing sense that she might be her own worst enemy. That she might be the thing that keeps getting in her own way.

So she feels frustrated. Chronically. She knows what she wants to do, but she doesn’t feel like she can ever quite get there. 

She wants to be in one place, but she always needs to be somewhere else. 

She wants to be doing one thing, but she always has to be doing something else. 

She wants to be a certain way, as a person, but feels obligated to act another way, maybe just out of habit. 

The Germans have a word for this.

Zerissenheit.

This translates to: torn-to-pieces-hood. Feeling pulled in one direction by your Inner Guidance, your intuition, your genius, your bliss, your desires… and your so-called obligations pulling you in the opposite direction.

Zerissenheit feels like being scattered. All over the place. 

It feels like stress. Frustration. Misalignment.

But it doesn’t always translate into sadness, depression or angst, like you might think. 

In many smart, successful people, the misalignment between the lives they have and the lives they want creates anger. 

This anger is trying to deliver a message about what’s really important to you, at soul-level.

It’s trying to deliver the information that you’re ignoring, abandoning or even silencing your true, sacred self.

That anger might also be trying to deliver you the energy to make some different choices.

This anger is painful. It doesn’t feel good. If we let it “have it’s career within us”, as Dave Richo would say, it would build and crest, like a wave, and then dissolve… and probably fuel our journey into a more aligned life along the way.

But usually, because it feels so bad, we simply dispute it. We choose not to feel it. In fact, we do all sorts of things to avoid feeling the anger of our misaligned lives… the anger of our unlived lives. 

We eat more. We drink more. We scroll more. We watch more. 

So it doesn’t go away, no matter what you do to repress it. It just rattles around within us, until it bursts out of the seams in one or five different forms:

• Overweight
• High blood pressure
• Jaw clenching
• Other physical illness
• Bouts of angry crying
• Impatience
• Irrational competitiveness (even at mothering or birthday cake baking)
• Binge consumption (of food, alcohol, social media, etc.)
• Emotional rollercoaster at home (alternately yelling at, then indulging, the kids…).

Carl Jung even famously said once that “the greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.” 

I’ve heard so many repressed, frustrated people who are living misaligned lives, out of integrity with their true selves, say they want to learn how to be more patient, be nicer to their families or manage their stress, their weight and their time better. 

But patience isn’t the problem. Just learning to be nicer or breathe more deeply… those are great things to do, but they ain’t the solution to this problem. 

Until you address the root reasons you aren’t able — as a grown a$$ human — to give yourself permission to truly fulfill your potentials and your dreams, your unlived life will remain unlived…

… the split within you will continue

… your obligations will continue to spark dread and pull you to pieces, and

… your stress, your health, and the people you love the most will feel the pressure, too. 

Only one question remains: What would it take for you to give yourself permission to start living your unlived life?

Head up + heart out,
 

P.S.: Last call to join my first group of students in the Inner Critic Cure™ program. We just opened the doors, and would love to have you join us. 

Learn more and enroll here: https://soultour.com/inner-critic-cure-special/

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
The Inner Critic Coach™️
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

I have this app called The Stoic, and every day it delivers a quote to my phone from one of the Greek Stoic philosophers. The Stoics were something like hardcore Zen practitioners of their day. Their main goal was to stay unfazed and calm of mind regardless of what was happening at any given moment. Hence: Stoic.

This weekend, the app sent me this quote from the Philosopher Emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations are perhaps the best known collection of Stoic writings:

Note: You must have images turned on in your email provider to be able to see the above image. 

[Image description: A plaster-appearing bust of the Greek Emperor Marcus Aurelius. His words appear at the bottom of the image, saying, “Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil.”]

I found it to be pretty hilarious that this guy’s words have been pored over by seekers of wisdom and calm since the year 167, and this was what he thinks we should say when we get up in the morning?

I even posted a screenshot from the app on Facebook with a note from me that said: “Marcus Aurelius was great at a lot of things, but writing morning affirmations was apparently not on that list.” 

One of my students asked: “Doesn’t this just make him a realist?”

And I replied: 

“Maybe… but that’s not what affirmations are for.”

See, my beef with the old Emperor was based on how powerful our morning affirmations actually are. It might sound woo, but whether you know it or not… whether you intend it or not, you probably are affirming something to thyself in the morning. 

And I say you should make the most of that powerful moment and the power of your words.

Now… you may not identify as someone who “does” affirmations. Maybe you’re doing unintentional affirmations, running over your to-do list in your mind, affirming your excitement and anticipation… or your irritation and dread, in advance. 

Or maybe you’re affirming that you didn’t get enough sleep or you’d rather stay in bed than do whatever you’ve gotta do. 

Maybe you’re just like old Marcus Aurelius and you’re like “ugh gotta go to work and deal with these busybodies, unsocial, arrogant, ignorant people.”

Or maybe you’re one of those who actually does affirmations with intention. You lie in bed or look in the mirror or sit on your meditation cushion and take a minute to affirm  — to tune yourself to the channel of —how you want to feel, be and live that day. 

And … it works.

Affirmations are a powerful Spiritual Strategy for calibrating your emotions and setting an intention for how you want your day to unfold. 

Affirmations are your best, daily opportunity to place the cosmic order for exactly what you want and exactly how you want to feel. This is true whether you are affirming what you want or what you do not want. 

Please catch this principle: Affirmations work whether you are affirming what you want or what you do not want. 

Either way, you’re calling it in. 

So with his (hilariously negative) affirmation, Marcus Aurelius was essentially placing an order for busy-bodies, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious and unsocial folk to come right on into his experience. 

I prefer Louise Hay’s people order of “I only work with people I love and who love me.” or “I’m in love with everyone and everyone is in love with me.”

Realistic? Maybe not. But realism is observation. And affirmations are a tool for creation. 

Catch this principle, too: Realism is observation. Affirmations are a tool for creation. 

When you use them consistently and intentionally, affirmations start to rewire the automatic scarcity and negativity thinking of your Inner Critic.

If nothing else, affirmations are self-hypnosis, meaning that when you consistently affirm empowered and expansive intentions for your day, you’re simply less likely to notice, focus on or get hooked into the daily dramas, busy-bodies and unwanted experiences of life. 

When I posted that Marcus Aurelius quote on the socials, one friend asked: “How would you reword it, Tara? Something about being patient & compassionate towards others?”

I replied: 

I’m big on not calibrating how I feel and the day I want to have based on what others are doing. So I would rewrite the quote like this:

Begin the morning by saying to thyself: I give thanks for this perfect day and its perfect unfolding. 

I give thanks that the Divine, genius plan for my Life now comes to pass. 

I release all Resistance to any element or stage of that plan. 

I open my arms wide to receive everything this universe has for me, including avalanches of abundance, which now flow to me under grace, over calm seas and in perfect, surprising and delightful ways.

Every person is a golden link in the chain of my highest good. 

All is well in my world. 

Yeah, I’d affirm something like that.

Head up + heart out,
 

P.S.: I’ve created a little hit list of 7 Affirmations to Soothe Your Inner Critic, which you can download here. It’s free. 

P.P.S.: The truth is, I have gleaned great wisdom and inspiration for equanimity in the face of life’s waves from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius over the years. 

Last time I opened them up, I saw this and made a mental note to find an excuse to share it with you:

“Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and mountains; and you, too, are wont to desire such things very much. But…it is in your power whenever you choose to retire into yourself. For there is no retreat that is quieter or freer from trouble than a man’s own soul, especially when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity; and tranquillity is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.”

Give to yourself a retreat. Constantly. And be renewed.

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

Your Inner Critic is the enemy of your intuition.

They are opposites.

You can’t follow both, Brilliant One.

So. 

What’s it gonna be?

If you choose INTUITION, here’s all you need to know:

Every time you obey your Inner Guidance, you take a little airtime from your Inner Critic and give it to your Wise Inner Being.

This is true whether you’re obeying a little nudge to take the long way to work… or you’re listening to a resounding NO in your Spirit when everyone around you is urging you to say yes.

That is all. 

Head up + heart out,
 

P.S.: It is my aspiration never to say YES when I really mean no. Every time you say YES when you mean no, you divorce yourself a tiny little bit. 

The practice of aligning my inner and outer YESes and NOs works out in my favor 100% of the time. 

Try it. 

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq., The Inner Critic Coach™, is a Master Coach, author and the Founder of SoulTour’s School of Spiritual Strategy.

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

Londyn is a Montessori kid so she loves to sweep. But she’s graduated to a penchant for vacuuming, and she wants to use the real one, not a toy. She’s also a Super Baby, so she can lift the vacuum out of the closet and move it around on her own.

I watched her do that the other day, and pretty instantly she moaned: “Ugh. It’s not working.”

I said, “I know, baby girl. We’ve got to plug it in.”

She said, “First, vacuum. Then plug it in.”

And I said, “Well, my love… the vacuum won’t work unless we plug it in first.”

Cut to: this morning, as I grabbed all of the things for Londyn’s day and my own, I made extra sure to grab my headphones… but somehow forgot my phone. 

Imagine my surprise when I got to the park to walk the dog and had the accessories I needed to listen to something energizing and inspirational… but I didn’t have the power source. 

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Do you see the moral of these stories?

You’ve probably had the experience of lying awake at night, stressing about what needs to get done the next day, then oozing out of bed with the thought: “I didn’t get enough sleep” or “I’m dreading this day” or “I’m dreading fighting with the kids to get them ready.”

And you’ve probably had the experience of getting right into the day before you’re really ready: getting breakfast on the table, kids to school or on Zoom, getting your own day of meetings or work going, but not feeling in the flow or like you’re even thinking clearly yet.

You might even have had the experience of going to great lengths to set aside time to work on your book or your business, but feeling blocked or stuck when that precious time arrives.

I’m hearing all of these fact patterns now more than maybe ever, especially among those who feel overextended or under-resourced (which is real common, these days)…that pervasive sense of “Ugh. I’m better than this. I want to do this. I want to do this well. This is not working.”

My advice is what I told Londyn and what I learned myself today: Don’t even try to play your A-game unless and until you plug in first.

Plug in first. 

Plug in to your power source.

Plug in to your Source.

Now if you don’t even know what ‘plugging in’ means for you, personally, then finding out what recharges and replenishes you is your #1 mission. Because not plugging in is a major limiting factor.

But chances are that you do know what gets you in the zone and on top of your game, and your Inner Critic is just telling you that you don’t have time or aren’t deserving of regularly doing it.

Maybe your “plug in” is a little earlier bedtime.

Maybe it’s a little more “me” time. Stretching. Taking a bath. Even at lunchtime. Whenever, man.

Maybe your ‘plug in’ is getting up before the circus begins and finding a quiet time and place to slow your thoughts down, even 10% or 20%, before you start the day.

Before you let other people into your space.

Maybe it’s making the decision to always always always take a 15 minute walk outside before you start work instead of plopping right down at the laptop, knowing that your plug in walk will undoubtedly multiply your creativity and focus far beyond what you’d get from 15 more minutes at the computer.

Maybe it’s working out or doing yoga at the beginning of the day.

Maybe it’s praying. Or free-writing. Or affirmations. Or pulling a card.

You do you, homie. 

I’m just asking you to do what you’ve gotta do to get yourself plugged into the energy you need — and the energy that runs this Universe — before you start putting demands on your system. 

Do whatever it takes to connect to Source.

Whatever it takes to open your heart. 

Cleanse your mind. Open a new compartment for this fresh, new day and let it be fresh and new.

Stop beating the drum of trying to control stuff you can’t control and ain’t never going to be able to control. 

Do whatever you’ve gotta do to drop your resistance to how the world works. 

Drop whatever grudge you’ve gotta drop about what so-and-so said yesterday. 

Drop whatever anticipation of the nonsense they might say today or tomorrow.

Write it down, burn that mess, do what you’ve gotta do to open your heart and plug yourself in.

And here’s the key: Do whatever you’ve gotta do to plug in before you start trying to be creative, generative or fruitful for the day… even if you’re a night owl. (And I have the utmost respect for night owls.)

There’s a viral idea in pop psychology on the Internet right now, something commentators on China’s specific burnout work culture call ‘bàofùxìng áoyè’: revenge bedtime procrastination. 

Journalist Daphne K Lee defined this as a phenomenon where “people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late-night hours”. Gu Bing, a Shanghai marketing professional, says she rarely goes to bed before 2 am because, in her words, “I want to steal back my time.”

If you struggle with getting to bed on time, in enough time, to feel rested in the morning, you might ask yourself whether you’re retaliating against your perceived lack of control over your time and the choices you made about how to commit your time in a previous edition of yourself. 

If your answer is YES, then now is the time to reclaim your time. 

When you plug in first, when you pay yourself first with your time… it’s not about revenge at all. 

It’s lavish to pay yourself first with your time. It counters and contradicts the lies of your Inner Critic that say you aren’t worthy of your own time. 

It’s liberating and a tiny bit radical to give yourself your most rested time of day… to prioritize yourself and your energy ahead of every other person, place and obligation you have all day.

You’ll quickly find yourself resenting your life and your colleagues and your calendar and even your kids way less… because you paid yourself first.

You’ll feel the inner peace that comes from not wishing you could be on a walk when you’re in a meeting because you took your walk first.

So this is my PSA for the day, requesting and insisting that you plug yourself in first… and plug in well. 

Plug yourself in as frequently as you need to do without judging yourself for needing to plug in.

You don’t have to steal your own time. 

Reclaim your time. 

After all, it belongs to you.

Head up + heart out,

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq., The Inner Critic Coach™, is a Master Coach, author and the Founder of SoulTour’s School of Spiritual Strategy.

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

The average smart, successful person has around 20,000 hours of negative thoughts involuntarily whirring through their mind, playing on a loop.

And these thoughts aren’t just negative thoughts about yourself. They’re narratives about the world being hard, resources being scarce and wrong-thinking about how and why you shouldn’t do things that make you feel exposed or vulnerable… which includes most things that would improve your life or fulfill your dreams.

Through lifelong practice, these thoughts become habits, and soon they harden into what I call The Trance of the Inner Critic: a low-grade, constant stream of mental narratives about yourself, your world or your prospects in life that are so constant you may not even realize you are thinking them. 

They become a pervasive worldview that limits your possibilities and causes self-sabotage anytime you try to improve yourself or your life. 

If you’ve ever tried to smash, slay, silence or mute your Inner Critic, you’ve probably realized that efforts to do so always backfire. 

Instead, the name of the game is to soothe, befriend and transform your Inner Critic, and here are 7 affirmations I use with my students to do exactly that: 

1. How easy can I let this be? 

Your Inner Critic has been fed for years by the cultural lie that struggle is virtue. 

On top of that, you may have been conditioned as a child to get dopamine hits of external validation and the illusion of continuous approval by doing hard things and suffering in silence. 

As a result: 

• You might not be in the habit of asking for or receiving help. 
• You might chronically take on way too much or spread yourself too thin.
• And you might frequently set yourself up with unsustainable, superhuman standards and goals.

I used to have these patterns, and one of my teachers offered me the mantra “let it be easy”. But I soon realized that I’d been getting validation and approval for doing hard things for so long I couldn’t even see easier ways to do what I wanted or needed to do… even when easier ways seemed obvious to other people.

So now I teach my students this twist on “let it be easy”: “How easy can I let this be?”

This question invites a path of ease, flow and way less resistance to light up before you, whether that be stretching out your timelines, saying no or getting more help.

2. Things take as long as they take. 

Time scarcity is a primary sign that you may have a harsh, dominating Inner Critic even if you don’t feel like your self-talk is self-critical. 

Your Inner Critic will tell you that you’re always behind or never quite productive enough, which only compounds the stress of the near-universal tendency to underestimate how long tasks will take. 

I started saying this one to myself years ago, when I first began to heal my own Inner Critic, and I say it to my team often, too: especially when it comes to building or creating anything with deep meaning or soulful substance. 

Things take as long as they take. 

It’s a beautifully elegant reminder to try practicing radical acceptance of the way life really works, and stop rushing yourself all the damn time.

3. Small things grow. 

One particularly insidious thought habit of your Inner Critic is the idea that you have to spin all the plates and pull all the levers and be troubleshooting, thinking, planning and doing All of the Things, All of the Time or Something Very Bad will happen.

We call that worry. And it’s a lie of the Inner Critic. 

It’s what makes you feel like, even when things are going good for you, there’s another shoe perpetually about to drop. 

So sometimes it’s helpful to remember that the sun rises and sets whether you lift a single finger… that the plants grow from seed to tree without you directing the Universe… that there is a Divine Order and Creative Power that fuels the engine of this Universe, and that things improve and ripen naturally with time… whether you work your fingers to the bone or not.

This affirmation is a super quick reminder that you don’t have to make everything happen through hard work and effort, contrary to your Inner Critic thought habits.

4. Divine Order and Divine Timing are real and in my favor. 

The Law of Divine Order says all components of this Universe will line up and light up to assist you, and says that they will line up and light up for you at the perfect place and the perfect time. 

It says you’re not alone and you’re constantly being assisted by higher powers and forces, and even other people.

Divine Timing will accelerate your progress at some times and slow it down at others. But I like what Tosha Silver says, which is that in Divine Timing even your delays benefit you. 

When your Inner Critic shames you for falling behind or not doing enough, these affirmations remind you to stop rushing all the time and to know that help is always on the way.

Here are a few more of my favorite, Inner Critic-soothing affirmations, declarations and mantra from my own teachers: 

5. I give thanks that the Divine Genius plan for my life now comes to pass. 

— Florence Scovel Shinn

This one dials up trust, which in turn deactivates fear. 

The essence of your Inner Critic is fear, so you can feel it dissolve and dissipate as you practice this affirmation. 

6. Everything is always working out for me. 

— Abraham Hicks

This might be the most soothing affirmation ever, as it reminds you that most of the things you fret about never, ever come to pass, and reminds you to look for the ways things might be trying to work out for you right now… right before your eyes.

7. I expand in success, happiness and abundance every day as I inspire those around me to do the same. 

— Gay Hendricks

In The Big Leap, author Gay Hendricks offers this as what he calls the Ultimate Success Mantra. 

In my practice, I’ve learned that your Inner Critic is a misguided, wrong-headed, but well-intentioned force within. 

Its aim is two-fold: to protect you and motivate you. 

That’s why some people worry that without their Inner Critic shaming and disparaging them, they might not be able to get motivated or take action at all. 

But the contrary is true: Your Inner Critic is fear, and fear always shuts off access to your highest brain functioning and your unique, sacred genius. So whatever you’ve been able to achieve in life with a harsh Inner Critic, you’ll be able to do exponentially more when you transform your relationship with this part of your shadow. 

Know this: Your Inner Critic gets activated and goes on attack anytime you attempt to do things that make you feel exposed or vulnerable, which is almost everything you want to do to improve your health, answer your callings or self-actualize your sacred potentials. 

Hendricks’ Ultimate Success Mantra helps prevent your Inner Critic’s resistance to all your own dreams and goals by wiring in a continuous growth way of being. Use this to flip off your struggle switch and embody a little bit more of your wise Inner Being every single day.

Head up + heart out,
 

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq., The Inner Critic Coach™, is a Master Coach, author and the Founder of SoulTour’s School of Spiritual Strategy.

On March 14th, Tara is teaching a FREE Live Masterclass on the 3 Secrets to Transform Your Inner Critic (for smart, successful people). Reserve your seat here.

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

I got an email from a client the other day, telling me how dramatically her income had risen since we worked together, and thanking me for helping make that happen. 

I was thrilled, because that was a core objective we’d worked on together in a dozen different ways. We’d worked on her packages, her pricing, her messaging, her positioning, her money blocks, and her ability to easefully deliver an enlightened “no” and trust that abundance was on the way.

But when I asked her what, specifically, had helped increase her income she said “I started consistently following Londyn’s rule.” 

(Londyn is my 3-year-old.)

She went on, “You told me once that Londyn just decides what she wants and doesn’t participate in anything else.”

And it’s true. Londyn is not much of a tantrum thrower, unless she’s tired or hungry. And she’s living her baby best life, y’all. We program really beautiful days full of beautiful activities and places and people, so she’s generally pretty enthusiastic about doing whatever we’re doing, most of the time.

But she’s also very, very clear on what she wants. 

Maybe clearer than anyone I’ve ever met. 

And she doesn’t participate in anything else.

As part of this, Londyn is exceptionally good at speaking up for herself, asking for what she wants and needs and saying what she means. (I’ll share more on how I try to foster her inborn clarity, self-knowledge, self-sovereignty and self-expression next week.)

Here’s an example: We live in a hilly neighborhood, so there are maybe a dozen places where instead of alleys, we have stairs that take you from one street to the next. Neighbors leave beautiful chalk art, painted rocks and even little displays of toy cars and airplanes out in the various staircases, and every weekend, we climb up a bunch of them, see what’s there and just explore. 

The other day we climbed up and were skipping-to-my-Lou down the street above our house. It’s a fancy street, lined with big beautiful homes, old and new. There’s one gorgeous, sprawling Mediterranean mansion, with a low, long, curved driveway and unobstructed views of the San Francisco Bay. 

I have probably walked past that house a thousand times in my 12 years here, and I have never seen anyone outside that house.

But someone was out front that day. 

As Londyn and I walked by, an elegant, white-haired woman stood deep in conversation with the gentleman who was tending the grounds.

They noticed us passing. I nodded and raised my hand in a silent hello. 

Londyn… took a different approach. 

She stopped walking abruptly and yanked on my hand for balance so she could lean over the down sloped driveway. 

“HELLOOOOO!!!!” she screamed gleefully (and at the top of her lungs) through her panda bear mask. “I’m Londyn! What’s your name?”

“I’m Katherine,” the woman yelled back, seeming startled but amused, then resumed talking with the landscaper.

“Kathyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!” Londyn yelled. Screamed, really. “You got any animals down there???”

I tried to distract her and keep our walk moving. “Ma choupette, let’s go see what’s happening up the street! Over there!” I said, pointing to the next staircase on our route.

Londyn stood still. She looked at me soberly, shook her head and replied: “No, honey.” 

In other words: Londyn had asked Katherine whether she had any animals down there… and Londyn wanted an answer.

Katherine paused for a moment, looked at her gardener, turned back to Londyn and said: “Yes, I do. Come down the driveway, and down that staircase (pointing) and I’ll meet you over there.”

And so… we did. 

Down the loooooong driveway.

Down a flight of stairs into some breathtaking gardens that seemed like they slowly descended to … the Bay.

A few moments later, Kathy appeared and walked us over to a little cove with a little clearing, pulled off a metal grate to keep the kitty cats out, and revealed dozens of glistening, fat, black-and-white, orange and red koi fish that have been wriggling and swimming around in there for a couple of decades. 

Kathy… I mean Katherine… poured some fish food in Londyn’s hand. 

Katherine showed her how they would swim right up to your fingers if you stuck your hand in the water.

And that’s how we came to spend the next 45 minutes playing with animals and her new friend Katherine, which was the cosmic order Londyn had apparently placed.

In fact, when we were done with Katherine and the koi, Londyn said she was ready to go home and take a nap… even though (a) Kathy’s house was at the beginning of our walk, not the end and (b) Londyn is 3. She never asks to go home and take a nap. 

The moral of the story is this: Let yourself want what you want. 

Don’t negate your own desires. 

Don’t keep them small out of some misguided sense of humility or virtute.

Don’t judge what you want or judge yourself for wanting it. 

As Rumi wrote, don’t analyze your enthusiasm. 

Want what you want without shrinking it down. 

Please remember that your heart’s desires are part of your Inner Guidance System. They are how the Divine speaks to you, within you. Even your seemingly “small” soul-level desires are part of how you are guided to the right place at the right time to be, do, have and learn what you came here for. 

Following your heart’s desires, following your bliss (as Jo Campbell would say), is part of how you learn to live a powerful masterful life. 

Next: Speak up for yourself. Say what you mean. Ask for what you want. 

Whether you’re asking yourself, another person, All That Is or your neighbor Katherine/Kathy. 

From there, you only have three jobs to get what you want:

Job #1: Get in receptive mode. Stop blocking yourself from receiving what’s trying to come to you.

Job #2: If you get a Divine Download to take an inspired action like charging more, investing in yourself, taking a different route to the grocery store or yelling your request to see some animals NOW at a total and complete stranger who seems busy at the moment, follow that download and take that action.

Job #3: Participate in nothing that is not part of or aligned with what you want. Participate NOT your own self-sabotage. Participate NOT in your Inner Critic’s naysaying narratives or in anyone else’s reasons why they think you can’t have what you want. That ain’t got nothing to do with you.

This is how you cause the Universe to yield to you.

Get after it, homie. 

Head up + heart out,
 

The Inner Critic Coach™
Spiritual Strategist for smart, successful people

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

Last week, we started to rewrite the cultural myth of productivity: the lie that says your work is your worth so if you want to earn the right to feel good in your own skin, you’d better perform better, conform yourself, and produce more and more and more and more and more. 

Know this: Productivity culture is slavery culture. 

I’m not exaggerating.

When you look back at the overseer’s books for measuring the value of their “human assets”, they tracked how much cotton each enslaved human picked every day of the week and extrapolated each enslaved person’s value from there. 

Those plantation logbooks looked just like every productivity planner on the market today.

Exhibit A: Thomas Affleck’s Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book from the 1800s.

Note: You do need to have images turned on in your email system to see the above image. 

During slavery, the goal of all this tracking was to get more and more and more “productivity” out of each human “asset” every day, every week and every year. 

And this is still the goal of productivity culture, which is toxic, extractive, and not even that effective, when you consider the data that says most corporate employees are only “productive” for a couple hours a day.

It’s savage and inhuman to treat people (including you) as assets whose work determines their value. 

It’s soul-killing to expect ever-increasing output from any sentient being. Again, including you.

To track and measure and obsessively optimize your monetary “value” contradicts the Divine realities of who you are, how you best work and why you’re here. 

And on top of all of that, productivity culture feeds your Inner Critic, which will tell you that:

…productivity is success, even when it’s making you miserable

…you’re not getting enough done

…if you keep it up you’ll lose your job

…you’re falling behind (again), and in fact

…you’re just generally behind in life, because I mean look at HER life and she’s SO organized AND she’s way younger than you.

Your Inner Critic will make it hard to rest when it’s time to rest, causing you to feel like some vague, catastrophic shoe will drop if you don’t get up and do something. Start with the dishes, your Inner Critic will say.

Catch this principle: Productivity culture is burnout culture, powered by fear. 

The antidote is fruitfulness: a natural rhythm of creation that aligns with how the world works and how humans operate in a best case, best life scenario. 

Fruitfulness is the rhythm of inspired action, collaboration, and rest. 

Fruitfulness aligns with the truth that human energies ebb and flow. 

Fruitfulness is seasonal, just like this Universe. There’s a time for sowing seeds. There’s a time for cultivating. There’s a time to let the sun and the rain and the soil and the bees take over and do their part, while the farmer takes a break. There’s a time to let the field lie fallow, be tilled by the hooves of the goats (and the pugs) and be replenished.

There’s a time to harvest your fruits.

And by the way, it’s not always harvest season 100% of the time. (That’s a lie of productivity culture, too.)

Fruitfulness makes great use of the shit and the compost of life, your past disappointments and traumas providing nutrition and preparation for your fruitful, juicy now.

Fruitfulness gracefully grows what you want to grow, in Divine Timing. 

Fruitful people know that sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is be still.

Stand down. 

Sit down.

Take a moment. 

Get quiet. 

Get still so you can hear with the ears of Spirit and see with the eyes of Spirit.

Listen. 

Be still so you can perceive and receive your Divine Downloads. 

Be still so you can see your own patterns of hiding and holding back. Know that your patterns might look like superheroic action, but underneath all that activity you might find patterns of chronic reaction, distraction, perfectionism and self-sabotaging your own passion projects and dreams in exchange for the dopamine hit of external validation and the false soothing of staying in your comfort zone.

Be still so you can see how you habitually blow up or complicate relationships with the people that want to help you. 

Be still so you can see the opportunities right in front of you to have what you want right now.

Be still so you can see what in your life is not in alignment with where you want to go.

Be still so you can discern what your Inner Guidance Committee is saying from what your Inner Critic is saying.

Let me tell you something: If you’re actively engaged in commerce in western culture in 2021, you probably need more quiet time than you are giving yourself.

You think that action is how things get done. 

But you’re not here just to get things done. 

And the biggest, best things get done through alignment, not through sheer action. 

You can accelerate your progress by taking a freaking break. 

Give yourself some space for the dots to connect.

Give yourself time for your brain to work in the background.

Be like the plum tree I planted and forgot… the tree that bore hundreds of plums last year. 

Give yourself time for the collaborative components to show up and help you out, like the rain and the sun helped the tree.

Stop rushing all the damn time. 

Stand down.

Make your life a place where natural rhythms and seasons of fruitfulness are respected and even revered.

Make your soul an environment in which fruitfulness thrives.  

Fruitfulness thrives where there is radical trust and radical acceptance of how life and this world works, especially these truths:

• small things grow
• seasons change
• some endings are necessary and
• things take the time they take.

Fruitfulness requires that you stop the madness of “I’ll do it myself” and begin tapping into the power of other people and other forces.

And fruitfulness requires rest, which gives those other people and forces a chance to show up and do what they do. 

It’s time to liberate yourself from the lies of productivity culture. 

I give you permission to begin noticing when and where your Inner Critic is telling you that your value is based on your output, busy-ness or activity and just see that thought for what it is: false.

Don’t believe everything you think.

Instead, let’s get fruitful.

Fruitful people plant seeds. 

Fruitful people create when they’re inspired.

Fruitful people rest without judging themselves for resting. 

And fruitful people radically trust that everything will come together and light up and line up, so they have a whole lot more fun in life x. 

Fruit doesn’t grow overnight, and neither do the most soul-satisfying books, projects, businesses, or careers.  

There’s a process. It takes time. And it’s co-creative.

Thanks for co-creating my vision with me. 

Know that across time, across distance… I’m co-creating yours with you, too, Brilliant One.

Head up + heart out,
 

The Inner Critic Coach™
Spiritual Strategist for smart, successful people

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

Perform. So that you might have nice things and have nice things happen to you.

Conform. Be a certain way. Stop being that other way.

Produce. More. Even more. No days off. 

Perform. Conform. Produce. After all, you have to work hard if you want to make something of yourself.

These are the dictates of culture. 

And they are in direct contradiction of Universal law. 

Universal law says you are a blessed, beautiful, beloved something now, and you were before you even made your debut here on planet Earth.    

Universal law says you came here perfect, whole and complete, born with the express destiny to be loved, cherished and adored.

However challenging love has been, and even your very early relationships were, please be reminded that you were born trailing clouds of the glory and love that applied to you when you were just a perfect idea in Divine Mind. So your very first relationship was one of perfect love.

So yeah… culture has lied to you, Brilliant One.

Let me clear some things up. 

You need never “be productive” to “create value.” 

You are not a human “asset” to be measured, tracked, and optimized. 

You are valuable just because you exist, even if you never crank out another iota of work product, never hit another goal, never lose another pound, write another word or make another dollar. 

Now…

…with that out of the way, I want to offer you another way to look at The Issue of Productivity. This is a teaching story in the tradition of my spiritual lineages. I call it the Parable of the Plum Tree.

About five years ago now, I planted a plum tree in my backyard. There was no big intention behind it. I wasn’t trying to be deep. I just saw a plum tree at the nursery and thought it seemed like a good idea. 

So I brought it home, took it to the top part of my backyard, dug a hole and dropped it in. I may have watered it for a few days. 

But then I forgot about it. 

I traipsed off to Croatia to ride my bike through the Dalmatian isles for my 40th birthday. MyFitnessPal, where I was leading marketing at the time, was acquired. I wrote a book. Linked up with a new boyfriend. Traveled a bunch. Got a (delightfully unexpected) surprise baby. Broke up with that boyfriend. 

I’ve been busy.

Seasons changed.

Along the way, I forgot about the tree. 

More than four years went by, and in all that time I never even went up to the top reaches of my backyard. 

Until Londyn started really walking and exploring, and tugged at me one day to go up there. 

So imagine my surprise to see this truly, fully neglected tree laden with shiny, sweet, delicious, plums. Within moments The Dimple Queen had both hands full of them, purple juice running down her arms, pausing between bites only to yell: “AMMA!! This GOOD!!”

What does this have to do with the toxic cultural messages that you must be ever-more productive to earn your place on the planet? 

Everything.

Productivity culture says that your results in life are directly proportional, linear, and logically related to how much work you put in. 

And that lie of culture feeds your Inner Critic, which says that you’re never, ever, ever productive enough.

Never working enough. There’s never enough time to do all of the things. You’ll never really make it. You’ll never get it all done. You’ve always gotta be doing more or you’re doing it wrong.

We even pass this PRODUCTIVITY culture down to our children, when we stress about how much progress they’re making during the pandemic when it might be more peaceful and soulful to prioritize connection and love for learning over academic achievement in this season. 

Listen, I know how your Inner Critic works. As soon as I invite you to set PRODUCTIVITY down, your Inner Critic spins this mental narrative: “Tara are you kidding me? If I don’t track my productivity, manage my time minute-by-minute and push hard toward deadlines, I’ll fall behind and I’ll never get anything done.”

So let me be clear: I’m not suggesting you stop taking action. 

I’m inviting you to shift paradigms. 

Release the need to be PRODUCTIVE. Instead, be FRUITFUL.

Think about my plum tree. I got the idea to plant the tree. I bought it, brought it home, planted it and watered it a little. 

And then Divine Order came in to help. The soil germinated and took hold of the roots. The rain came. The pollinators came. I’m sure my dogs and the foxes helped with fertilization. 

The sun shined.

The fruit this tree bore was neither logical, linear nor directly proportional to my personal efforts. I had a lot of help, and I didn’t personally make all of those plums happen. 

This is true in life, too. You’re not alone in answering your callings. There’s a piece or a zone of activity — a zone of genius — that is uniquely yours to inhabit. 

And if your vision or calling is big, many other people, events and forces will show up, and co-create it with you, whether you ask them to or not.

When you learn to trust this truth  — which is to say, when you learn to trust in Divine Order and the assistance of others — it shifts the atmosphere.

Because PRODUCTIVITY culture creates a prevailing atmosphere of scarcity and fear. 

But FRUITFULNESS and fear can’t coexist.

Fruitfulness is an atmosphere of radical love for yourself, your potentials, and the people and ideals you serve by stepping into your dreams…

I’m talking enough love to wholeheartedly engage with your golden, inspired ideas and take what feels like your natural next step without hesitating, overthinking, second-guessing or analyzing your enthusiasm.

And I’m talking enough love to follow Divine Order, take a pause and let others play their roles, too, when Spirit moves. 

I’ll share more on how to cultivate an atmosphere of fruitfulness next week. 

Head up + heart out,
 

The Inner Critic Coach™
Spiritual Strategist for smart, successful people

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

You know those yard signs that say: 

“In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter | Women’s rights are human rights | No human is an alien”… and so forth? 

We have one of those signs.

And every time I see it, I think we need another line that would read:

“In this house, we orient to joy.” 

Londyn (age 3) showed up knowing how to do this. She knows what feels like joy and doesn’t participate in anything else. 

I (age 45) took most of these 45 years to learn how to orient to joy and make my decisions based on what feels like joy, but I’m never looking back.

Today I want you to write your own sign, in your journal or in your heart: In your house… in the temple that is your life… you orient to joy.

And then start orienting to joy.

And do it without the need to convince or explain to anybody else why you’re doing what you’re doing… or why you’re not doing what you’re not doing.

Orient to joy and do it unapologetically.

When taking inspired action feels like joy, orient to that.

When action feels grindy and getting some rest feels like joy, orient to that.

When you’re clear about what’s next and moving forward feels like joy, do it.

And know that it won’t always feel that way, so let dwelling in great expectation and eagerness for the mystery of what’s ahead x feel like joy sometimes, too. 

Think about joy as the Inner Guidance navigation system you were given at birth by the Divine. 

One of my teachers is known for taking breaks from Q+A by announcing: “This is a perfect time for a segment of refreshment.”

When it’s hard to get clear on a goal or the going gets super grindy, that’s always a sign that it’s time for a segment of spiritual refreshment.

A segment of recalibration… a time to refill your trust tanks.

You get spiritual refreshment by taking a break from worrying, troubleshooting and trying to avoid the unwanted hypothetical situations you’ve been trying to avoid your whole life.

You get spiritual refreshment by pressing pause on your need for things to be fast, difficult or perfect.

You get spiritual refreshment by practicing radical acceptance of the fundamental truth that everything good involves a process of becoming and that you’re not the boss of what that process looks like.

You get spiritual refreshment by orienting to joy. 

You get spiritual refreshment by taking in the artistic endeavors and beautiful creations of your fellow human beings.

You get spiritual refreshment by getting out into nature and taking in the creative output of the Divine… All That Is… Source… Spirit… the Creative Power that formed all worlds.

You get spiritual refreshment by playing with dogs and babies and by playing, in general.

You break your holding patterns and hard hustle patterns by gently, compassionately receiving my reminder today that you did not come here for a 90-year slog on the treadmill of checking off the boxes of a societally approved, “successful” life. 

You came here for joy.

So when things get grindy, take a sacred pause and let your nervous system downregulate a little bit. Recalibrate and replenish by reorienting to things that feel good, soothe your spirit and feel like joy.

One more way to reset what needs to be reset is to suspend all judgment of your process of personal growth and your progress on your goals.

Reset and replenish yourself by refusing to rush yourself…

…by doubling the time you think any step will take…

…and by radically accepting the truths that (a) things take as long as they take and (b) Divine Timing means that even your seeming delays are actually beneficial to you.

So wherever you’re at in your journey on whatever subject, goal or desire has your attention right now, take a deep, delicious segment of spiritual refreshment.

And reorient… to joy.

Head up + heart out, 

The Inner Critic Coach™
Spiritual Strategist for smart, successful people

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.

I get it.

You’re smarter than the average bear. You do pretty freaking well in life. People who know you think you’re very successful.

So you might be thinking: “I relate to having a harsh Inner Critic, but I think it might be what keeps me in line. Sometimes it even pushes me to do better. I probably just need to be a little more grateful for what I have.” 

I put my Inner Critic masterclass on February 4th together for smart, successful people for a reason:

The most successful people I’ve met often have the harshest Inner Critics. 

Which brings me to a super-important principle: Having a harsh, hindering Inner Critic is not the same thing as having low self-esteem. 

In fact, for many high-achievers, the recipe for a harsh Inner Critic looks like this: high self-esteem + LOW self-compassion. 

High self-esteem (meaning: high expectations and standards for what you believe you can do), PLUS low self-compassion.

And that can make you feel like you’re always behind, never productive enough, and like you’re responsible for fixing other people’s problems.

High self-esteem plus low self-compassion can make you extremely perfectionist with your work and cause you to set unsustainable goals for yourself. 

It can cause you to be hypervigilant and feel like you have to overachieve and just be DOING stuff all the time, as insurance against bad things happening to you. 

You can feel like you’re never organized enough, productive enough or making enough money, even if you are financially successful. And it can cause you to do things the hard way, missing out on opportunities to get more help, have more ease and have more fun. 

Your Inner Critic is the voice of fear, so it actually shuts down access to the most creative, most genius areas of your brain. 

Even if you think your Inner Critic is making you perform better at home and at work, the truth is otherwise:

Your Inner Critic is holding you back from reaching the highest heights of your full potential… and from living with a prevailing sense of inner peace and joy. 

PLEASE catch this principle: Whatever you’ve been able to achieve with a dominant Inner Critic is a fraction of what you’ll achieve when you reclaim control. 

Take a look at how these other ‘successful’ people said their lives changed when they did the work of transforming their Inner Critic:

“Tara has helped me put my Inner Critic in the backseat instead of letting her drive.”

Joy Danner Lehman, Educator, Minneapolis

“What I found through my journey with Tara was, first, how to calm my Inner Critic. Then I learned how to laugh at my Inner Critic, and now I can let go of my Inner Critic most of the time.”

Anne Marie Petersen, Realtor®, Windermere Real Estate Seattle

“Through my work with Tara, the voice of my Inner Critic has been replaced by the voice of my Inner Wise Woman. Rather than simply reacting to my past, I am creating my desired future and growing myself into the version of me I want to be.” 

Dr. Evelyn Young, Educator, California

“Tara has helped me literally stop negative self talk in its tracks.” 

Eric Barnes

“Tara helped me to tackle Imposter Syndrome by helping me realize I deserve to be where I am and giving me more confidence. Not feeling like my work has to be perfect has been so freeing. I’ve made way more progress on my goals than I would have without being in her program.”

Sonia Dong, CEO, Henkaa, Toronto

“I have discovered areas of myself that once held me back from my true potential. I have met my Inner Critic and now I can turn her volume and influence down. I have learned to accept myself for who I am right NOW and experienced joy and peace in this journey.”

Dr. Laura Munkel, MD, Physician, Indiana

“Tara helped me tame my Inner Critic. Since I started working with Tara, I’ve changed the way I think about myself — I’m no longer a victim. She helped me establish a routine that brought the sacred to my everyday life. I no longer feel dominated by my old “knee-jerk” reactions.”

Emma McKay, Executive Producer, Montreal

Join me and 600+ other smart, successful people just like you on February 4th where I’ll be LIVE for 90-minutes for showing you the How to Transform Your Inner Critic.

[Sign me up (it’s FREE!)]

Head up + heart out,

The Inner Critic Coach™

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.