I love you. And you know me. I have all these spiritual insights into the current global situation and how the human collective can use it to create what Eisenberg called “the more beautiful world we all know is possible.”

But let’s be real. That’s probably not the most pressing issue on your mind right now. 

You’re probably trying to figure out how this will impact you, your family, your business or career, your employees and your ability to make your living. 

Or, if you’ve already been impacted, you might be trying to figure out what’s next for your life. 

The other day, I was talking with a friend who works at a massive company whose products you know and probably use, daily. She was telling me about a meeting of their leaders, after this crisis started, where one of the leaders flat-out said: “I’m a wartime executive. We have a war chest that will never be depleted. We will be okay, regardless of how long this thing lasts. You can count on that.”

And I think that’s what everyone wants. 

Everyone wants someone smart, strong and strategic to have their back. 

Just about everyone wishes they had someone who they could count on, 100% of the time, to be clutch in a crisis, kind of like a wartime consigliere to help you make the right decisions and be in the right place at the right time as things play out, in real time. 

Everyone wishes they had a war chest that could never be depleted.

How would you feel, if you had those things? 

Relaxed? Relieved? Safe? Secure? 

I’m here to tell you that you do, indeed, have those things.

But your wartime advisor is not another person. 

And your war chest isn’t the cash you have on hand, even if you have a ton. Let me tell you, I know people with many millions stashed away and most of them don’t feel safe right now, either.

Because as long as your wartime consigliere is someone else, and as long as your war chest is some external resource, you will feel insecure, because your ability to access that resource could be limited by a circumstance or event beyond your control.

So take a sacred pause. Stop looking out there. That’s not where security is to be found. 

I’ve had my life turned upside down a couple of times, and I can tell you that there’s no security like the security you feel when you realize where your real war chest is.

It’s within you. 

Your war chest is within. 

Your war chest is your unique skills and genius, talents and resilience, your inborn potentials and the wisdom you’ve acquired over your lifetime. Your connection with Source and All That Is. 

Your Inner Being, Inner Guidance, Inner Wisdom, Infinite Intelligence: that’s your wartime advisor. 

I was an entrepreneur during the last recession. And I know for a fact that there are people and companies who thrive in every economic climate.

My desire is that you be one of those. 

So today, I’m just going to give you a rapid-fire set of spiritual and practical strategies for:

• Becoming your own wartime consigliere, and 
• Tapping into the war chest of wisdom you have within you, so you can
• Make clear-minded, wise decisions and move forward in your business and your life, even during this apocalyptic-feeling season.

Spiritual Strategy #1: Practice rapid, radical acceptance. The faster you accept the rapidly shifting realities around you, the faster you can get your footing and feel your way into the right, next steps. Sometimes, like when you’ve literally been ordered to stay at home, there’s not much of your normal way of operating at work or in your business that you can do. 

So practice Zen-style equanimity, cultivating the ability to keep an even keel regardless of circumstances. 

And practice Buddhist detachment from how you expected your year to play out, your product launch to go, or your customer base to grow. Let go of how you thought your business or your career would look. And let go fast. When you do, you create an opening for something even better, potentially, to come to you. 

Don’t resist the reality of what is. Allow it. Feel what you need to feel. Then get organized and move forward in whatever today’s new normal looks like, without judging or bemoaning it. 

Spiritual Strategy #2: Feed your own meter first. Stay prayed up and worked out, or whatever your preferred equivalents are. If you want to be on top of your mental strategy game, you absolutely must tend to your own inner wellbeing and physical wellbeing, especially when it feels like there’s no time for that. 

Tend to your own state of wellbeing first thing in the morning, even if you’re feeling like you slept in too long. Get a walk or a workout in, stretch or do The Five Tibetans, nourish your body, and meditate or journal… whatever works for you.

Make these things non-negotiable in this season, and you will find that your thinking is clearer. Your insights are more uncanny. Your ability to influence and inspire will level up. And you will be able to sell in whatever you need to sell in to get done whatever you need to get done. 

Spiritual Strategy #3: Third time’s a wrap. Count your blessings, not your struggles. We all want to feel understood in our outrage at the level of personal hits we’ve taken. And we want our super-heroic efforts just to keep the freaking trains running on time right now to be recognized. 

But the solution to a problem is never found in the same energy as the problem. And what you focus on grows. So when you focus on listing off your problems over and over again, it becomes easier to see even more problems and harder to find any solutions.

I know, I know. Listing your struggles is tempting, because our human brains are wired to focus on what’s wrong. On top of that, our culture loves and rewards a martyr. And on top of that, it’s very normal in our world to bond with others by pulling out and showing off all the files in our struggle portfolios.

Here’s what to do when you have legitimate grievances, instead of repetitively airing them: When you hear yourself listing off all the shit that’s gone wrong, refrain from judging or shaming yourself for venting.

Best practice when you need to vent is to write it all down, brain dumping your grudges, grievances and guilt trips every morning. Julia Cameron once said to “put your dramas on the page… and leave them on the page.” Do that.

But if you find yourself venting anyway, vent away, without judging yourself. But when you hear yourself tell your tale of woe the third time, decide that the third time’s a wrap. The next time you’re tempted to tell that story, you either need to tell the story in a way that feels more powerful or change the subject entirely.

Here’s a script for when you’re tempted to bond with a friend or colleague in venting your grievances: “Things have been intense here, too. And also… I know that every crisis is a portal. So I’m appreciating all the clarity this situation is creating for me about what really is and is not important. And I’m trying to stay ready and open to see what is mine/ours to see/learn/embrace/realize/uncover during this time.”

Spiritual Strategy #4: Notice what you’re afraid of. What are your nightmares about these days? What catastrophic narratives do you play out in your mind? If you’re not sleeping at all, what’s keeping you up? 

Write it down. Get the swirl out of your head. Don’t worry: You won’t make it happen by writing it once.

The subject of your fears is often pointing you to an inner shadow, repression or touchy subject that needs your attention or is calling you to do some inner work.

When you notice your fears, instead of repressing them, you will get a flashlight on the exact subject matter you’ll need to wholeheartedly engage with in order to grow and evolve as a person and as a leader. 

Spiritual Strategy #5: Get crystal clear on your Zone of Genius. Read The Big Leap, or take my Sacred Money Archetypes workshop to understand exactly what you’re the best in the world at, and how to make sure your business or career is in alignment with that. 

Spiritual Strategy #6: Take it all in… then take a sacred pause. I know so many entrepreneurs who are feeling pressure right now to take action, do things, put things out there and react to the crisis. But they’re also feeling pulled in so many directions that the net result is scattered and the net output is small potatoes, compared to the impact they are capable of with intentional, strategic action.

Take in what you need to take in, informationally. Talk with your customers. Listen to your employees. Let the dots connect. Let all this material marinate. 

And then take a sacred pause. Take an hour or a day to feel what you need to feel. Allow yourself that, so the fearful feelings can pass on through. Investigate your feelings and brain dump every new idea or project you think you may need to do out onto the page. 

And don’t track or rush your own progress, or anyone else’s. Judgment of any sort just creates turbulence in your system. So let that go. 

After a day or so, you might be surprised to feel the spurts or even the steady rush of inspired, right ideas and the flow of creative power that comes in to fill the vacuum you create when you take a day or two off from rushing into action. 

When you’re done with your sacred pause, get organized and prioritized, then communicate the clear vision to your team at work or at home.

Spiritual Strategy #7: When you get a golden thread of an inspired idea, download it, capture it and run with it then. When you’re inspired with the right next step, don’t put it on next week’s to do list. 

Take that step, or some part of it, now. 

Spiritual Strategy #8: Implement frequent Mini Monk Modes. Reclaim sovereignty over your mind and your inner peace. Don’t outsource that to the media or the worriers in your world. 

Even if just for an hour or two a day, or a day or two a week, dive inward and isolate yourself a bit, so you can focus on the things that matter the most to you.  

Withdraw from the news and social media. Set aside a sacred space in your heart, your home and your calendar. And then turn the magical power of your focus on the deep work or easily neglected work that you know will make a difference, moving forward. 

Spiritual Strategy #9: Live in “day-tight compartments”.  This is one of Dale Carnegie’s rules for how to stop worrying: Visualize yourself as the captain of a ship with the power to shut off any part of the boat into a water-tight compartment in the event of a leak anywhere else in the ship. 

But in your Inner Being, the compartments aren’t water-tight. They close off the present so it isn’t impacted by “leaks” from the past or the future.

Anytime you ruminate or worry about what happened yesterday, last week or last month…. and anytime you fret or stress about what may come tomorrow, push the button. 

Shut yourself off into a “day-tight compartment”, locking off the past because you can’t change anything about that… and locking off the future, because the only way you can positively impact that is to be 100% present in your now. 

Spiritual Strategy #10: Make no assumptions about what is and is not possible. Lean into beginner’s mind, over and over again, every single day. Just keep asking yourself: “What is mine to be, do, have, create, see, uncover, allow… today?” 

And you’ll find it. 

Before I go, please catch these principles: 

• Every crisis is a portal for your awakening. 
• Every crisis is a portal for you to actualize your God-given potential a little more.
• Every crisis is a portal through which you can become a little bit more of who you need to become to answer your callings. 
• Whether you walk through the portal or not… that’s up to you.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

P.S.: Entrepreneurs and Executives: Here’s how to work with me right now. I guide and coach startups and companies through the fearless, intentional decisions you need to make in order to survive and thrive during this crisis. 

I also brief companies and leaders on the post-virus Transformational Consumer Trends they need to be aware of now…. before they can even be seen in the data.

Just email tara@soultour.com to inquire about ways to work with me to thrive during and after this season.

P.P.S.: Rumi said there are two kinds of intelligence, and I think you might appreciate what he had to say. He wrote:

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired, as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts

from books and from what the teacher says, collecting information from the traditional sciences

as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.

There is another kind of tablet, one already completed and preserved inside you. 

A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of the chest. 

This other intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid, and it doesn’t move from outside to inside through conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you, moving out.That fountainhead — your inner wisdom — is your war chest. And every crisis is also a switch that can turn the fountainhead of your inner wisdom on.