One of my teachers, Florence Shinn, wrote something I try to hold in my heart every time I’m trying to decide whether to make a significant change in my life. 

She wrote: “When in doubt, always do the fearless thing.”  

That’s a badass way to live, ain’t it? 

Depending on your wiring, it might seem absurd as a rule to live by.

Your Inner Critic might even be super-activated right now, listing off all the reasons you should never follow this rule.

“You’ve gotta think it all the way through,” says your Inner Critic. “You could end up broke … or worse, all alone.”

“That’s just irresponsible,” says your Inner Critic. “If you do that, Very Bad Things will happen.”

“Don’t you know how good your life already is? Who do you think you are to want more than you already have??”

Catch this principle: Your Inner Critic is the warped voice of primitive, misguided, self-protective fear that lives in your brain, your mind and your soul. It will always flare up and broadcast a signal of fear right on the brink of your making a change that would expand your capacity, actualize your potentials, fulfill your dreams or increase your income.

Always.

You may know in your heart that there’s a change your life and your Wise Inner Being want you to make.

Your Inner Critic wants you to resist.

But your Inner Critic is not the boss.

Your Inner Critic does not set the navigation or sit behind the steering wheel of your life. 

Here’s a Pro Tip: Start expecting your Inner Critic to start chiming in when you start turning the dial up on your Best Life dreams and goals.

And start declaring it “success!” when you hear your Inner Critic pipe up, because that only happens when you reach beyond your comfort zone and try to expand your capacity.

Today, I thought I’d just share this quick roundup of 11 things that WILL happen when you make the bold, badass, expansive-feeling, liberating-feeling life decision you’ve been contemplating: 

1. You will feel relief. Your Wise Inner Being is asking you to make a move… and when you do, it feels like relief. 
2. You will get all this energy back. It was taking a ton of energy to try to push your desires down, to fight your own Inner Being. When you put an end to the inner conflict of that… you get all that energy back. 
3. You will feel vastly more centered, focused and grounded, because you’re not being pulled in opposite directions. 
4. You will hear your Inner Guidance more clearly. When you go where you’re feeling called to go, it’s like giving your Inner Guidance the green light. You’ll feel less confused and more clear on what you should do and not do, moving forward.
5. You will feel some fear. Anytime you step outside of your comfort zone, that step will spark feelings of being nervous and agitated, even afraid. Learn to recognize that as always, always, 100% of the time a sign you’re making a step in the right direction. And know that your most authentic, most delightful, absolute Best Life lives on the other side of that cloud of fear.
6. The thing you most feared will dissipate. Most of your overthinking, analysis type fears are really lizard brain, brainstem, survival fears that your cognitive brain hooks onto. And when that happens, your brain will spin narratives of projected catastrophes. Thing is, almost all your catastrophic fears are highly, highly unfounded. They are fantasy. So when you actually DO the thing that sparked the fear? The fearful thing dissolves. Florence Shinn said the lion on your path turns into a bouncing puppy.
7. Your fear will change to excitement and exhilaration at your own expansion.

Your fear is just unintegrated excitement. The way you integrate your excitement is to wholeheartedly engage with the subject of your fear. If you have financial fear, get educated and dive into personal finance tools and set yourself a system up. If you’re afraid of dating, go on a buuuuunch of dates. Read books about dating. Listen to the Esther Perel podcast. Wholeheartedly engage with the thing that scares you the most and watch the fear dissolve.

8. You will feel a flood of self-respect, because you’ve honored your own desires instead of overruling or avoiding what is really true for you… and because you’ve proven your Inner Critic wrong. Repeatedly making bold, badass Big Life Decisions contrary to the advice of your Inner Critic is how you wire in the belief that you can actually trust life, this Universe…and yourself. 
9. Things will start happening that you couldn’t have made happen if you tried. You will kickstart a domino effect of doors opening, resources flowing to you, opportunities opening, collaborators showing up, bright ideas lighting up, wondrous “coincidences” sliding into place… that would never have happened had you not made the BBLC in the first place.
10. You will reflect months or even years later and think “Thanks, younger self. I would do that again.” 

Back to old Florence Shinn, who said “when in doubt, do the fearless thing.”

It turns out the data backs her up. (Don’t you just love when science catches up with Spirit?)

A study was just published that was conducted by Steven Leavitt, one of the authors of Freakonomics: Overwhelmingly, people who made a bold, badass life change based on a coin toss were happy they made the change six months later.

Over the long run, people who made BBLCs were way happier than people who thought about making a change but didn’t.

This was true regardless of how the BBLC worked out.

On the other hand, people who didn’t make the BBLC they’d been considering were content two months later… but regretted not making the change six months out.

Let that sink in: When you make a badass life change you’ve been considering, you almost never regret making it. 

Even if it doesn’t work out how you wanted it to. 

And when you don’t make the change that is tugging at you… you’ll almost always regret playing it small and safe. 

This data is 100% consistent with my observation from 25 years in the transformation business: 

No one regrets following their intuition, but almost everyone regrets ignoring it.

So… don’t ignore your intuition. 

Even if it’s asking you to make a BBLC. 

And even if…especially if… that scares you.

That’s just a sign you’re doing it right, [First Name].

Head up + heart out,

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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