Listen, Brilliant One. 

I heard there are some gurus out in the guru-sphere reminding you that you can do hard things.

And when I heard that, I thought…

“It’s true. We can. But my people don’t need to be reminded of that. They do hard things 13 times before breakfast. 

In fact, that’s the problem. 

Because hard things can get you pretty far in life. But the most meaningful, beautiful, joyful things in life don’t come that way. 

They come through the power of our focus. Our attention. Our willingness to listen when Inner Intelligence is speaking and go where Inner Guidance says to go. 

My people have been rewarded for performing…conforming…achieving… being productive… and doing hard things their whole lives. 

And 9 times out of 10, that’s what’s blocking the magic! 

That addiction to hard becomes a relational template with the whole Universe, where you can’t even see the wondrous unlived life that is waiting for you because you’re so used to everything good being so damn hard…”

That was my thought process. 

And just as I was thinking those thoughts, my student and client Meredith Vaish, the Creator and CEO of Pause Box, shared this:

And that was the tipping point, that last little thing that fell into place and reminded me to tell you something I’ve been meaning to tell you (again) for the sake of emphasis. 

Brilliant One, please, for the love of everything sacred:

Let it be easy.

Let it be easy. 

Let it be easy. 

Let it be easy.

Whatever it is. 

Try that on in your spirit. 

Get curious about it. 

If the idea that it could be easy feels like a spark of relief, immediately followed by a spark of argument (Easy is not real! That’s not how the world works! You don’t know my life!) then… you’re on the right track. 

If the mere phrase “let it be easy” sparks within you the temptation to pull out your struggle portfolio and start litigating the case for how real your struggle is… good. Let’s go there. 

If the idea that some stuff you’ve been doing the very hard way could actually be way easier sparks a frisson of terror in your heart, like it still occasionally does in mine, you might be on the trail of a radically liberating insight.

Here’s that insight: Very early in life, you might have learned that to get love, attention or affection, to avoid catastrophe or to be seen as valuable, worthy or a card-carrying member of your family, you have to be any of the following things: 

• Extraordinary
• Perfect
• Longsuffering
• Martyr of the Month
• The Director of the Universe*, spinning all the plates, all the time and smiling all along the way
• Busy
• Better than others
• Over-achieving
• Valiantly plugging away, doing hard things in every area of your life (even, in your relationships and hobbies)
• Never quitting or imposing boundaries on how hard you’ll go
• Never all the way “off” 
• Constantly putting forth super heroic effort.

If you had to be heroic to get your needs met as a child, your toxic penchant for struggle might be rooted in those very early life family patterns. This is what the author and psychologist Alice Miller deems the Drama of the Gifted Child. The “gifted” part describes how good the little You was at repressing your True Self to get what you needed. 

If the struggle “feels like home”, you will re-create it, over and over again as you go through life.  You will re-create that repression of your True Self, over and over again as you go through life. and you’ll even find that struggle just feels more comfortable, available and “right” than ease does. You might not even like people who seem to live on Easy Street, and you might reject, ignore or blow up opportunities for your own easeful, spacious life, over and over again.

But let me tell you something. Your True Self and your true life are not all about the struggle. I mean, have you ever met a toddler who was a martyr? 

Didn’t think so. 

So anything you were taught that says you must struggle to be worthy of love or to thrive is what I call a “lie”. These are the lies of well-meaning family members, and the lies of culture. 

But over a lifetime, these lies get wired into your worldview. They become internalized into the voice of your own inner critic. Your own imposter syndrome. Your own self-judgment and self-criticism. Your own harsh standards for yourself and the false prerequisites you place on your own joy. Your own harsh worldview and negative mental narratives about what kind of life is possible for you and how hard it has to be.

If your thoughts say that all of life is struggle, not struggling doesn’t even occur to you. Doing things the very hardest way feels like it might even endanger your existence. When things feel easy, you feel lazy. Like you’re courting catastrophe if you go all the way on vacation without checking a single email for a single week. 

A spacious, easeful lifestyle without constantly living on the clock might spark existential dread in your soul.

If struggle feels like home, you’ll create hard, to feel alive. You’ll take on difficult relationships or make easy ones difficult, because that just feels more “right”. That feels like home. 

The struggle lies, the unworthiness lies, are the lies that stop you from taking a nap. From taking a break. From getting the help you need. From taking things slow. 

These are the lies that stop you from saying no when everything within you wants to say no. 

These are the lies that cause you to overrule your own inner guidance, to push through that feeling of “shackles on” that would keep you out of depleting, joyless relationships, jobs and patterns if you only listened to it. 

These are the lies that cause you to take on more and more new obligations, without first ending old ones or getting help.

Please be aware that I’m using the harsh word “lies” with great intentionality here. 

That you must produce to have value is an absolute, bald-faced lie.

Because you need never prove your value.

You need never perform to have value.

You need never conform to have value.

You need never achieve anything – be it a certain weight, a certain income or a certain level of status or “success” – to have value. 

You might want to do those things and you might even be destined to do them, but that’s not how you “earn” your place on this planet. 

You need never produce superhuman output to have value.

That’s the lie of the oppressor, in the guise of productivity culture. 

You didn’t come here to check a bunch of tasks off some never-ending, ever-growing to do list in the sky.

You came here for joy.

You came here for ever-increasing wholeness, as you start reclaiming all the parts of yourself you had to shut away, repress and disown just to make it through life, when you were young. 

You came here for radical liberation from inner conflict, from a life of struggle, from the repressive lies of culture and of your own inner critic, imposter syndrome, and self-sabotaging, negative thoughts.

You don’t prove or earn your value by achieving, even though that’s what culture wants you to think. 

That might feel real, like it’s how the world works.

The struggle way feels real. I know it does, y’all. But it’s not true, [First Name].

What’s true is that you are valuable, valued, cherished and beloved of All That Is, not because of what you do, but because you exist. 

You can’t earn your worth, because it’s not earnable. And you can’t lose it, because it’s not lose-able.

Your value is absolute. Your worthiness is, too. You deserve a wonderful, blessed life not because you work your heart out, but because you exist. 

Theeee end. Actually, no… I’m not done.

You are not an asset to be tracked, measured and “valued” like a commodity. 

You are a radiant, magnetic soul and spirit. 

You are made of stardust and mystical, scientific miracles.

You are offspring of the limitless love, the infinite intelligence and the creative power that formed all worlds.

You are a droplet of that.

And you weren’t made for constant, chronic struggle. 

So. 

What are you willing to let be easy today? 

And if the idea of “easy” comes hard to you, ask yourself this breakthrough question all throughout the day/week/month/year/decade, anytime your struggle switch flips on: 

“How easy can I let this be?”

And just watch what lights up. 

Let me flag something for you: You can expect your inner critic to talk you out of the opportunities for things to be spacious and easeful that will start lighting up when you start asking yourself “How easy can I let this be?”

Your inner critic will chime in. Your imposter syndrome will flare up. 

I dare you to gracefully do things differently than you ever have before, and let it be easy anyway.

Head up + heart out,

P.S.: I’ll share more about the struggle switch within you soon.

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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