That’s what Abigail, my right-hand woman, said about me the other day. Just those two words:

“Laser energy.”

I told her that I’ve started getting up at 3 am again, when it feels like the atmosphere — the literal, physical air around me  —  turns to this sort of creative ambrosia and the relative stillness of my mind puts me in maximum receptive mode. This is what the yoga scriptures called Brahmamuhurta, or Creator’s Hour: a time of day when the Creator showers those who want them with Divine Downloads of inspired ideas, hunches and golden threads of inspiration, small and large. 

During Creator’s Hour, you can sit still and see your natural next steps toward whatever you deem important just light up before you. And you can receive the energy to take those next steps. 

But almost no one is up at that time. 

(If you have a harsh Inner Critic, she might be telling you right now something like SEE, I TOLD YOU TO STOP DRINKING WINE AT NIGHT AND GET TO BED EARLIER UGH YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG AGAIN. Tell your Inner Critic thanks for that input, duly noted, you appreciate it, and you’re going to continue reading your favorite newsletter now without the need to compare or judge yourself, because Tara says harsh self-criticism always backfires and Tara also says that you can trust your Inner Intelligence to help you get exactly what you need out of this message, exactly when you need it. Eat the meat and leave the bones. Carry on.)

See, as quiet as it’s kept, your brain and body take much longer to wake all the way up than almost anyone gives them time to. 

After twenty years in the transformation business, I’ve learned a lot about the normal wake up experience. 

Most people wake up with a scarcity story on their mind that goes like this: “I didn’t get enough sleep.” And many wake up with a dread story, too: “I don’t want to do whatever it is I’ve got slated to do today.” 

And many, many people wake up and resume the same energy they had when they went to sleep the prior night. That feeling of Zerissenheit, the German word for feeling torn to pieces by all the demands, projects and tasks of the day, feeling stressed about being here and now while already thinking ahead to the hundreds of other things you’ll need to do that day.

And so they linger in bed for as long as humanly possible, trying to eke out a few more moments of avoidance, then sort of jolt themselves up, hurl their bodies out of bed and start caffeinating in an effort to shake off the fog and brace themselves for the coming day and its coming onslaughts. 

Neurobiologists call this mentally foggy segment of time after you wake up sleep inertia. And it’s not a couple of minutes, it’s more like 30 minutes, neurobiologically speaking.

And the “fix” for it is not caffeine… it’s time. 

The fix is time. 30 minutes your brain wakes up, you just need time. 

And the fix for that dread story of “I don’t want to do this day” is sovereignty. The fix for that is pruning your calendar ruthlessly. Getting better and better every day at removing the things you dread and also giving yourself more, longer, uninterrupted stretches of time to do the things that bring you delight or put you in the flow. 

The fix is time. To give yourself time.

And the fix for that scarcity story of “I didn’t get enough sleep” is getting to bed earlier, investing in a bedtime wind-down routine that feels like a gift you give yourself every night, setting some boundaries with yourself. Limiting the empty calorie screen time in which you indulge at night not from a place of harsh self discipline, but from a place of lavishing yourself with sleep and with… time. 

The fix is time. 

And the fix for Zerissenheit is to take a sacred pause, to reclaim your energy and attention from the hundreds of demands that will come later on, to stop reacting and to replenish yourself, tapping into that natural well of energy you have within (whether you know it or not).

The fix is time. 

I’m not saying you have to get up at 3 am. But I do. And when I do, I don’t hurl myself straightaway into the day. I don’t start making myself available to other people and their emotions first thing. 

I make myself a huge cup of green tea. I light candles all around. I sit. I just sit still for a while, often with the sound of the rain playing on my white noise app, and I just be. 

Then I freely write, getting all the thoughts and ideas and grievances of yesterday and concerns of today on the page. Sometimes that brain dump just snowballs into notes for my team, for the book, or even just answers to a question I’d been pondering.

Then I pray and do some declarations. And then I turn on my chakras with a little micro-yoga practice, The Five Tibetans, or some agility and mobility work. (If that got too woo for you, just think: new age calisthenics.)

By then my brain is ON. I write for a while, the book or the curriculum for my new program, or I work on a Transformation Tuesday. 

And then I work out.

And then my day in the external world begins, usually with Londyn springing out of her room and yelling, “TA-DAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I’M AWAKE!! IS IT WAKE UP TIME???” 

And fast forward… then my day ends around 8 or 8:30, with a bath and bedtime. Because: 3 am. wake time requires an early bedtime too.

But before I do all of that, I just sit and I just be in that brain fog state for a while, knowing that because I have this luxurious stretch of time to myself before I start writing, and because I have that luxurious stretch of writing time to myself before I start working… my sleep inertia transforms into a gift, not a problem to be fixed. 

With time, your so-called sleep inertia transforms into the gift of a quieter mind, so you can feel your natural next steps light up. 

It’s the gift of being in receptive mode, which reminds you that there’s magic and assistance available to you. 

It’s the gift of being fully alert for a good long stretch and getting to put that energy into what I care about before you open yourself to other people’s priorities.

It’s the gift of being able to hear my Divine Downloads in high clarity.

It’s the gift of being able to spend some time adjusting my frequency, getting in alignment with whatever I’ve chosen to focus on that day. Removing the energy of “I have to” and remembering why “I chose to”. Resetting and realigning those choices, if I need to because something feels “shackles on” or my callings are calling me to a different allocation of time and energy today.

It’s the gift of hearing and seeing what needs hearing and seeing. Of seeing dots connect that you can’t see while you’re in hustle and bustle mode. Some days, I have an epiphany or download about what I want to create next or what’s not in alignment, and it comes so fast and complete during my sitting or free-writing that it’s in my team’s inbox before I even get on the bike at 5 am. 

It’s the gift of some time in flow mode every single day, without being interrupted. 

It’s the gift of waking up eager to start the day, even on those days when I have to do things I would rather not. It’s the gift of being able to feel when that’s happening a little too often for my liking. It’s the gift of feeling the “shackles on” and being able to explore that, having the time to pour yourself and your thoughts onto the page, so you can see what feels constricting. Where you can explore your patterns. Where you can slow down your feeling > reaction loops and insert a pause of mindful, intentional decision making.

It’s the gift of the space and self-compassion to have made a detailed action plan and then feel how it’s not in alignment with what you really, truly care about the very most, so you replace it with 3 simple, important priorities for your entire year. 

It’s the gift of letting yourself feel the unwanted emotions, letting yourself distill what they want to communicate with you, and resetting in a natural, resting place of trust and knowing that everything is always working out for you, before you start doing and acting and performing and producing and perfecting for the day. 

It’s the gift of grounding. Getting to center. It’s the gift of breath. Quiet.

I think of it as countering all the scarcity messages I’ve ever received by lavishing myself with the gift of time. 

For me, the quality of life boost I get out of my early AM wake-time and practice is extreme.  It’s the most restful thing I do, even more restful than sleep itself. The flow it allows me to live in, regularly creating my ideas without blocks or stuckness… it’s joyful and intrinsically motivating, psychologically.

But it’s also deeply spiritual: It’s when I reset and stop reacting. It’s when I reconnect with my own natural strength and power, and with All That Is. With God. It’s when I explore my own shadows and open my soul and replenish it and integrate what I’ve learned more deeply, into who I’m becoming. 

It’s when I see the hidden hijinks of my own Inner Critic, and get intentional about breaking the pull of my patterns. 

It’s my inner retreat, and I get to take it every day of my life, anywhere I am in the world. 

And it’s how I get to this place of laser energy that I’m in right now, over and over again: Focused on what matters the most. Focused on aligning to that and resourcing that. Focused on putting things in their rightful place on the priorities list, because there’s always that creep of urgent things trying to knock the important stuff off the top of the list. Focused on delegating more effectively or taking less important things off the list altogether and letting that be okay, too.

I’m challenging you this week to get curious about this: Do you give yourself and your soul-deep priorities (not just your work priorities or household duties) the gift of time? 

What is your Inner Critic saying about why this delectable, lavish gift of time isn’t really available to you, personally? 

What does your Inner Naysayer think when you think about going to bed earlier or, if you’re a night owl, turning off the devices so you can just be? 

What might be possible for you, if you did? And I don’t just mean what stuff could you get done. 

I mean how would you feel? Self-respect? Self-compassion? Awake? More alive?

Yeah, probably all of those.

Head up + heart out,

The Inner Critic Coach™

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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