On Easter, an old friend texted to ask whether we’d done an egg hunt at my house. I said “Yes, but we did it very Tara-style.” I meant that we had put on our Easter dresses and done a video shoot all around our neighborhood. 

But before I could explain, she wrote back: “You did an Easter egg hunt with egg whites????”

See, she remembers back when I was a total health obsessive. After an unhealthy few years as a young Mom, I’d lost 60 pounds. In the process, my pendulum swung in the way opposite direction. I survived mostly on chicken breasts, egg whites and vegetables for years. I didn’t drink… alcohol or milk. Or milk substitutes. I didn’t eat sugar, most fruits or grain. 

For years.

I used to say things like: “cow milk is for cows” and “grain is for livestock.”

And, if asked for my exercise philosophy, I would share my Dad’s old rule about working out: “You don’t work out every day. You only work out on the days you eat.” 

So, I ran and ran and ran and Versaclimbed and lifted. I wore 70 SPF all day every day. 

For years.

Until one day, crossing the street, I slipped a bit and shattered the side of my foot. Freak accident. Then a few years later, I slipped a bit and broke the other one. Bizarre.

I switched from running to spinning, to minimize the impact on my feet, sometimes taking two classes a day. My feet still hurt, but it was tolerable… until it wasn’t. One day I had to climb off the bike and limp into the office of a new doctor, who held up the x-ray film and counted out all the stress fractures in my feet: One, two, three, four. 

He put me on total foot rest. No walks, no workouts. I came back six weeks later. 

He found 3 new stress fractures.

Turned out, I had early osteoporosis, from a severe, chronic Vitamin D deficiency I’d probably had forever. 

The new doctor counted off her own list of reasons I had nearly no Vitamin D in my body: 
You’re Black, and melanin makes it harder to get your Vitamin D from the sun
You wear SPF 70, blocking the sun
You wear long sleeves all the time, even to work out. Blocking the sun.
You work inside. No sun.
You don’t eat dairy or dairy substitutes, most of which are fortified with Vitamin D
You don’t eat grain, which is also often fortified with Vitamin D.

It turned out that a lot of the things I was doing in the name of ensuring my health were actually harming my health.

She went on and on, then gave me 500,000 units of Vitamin D to take that week, to at least get a little traction started on the bone matrix I needed to rebuild. 

I’m fine now, of course. 

But this story is not about Vitamin D.

This story is about what happens when you distrust your own body, and your own Universe.

See, when I was doing All of Those Things in the name of “making myself healthy”, it was like I’d decided I was the Director of the Universe, as my friend Victoria would say.

I was solely responsible for my health, in my mind. So I pulled every lever I knew how.

And in so doing, I blocked the most fundamental gift this Universe bestows every single day on every single human:  the sun. 

And, in trying to run the Universe, I blocked my body from doing what Infinite Intelligence had already programmed my cells to do: convert that sun into Vitamin D. 

Since then, I’ve discovered that the idea that we must control and manage everything we possibly can or catastrophe might occur is an unworthiness story. The idea that we’re not worthy of a wonderful life if we’re anything less than superheroic in our efforts to tame the Universe, including but definitely not limited to our bodies, is oppressive and flat-out false.

So the next time you think you need to inventory all the things that you want to fix, edit, change, optimize or make happen about your body, your self or your life, I invite you to try this reframe which has a funny name: pronoia. 

Paranoia is the idea that everything in this world is out to get you.

And pronoia is the opposite. It’s the idea that everything in this world is conspiring to bless you.

But pronoia is not just an idea. If you reflect on the logistics of your existence, you can’t help but find the proof points for pronoia.

Your lungs and your atmosphere conspire to breathe you to life about 22,000 times a day, with no assistance or instruction from you. 

Your connective tissues keep on negotiating a series of agreements between your skeleton and your muscles, all conspiring to hold you together even if you release your clenched jaw and those little muscles between your eyebrows. They conspire to keep you all together, even while you sleep.

Your cells keep re-creating the new version of the old you, like the rapper says.

Your skin and the sun conspire to continuously re-create your skeleton in a process that continues even at night, even if you live in the Arctic. Your sweat even plays a part in this chemical miracle. 

Unless you block yourself from receiving your pronoia blessings like I did, by refusing to trust that all could be well with my body with a more joyful, less superhuman performance on my part.

I still take really great care of my body. But I move and nourish it in ways that feel like a gift, not a superhuman, neverending chore. 

I’ve reflected. I’ve connected the dots. And I’ve learned that you can get a lot done in your life the very hard way. I did, for years. I used to have an addiction to doing things the very hardest way possible. 

But the best things in my life didn’t come to me that way. 

They happened when wonderful things lit up before me.

And when I trusted my Inner Guidance.

And when I decided I can’t lose. I can only win or learn, because that’s all there is. 

And when I learned how to get out of my own way and take action, when inspired, from a stance of total trust that everything would always work out for me. 

And it does. 

That’s the thing: You’d think that a trusting, receptive mode would make you lazy.

But it totally works the opposite way.

Trust actually opens you up to those golden threads of inspiration and gives you the energy to act on them when they come. 

Trust and inspired action go hand in hand.

Trust is the masterful way to live. 

Stand down. Stand still. Stop achieving so much. Stop blocking your own blessings.

Start receiving. 

Decide you’re not willing to participate in feeling unworthy anymore. 

Get receptive.

And watch what lights up for you.

Head up + heart out,

P.S.: Tomorrow I open the doors to my cornerstone program, Life and Self Mastery, for the first time since March of 2019. 

I’ll tell you all about it soon, of course. But know this: The students in that program learn my proven Daily Ritual and build the mindsets to silence their inner critic and break their patterns of negative thinking and self-sabotage.

Just 30 days in, they report feeling clear-minded, positive and focused on what really matters to them.

<<  Learn more or sign up here.

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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