Four percent. 

That’s all I ask of you. 

That every day you seek to move 4% closer to doing the thing that scares you the most, which is usually the same as the thing you would find the most deeply fulfilling, exhilarating and liberating… if you could do it.

Let me tell you about a conversation I had with one of my favorite coaching students the other day. 

She has a calling on her life. A calling for greatness. She is an uplifter to the core, and trails a cloud of genius around her. 

She’s got a wildly successful career that is lucrative and high-status, but less than fulfilling. 

And together, we’re starting to invite a clear vision for her next season to drop in. 

We were talking about what it might look like for her to hop off the treadmill of checking the boxes of what society says is a successful life and realign her life with who she really is and what she really cares about, in a way that integrates her spiritual and entrepreneurial journeys. 

And she had a golden thread of an inspired idea drop in. It was the kind of thing we call a Divine Download: a gorgeous vision for what she’d like to create and how it might look.

So I asked her this question: What feels like the natural next step to you? 

She got thoughtful and said, as the smart ones often do: 

Well, let me break it down into a 100 point action plan for the next 5 years… 

I’ll need to do this and do that and choose this and oh my goodness I have to build that and figure this out and do that, too, and fly there and probably shop for the exact linens and then 2,300 other things.

And I was like ok cool cool cool…. 

But I didn’t ask you all that. 

I only want to know what FEELS like the single, natural next step.

Because I’ve worked in the transformation business for about 25 years, y’all. 

And I’ve been a human being for 45. 

So I know this: Those detailed, logical, linear, step-by-step action plans for years out in the future almost never work. 

Because that’s not how your brain works.

That’s not how your spirit works, either.

And that’s definitely not how life works. 

Life never goes according to those plans. 

Anytime you get attached to your action plans and timelines, you feed your Inner Critic. The troubleshooting is fodder for fear: fear something will go wrong, fear of not being able to predict your outcomes with certainty, fear that you’ve missed one step so you’ve already screwed it up, or fear that you’ll miss one step or twenty or only do something partially instead of all the way.

So I almost never want you to start down the path to your most inspired idea by laying out a super detailed, granular, long-term 100-point action plan. 

Especially in the earliest stages of your dreams, I never want you to think the long-term action plan all the way through with your mind. 

Instead, I want you to tune in — listen within — to what FEELS like the natural next step. 

And take that. 

And then do the same tomorrow. 

What I’m about to say may seem counterintuitive, but just hear me out: Having a harsh Inner Critic doesn’t always show up as having low self-esteem or low-achieving in life. 

The most successful people I work with often have the most dominant Inner Critic, but it shows up in a very different way. 

Among smart, successful people, the Inner Critic often shows up as a spiritual emergency brake that stops you from getting off the treadmill of a culturally approved life. So you can be very high-performing and powerful at things that don’t matter that much to you, but feel like you hit a wall of hesitation, delay, mixed mind and Resistance any time you try to step out of that corporate life and into a soulful life outside of the box. 

One way the Inner Critic does this is by pretending to be the voice of reason and logic, setting you up for self-sabotage with uninspiring action plans and unsustainable goals when it comes to your soul-level callings and dreams. Against that backdrop, the shadow life of checking off boxes feels much safer and simpler. 

So you just keep doing that, checking off boxes, day in and day out.

That’s why when you get those Divine Downloads, those beautiful inspired ideas that feel so exhilarating for a moment, you may have a habitual arc that looks like:

1. Get big, beautiful idea for how life can be different
2. Have a honeymoon period with your dream
3. Start thinking about all the action items it would take for you to be/do/have/create/learn that dream and start feeling the bigness, start imagining how difficult it will be
4. Start troubleshooting all the things that could go wrong if you step into your dream, and feel the inner shackles start encircling your heart
5. Visualize yourself being vulnerable and feel your spiritual emergency brakes activate
6. Feel your inspiration and self-respect dwindle
7. Feel sad and wonder why you can’t seem to get it together
8. Go get busy doing housework or work work for a dopamine hit of worthiness, to remind yourself that you are a competent person and maybe get some external validation from someone who appreciates that work.

So, if you have a big inspired idea or dream or unique, electric vision for your life, my challenge to you is this:

Don’t plan it all out.

You wanna stack the decks in favor of your dreams???

Don’t plan them all the way out.

Not yet.

I know you think that doing so makes you a good, rational, responsible grown-up.

I know you think doing that kind of action plan is a prerequisite for making your dream come true.

But it’s exactly the opposite. 

So today, I just want you to tune into your inner awareness about what feels like the natural next step.

Identify that. 

Find a version of that step that feels just 4% more challenging than anything you’ve ever done before. 

And just take that step. 

Maybe today’s 4% step poses a challenge to your comfort zone around being vulnerable and visible.

Maybe tomorrow’s natural next step challenges you to be 4% more organized than normal.

Maybe the next natural next step challenges you to be 4% more free in your self-expression than normal, speaking up for yourself, saying what you mean, asking for what you need.

Just 4%.

Because 4% isn’t scary enough to give your Inner Critic the hook of “that’s super risky are you out of your mind????” or “you’re being totally irresponsible and your children will starve. Get it together.” 

4% doesn’t feed your Inner Critic.

And here’s the happy side effect of challenging yourself to focus 4% more on your dreams than on your fears every day. At a glance, it seems like 4% x 25 days would have you double your capacity roughly once a month.

But that’s bad math. You have to think of it like compounding interest. Because if you grow your capacity to fulfill yourself 4% today, then tomorrow you don’t start back over with 100%. Tomorrow you start with 104% of the capacity with which you started and grow that by an additional 4%. 

So, if you grow your capacity to do your dreams by 4% every day, your capacity grows by over 1 million percent in one year’s time.

And that’s how you become free.

And that leaves you, in one year, with a 1 million percent higher threshold for the scariness of challenges you can face before you set off your Inner Critic. 

That leaves you with 1 million percent more inner peace, more of your inner landscape, that you can explore hand-in-hand with your Inner Being – your True Self – the voice of the Divine that speaks to you within you… instead of having your mental airwaves dominated by that loud, fear-spouting Inner Critic. 

Spiritually speaking, 4% is the precise incremental difficulty that results in: your natural next step. It keeps your dreams from feeling so scary that the fear feeds your Inner Critic. 

Neurobiologically, 4% harder than your current capacity puts you in a flow state sweet spot. 

Neurobiologically, 4% is just challenging enough for you to get into blissful creation mode, lose track of time and become joyfully absorbed in the desirable difficulty of your challenge without your brain flipping its internal struggle switch on and tapping out of the project entirely. 

And here’s another beautiful thing about 4%: It’s just enough of a step to put the higher powers and forces of this Universe on notice of your commitment. 

It’s enough to spark the assisting forces that are all around you all the time, so that they know you’re open and willing to move forward, meaning you are open and willing to receive their help.

And as a result, when you take a 4% step you can rest assured that help is on the way. Always and in all ways. Ways that will surprise, please and delight you.

Four percent is enough to activate Divine Order and Divine Timing, which are real and always in your favor. Four percent tells Divine Order and Divine Timing to start weaving their golden threads together into a magic carpet of momentum beneath you that adds to your energy, adds to your focus.

(By the way: That’s why stepping into your callings is actually energizing as you go, not depleting.)

Four percent is just enough to start re-educating your spirit that you actually can trust yourself, trust your ideas and trust that everything is always working out for you. 

Four percent starts to re-train your fearful holding patterns and break their pull.

Four percent will trigger momentum in your brain, in your mind and in your soul, but also in your relationships and in your ability to see opportunities all around you that you couldn’t see before.  

The right doors begin to open. 

The wrong ones start to close.

The path of possibility lights up before you.

Your co-creators show up and raise their hands. 

Four percent teams you up with the creative power that formed all worlds, and wants to flow through you, too.

I don’t care whether your inspired idea is to move to Spain, to write a book that forever changes its readers, to unschool your kids or to leave your job and start a profitable, influential,  transformational business…

Know this today:

You are poised and powerful.

Your True, Sacred Self is timeless and tireless.

You are radiant and magnetic to wonderful things.

They now begin to flow to you by grace, over calm seas, in perfect ways.

Get open.

Get receptive.

Get willing. 

Stop overthinking it. 

Just take what feels like the natural, next step… 4% beyond your current comfort zone. 

And with that step, climb up onto your magic carpet of momentum.

I’ll see you there.

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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