At any given moment in life, there is a choice you can make. 

Scratch that. Let me say that differently.

In EVERY moment of your life, you are making a choice. 

That choice  — I call it The Choice — is whether to fulfill your potential or whether to hinder your own highest good.

This is spiritual law. It’s one of what I’ve come to call The House Rules of the Universe. 

There’s no super simple, absolute, black-and-white decision rule to help you make the right choice when you make The Choice. 

Sometimes, The Choice in favor of your highest good is to gear up, go all in and do the damn thing. 

Other times, The Choice that supports you reaching your full potential is to do nothing. To take a break. Take a vacation. Take a nap. 

Fortunately, you always have the ability to know whether the choice you’re making is a vote in favor of your good or not by how it feels when you are about to do it. 

If the thing you’re thinking about doing feels good, shackles off, energizing or expansive, it is a step toward your highest good… even if the thing also makes you feel nervous, afraid or vulnerable. 

If the option before you feels shackles on, depleting or like you’re letting your own self down… that’s a signal that it’s against your highest good and fullest potential.

The first step to getting skillful with this House Rule of the Universe is this: Get in a place of radical self-acceptance and self-love first. 

Do not decide that you love yourself enough to work on your choices and then hate yourself for the choices you’ve made or are making. 

That just feeds your Inner Critic. And that defeats the whole purpose. 

I’m not big on convincing people to do anything ever, but here’s a super-short list of my arguments why you should suspend self-judgment while you look at your choices:

1. Self-judgment never creates self-liberation so it’s 100% counterproductive.
2. You have no ability to change your past choices so judging yourself for them is wasted energy you could be using to make self-actualizing choices now.
3. Almost any wise human you ever meet will tell you they got that way, in part, by making choices they wouldn’t repeat and reflecting on those choices and how things turned out. 
4. When wise humans reflect on their lives backwards, they see both the unwanted consequences of their past choices and the wonderful things that came to them despite or even through the unwanted seasons or upsetting moments in their past. 

Listen: You have to decide not to judge or criticize yourself when you start to see the choices you’re making or have made in the past, or you’re not allowed to keep reading, watching or listening to this message. 

I’m serious. If you can’t agree to suspend the need to judge yourself for the choices you make, no problem. I love you. Close this email. Have a beautiful week. See you next time. 

Oh, you CAN commit? No self-judgment? No self-criticism? 

Can you take a step outside yourself and become an objective observer of your own choice-making for even a day? 

Ok cool, then you can keep reading. 

Now. The second step is to become aware that you’re making The Choice all the time, and to become aware of how you are making the Choice. So much of our decision-making is habitual, that it’s very easy to unwittingly find yourself in a downward spiral, living the results of autopilot decisions you made (and are still making, out of habit) that limit the extent to which the genius within is ever allowed out. 

And the third step is to get intentional about The Choice more and more of the time, making Choices that feel better and better to you over time and then watching the net level of freedom, liberation, wholeness, joy, health, wealth, wisdom, abundance and unfettered self-expression rise as you make The Choice over and over again, in the small things and in the big ones. 

But that part kind of happens automatically if you really dive deep on Step 2: Awareness. So let’s go back there.

Just becoming aware that you are voting for yourself or against yourself in every moment helps to break the pull of those habit patterns. 

So I want you to start to see the many, many ways this choice … this vote for your highest good or vote for your inner critic… can look in your everyday life.

Catch this principle: Your opportunities to make The Choice number in the thousands every day. 

Here’s what they can look like: 

You get to choose whether to think a self-judging thought or a self-loving thought.

You get to choose whether to make an excuse or whether to reclaim your power by taking responsibility, even if that’s uncomfortable. 

You get to choose whether to have uplifting or complaining conversations. And every time you find yourself in a complaining conversation, you get to choose whether to keep participating in it, or shift it, or end it… at any time. 

You get to choose whether, what and how much to eat (most of the time).

You get to choose what food to even have on hand, in your home. (Most of the time.)

You get to choose whether to select your food based on what truly nourishes your body or to eat your emotions. 

You get to choose whether to binge one more show or to read something beneficial before bed. 

You get to choose whether to hate on your job or to bloom where you’re planted, even when you decide it’s time to move on. 

You get to choose whether to gossip or to praise. 

You get to choose whether to keep overcommitting your calendar  x and overextending yourself or whether to practice saying no and create more space and time in your life. 

You get to choose whether to build a rich inner life or whether to avert your eyes from looking within because you’re afraid of what you’ll find. 

You get to choose whether to ask for what you need or to play the martyr.

When your kids feel bad or can’t access their neurological impulse control centers, you get to choose whether to connect and soothe or to yell and threaten. Up to you. 

You get to choose whether to do the inner work to heal your family’s patterns or to keep perpetuating them.

You get to decide whether to let your this-lifetime trauma, your traumatized ancestors and this toxic culture be the boss of you or whether you’re ready to turn within, shine light on your shadows and reclaim your sovereignty and your life. 

And… you get to choose whether to rush and judge the pace and progress of your Inner Work or to make peace with yourself, let things take the time they take and start living the wide-open, spacious life you came here to live. 

In any given moment you get to choose whether to stop disrespecting, overruling and overriding the voice of your own Inner Intelligence or whether to start recognizing it, honoring it and obeying it because it is the voice of Infinite Intelligence sending you a text message like “NO don’t do that. Don’t go there. Yes! Raise your hand for that. You’re ready for this. I’ll help.”

Every freaking moment of your life, you get to decide whether to be stingy or lavish with yourself.

… and that’s just off the top of my head. 

Catch this principle: 

All day, all throughout the day, every single day you are making The Choice to receive or resist your highest good, over and over again.

I don’t want you to feel terrorized by this.

I want you to feel the power in this.

And I want you to know what they say in Tibet, that “if you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves.”

If you make The Choice to step toward fulfilling your potential this minute… and then in the next one… over and over again…

If you make The Choice to follow your Wise Inner Guidance in this minute…

If you close your eyes and sit with the question of what kind of human you really want to be, then you open your eyes and make a decision to show up as that person in this minute… 

And if you make The Choice in this moment to stop participating in anything other than  what you want… 

The years will take care of themselves. 

The seemingly Big Stuff will take care of itself. 

The stars will align. 

And so will the rest of your life. 

I dare you. Try it. Start now. 

Head up + heart out,

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI
Sign up to receive Transformation Tuesday in your inbox, here.