There’s a teacher I know who says people who want to be millionaires should stop making broke ass decisions and start making decisions that move them closer to making a million dollars instead. Seems right, at least directionally. 

Money’s great. Also directionally. To the extent that money is time is freedom is energy, I’m into it. 

But the biggest million dollar decisions I’ve ever made in my life were the decisions I made to walk away from a job that offered me seven-figures to stay and to turn down several million dollars in venture capital funding for SoulTour.

There was nothing inherently wrong with that job or with taking venture money. 

But my Inner Guidance was not on board, and voiced its opposition LOUDLY. 

My biggest Million Dollar Decisions were to turn down millions and prioritize meaning. 

And as a wonderful side effect…  from these decisions, millions of dollars will ultimately flow.

Because we’re raised from childhood to perform, conform and produce our way to “success”, you might think that success is all about making the right moves, having the right strategies, making the right decisions and having the right connections. 

But I know otherwise. 

I know that what society calls success is laughable in the cosmic context, because you can’t get ahead on a hamster wheel… you can just get more and more convinced that the hamster wheel is the real world.

And I know that the moments that feel the most like success to me are not hamster wheel moments—they’re moments of transcendent connection and creation for the flow of it, for the sake of it.

Standing next to my friend Celena while we push exhilarated toddlers on the swings and revel in the redwoods around us. 

Sitting at the bar with a kale salad, some fries and a glass of champagne, watching the chapters of my next book take shape as they pour straight into me from Spirit and off my fingertips. 

Speaking the empire of my soul to life as I leave voice memos for my team about my (brilliant, if I do say so myself) business ideas.

Unapologetically speaking life into an audience, at a conference or on a Zoom session. 

Shopping with Londyn (aka letting this radiant baby goddess sprinkle love-dust on all the peoples) at the farmer’s market, in Oakland or in Mexico. 

That’s my definition of success: a life in which you get to spend a lot of your time in beautiful paces surrounded by beautiful things doing things you deem meaningful with whomever you choose (and you choose well)… a life where you feel and operate like the powerful creator you are… a life where your thoughts turn into things frequently and flowfully… and where you feel connected and creative all along the way. 

Don’t get it twisted. Even my version of success requires money, sure. 

But it takes even more time, space, clarity about who you are and what you’re about when you get off the hamster wheel and the sovereignty to hustle less, output less and still make let it rain. 

So, to my mind, the real baller decisions aren’t engineered to make you a million dollars. Real talk? That money is make-able, millions and millions of ways. 

So the real flex is not to make a million, it’s to magnetize the money to do what you want, while you are becoming the being you came here to be, fulfilling yourself as you came here to be fulfilled and having millions of big and small, mundane and peak, transcendent, beautiful, meaningful moments all along the way. And of course, as you become the creator you came here to be, you can make your life a magnet to millions, too.

But the millions are the means, not the end. 

And focusing on them AS the end? It’s seriously uninspiring and rarely works. 

Someone literally handed me a check for millions once, but it was the culmination of a long series of events which started when I chose the lesser-paying, more meaningful thing. 

Only 20% of whether you’ll be “successful” in this life has anything to do with the bread-and-butter decisions you make. 

The other 80% is based on your inner wellbeing—your spiritual wellbeing. 

That’s what determines how clear your mind is, how grounded your energy is and how consistent your actions are. That’s what determines how inspired your ideas are. 

That’s what determines how often you dwell in your zone of genius. 

That’s what determines what opportunities you see…and take action on.

That’s what determines whether you can commit and stay the course long enough to let your so-called “failures”, painful patterns, obstacles and disappointments do their work within you. 

When your inner well is full and your spiritual pipeline is expanded to wide open, you could make 490 strategically “wrong” decisions and still thrive. And every single one of those 490 decisions would have gifted you with some tasty morsel of wisdom, clarity, power or maturity along the way. 

Because in this culture’s performative obsession that says you’ve gotta meditate, pray, retreat, send love and light, go vegan and stay woke to check the “spiritual” box, what gets lost is this: TRUST.

One of the most delicious elements of mature, spiritual wellbeing is knowing FOR SURE that help is always on the way, so you needn’t fret, worry or perfectionist the joy out of the journey.

And the cherry on top of TOTAL TRUST that Divine Order and Divine Timing are real is learning how to register, recognize, allow and accept assistance to flow, flow, flow your boat gently down the stream of happiness, success and abundance. 

That’s how you do big things and live big dreams.

You don’t have to do them all alone. 

You can’t even do them all alone.  And that’s just fine, because you won’t need to. 

When you get tired of playing this culture’s bullshit unworthiness games, and you decide there’s just no other option for you but to muster up the courage to let yourself want the fullness of what you really want in life?

The heavens will open and pour out assistance, in heaping, overflowing, bucketloads, upon you. 

That was a word for someone today. So back to those Million Dollar Decisions. 

I made one this morning.

My dearly beloved Ace #1 babysitter walked in the door to cover me during this school holiday so I could run to the doctor’s office. 

And I bought out her overnight sessions… for all of 2022. 

See, remember when I said that if you tend to your spiritual wellbeing first and foremost, the right strategic moves and decisions will become clear to you, even if you take 490 wrong roads before you take the right one? 

Well, I’ve had multiple sources share the three-part message that 1) SO MUCH ASSISTANCE is trying to get to me, and 2) I’m not receiving all of it and 3) that when I do it will exponentially multiply my success, happiness, abundance and alignment. 

Listen. First and foremost: Kudos to me. 

I’m ending 2021 so, so much more resourced than I started it. 

I made an intentional effort to get much more deeply connected. Supported. In these beautiful, reciprocal relationships. And I have.

Yet I still find myself with weeks that go by, feeling like the inspirations are pent up and piling up… weeks where I’ve got this Netflix concept and that TED Tak concept that need to come out, but no time to let ‘em on out. 

But I also made a decision this year that the seemingly mundane things of life, like time with friends and respectful, intentional, attentional parenting matter to me… a lot. 

I decided to limit the baby’s hours in playschool because this is the only time she’ll ever be 4, and the opportunity to swing with her and read the goddess book to her and teach her how to ride a bike is much more fleeting and precious than the opportunities to create books and business thangs.

So I wrote in my journal over and over again: Infinite Spirit show me the way.

Show me the way I can have both ALL OF THAT and ALL OF THIS.

SPIRIT! I demanded. Reveal it! How might it look?

Well, it looks deep. 

It looks like needing hours and days to go deep and create. And it looks like two nights a month off from bath-giving and nighttime-routine-doing. 

And that’s the Million Dollar Decision I made today.

But I hope what’s become obvious by now is that making Million Dollar Decision is not about money.  

It’s about getting out of the way of your own Best Life. And about getting into alignment to what you are creating. 

If you are a person who tends to do things the hard way, it’s usually a decision that unblocks your creative power by allowing more assistance to flow. 

I share this now because I know you’re mentally, spiritually and logistically beginning the offramp from this year into 2022. 

And I know (because you’ve asked) that you’re wondering what I do to leave one year and begin the next. 

I close a last few open loops.

I slow my ass down.

I metabolize what I’m ready to leave behind in 2021 (or in 1993 or whatever).

I sit and get still and get out of FIXING or JUDGING or even DOING TOO MUCH energy.

I start to revel in my wins and bring “all is well” energy into the atmosphere.

And I start imagining. 

Dreaming. 

Giving thanks that the dream now becomes real, in a perfect way. And I refrain from acting, or action planning too much even. 

Instead, I focus my energy on ALIGNING to the possibilities I want to turn into realities. 

I ask myself what’s not in alignment. And I scan the field of possibilities for what alignments I might create.  And as a result, every once in a while, I book a twice-monthly overnight sitter for a year.  Let me close with an invitation. 

I invite you to hold all these things in your big heart as you imagine the reality you want in 2022:

1. Revel in your wins. 
2. Shed what feels bad aka what no longer serves you and don’t feel the need to spend a single moment justifying or explaining why you’re shedding it. 
3. Commit to let things take the time they take. That usually looks like doubling or tripling your timelines and halving or thirding the list of things you want to do next year. Slash away. 
4. Select only goals that seem like they’d feel super GOOD to you as you work toward them, even if you never actually reached them. 
5. Decide to judge how successful you are next year by how much joy you experience every day.
6. Remember that even INACTION is a decision, and can be a very wise one to make.
7. Prioritize alignment over action. 

As you start to make decisions that lay the groundwork for your 2022, remember that your Million Dollar Decisions are all alignment decisions. 

They are decisions to look with frank, loving, self-compassionate self-awareness at all of the elements of your life and see what is not in alignment with the reality you want, then focus on creating space and systems, receiving assistance and resources and cultivating trust. 

They are decisions to dare to take action on inspirations when they come, and not give up in the middle. 

They are unblocking decisions—the ones that take a limiting factor OFF.

They are the decisions that value as precious your time, YOUR LIFE FORCE and your zone of genius… and that replenish all of the above.

Actually, as I think of it… I would call these Self-Actualization Decisions except the acronym SAD is backwards so I’ll keep working on a better name. 

Here are a few other Million Dollar Decisions I’ve made recently:

1. I hired people and chose to work on my relationships with them and our work flows in an ongoing way instead of firing everybody like I used to do.
2. I committed over and over again to my callings, to my Best Author Life, to the vision of Farm by the Beach, to a thriving SoulTour and to the overarching transformational empire I’m here to create, for the benefit of all. 
3. I acquired a 9Round kickboxing fitness franchise that was already profitable and already had a team in place, because one thing I know I’m called to do is to build said empire without swinging a hammer. 
4. I joined a country club near my home to get off the endless waitlists for kids enrichment lessons, to have a warm pool and a hot sauna always at the ready and to have a KIds’ Club where I could take L during meetings.
5. I got a fancy iPhone in addition to my “real” phone to have a dedicated device for social media that doubles as a “Freedom Phone”.
6. I stopped coaching and fired a really wonderful, really lucrative corporate client to clear my precious childcare-free hours for the creating I need to do. 
7. I let go of some longtime, long-cherished business relationships that weren’t in alignment with what I’m creating, no matter how much I love the people involved.
8. I decided to take a sacred pause and invite the A-list to throw their hats in the ring to work with me, instead of immediately replacing the folks from line 7 with the easy choices.
9. I invested tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of time and money in leading-edge treatments for my tendons and my PTSD. 

Hit reply or come to the Spiritual Strategy Facebook Group and let me know what Self-Actualizing Investments you’re making as you get on the 2022 onramp.

Head up + heart out,

PS: Pro Tip for Kindle Readers—you can print these to pdf and email them to your Kindle address, to have them at hand for when you’re in wind-down mode. 

My friend Jonathan just shared how to do this in his 2021 Life Experiment recap. Check it out, here. 

PPS: Click here to read the last 200 (!!!) editions of the SoulTour Newsletter.

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

@taranichollekirke on FB | TW | IG | LI