Here’s what I learned this year:

We’re all dying anyway. 

Despite all the self-protection we think we’re doing when we hide our light and hold ourselves back. 

Perfectionism will not save you. 

Waiting until you’re ready won’t, either.

We’re all dying. 

It’s the only thing guaranteed about living.

And if the death of this beautiful, meat-covered skeleton made of stardust that is your body, if that death is a given then that death on its own, cannot be the tragic part. 

The tragedy is the unlived life. The tragedy is that you survive the pandemic and hide from your own genius out of fear. The tragedy is if you spend the next years or decades living some societally-approved shadow of the life you really want.

Self-consciousness and self-sabotage. Hesitation and procrastination. Wondering what they’ll think. Marrying our struggle portfolios. Fondling the faux-catastrophe of “well, if I speak up in the meeting I could look super dumb,” so you say nothing at all. Continuing to over-give and let resentment and exhaustion take up all the energy you could otherwise pour into the callings of your soul.

That’s tragic. 

Because all that self-limiting usually comes from a storyline that says: “If I go all in, or if I dare to get after whatever my heart really desires, Something Very Bad could happen.”

Almost all of our Inner Critic talk and self-limiting comes from a protective place. 

The occasional terror and prevailing beauty of 2020 was in remembering that this world and these bodies are not our permanent homes. 

Don’t get me wrong. I have not become one of those “life is short” people.

Because you are eternal. Your soul is eternal. And so are all the elements of your body: the carbon, the nitrogen. They’re not making any more of that stuff. Matter just shifts form.

Your soul never dies and your matter never dies…so you can never really die.

But in case you were in danger of getting it twisted, 2020 was here to remind you: The current form of YOU is only here for a season.

And we came here to play the creation game, because the singular advantage we have while we’re here in these human bodies for this season is to think thoughts and have ideas about how we want the world to be or our lives to be… to think thoughts about things that don’t currently exist, and then to cause those things to exist.

That’s the power of playing the creation game.

The tragedy is not playing the creation game because we think our perfectionism, procrastination, self-criticism and self-limiting is protecting us from dying, when (not to beat a dead horse) dying isn’t even the tragedy.

The tragedy is hiding our light, holding ourselves back or telling ourselves the story that we’re not doing it right, whatever it is. 

The tragedy is to continue telling ourselves self-critical stories that feel shitty and fables of limitations that do not exist.

You may think that these stories of your Inner Critic are keeping you responsible, keeping you safe or keeping you alive, but nope! YOU ARE DYING ANYWAY. 

Maybe not for another 100 years, but the day will come. 

I invite you to opt-out of the tragedy of hiding your light.

You get to outgrow the need to participate in that. 

2021 seems like as good a year as any to let the old ways you held yourself back dissolve and dissipate. 

I know that’s what I’m doing. 

In fact, here are some of my intentions for the segment of time we’ve deemed 2021. 

I invite you to borrow any of them that feel resonant for you. 

Click here for Tara’s 2021 Intentions.

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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