Last week I shared a few reasons you might be enthralled with the Netflix series, The Queen’s Gambit. 

Then I had one of those weeks where I received the same message over and over again, starting with another on-screen (and real life) Queen. It all began with a fascinating scene from Season 4 of The Crown. The scene depicts the 21st birthday speech that real-life, then-Princess Elizabeth delivered from the British royal family’s 1947 tour of South Africa. There’s a lot that’s historically interesting in the speech about the evolution of the monarchy and the death of an empire.

But one line stuck with me and I just had to look the real version up and watch it on YouTube. The 21-year-old woman, whose father would soon die prematurely, leaving her Queen, said: 

“I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.” 

A few days later, something in my inbox caught my eye. “Why hasn’t the Queen retired?” Quora’s top-rated answer pointed to this exact same line of this exact same speech. 

She made a commitment seventy-three years ago. And she will keep it. Theeee end.

This concept of commitment came to me once more as I was reading our Book of the Month in my Mastery program. The book is called Conscious Luck, and it’s like a breath of fresh genius from a favorite author of mine, Gay Hendricks, and co-author Carol Kline. 

Right in the first chapter, Hendricks tells the story of a relationship in which he realized that he’d been having the same argument script with his mate for five years.

He writes: 

“I stepped back from the process and wondered: Why would I engage in a pattern like this? Why would I create the same basic argument over and over again for years? Given all the experiences I could be having as a human being, why have I kept repeating the pattern of lying and being lied to, being criticized and criticizing, blaming and being blamed, and thinking of myself as a victim?”

Then in a rush of realization, I got the answer: These things kept happening because I was committed to being criticized, committed to being betrayed, committed to arguing and lying. I was more committed to my established pattern than I was to having a great relationship. The commitments were obviously unconscious….

The moment I realized what my commitment was, I felt a huge shift inside. I wasn’t a hapless victim of my circumstances, I was the powerful creator of those circumstances!” 

He goes on: “The very act of becoming aware of our unconscious commitments is an enormous first step in taking ownership of our results in life. It loosens the negative grip of our old patterns and allows us to begin practicing new, conscious habits of behavior. It swings wide the door to claiming our power so we can create the life we truly want.”

As I read this, and connected the dots between my reading and the Queen’s words that had captivated me earlier in the week, I sat down with my journal and wrote out the question: 

What are my commitments? 

As I continued doing what I do this time of year, which is to metabolize 2020 and envision 2021, I kept coming back to that question:

What are my unconscious commitments?

As I identified areas of my life and my work where I’m not getting the results I want (yet), I asked myself again:

What have I been committed to? What commitments have I outgrown?

And as I started “writing the vision and making it plain”, as the Scripture says, so that my team, my vendors, my partners, my students, my clients and all my future collaborators may see and understand it with crystal clarity, I sat with the question still: 

What fresh commitments am I making right now? 

Your commitments — conscious and unconscious — are creating the results you’re seeing in your life, especially when it comes to the areas where you feel like you dwell daily in your zone of genius, which is the same as your zone of freedom, wholeness, meaning and self-actualized fulfillment.

Your commitments — conscious and especially the unconscious ones — are creating the results you’re seeing in your life, especially when it comes to your self-limiting beliefs and worldviews, your self-sabotage, your blocks and your inner glass ceilings, all those thoughts you think and stories you tell yourself that cause you to hold yourself back.

My life’s work — my commitment —  is to help you reverse the repression that began so long ago, all the conditioning that causes you to hide your light or hold yourself back from anything ever. 

That’s the same thing as saying my mission is for you to reclaim sovereignty over your life and your experience of it. 

Every time you break the pull of your patterns by even 1%, you get a little bit of sovereignty back.

Every time you take 1% or 5% or 10% more ownership of your results in life, you get a little closer to wholeness, joy, and liberation. 

So in the interest of shedding even a tiny, onion-skin thin layer of whatever old self-critical, scarcity-based, fearful mindset programming bugs have you in their thrall, I challenge you today to ask yourself this question and to do it without even an iota of self-judgment or self-criticism: 
 
What are your commitments?

What commitments are you ready to release? 

What is ONE unconscious commitment you can now see that has created unwanted results in your life? 

What would happen if that commitment was no longer important to you? 

How would that feel? 

What would be possible for you? 

What one commitment will you retire as 2020 comes to a close? 

What gift of a commitment will you give yourself now, as we onramp into 2021?

If this one is tough for you, here are some thought starters: 

• What fears have you been committed to? 
• What self-limiting stories have you been committed to telling? 
• What painful, self-punishing interpretations of your childhood or your past have you been committed to, maybe for years?
• Are you committed to self-soothing through consuming (wine, TV, Facebook, online shopping)?
• Are you more committed to not rocking the boat than to saying what is true?
• Did you make a commitment as a child to look for others’ approval as your green light? 
• Did you commit years ago to never outshine someone? 
• Are you committed to your few extra pounds? 
• Do you have a commitment to self-deprecation, or to bonding with others in low vibration, petty complaining? 

Remember what Carl Jung said: Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.

What unconscious commitment are you ready to make conscious, so you can get your life back?

Hit reply and let me know what comes up for you.

Head up + heart out,

The Inner Critic Coach

P.S.: I predict that at least one of these 3 things is taking place in your mind right now:

• Your struggle switch flipped on when you read the word “commitment”, because that sounds like setting a goal where you fail if you don’t get a 100% perfect score. 
• You started telling yourself that you’ve tried and failed at dozens of commitments before.
• You started thinking “Well, Tara’s super disciplined, so she can just decide what her commitments are gonna be. But I can’t just do that! It’s not that easy.”

That’s your Inner Critic at work.

Listen: YOU are beautifully unique. But your Inner Critic is wildly unoriginal. It’s been telling the same damn stories for decades. I’ve worked with tens of thousands of people on their Inner Critic problem, and I will tell you that almost everyone you know could put their habitual self-limiting or self-critical thoughts into one of just 7 primary categories.

I’ve been keeping track. 

So here’s my advice: Don’t get ahead of yourself. For now, just identify one commitment you want to set down and another you’d like to make. Next week, I’ll tell you how I know you can do it, and we’ll talk about next steps.

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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Tara-Nicholle Nelson · Transformation Tuesday | what the super-fit old man yelled at me

My current hometown of Oakland California, has a legacy of supernaturally fit old guys. Jack Lalanne came from here, and there are many local guys who are doing their best to fill his shoes. I’ve been a gym rat in Oakland for about 22 years, and I’m endlessly charmed by the old dudes that were getting it in decades before I arrived, who are still on the gym scene.

There’s this one guy who I estimated to be about 100 years old back when I first met him, in 1998. He might be one of the fittest people I’ve ever met. I still see him running all over town, around and around the Lake, even during the pandemic.

A few years back, I ran the first Oakland half marathon. Thirteen miles. And I’ll never forget this same super-fit old guy running past me. He ran to the finish line, turned around and then ran back to cheer on the rest of us. 

As he ran back from the finish to the start, he would lovingly accost individual runners to encourage them.

I must have looked really tired on my mile 12, because he ran right over to me and bellowed: “You’ve got this!!!  You can do this!!!”

“YOUR BODY IS LYING TO YOOOOU!!”

I thought: “You know what? My aching feet are lying to me. I’m almost there. Turbo time.” 

*Tara: zoom*

As I sat down to write this morning, that gentleman came to mind. 

In some ways, with that one sentence, he became my role model for my life’s work.

If you think you have a problem with perfectionism, procrastination or self-sabotage…

If you have a savage Inner Critic who has ever stopped you from doing something you truly wanted to do…

If you feel like you spend more time with your fears, self-doubts and struggle stories than you do expanding your capacity to live the life you dream about..

Or if you just have some kind of struggle switch inside that flips on every time you have a dream or desire to level up…

I’m here to tell you that I’ve run that race, Brilliant One.

And my life’s work is to run back from that finish line.

I’m running back, calling out to you just like that guy called out to me, but with a tiny twist.

I’m yelling: “Your Inner Critic is lying to you!!!!”

Your fear is lying to you.

Your programming is lying to you.

Because your fear — the old, played-out programmed habits of thought that speak in the voice of your Inner Critic  —  your fear is saying things like: 

Who do you think you are to even dream that dream?

That’s not really possible… for you.

You’re smart, but you’re not THAT smart.

Nobody cares about your story. 

You made your bed, now lie in it. 

No one you know has ever done something like that, successfully.

You never finish what you start. There must be a little bit of something wrong with you, deep down. 

That’s what your Inner Critic is saying. 

But I’m here today, just like that super-fit old guy was on my half marathon course. 

And I’m running back to tell you that your Inner Critic is lying to you.

Because here’s the honest-to-goodness truth, [First Name]:

You are offspring of the Divine. Your birthright is freedom, wholeness and joy.

You ARE allowed to want whatever you want. 

And it IS possible for you.

You ARE that smart.

People DO want to read what you have to write and buy what you have to sell.

You DO get to outgrow things, and patterns and ways of being.

You might BE the first person you ever know to do that. You get to be that. 

There’s nothing wrong with you, because you’ve had great ideas before and not finished them.

The truth is that all of that was part of your journey, your process, your becoming who you came here to become. 

That means you’re doing it right.

All along the way you’ve been groomed, you’ve been prepared, your skin has been thickened, your heart has been softened. 

You’re coming into a time when you’re really ready.

Catch this principle today, my friend: Your Inner Critic is lying to you.

Head up + heart out,

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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One of the most powerful Breakthrough Questions we ask our members and coaching clients is this: 

“What’s not in alignment?”

“What’s not in alignment with your calling or your desires that feel blocked or stuck?”

It might be their values.

It might be their identity: who they see themselves as and what they think they are (or are not) capable of. 

It can be their beliefs or the decisions, actions and inactions that flow from those beliefs. 

For high-achieving women, it’s often their systems, tools, relationships and environments that are out of whack.

I think of this particular Breakthrough Question as the “cut the line to your breakthrough” question, because most people know the answer (or at least one good answer) instantly.

The most powerful breakthrough Spiritual Strategies aren’t about spotting the misalignment.

The most powerful breakthrough Spiritual Strategies help you know what to do next.

See, this world’s unworthiness messaging has programmed us to believe that if we’re not getting what we want, we have to find what’s wrong with ourselves and roll up our sleeves.

We need to change or fix whatever is wrong with us.

We need to “heal” it. 

Get more disciplined.

Exert more willpower. 

Work longer hours.

Date more. 

Work out more. 

Real talk? That “go harder” approach, alone, rarely works in a sustained way.

Because what you focus on grows.

Because: MOMENTUM. 

Focus on what’s not working, and you get more of what’s not working.

When you focus on what’s not working or feeling good in your business or your life, you tend to honk your insides up with the double-whammy of seeing what’s out of alignment, then applying more power and force to that same, misalignment.

Or you honk yourself up with the triple-whammy of seeking the misalignment, putting more energy on top of that and then judging yourself for getting the same bad-feeling results as you’ve always gotten. 

As Esther Hicks would say: “The worse it gets, the worse it gets”. 

So the Breakthrough Spiritual Strategies that work involve doing the opposite of rolling up your sleeves and working harder, grinding it out or fixing yourself: 

• Breakthrough Spiritual Strategy #1: Radical Acceptance: See it, shine light on it, radically accept it and investigate it with kindness and compassion, without identifying with the “problem”. (These are Tara Brach’s steps of Radical Acceptance.)
• Breakthrough Spiritual Strategy #2: The Pattern Interrupt, aka Take a Freaking Break: Take a break, take a walk, take a nap, take a vacation, change the subject, hug a baby, hug a pug, get into nature, go to the gym, workout, make out, break the momentum of problem and refocus on a subject that feels like soothing and just GOOD to you. 
  
  Then: Wait, watch and see what inspirations come to you, without rushing, judging or tracking your progress.
• Breakthrough Spiritual Strategy #s 3 and 4: Divine Order and Pronoia. It’s a mastery level strategy to keep in mind at all times that everything is always working out for you, even your setbacks, troublemakers, problems and obstacles.
  
  They are collaborating for your ultimate thriving, whether they know it or not. Whether they want to or not.
  
  Even your delays are beneficial to you. 
  
  What’s important is that you know it and tune yourself to the channel of seeking and finding the wonderful things are trying to come to you, even through your frustrations and disappointments.
• Breakthrough Spiritual Strategy #5: Focus on What is Working.

I coach myself… in business and in life… with these same exact methods. 

We have a business question that has felt sticky and unmoving for a long time, so we’ve tried lots of different solutions.

But today, I posed this question to our General Manager, Tierra: Can we inventory all our assets on that subject that we know DO work? 

What resulted was this SUPER fun, fresh, energized conversation and a beautiful reset on a piece of our 2020 SoulTour strategic roadmap, complete with simplified, super-clear marching orders for our vendors. 

Will this reset work? Yeah, probably. 

The data suggests it will.

But way more importantly, the reset feels wonderful, partially because it gave us a reason to celebrate all our wins instead of dwelling in the energy of what seemed like a problem.

It also gave us a beautiful guardrail, a beautiful constraint.

As any artist will tell you, creativity loves constraints. 

See, there’s a trap of the multipassionate and the multitalented, which overlaps with the shadows of the Ruler and Maverick archetypes, both of which run strong in my own inner wiring.

The trap is defaulting to making new things, writing new things, producing new things, creating new things to solve business and life problems as they pop up. 

But this is a shadow. And we knew it. So instead of trying to “fix” or change that about ourselves, we leaned into the strengths of those Archetypes, too.

And we course-corrected ourselves to stay out of the shadows by putting two constraints on our strategy session: 

1. What might be a wise solution if we couldn’t create even one single new thing?, and
2. How might we optimally use, integrate and leverage the assets we already have that really, really work? Put differently, how can we fully inhabit the resources we already have?

And because creativity LOVES constraints, this historic tour of that part of our business gave birth to a beautiful new strategy… and the momentum of fresh, new energy for the things we already do very, very well.

To recap, anytime you find a misalignment, here’s what you do: 

1. Ask yourself what’s not in alignment: feel what needs feeling, investigate what needs investigating, grieve what needs grieving, see what needs seeing 
2. But don’t hammer away at the misalignment, once you see it.
3. Instead, practice Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach-style. Do a Pattern Interrupt. Invite Divine Order to take the wheel. Look for the wonderful things that this so-called “problem” is flowing your way.
4. And then focus on what is already wonderful and good and really, really working for you in that area or on that topic, no matter how seemingly small and tangential

Then lean into that. 

That’s how you’ll play your role in human evolution, my friend. 

Awakening from the paralyzing, self-defeating inner war of trying to fix or change yourself. 

Actualizing your own divinely granted resources, those within you and those without, and then…

Answering the calling of your soul, no matter how trivial or non-world-changing that calling may seem at the time. 

Awaken. Actualize. Answer.

And enjoy yourself, all along the way.

Head up + heart out,

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

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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Friends,

If you tune yourself to the frequency of answers, you can find wisdom anywhere.

Saturday was the last day of my first 90-day book writing boot camp. As I was preparing my final words for my brilliant students, I was studying various perspectives on the subject of clarity, curious to see what the great philosophers had written on the subject.

I came across a quote from the modern thinker and sports ball savant Venus Williams. It didn’t seem on topic at first, but I read through anyhow. She’d been asked how it feels when she’s playing a great game and it begins to rain, stopping momentum and forcing her to sit on the bench.

Counterintuitively, she said: “Rain is good for me. I feel like I achieve clarity, actually, when it rains. The longer I have to sit and wait, the clearer my game becomes to me.”

I was instantly reminded of the bull in its querencia, the bullfighters’ wisdom that if you let a bull take a pause, get out of reactive mode and recalibrate, it taps back into its natural strength and power. It does what it was made to do, and will run through anything in its path. It becomes unstoppable.

But I was also reminded of so many conversations I’ve had with my friends and students, the people I think of as “impatient uplifters”: ambitious and successful in their day jobs, seeking to live conscious lives and lift others up, yet always feeling like they’re behind, like they’ve not yet hit their stride in life. Like they’ve not yet made enough money to leave their corporate job or shadow career.

Those who are doing their life’s work, often feel they’ve not yet figured out how to be as successful or play as big a game as they were put here to be or play. Because life got in the way. Or their childhood wiring gets in the way. Or they’re good at one piece of the puzzle, but they’ve never quite gotten (or made) the break or the traction they seek.

So they feel behind. Sidelined. Benched.

I’ve been there myself, despite having had an all-hit career. And that’s precisely why this quote was so meaningful to me. Because I’ve been there, yes, but that was then and this is now. Now I have crystal clarity. I can see how every single shadow career, every seemingly more than good-enough-but-not-quite-right career path, every job I disliked and even the ones I loved, every personal crisis, drama and trauma, every obstacle and delay was really another moment (or season) on the bench.

Each moment was good for me. In each season, I achieved greater and greater clarity. Because I had to wait, my “game”, my long-term vision and my immediate next steps, are now completely clear to me.

So if you’re feeling behind, or like life has sidelined you over and over again, take heart.

And take a sacred pause.

That pause might be for a moment, or an evening. It might be for a week or a season. But take the time to stop doing and achieving and “getting things done”. Just be. Even for one evening.

‘Be’ with the feeling of behind. You don’t have to push against that feeling, or spring into making some action plan because you feel like doing something, anything, will make you feel ok. Yes, sometimes clarity comes by taking one step toward what feels like it might be resonant and expansive, and seeing what happens. But you don’t have to earn your place on this planet by doing. Sometimes, the best plan of action when you’re not clear what to do next is to take a pause and let those feelings of behind, anxious, scarce – whatever – sit right next to you on the bench.

When you stop trying to do things to outrun those feelings, you recoup the energy you’ve been putting into that struggle.

And with that energy, you can do loads of things. Way high up on the list of uses for that energy: allow what you’ve learned to integrate. Whether your recent season (or whole life) has been characterized by wanted experiences and emotions, unwanted experiences or both, catch this principle: there’s a life adventure to be had in allowing your experiences to clarify your game for you.

And catch this principle, too: the unwanted experiences often hold more power to clarify your game, to clarify what you do want, than the walk-in-the park parts of your life.

So, you might be feeling like you’re behind. Like you expected to be “further” by this point in your life, or like you’re not all the way grown up yet (even though you’re plenty grown).

Or maybe you feel like the twists and turns of life keep getting in the way of you walking fully into your calling?

Take some refuge in the community, the collective of impatient, ambitious uplifters, almost all of whom have felt this way at one time or another. I’ve known industry leaders, people millionaires many times over who still say they feel ‘behind’.

Channel your inner bull: take a pause, stop reacting, recalibrate and tap back into your natural strength and power.

Then, channel your inner Venus and remember: you’ve just been getting clearer on your game.

That’s how you’ll become unstoppable, in divine timing. Because that’s what you are.

NOTE #1: I’m currently building a course on how to make bold career transitions successfully and soulfully. If you’ve been thinking about making a career move and you have a question you’d like me to answer, just hit reply and send it my way. Thanks in advance!

NOTE #2: I’m teaching a series of four, LIVE 90-minute transformational business and marketing classes on Creative Live on May 24th:

• How to Build and Market Products that Change People’s Lives
• Rethink Your Content Marketing Strategy
• Rethink What you Sell and Who you Serve
• Build a Customer Journey Map that Drives Engagement

There are a few ways you can participate:

• You can stream the classes live, for free, on May 24th. Use the links above to register for access.
• You can buy access to watch them on-demand anytime you want at the same links.
• If you happen to be in the Bay Area, you can apply to be part of the live studio audience! The audience will get breakfast and lunch that day, plus free access to the class (both during and after broadcast). (And of course, you get to be there in person, ask questions, and be a part of the course!)

Apply to be part of the live audience, here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfRahOe738s6CvZ76dkBzKbgMcRfw3Owfpiq8EKFUQV4AOm-Q/viewform

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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As I think of it, it might be an aversion I worked up during my first official job ever, as a hostess at the Sizzler: Buffet Court PTSD.

This is absurd, as I hope is obvious. But it’s a microcosm of something we do all the time, allowing a life event or experience to plant triggers in our operating systems, so that we always cringe when we see that kind of car or shut entirely down when we meet a certain kind of person.

This is very normal. It’s the extreme version of learning, but it’s a deeper sort of learning, it’s almost like a spiritual encoding that happens. And taken to great extremes, we can find ourselves defined by a single life event or something someone said to us 40 years ago. This is natural, and maybe even normal, but it can also be very painful, dysfunctional and limiting.

I know it’s normal, because when I meet new people (which I do nearly every day at work), I generally share my own story, then I ask them flat out to tell me their life story. It’s really a Rorschach of sorts, to see how people interpret that question, and where they take it, whether they go general or specific, the overall tone and whether they take a career story or personal story or combined approach. The way we tell our general story drops clues to how we define ourselves, I think. Another set of clues is in the stories we tell about our histories and our lives, over and over again.

I tell the story of my family migrating to California around 50 years ago, with some regularity. I tell it to explain why I am uninterested and uninitiated in the ways of the South and, to a lesser extent, the East Coast.

I tell the story of going from Honors Student to teen Mom and then, to college/grad school/law school, all the time. I tell it to express my gratitude for a life of miracles, and to share how I know God is real.

On the personal side, I tell the story of how I heard a Tony Robbins CD about the Power of Identity and then lost 60 pounds, twenty years ago, at least a few times a year. I share it to help people know that I’m a contrarian. That I don’t always do things the way others do. That my health has played a central role in my life for a long time. And that I am a woman of change, action, power and growth.

I tell the story of my 86-year-old grandmother and her three sisters, all Black women from Texarkana, Texas, all of whom have college or nursing school degrees, as often as I can. I tell this so they know that #blackgirlmagic is real. But I also tell this so people understand that I come from a matriarchal lineage, and to explain why I was damn near 40-years-old before I realized that other people saw being Black and a woman as a disadvantage, while I grew up with the explicit and implicit understanding that being a Black girl meant you could do anything. Literally, anything. Circumstances are irrelevant.

These things, I tell, because they define or, at the very least, depict major components of who I am.

But there are other stories I’ve allowed to define me, too, at various times in my life. Stories of repression. Stories of emotional chaos, allowed to spiral and embed for years and years. Even stories of multi-generational beliefs that were both blessing and curse. And it’s been interesting to see how, as I develop and heal out of some of these patterns, I find myself telling those stories much less frequently. But I do want to share one with you, now.

My grandmother is a force of nature and supernatural spirit. Her father was an alcoholic, and her mother was a saint. After her mother died very young, my grandmother helped her three sisters get educated, then got her own degree, while raising her own four children alone. Her own alcoholic husband had long since left her for the West Coast, and my grandmother gradually migrated from the South (Texarkana), to the Midwest (Omaha), to the Southwest (Clovis, New Mexico) and finally landed in Bakersfield, California, right around fifty years ago. She and my Dad still live there, to this day.

My grandfather and grandmother had not, until that time, been officially divorced, but he had moved on to a series of other women, somehow also winding up in Bakersfield. Because their lives were so separate, my grandmother was shocked and dismayed when she went to buy a house and was advised that California was something new to her, something called a Community Property state. That meant that all the debts my grandfather had run up and reneged on actually belonged to her, too. Which meant that for her to buy the home for her children she’d worked and saved for, she’d first have to pay or make arrangements to pay all of his bad debt. She was able to figure it out, but it was heartbreaking. And she did eventually divorce him.

But the scar of that heartbreak long remained. My whole childhood, my sweet, piano-playing, hymn-singing grandmother dove joyfully into her duties to teach me How to Live a Good Life. She taught me how to love God, how to clean house, how to prioritize school above all, how to balance a checkbook, and how to churn butter (I’m not joking). She also taught me never to rely on a man to support myself or my children. Never to have children unless I was 100% certain I could support them on my own. She was remarkably free of bitterness about it, but she was exceedingly clear and insistent on this point.

And I took the message. In fact, I took it and ran with it. Somehow, her message mixed in with my perfectionism, my own ambition and my own Daddy issues, and showed up in my spirit as an extreme, dysfunctional over-self-reliance. So I attracted in people at the level of my own bullshit, as one does. I married men who had no capacity to be full partners in my life. And I created a life in which there wasn’t much room for deep partnership and interdependence, because I didn’t believe, deep in my spirit, that I could really have those things.

And at some point, after my spiritual teachers and coaches and therapists helped me see that I’d allowed this childhood message to define a whole area of my life, I couldn’t un-see it. I thanked my family for cultivating my independence and raising me to be an unlimited being, because I am that. I honor and will always be independent and impactful. But I also had to release the isolating extremes I’d taken on.

I put an end to the patterns that kept me isolated and unsupported by being extreme and dysfunctional in my over-self-reliance, slowly, slowly, slowly. I started to spend a lot of time with my friends who were in beautiful partnerships, who’d built healthy families and who had created long, loving, two-way relationships. I wanted to experience that model and what it looks like everyday, up close.  

I’ve talked with lots of people who define themselves by a thing that happened to them 30 years ago, or something their Mom used to always tell them—even a thing their Mom used to say about herself or, especially, her body. I know people who define themselves by a past failure, a family death, or a victory. I know people whose self-definition is heavily painted by their geography or profession, or the fact that no one in their family has ever been educated/happy/healthy/sober.

Often, we take on an extreme commitment to our defining family or personal history dysfunction. But it can be just as unwise to define ourselves in aversion or opposition to our long-gone experiences, like I do with the Buffet Court. Exhibit B: I wear some version of the same outfit every single day. I do it because it’s comfortable and beautiful and removes so much decision-making from my day. But it also helps that my “uniform” strategy makes my Mom a little crazy.

We’re all in the process of working this stuff out, some more intentionally and effortfully than others.I’ve learned that we have a lot more choice about how we define ourselves than we think. We truly do have the power to decide and shape and rewire who we are, even though our past programming might be encoded at a level of depth that seems permanent and inescapable. It can seem like as much a part of us as the shape of our eyes or the size of our feet.

We get to pick the elements of our past that are expansive or contract us, that spark joy and pride and possibility, or that revert to the sometimes comfortable, limiting storylines we’ve always heard and by now, have started to tell ourselves.

And we also get to pick our todays and tomorrows, and we get to exercise intention about how we define ourselves every single day. “That was then, this is now” means something. And it doesn’t mean you disrespect your family’s trials and tribulations or the people who raised you, to keep what serves you and release or discard what no longer does. That’s what I call wisdom, and what the Interwebs call “adulting”.

P.S.: I issued a 30 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders a few weeks back, and over 150 brilliant souls signed up! I decided to take the Challenge right along with them, and it’s been a profound journey for many of us. Most people are journaling or free-writing every day, privately. But I wrote this post on Day 5 of the Challenge. I’ll be doing another writing Challenge in January; click here to get on the list for the January Challenge.

Q: What exactly are you challenging me to do, TNN?
A:  I am challenging you to write something every day for 10 days starting March 19, 2019.

Ideally, you should aim to write the equivalent of 3 pages longhand every day.

Three pages longhand roughly equates to 750 words typed. Writing speed varies a lot person to person, but many people will find this to take about 30 minutes to complete, daily, on average.

I recommend you do your writing in a dedicated Google Drive folder, with each day’s writing on a new, dated Google Doc. This creates a permanent, searchable, secure repository of your writing. (Notebooks work well, too!.)

Once you’re done writing for the day, I recommend you copy and paste the day’s writing out into 750words.com, which will create a running dashboard that visualizes how much you’ve written across the month, will help keep track of your daily streaks and progress and is generally awesome. It’s also free. No one else can see your account or your writing, FYI, unless and until you decide to share it on the SoulTour Community Group.

I am not affiliated with 750words.com – it is a tool I personally have used and think work well for this.

Q: What are you not challenging me to do?
A: I am not challenging you or asking you to publish your writing, though occasionally we’ll throw out a “Share a Snippet” call on the SoulTour Community Group, for anyone who wants to. In the past, some people shared everything they wrote, some shared a paragraph here and there, others kept it all private.

I am publishing what I write to you, as an exercise in vulnerability, but this is your challenge. You do what you need to do. And you know what you need to do. If you don’t know now, you will soon. Just get started.

I am not challenging you to bare your soul or to write about any specific topic. I will provide writing prompts daily, but you can take them or leave them. And I will bare my soul, because that’s the kind of chick I am (becoming). A couple of you have shared that you are planning to use this Challenge to refresh your children’s excitement about writing, looping them in and having them do the Challenge with you (which I adore). Others are using it to set goals. Still others need to process the past or find a breakthrough. This Challenge will work for all of these things.

Q:  What should I write about?

A:  Every day at midnight Pacific I’ll send you an email with the writing prompt of the day. The prompts are designed intentionally to trigger shifts to new levels of personal growth and unlock previously untapped inner greatness. 

On any given day, you can use the writing prompt, you can free-write, or you can work on your own book or blog project.

Q:  What is free-writing? 

A:  Free-writing is a brain dump exercise: put words on the page. Any words. Whatever’s on your mind. It is meant to be private, so no one will ever see it. Uncensored.

If you want more information on free-writing, Google “Morning Pages.” From Lifehacker:

Every morning, take a pen and three blank pages and write down whatever you want to fill those pages.

Q: Do I have to publish what I write?

A: Nope. The moderators and I will publish some of our writing to the SoulTour Community, just for fun. And you’re welcome to do so. And you’re welcome to do so on the Group, which is Private.

That said, if you’re doing free-writing or Morning Pages or journaling, I actually encourage you to start off with a plan to not show your writing to anyone else. The goal of these exercises is just to get your mind and soul and spirit trained to pour out freely, without censorship. And the best way to do that is to know that you’re writing for yourself. That it’s between you and you.

And that said, don’t be surprised if, by the middle of the month, you’re just excited about what you’re writing or discovering and you want to post/publish it.

Q: What if people don’t like what I write? What if someone finds or reads my writing and gets upset?

A: One of the Patron Saints of our Writing Challenge is Anne Lamott. She earned that distinction with this quote, from her book on writing, Bird by Bird:

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

#preach #Amen #tellyourstories

This applies to people who read anything you write publicly.

With respect to your private journaling or free-writing, writing in Google Docs will help, because: password.

Also, anyone who reads your private writing anywhere else and gets upset or confronts you about it is just giving you a great opportunity to speak your truth and practice boundaries. By boundaries I mean righteous indignation and expressing the unacceptability of reading your private thoughts. Yeah, that happened to me. It was uncomfortable and fantastic.

Q: What if I’m terrified?

A: If you’re terrified, you’re doing it right. See also this blog post:

Q: What’s the SoulTour Community Group for?
A: First, here’s the link to join the SoulTour Community.

Second, it’s to connect with others doing the Challenge. To share your experience. To ask your questions. To get inspired. To stay on track. To get back on track, should you need to.

Third, I am maintaining an archive of the PODs (writing Prompts of the Day) in this Spreadsheet. And I’m also adding videos, thought starters, inspiration and other juicy goods to the Community Group on a daily basis.

Fourth, I love you.

Head up + heart out,

I’ve had notes from a number of you expressing this general sentiment. So many notes that I thought we should talk about it.

Let’s take these emotions in turn: first the excitement, then the terror.

The excitement is impulse. But not impulse the way we normally mean it, like dysfunctionally impulsive behavior. That excitement you feel when you come across a Challenge like our 10 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders is the kind of impulse that happens when you get a glimpse of something that will lead you to what you desire, deep down in your spirit.

I believe that a lot of what we desire, we desire because it resonates with something way down deep. The excitement, the impulse, you get when you’re given this sort of Challenge like a spiritual breadcrumb on the path to what you really desire and who you really are.

To be clear, I’m not talking about desires like, say, a Tesla or a ring. I’m talking about deeper desires than that. I believe the things we are spiritually encoded to desire the most are to give love, to receive love, and to live a life of meaning.

My whole life changed when I started consistently paying attention to these kinds of impulses and started letting myself follow the paths to these deep desires. I don’t follow every single inkling or urge, but I do try to honor and give some attention to those that trigger a deep twinge of something that feels like resonance with who I really am or what I really want.

To do that, I had to (gradually) train myself out of the thought habit of immediately countering these desires. I had to stop focusing my energy on the internal struggle and start investing it in doing the work of following these impulses.

In the olden days, I’d have an impulse that felt like it might be the first step of something possibly major. Then my immediate next thought would be to counter that impulse with fear, with all the reasons why I can’t/shouldn’t follow that path. Does that ever happen to you?

I still did some big, glorious things in my life. But this internal dialogue made them harder, fewer and farther between than they needed to be. It led to years of playing a smaller game than I’m here for.

The idea that I don’t have time to tend these little spiritual bonfires was a go-to line of mine for years. And I’ve heard it a lot from those of you who hesitate to commit to this Challenge.

But I practiced my way out of it. And I invite you to take the challenge as as an opportunity to practice your way out of it, too. Trust me. I’m a busy chick. But It’s very rare that that “I don’t have time” even occurs to me anymore when I’m facing an impulse or project that I feel like might be an important part of my journey. And when it does, I’m very sweet and compassionate with myself as a I note the “no time” thought, then choose instead to focus on speeding that makes me feel expansive and aligned and just GOOD.

I’m committed to making time to follow the sparks that have proven over time to keep my soul stoked, my spirit open, my creativity and emotional groundedness flowing. Even if I have to stop doing some other, less critical thing.

I see Challenges as powerful little micro-seasons for growth and breakthroughs. I do them in lots of areas of my life, most often self-directed/DIY. They allow me to try on a practice or a habit or a new way of being, for a finite, manageable period of time. Sometimes, I like the practice and keep it, or some element of it. Other times, not. But even if I don’t integrate it into my daily routine for the long term, I’ll usually have made some sort of progress on a project or an issue in my life in the process of trying it on. Or I connect some new dots, or have some clear idea or insight, in the course of the Challenge that I wouldn’t otherwise have experienced.

The other thing about Challenges is that they’re just FUN. I think of them as growth games for grownups. In a Challenge, you can try on a new practice or way of being on without a death grip or terror because hey, guess what – YOU chose to do it and you are the boss of your own Challenge. It’s between you and you.

That POV allows me to take on Challenges with a spirit of both play and excellence. And that makes me feel proud and energized and engaged and alive during and after the Challenge.

Okay, so what about the horror part. It’s what Steven Pressfield calls Resistance. We’ll talk about that a lot more in the actual Challenge.

For now, it’s important to know that this Resistance is simply a habit. It’s a thought habit. You can rewire it. Doing Challenges, when the stakes are low, can be an early step toward rewiring yourself into freedom from Resistance, or at least into the consistent new habit of overriding Resistance when it arises.

I’ve heard a number of variations of fear in the “I want to do it but am afraid to do it” notes a few brave souls have sent me. And I’ve given various corresponding forms of advice, in these one-on-one conversations:

• Failure isn’t a thing here. What happens if you only write for 2 or 5 days of the Challenge? You’ve written for 2 or 5 days more next month than you did last month. Seems like a net positive to me!
• This is your Challenge. You can do it while you’re traveling, or you can take it as a 5 or 7 day challenge or whatever you need to do. If you want a breakthrough, try to do something every day. But you get to define success here.
• The more consistent you are, the more progress you’ll make. But you know what? If you have a day where all you can write is a single sentence? I hereby give you official permission to count that as a win.
• If you’re doing this to get clear or set goals, you might not need as much writing as 750 words x 10 days. You might have clarity on day 4. If you’re trying to experience a real shift or trigger clarity or flow, you might have your breakthrough on day 7. Or you might need to keep writing until day 49 or day 99. That remains to be seen, so it’s a good thing you’re getting started!
• If you want to write a book, you can use this Challenge to “turn pro.” 750 words a day is probably what you need to do, and consistency matters. I’ll hold your hand. Trust me when I say that you can do this.

Obviously, which advice is right for you depends on your situation.

But what I’m about to say now applies to everyone.

This is a growth experience. There’s a reason they call them growing pains. If I were challenging you to do something you already were doing or already had the capacity to do or was super super easy to do, there wouldn’t be any growth potential in it.

Game design guru Jane McGonigal speaks and writes a lot about why games (including Challenges, IMO) are so engaging than reality, including something she calls Hard Fun:

“If there’s anything I’ve learned as a game designer, it’s that the hard part is the fun part. We need a good challenge to have fun, to feel alive, to unleash our strengths, to turn strangers into teammates and allies. This is why we play games – sports, videogames, all games. We play them because nothing makes us happier or stronger than tackling a tough challenge that we choose for ourselves.”

If you’re both excited and terrified at the prospect of this Writing Challenge, again, you’re doing it right. It’s already working. I want to invite you to see that as a sign that you’re in the right place, and that signing up is the right thing to do.

But I also want to invite you to have a little shift of state and spirit around it. Yes, this is a Challenge. Yes, it’ll be challenging. Yes, you might see some scary things inside and be challenged to make some changes that are even more scary. Or not. But in any event, remember that you are choosing this Challenge for yourself.

It doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to be terrifying. You can decide not to be a martyr to the Challenge. Try easy. Go easy on yourself. Be light and playful with this project. Allow for the possibility that your challenge will be a fun, exciting adventure into new territory, inner and behaviorally.

I see your bravery, and respect you for it. Let’s do this. Our Challenge begins MONDAY, JUNE 9TH, 2018. It’ll cost you nothing but a little time and more spirit and soul. Here’s the sign-up link.