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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