Tara Sophia Mohr | wise living

I’ve been thinking a lot about what we learn in school – not the facts we memorize, but the message we absorb about what will earn us gold stars, what will bring success.

In school we are taught to please the teacher, but to do anything significant as adults we have to be comfortable with pleasing some audiences and drawing criticism from others.

In school you are taught to absorb a lot of new information, but to play big in your career you have to trust what you already know.

In school you are taught to perfect your work as much as possible, but to play big in your career you have to put things out in the world that are messy and very imperfect – to beat the competition, to get going, and to get the feedback to improve.

A lot of women get stuck bringing the “good girl” skills they used to succeed in school into their work lives. But the things that helped us get such good grades in school don’t take us to the top in our careers.

Is this playing out in your career?

Are you still assuming your job is to please every teacher-like authority figure around? Let me free you up: the truth is that now, some of them being threatened by you, and some not getting what you are up to, is actually a sign of you doing great work.

Are you still thinking that the way to ensure success is to research that new idea to death (or keep your mouth shut until you know more about it)? Or are you recognizing that success now comes from trusting what you already know, and leaping based on that?

Are you still trying to perfect your work as much as possible before sharing it – just as you diligently checked your work and revised and revised before handing in an assignment in school? The rules have changed. Now it is essential to get comfortable sharing imperfect, messy, in progress work – to brainstorm with colleagues, to be the first to propose it to your boss, or test it early on with potential customers.

What I keep seeing again and again is us good girls aren’t being so well-served by the diligence, obedience, and carefulness we learned in school. Blazing a bright trail in our careers – moving from “good worker bee” to “mover and shaker,” requires an entirely different set of muscles, skills, and ways of being than the ones we learned to get so good at in school.

To create trail-blazing careers, we need new skills in self-trust, risk-taking, leaping.

I’d love to know. Have you noticed that what worked so well for succeeding in school doesn’t take you where you want to go now?

Have you made the shift, or are you bringing your old ways of playing to the new game? If not, will you give your voice the glory it deserves and make the shift now?

What do you think? Tell me in the comments.

Love,

Tara

Get Tara’s mini-ecourse on quieting your inner critic HERE

It was 2003. I’d just spent three years giving my all to a labor-of-love project – two anthologies that brought women’s voices to topics where they had not previously been heard.

After three years painstaking work, three years of 14-hour days, the finished copies of the books arrived from the publisher.

This was the moment my coeditor and I had been waiting for. We decided we wanted it to be a literal mountaintop moment, reflecting the sense of vast accomplishment we felt inside. We hiked up to a beautiful vista, and together, opened the FedEx package.

There they were. Our creations. Our babies. Our books in the world.

It was very exciting.

For about three minutes.

And then – I couldn’t deny it – I felt hollow inside. I felt a little numb. Seeing them finished didn’t make me feel much at all. They felt like dead weight in my hands.

Over the next few days, we had a book party, we drank champagne, we got lovely notes from people about them, but I didn’t feel much celebration inside.

I thought to myself, is this what they mean when they say, “It’s the journey, and not the destination?”

I kept thinking about how different this reality was from what I expected. What I felt when I was working on the books – the total engagement, the passion about the work, the interest in the puzzles that came our way and the figuring out how to solve them, the joy of the little, mid-stage victories along the way, the almost familial relationships I built with my collaborators, the rich conversations, – all of that brought so much more meaning, fulfillment, and rich satisfaction than the actual accomplishment did.

I know you’ve felt this too. You had your heart set on something. You had your destination in mind. Make x amount of money. Get the raise. Get x title in my organization. Get the book deal. Own a house. Say “I do.” Change these people’s lives for the better, in this particular way.

And then you’ve gotten there. You’ve reached the holy grail. But after a couple minutes, it didn’t feel so holy. In a moment embarrassingly soon after the big accomplishment (an hour, a day?) you heard a little voice in your mind wondering: what about that next quest? What if I could achieve not just this, but also that?

We can easily beat ourselves up for this, lamenting that we never savor the moment, or feel like anything is “enough.” Or we can explain our feelings in the way contemporary psychology does – saying that all humans run on a kind of “pleasure treadmill” – where we adapt to any new pleasures and have to keep running and running for the next gold star – just to keep our level of contentment constant.

I’m looking at it differently these days. I’ve been thinking about how this plays out in my own life and in the lives of the women I work with. And my new thinking has been informed by the wisdom in Ariel Gore’s book, Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness, and in this interview with psychologist Dr. Andrea Polard.

Now I think that life is simply most fulfilling in the quest – not at its end. We human beings, we human brains and minds and hearts, love the quest. Our souls came here to live out a story – an action plot that unfolds over time.

What makes us feel alive is “working on.” What gives us meaning is “working toward.” Human joy comes from being in motion – not from attainment.

Finishing? Accomplishing? That is too finite, to static, and too final to find any resonance in our ever-dancing souls.

We’ve all gotten the cultural message that it’s the mountaintop moments where we are supposed to find our bliss: the moment of getting the promotion, or of getting the book deal, or of saying “I do.” So we berate ourselves or feel confused when those mountaintop moments feel anticlimactic. But they could never provide us with fulfillment.

The moment of getting the promotion will always pale in comparison to the days we worked with intensity and great engagement on the job. The moment of getting the book deal brings nothing like the joy and meaning that came from figuring out how to get that one sentence in the book proposal right. The moment of saying “I do” is not nearly meaningful as the afternoon when we found a way out of a tense conversation with our beloved – and into healing, hysterical giggling instead. If you aren’t loving the journey, it’s time to a new quest or find something that makes the quest you are in interesting, alive, compelling for you.

When people said, “happiness is about the journey, not the destination,” that always made me feel like I was supposed to abandon my goals and just start enjoying life by savoring my peppermint tea and the sunset out the window – since hey, it’s all about the journey, anyway. That doesn’t work. We need desires, visions, goals — in order to have a journey to fall in love with.

In other words, we need goals, not because goals are themselves important but we can’t have an engaging quest without a meaningful goal. The goal provides direction, momentum, plot, in the quest.

What does this mean for each of us? That we can embrace our instinct to reach the next level, create the next thing, bring about x change in our lives – but not out of the delusion that achieving milestones will bring new levels of satisfaction. Instead, we can choose what to aim for knowing that what matters is that the goal gives us a quest to fall in love with.

So pick your quests mindfully. Pick the ones that you think will give you joy, and moments of tears at the poignant beauty of it all. Pick the quests that you think will put you in deepest, most glorious contact with something larger than you. Pick the quests that make gratitude and passion come alive in you.

The pot of gold is not at the end of the rainbow. It’s here.

Love,

Tara

Click here to get Tara’s book of poetry & inspirations: Your Other Names

Good morning!

First things first, I want to welcome the 1000 of you or so who just signed up this week to receive articles and inspiration from me. Welcome. I’m honored that you are here.

Some goodies for today:

1. Below is Part 2 of my visit with Jillian Michaels. We chat about some of the unhelpful speech habits so many of us women have – habits that cause us to come across as less confident. Here’s Everyday Health’s article on the segment. Special thanks to brilliant woman in tech Gina Trapani for sharing the video at her site.

Click HERE to watch if you are reading over email)

2. Here’s my other conversation with Jillian Michaels. We talk about the inner critic and how to quiet its voice. (Click HERE to watch if you are reading over email)

3. Blogger Cherry Woodburn interviewed me on the topic of inner critic and confidence last week. She jumped right in by asking me about my struggles with my own inner critic – and I was honest! We also talk about how and why so many women lose their voices at school – and what we can do about that. Cherry is super smart, and so dedicated to helping women access more confidence. Check out our conversation here.

Love to all of you!

Tara

I had a great time appearing on Jillian Michaels’ new show a few weeks ago. I’m not saying that to be gracious or polite. I really mean it – I had so much fun!

She made it possible for us to have such a funny, honest, and engaging in the conversation.

You’ll see how she cracks me up, how I make her cry…and we talk about what I’ve learned about the inner critic and what helps us quiet its voice.

Watch the video clip here (if you are reading over email, click here for the clip):

Love,

Tara

Sometimes growth is just seeing it sooner.

You see sooner that you are silencing your voice.

You see sooner that you are acting out of fear.

You see sooner that you are projecting the past on to the present.

You see sooner that you are the one acting crazy, not them.

Because you did the work, you see it sooner.

Until our last breaths, we’ll keep missing the mark.

We will dim our light and betray ourselves.

We will cause harm to those we love.

But if we stay awake, we can learn to course correct sooner.

Stay awake and you might see it this year – and not let it extend for a decade

Stay awake and you might see it this week – and not let it extend for a year.

Stay awake and you might can see it this hour – and not let it extend for a week.

Stay awake and you’ll receive those moments of grace, those crystal ones,

when in the instant – before the first choice, the first word, the first act

you will catch it

right the moment of it’s beginning

and choose differently.

The turnaround is the most important part of the flight path.

When you make it, you move the whole world forward.

You plant a seed of love in the ground,

and all those who come after you thank you.

***

Toronto evening salon in May. Sign up here to join me!

And, my Abundant Launch mini-course for entrepreneurs is now available in self-study format. Learn more here.

Teaching a workshop this weekend, I was reminded of a very important truth:

It is *not* a good idea to argue with your inner critic.

Because here’s the thing: if you are arguing, you’ve already lost. The critic is happy to argue with you till the cows come home, because if you are busy arguing with it, you are not doing the things your critic is trying to prevent you from doing: Putting your voice out there. Breaking the mold of your limiting beliefs about yourself. Sharing your voice. Risking failure to fulfill your big dreams.

The critic is like one of those people in your life who you know that if you’ve gotten sucked into the argument with them – you’ve already lost. I know you’ve got a few of those peeps in your life. The critic is the same way. When we get sucked into arguing with it, we’ve already gone down the rabbit hole.

You can’t win arguing with someone who doesn’t respect you and isn’t listening to you, and the critic is the same way.

Plus, have you noticed how the critic will keep producing new reasons, one after the other, about why you shouldn’t do whatever it is you dream of doing?

It might start by saying:

You don’t have the time to write the book right now.

But when you knock down that excuse and carve out the time, it will say

You don’t have the right room to do write in. You need a good space.

And when you finally create the writing corner in your home, it will say

You aren’t good at this. It’s too late. You needed to become a writer earlier.

And if you can get rid of that one, it will say

Too many other people have written about this same topic. There is no market for it.

And if you get over that it will say

This is an indulgence. This is selfish. This is a time when other people need you too much for you to be doing this.

And if you can get rid of that one, it will come up with something else, and something else, and something else.

Meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein describes our minds as like popcorn machines – they keep popping off new thoughts – true or untrue – because that is simply how the mind functions.

The inner critic is the same way, which is to say, the voice of fear (of failure, of change) within us is the same way.

When it is determined to prevent you from leaving your comfort zone, it will cycle through excuses like someone flipping through a Roledex.

A = This is arrogant of you.
B = You are too busy.
C = There is too much competition.
D = You lack the self-discipline.
E = You need more education first.
F = You are a fraud.
G = It’s not good enough.
H = It won’t make you happy anyway.
I = It’s impossible.
J = People are going to judge this harshly.
K= The kids will be deprived if you do this.
L = You are too late. You needed to start earlier.
M= Wanting this is materialistic.
N = No one cares about this. No one will listen.
O = This is the wrong order to do things in. Better do x, y, and z before you go for this.
P = You are unprepared. Better do more preparation first.
Q = Doing great work quietly is enough. No need to speak up or be aggressive. Just wait.
R = You need more financial resources before you can do this.
S = You don’t have the right space to do this in. Reorganize your house to create an office first.
T = You don’t have the right tools. Buy special pens instead of writing, shop for a new computer before launching the business, get the perfect website designed before telling anyone you are in business.
U = Your voice is not unique. Everyone’s doing this.
V = If you promote yourself in that way, people will think you are vain.
W = You need the perfect website before you can start (fill in the blank: seeing clients, running your business, etc.)
X = You need more experience first.
Y = You are too young. No one will take you seriously, especially not people older than you.
Z = Well, maybe your critic has nothing to say with z.

You might picture your critic as flipping through a Roledex, each card a new excuse to try on you. Or maybe it’s a deck of cards, and each time you start to leave your comfort zone, the critic draws a new one.

The inner critic will just keep going, with one argument after another. It doesn’t worry too much about choosing arguments with any relationship to reality, it’s just looking for one’s that will cause you a big “ouch!” or “ack! that would be terrible!” or “oooh, good point….” and cause you to send yourself right back into your familiar status quo.

If your plan is to argue away each argument it shows you, you will never finish the argument. The critic will keep you stuck at the gate – arguing with the gatekeeper, and never able to actually get on that plane that is going where you want to go.

Do you notice an area in your life when your critic, or your fears are just cycling through one excuse after another? I’d love to hear about that if so.

So, what to do?

1. Notice. Notice when your inner critic is talking to you, and label it as such. Use this list of 7 qualities of the inner critic’s voice to help you recognize when your critic is speaking up.

2. Name the critic when you hear it. This is as simple as inwardly saying, “Oh, I”m hearing my inner critic talking now. Hi, inner critic.”

3. In your own way, wave hello to it. Blow it a kiss. Acknowledge it’s voice. Say, “Thank you so much for your input, but I’ve got this one covered.”

Move forward from the part of you that is desire, dreams, longing, aspiration, impulse to self-realization.

She isn’t going anywhere, but her hysterics do not need to direct the course of journey.

p.s. Toronto women: I am coming to you May 15th and doing an event! I hope you’ll join me. Info and sign up HERE. This is a small gathering in a home so get your ticket now if you want a spot!

p.s #2 I talked with Tamarisk about connection – to self, to others, to spirit – at her blog HERE. Come visit.

Love,

Tara

Hey there,

I’ve been doing more TV lately, which is really fun in lots of ways, but one of the big downsides is the three-minute thing. On most shows, you get three minutes, or maybe, at tops, five minutes, to share your ideas, connect with the host, deliver the information. It can feel rushed and shallow. It can leave a girl feeling kinda empty.

Doing those segments has made me appreciate other longer interview formats, and I got to luxuriate in two of them this week. Both of the interviewers, Tabby Biddle and Jeffrey Davis are wise, impassioned souls I admire.

Here’s Tabby’s interview of me (this was a phone chat now written up in an article).
Here’s Jeffrey’s interview with me (this is an audio recording).

To be honest, I am feeling weird and awkward about sending out two interviews of me…some sort of “that’s arrogant” police are yelling in my head. Like somehow this is less okay to send out than my own thoughts written into a blog post? Anyway, just voicing the inner critic there.

I spoke from the heart in both of them and I hope you find something useful in each. (I also hope that the part about the Venus of Willendorf will make you laugh out loud as it made me when I saw what I had said!)

Tabby’s interview
Jeffrey’s interview

Love to you,

Tara

A lot of people think, “but my partner should know!”

If he loves me, he’d get how this makes me feel. If she’s the right person for me, if she is sensitive to how I’m feeling at all, she would have known this is not what I wanted.

He should have known that I didn’t want to spend the extra money – he knows how stressed I am about our not saving enough. She should have known that transitions are difficult for me and I would want her to be around more during this one.

I have to tell you, I totally disagree. I think X-ray vision is a skill for X-ray machines. Mind-reading is a skill for the neighborhood psychic. For you and me and our relationships, there is communication.

Give your loved ones a break. Stop expecting them to know.

And give yourself a new job: discovering how you feel, what you want, and communicating it. Because let’s be honest. How often do you really know precisely what you want and what you want from your partner? Isn’t it a little unfair to expect your honey or your friends or your family to know what you really want and feel when you find it too difficult (or don’t make the time) to sort through the complex and conflicting layers yourself?

If you aren’t sure about this, try it this week. As you communicate with your loved ones, invite yourself into the practice of finding out what you really want. When you are talking about the weekend, are you aware of what you actually want? When you are talking about childcare responsibilities, are you clear about what you want (or are you just in a negotiation that has more to do with obligation, resentment, or martrydom)? See if you can begin looking inside to explore what you want. Sometimes it will take time to peel pack the layers to find out.

The other reason our loved ones can’t know what we are feeling is that our individual minds work differently from eachothers. The terrain is different within each of us. When we try to guess what our partner is feeling, we are always doing one of two things 1) projecting our own inner reality onto theirs (assuming our partner will feel how we would feel in similar circumstances or 2) projecting our beliefs about our partner on to them. Often, our beliefs have to do with our own past experiences or with how they’ve reacted in the past – but neither of those have bearing on what is happening in the present. One of the saddest things that can happen in a relationship is when one person makes big assumptions about their partner based on how that person has felt or behaved in the past. When we do this, we literally kill the most exciting part about relationships: that they are always evolving, because we are always evolving.

I find my own relationship stays most healthy and most interesting when I bring a sense of curiosity, of “what is happening over there, in that territory, now?” That means assuming nothing about how my husband feels or what he wants – and instead, being curious about it. Of course, I diverge from this at this all the time, but I do so less and less- as the assumption reflex gets weaker, and the curiosity reflex gets stronger.

So that’s my offer to you this week. To assume less about that person sitting across from you. To get curious. And to take the time to go within and discover what you want – about the little things and the big things. To share that. You’ll be surprised – quite often, you discovering what you want and saying it is enough. You no longer need to do anything about it, or expect anyone else to get it. You’ve witnessed and honored yourself.

On a different note, I want to invite you to visit here and listen to my audio conversation with writer and creativity expert Jeffrey Davis. We talk about “tracking wonder,” about fostering a creative life, about writing. I read a couple poems too.

Love,

Tara

“Honey, want to set the table?”

That’s what we say, but what we really mean is

“Honey, I’d like you to set the table. Would you be willing to do that?”

Or we say,

“Let’s go hiking today.”

when what we really mean is

“I’d love to go hiking! Are you up for that?”

We say,

“We should do our taxes this weekend.”

When what we really mean is

“I feel stressed about the taxes and would like to get them done. Would you be up for doing them together this weekend?”

Read over these statements again. Notice how it feels to you to imagine saying the first question in each pairing, and then what feels different when you imagine saying the second.

For most of us, it feels much more comfortable to ask the first in each pair of questions.

But do you notice what’s missing in each of these statements? The “I.” And as a result, the truth is missing too.

Most of the time, we don’t express our requests or our preferences explicitly. We blur them, hide them, couch them.

Sometimes we do that because deep down, we aren’t sure if the request is fair. We feel guilty about it. Or we don’t want the disappointment or frustration of a clear “no” – so we don’t frame our requests as questions at all. Much of the time, we are uncomfortable simply because making requests is vulnerable – it requires sharing openly what we want, and, in some way, asking for help, for teamwork. It is also difficult, because it puts the responsibility on us to discern what we want and ask for it rather than being vague about it and expecting our loved ones to just get it.

So we skip the actual requesting part. We also skip the part where we insert an “I” into the sentence and say what we want.

This has big-time problematic effects in our relationships.

You say, “Honey, want to take some time off so we can reconnect?” when you mean, “Would you please take some time off so we can reconnect?” “Honey” has two options:

1. Answer your question literally. Honey’s answer is likely “no” since he or she probably doesn’t actively want the exact same thing you just dreamed up. The problem is, you’ll receive that no as a dismissal of what you were really feeling, which was “I’m feeling disconnected. I want to do something about it. My request is that maybe you could take time off and we could spend time together. Would you be willing to do that?”

2. The other option is for honey to play into the “code” language here and understand you are really making a request of them, even though you haven’t said it that way. This is a kind of “we know each other so well, I know what she is really saying” thing that many couples get into. They learn to read many of each other’s weird ways of saying things – through words, facial expressions, sighs, and behavior. But we don’t want to be doing interpretative guesswork about what our loved ones are saying, because a lot of the time we’ll guess wrong – and then they’ll feel misunderstood, unseen, or unloved. Guesswork also deprives us each of the powerful experience of figuring out what we want and articulating it, and the beautiful experience of being able to meet a partner’s request.

So here ‘s my challenge to you for the week:

1. No more saying, “Want to blah blah blah?” when what you really mean is, “Would you be willing to do blah blah blah?” Instead, say what you mean, “Would you be willing to do blah blah blah?”

Remember your partner can answer yes or no, and then it’s up to you to decide what you want to do from there. You may feel sad, disappointed, angry or other difficult emotions when you get a “no” – and- your partner is not responsible for your emotions. Similarly, your partner may have requests of you, and you get to answer yes or no, based on what feels right to you. They may have emotions in response to your “no” and that’s okay – you aren’t responsible for those emotions.

2. No more saying “Let’s do x” when you want to say, “I’d like to do x.’ Instead, say, “I’d like to do x.” What follows depends on the situation. It might be, “I’d like for you to come. Would you be willing to join me?” It might be, “You are welcome to come if you want.”

3. And last but not least, no more, “We should…” That statement is never, ever, true. What might be true is that there is something you want, or something you think you and so and so should do. But there is no such thing as “We should.” So say what you mean: “I’d like us to…” or “I think the right thing to do here is x.”

Use your “I’s.” Be clean in your communication: say what you mean. Start practicing the art of identifying and expressing your requests.

What do you think about giving this a try? What does this post bring up for you? Let me know in the comments.

Join Me for an Open Rehearsal

AND I have a fun invitation for you! Later this week, Jennifer Siebel Newsom and I will be giving the keynote talks at the California conference for the American Association of University Women. I am having an “open rehearsal” of my talk tomorrow morning at 8-9am PST, by conference call. If you’d like to listen in, register for free access here. The talk is about women playing bigger, about how we can step into our callings, and about how I see the next frontier of the women’s movement. Register for the open rehearsal HERE. (Note: There will be no recording of this call available, unfortunately. If you can’t attend April 10, 8-9am PST live, please stay tuned for other opportunities to listen to this content.)

Love,

Tara

Hello!

I’m almost at the end of what has been a lovely week in the Seattle area. Maybe if I lived here, the months of rain and cold would become hard to bear, but whenever I come to visit, I swoon for the Pacific Northwest. The landscape of tall trees along the water, the fact that there seems to be an adorable, healthy place to eat on every corner, and there are so many fabulous people here – friends and colleagues I admire.

On Monday, I did an interview with NewDay Northwest, the morning TV show here. Our topic? The subtle, and seemingly “little” ways that women undermine themselves through their own words. Here is the clip: (click here if you are reading by email)

 
Earlier this week, I held a day long workshop, graciously hosted by Laura Henderson, a blog reader who generously opened up her home for the event, and was an amazing host. Thank you Laura!

And…if you didn’t catch my recent blog post here, “Some Loving Reminders About Feedback,” it’s now up at Huffington Post here.

Love & hugs to everyone,

Tara