Tara Sophia Mohr | wise living

So, you’ve been getting to know your inner critic. You realize that the anxious, mean, voice in your head is actually in charge of many of the choices you make each day.

You see how its chatter about what you deserve prevents you from honoring your real dreams for your life. How it keeps you from sharing the bold, unique ideas that will get you moving in your career. How its pontifications about your belly and arms and thighs make a day at the beach a lot less fun.

You start to contemplate no longer listening to this voice. But then a little, troubling realization pops up:

“What if the inner critic is what has been motivating me to succeed all this years?”

You realize: it’s often the anxiety screaming, “DON’T SCREW THIS UP” in your head that makes you reread and reread and reread and improve the document. It’s the voice that sighs in disappointment when you look in the mirror that ensures that you stay physically active. You wonder, could the inner critic be the motivator behind a lot of the “good” and “productive” stuff I do?

This question has been coming up in my talks and workshops, a lot. Here’s my answer.

Part I: Yes, the inner can be your motivator.
Part 2: There are serious costs of being motivated this way. Serious.
Part 3: If you knew of an alternative, would you still choose to be motivated by the critic?

The critic can spur us into action. A sense of inadequacy can drive us to work harder, to prepare more, to do more. But what are the costs of that?

Our lives don’t feel sensual, fun, luscious, when the critic is running the show. We don’t experience our connection to others when the critic is threading its voice through our interactions with others. We walk through our lives with a really horrible soundtrack in our heads, on repeat. “You aren’t enough. You are about to fail. Who do you think you are?” (You know that catchy one? Lots of verses but the chorus remains the same…?)

Second, yes the critic leads us to do stuff, but does it really lead us into wise action? When I have a speaking engagement coming up, sometimes my inner critic jumps in: “You didn’t prepare enough for this – now it’s too late and you are already screwed. This is going go very poorly. This topic is all wrong.” The critic can scare me into more preparing and last-minute rewriting, but I’ve noticed, over time – the extra work I do from this self-critical, panicky place usually turns out to be not very high quality work, or work that was needed at all.

If you are aware that the critic is motivating you, take a good hard look: are the actions it drives you to really in the service of your dreams, or your professional blossoming? The inner critic can help us have some small wins but does that matter if it has also caused us to be playing the wrong game entirely?

And then, health. I think about this a lot lately, because I’m now squarely in my adult working life, and the question occurs to me: well, if I were to keep doing it this way for the next two or three decades of my working life, what would the impact of that be?

I know that when I am being driven by the critic, there is a lot of adrenalin moving through my system, a lot of stress hormones and racing heart beats. Human bodies are not meant to be in that state for hours everyday – and it takes a serious toll on our health if we are.

But you don’t need me to tell you that. You can feel it: when you are being driven by this anxious never satisfied, voice, you can feel how it depletes and strains your physical systems. You feel the exhaustion, the headaches, the jitters. And you experience the collateral health damage – the extra reaches for caffeine or sugar to keep up the pace, or the over-eating or over-drinking to calm yourself from the stress.

So here’s my question to you today: For those of you who feel you’ve been motivated by the critic, I invite you to start to wonder into the question: how else might I motivate myself? What else could provide the push or the pull into action? And for those of you have found another way, tell us about it. If not from fear, and self-doubt, from what do you act? What motivates you? How do you name it? Love? Dreams? Values? Service? How does acting from this place feel, and what are the results? Please share.

Love,

Tara

So you are working on speaking up more. Or you are dreaming about launching that new business, or nonprofit, or artistic venture. Or you are just trying to be more of your real deal self and share what is on your mind.
 
In some way, you are fighting the everyday fight to step into playing a little bit bigger – because you want the joy of it and you want to do some good in this world.
 
I bow to that. I’m proud of you.
 
We need to talk about feedback — feedback in the broadest sense. Not just the kind of feedback you get in annual “feedback conversations” at work, or when someone says, “Um, can I give you some feedback?”. I mean all kinds of feedback. The feedback that shows up in how many comments you get on a blog post, or in how many people buy what you are selling. The feedback that shows up in how many job interviews you get called in for – and how many companies ignore your resume. The feedback that shows up when you say something in a meeting and it is met with awkward silence – or when you say something and everyone responds with agreement and excitement.
 
If you are playing bigger, if you are sharing your voice, you are going to get more feedback that feels high stakes, because it is feedback on the real, emerging, tender you.
 
This is hard.
 
We are tender. The toughest among us are even more tender, underneath our thick skin. We are afraid of finding out we aren’t good enough. We are afraid of finding our we are more than good enough, so good that there is no reason to keep stalling, perfecting, preparing – that it is actually time to just step onto the big stage now. What if that is true? Ack!
 
So I want to offer you a mega-concept shift, a whole new way of thinking about feedback that has allowed feedback to serve me (instead of scare me). It allows me to even seek out feedback. While I can’t say I now love getting feedback and enjoy it as much as an ice cream sundae…this makes it tolerable to get it. Note: this way of looking at feedback is one of the few useful things I learned in business school, and now, I share it with you (and you don’t even have to pay the $70k tuition).
 
FEEDBACK DOES NOT TELL YOU ABOUT YOU. IT TELLS YOU ABOUT THE PERSON GIVING THE FEEDBACK.
 
Let’s let that sink in. FEEDBACK DOES NOT TELL YOU ABOUT YOU. IT TELLS YOU ABOUT THE PERSON GIVING THE FEEDBACK.
 
If you show your memoir to a writing group, and three people in it say its boring, what does that really tell you? It tells you about what those people find boring. Does it give you any facts about the quality of your writing? Does it reveal any truths about your potential and merit as an artist? Nope. The only fact you have is about what these three people find boring. But what if tons of people think its boring? If you show your memoir to a million people, and all of them say its boring, that still does not tell you anything about you. It tells you about what audiences find boring.
 
If you pitch your idea to a venture capital firm and they aren’t interested, that tells you something about what they get interested in and what they don’t. It does not actually tell you anything about you or your idea.
 
But stay with me for part two of the idea here, because part two is very important. I’m not arguing that feedback should be ignored because it doesn’t tell you anything about you. No no no no no. No! I’m a huge proponent of gathering, listening to and incorporating feedback. It is vital.
 
Here’s the difference: in this new paradigm, we seek out feedback not because it tells us about our own value or merit, but because it tells us whether we are reaching the people we need to reach in the way we want to. If that entrepreneur wants her pitch to be effective with venture investors, she needs to know what speaks to them. If that memoirist wants her work to be read widely, she needs to know what keeps a reader engaged. Most of us want to reach and influence other people with our work, our ideas. Usually, we need (or want) to reach particular people or particular types of people. We want to influence them in particular ways.
 
As writers, we want the reader to learn and to enjoy. As entrepreneurs, we want the investor to invest, or the customer to buy. As healers, coaches, therapists, we want to do work that actually heals and transforms. Feedback tells us about what is working and not for the particular people we want to reach. It gives us insight into them, not into ourselves.
 
When I write a post, and no one comments, shares it on social media, or writes to me about it, I could conclude that I wrote “a bad post” or that I am a failure. Or I could use that as an opportunity to learn something about my audience – to glean an insight about what helps a post make an impact for them. The first line of thinking will send me into an unhelpful self-obsessing spiral. The second will help me improve my craft.
 
Feedback doesn’t tell you whether you are good enough or not. Whether your ideas have merit or not. Whether you are gloriously worthy or worthless. It is not meant to give you self-esteem boosts or wounds. It gives you tactical information about how to reach who you want to reach.
 
Feedback is emotionally neutral information that tell us what sings to our audience, what resonates for them, what communicates clearly, what engages the people we want to engage.
 
Got it?
 
Let me know what you think in the comments.
 
Big love, big hugs, big appreciation to all of you.
 
Tara

The poem below, The Real Life, was the very first poem I wrote when I started writing poetry again a few years ago.
 
Today, I want to invite you to consider:
 
What is the “the real life” in front of you – the beautiful, simple, available life in front of you that you can so easily overlook?
 
What happens if you turn your attention away from how you wish things were different, and instead, fall in love with (or at least get really interested in) what is happening in your life right now?
 
Can you find the adventure in it?
 
Can you find the grace in it?
 
And, toughest of all, can you surrender to what it is trying to teach you? .
 
Love,
 
Tara
 

Photo by Jenny Ellen Brown

The Real Life

Don’t be greedy with the universe, she said to me.
 
But she didn’t say it in the mean way.
She didn’t say don’t dream big, don’t want things, don’t think you deserve.
 
She meant: look at your life and trust it.
Notice how you have forever been given what you need.
 
Notice how, while you’ve been railing and ranting and wanting,
enoughness has gathered around you like stones around a fire,
 
How, while you’ve been making lists of what should be
wishing the set and costumes were different,
there was a whole other play happening on another stage.
 
The real life.
 
Witnessed when you hand a dollar to the woman behind the register
in the color of the orange
in the magic laugh
 
Never calling, just crackling, speaking in tones –
the real life
 
Cup your hands and ask for it.
Start looking.
Sweetness. Honey in a bowl. Nectar.
 
-Tara Mohr
 
***
 

Psst! Seattle event!

There are still a few spots for my event in Seattle this Sunday! Click here to learn more.

the pressure to have an arm that looks like that
and legs that look like that
and a belly like that
 
pressure to tone this to that
to be a size this
weigh that
 
How many days have you lost?
How many murders of yourself?
 
How many times have you
clamped down because of it,
quieted the moon because of it,
or didn’t ask the sun to dance?
 
She mourned this one morning,
and wondered,
what would it be like, without the pressure?
 
-Tara Sophia Mohr
 
***
 
What would your life be like, without the pressure to change your body, or to keep it conforming to our culture’s ideal? Please share in the comments.
 
Seattle Workshops – April 1
SF Playing Big Workshop – April 14 & 15 – one spot left.

I haven’t posted a poem here in a while, but on this rainy foggy day in the middle of winter, it seemed time for a poem, and time for this one. A loving reminder of the rhythm. We all need to remember her.
 

The Rhythm

Art by Shelley Kommers
 
 

In any creative feat
(by which I mean your work, your art, your life)
there will be downtimes.

Or so it seems.

Just as the earth is busy before the harvest

and a baby grows before its birth,

there is no silence in you.
There is no time of nothingness.

What if,
during the quiet times, when the idea flow is hushed and hard to find
you trusted (and yes I mean trusted)
that the well was filling, the waters moving?

What if you trusted

that for the rest of eternity,

without prodding, without self-discipline,

without getting over being yourself,

you would be gifted every ounce of productivity you need?

What would leave you? What would open?

And what if during the quiet times you ate great meals

and leaned back to smile at the stars,

and saw them there, as they always are,

nourishing you?

There are seasons and harvest is only a fraction of one of them.
We forget this.

There is the rhythm that made everything.

The next time you stand in the kitchen, leaning,

the next time a moment of silence catches you there,

hear it, that rhythm, and let it place a stone in your spine.
Let it bring you some place beautiful.

Tara Sophia Mohr, from Your Other Names: Poems for Wise Living

Upcoming Events

I have two events coming up and would to meet you at them!
 
San Francisco Weekend Playing Big Workshop: There are just two spots left in my April 14-15 Playing Big two day workshop at the San Francisco coast. This is the first time I’m taking the Playing Big material into a small-group, weekend workshop format. You can learn more about it here.
 
Seattle Workshops: I’ll be leading two workshops in Seattle – a morning workshop on “Finding and Freeing Your Inner Writer” and an afternoon workshop on “Playing Bigger in Your Work and in Your Life.” I have a special fondness for the Pacific Northwest and it’s culture – I’m really looking forward to this gathering. Click here to learn more and to register.

The Rush Limbaugh Sandra Fluke controversy rages on.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week — feeling inspired by the successful consumer activism that is causing advertisers to take a stand. I’ve been thinking about what makes someone say offensive and demeaning things about another human being – and what makes other people tune in to listen to those works. The incident has also got me thinking about the term “slut” — just thinking about it, and researching its origin.

“Slut” originally simply meant “dirty” (way back in 1400). There was a period where a messy corner in your house was called “slutty.” No joke. The term came to be associated with promiscuous women in part because prostitutes in the 15th century were literally “dirty” – very poor and without access to basic hygiene.

In 2012, what role is there for the term? We know that women make sexual choices out of a sense of empowerment or disempowerment, and we know that their choices don’t make them either “clean” or “dirty.” So what role remains for this word?

In thinking about that, earlier this week I tweeted “Let’s just abolish the term slut. Born 1402, died 2012.” That tweet seemed to strike a huge chord — people shared it all day. I’m writing more about that at Huffington Post here today, here. I’m getting hate email about this article already! (Good sign?) I invite you to come on by and share your thoughts.

And, on a very different note, I’ve got some lovely, small-scale, soul nurturing events coming up. Please see below if you are interested in attending.

Love,
Tara

There are just four spots left in my April 14-15 Playing Big two day workshop at the San Francisco coast. This is the first time I’m taking the Playing Big material into a small-group, weekend workshop format. You can learn more about it here.

On April 1, I’ll be leading two workshops in Seattle – a morning workshop on “Finding and Freeing Your Inner Writer” and an afternoon workshop on “Playing Bigger in Your Work and in Your Life.” I have a special fondness for the Pacific Northwest and it’s culture – I’m really looking forward to this gathering. Click here to learn more and to register.

Today I’m bringing you a conversation with my friend and colleague Marianne Elliott, whose book came out this week! Some of you who have been reading for a while have met Marianne here before. She’s a human rights activist, a yoga teacher, a writer, and a lawyer. Her new book, Zen Under Fire, is a memoir of her time working as a United Nations Human Rights Officer during the conflict in Afghanistan.

Doing that takes a lot of courage, of course. Marianne and I sat down to talk about courage, her book, and hew new course, “30 Days of Courage” (which is free with the book) in this short conversation (~20 minute audio). In her course, Marianne shares her lessons learned about courage and applies them to the (less dramatic) challenges we all face in our daily lives.

Marianne Elliott Interview

Download as Mp3 Marianne Elliott Interview

To learn more about Marianne’s book and the 30 Days of Courage course, click here.

Love,

Tara

I watched the Oscar’s Sunday night, and then, with more than a little frustration running through my veins, I wrote about the sad and weird relationship to women going on through the whole darn thing. That article, called “Dear Oscar: Women Have Stories Too“ is up up on the front page of the Women’s section and the Entertainment section of Huffington Post today. Come read and comment and share what you think.

I’m also about an event I’m doing next month. As many of you know, I’ve been running Playing Big as an online six-month program for the past two years. For the first time, I’m taking a selection of the Playing Big material and offering it in a 2-day live workshop, on the beautiful California coast, April 14 and 15. This is a small group pilot program limited to 12 participants, so it will fill up fast! Click here to learn more.

Love and hugs,

Tara

Photo: “Life flows on…” by Christa Gallopoulos
 
***
 
I don’t often excerpt other people’s work here, but I recently read something so gorgeous I knew right away I wanted to share it with you. This is from one of my favorite teachers, neuropsychologist and Buddhist teacher, Rick Hanson. Rick writes:
 

“One of the strangest and most meaningful experiences of my life occurred when I going through Rolfing (ten brilliant sessions of deep-tissue bodywork) in my early 20′s. The fifth session works on the stomach area, and I was anticipating (= dreading) the release of buried sadness. Instead, there was a dam burst of love, which poured out of me during the session and afterward. I realized it was love, not sadness, that I had bottled up in childhood – and what I now needed to give and express.
 
We can hold back our contributions to the world, including love, just as much as we can muzzle or repress sorrow or anger.
 

 
I was so moved by this: we expect to get in touch with buried pain, or grief, inside, but what about this – that inside of us rests a bottled up, unexpressed well of love?
 
“I realized it was love, not sadness, that I had bottled up in childhood – and what I now needed to give and express.”
 
I just wanted to hold a space for those words here. They stir my heart each time I read them.
 
We are so large, so sacred, so miraculous, so gifted – so much more so than the world has told us or than the world understands. We came into the world full of so much love, and along the way, got so many messages that caused us to hold back.
 
It is time to burst the dam of love.
 
I hope you’ll share in the comments what these words stir in you.And parents, what does this bring up for you in terms of your parenting? Please share.
 
By the way, if this spoke to you, I hope you’ll check out more of Rick’s work. It is quality. Rick is the author of Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom – and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time. I’m proud to say Rick is also a featured guest teacher in my Playing Big program, where he shares his wise and gentle approach to dealing with fear. Rick also writes a lovely newsletter called Just One Thing, which is where I read the passage above. You can subscribe to it here, (free!), if you’d like.
 
 
 
 
Love,
 
Tara

Cafe Lalo, one of my favorite places in NYC
 
At this moment I on the plane coming home to San Francisco from New York. I had a fabulous week in NYC that included:

• Staying at On the Ave, a sweet little boutique hotel located at a great spot on the Upper West Side. I recommend!
• Speaking to hundreds of brilliant women at tax and advisory company KPMG.
• Sitting a beautiful long table with Jeanne Stafford at her fabulous women’s networking dinner, EVEnts, and speaking there.
• Meeting longtime and new readers of my work like C.V., Katie, Rosemary, and so many others  at my evening salon on Playing Bigger. It ran smoothly and beautifully due to the help of Playing Big grads Ariane and Kiki!
• Joining Christine and Bronson for their NY radio show on 106.7 FM to talk about how women undermine themselves.
• Daily breakfast at this adorable cafe (how can you resist a place called: “pecan: a barista and a cook”?)
• Late night visit to Cafe Lalo (I try to never leave NYC without coming to this place at least once. It is cheerfulness manifest.)
• Fabulous meals (and needed green juice to fight a cold!) from here, here and here.
• A visit to the theater to see family drama Other Desert Cities with Stockard Channing, Judith Light, and Rachel Griffiths (I recommend. I really do love a play, or movie, where nothing happens except people talking to each other.This was one of those.

It was a great week. I love this city, and I loved the “work” (it is so not work!) I got to do when I was here. Thanks to everyone who made it such a lovely week.

Love,

Tara