“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

• 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

I’m excited about what Molly does over at her site, Stratejoy. Her work targets women in their mid-twenties, women grappling with their “quarter-life crisis!” (Have you heard that term yet? It’s a new thing.)

She’s created a community for thousands of young women who want to consciously craft their lives and find greater meaning EARLY in adulthood.

I’m a big supporter of this because of my own experiences. I started consciously working on my personal growth early in life, and along the way was often frustrated when people remarked to me that inner work is for the second half of life. That you only get interested in it or ready for it when you are older.

I believe that is so not true, that many children, adolescents and young adults are seeking tools to live aligned with their values and help them go after their dreams.

So, for her “ABC’s of Self-Love” blog crawl, Molly asked me to write a post about questioning, as it relates to self-love.

Of course, one way we can love ourselves is to question the limiting stories or inner critic narratives that live in our heads. But I want to write about something else here: the importance of asking ourselves powerful questions.

It’s sometimes said that the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our questions. I think that’s true.

Here are seven of the most loving questions I think we can ask ourselves

1. What do I really want?
2. What is my heart’s desire?
3. What is this teaching me?
4. What is the gift in this?
5. What am I ready to let go of?
6. What am I avoiding?
7. What would love do in this situation?

Notice what these questions have in common:

1. They are about the present – not the future or the past.
2. They are short, under seven words. Simple.
3. They begin with the word “what.”

There are exceptions to every rule, but for the most part, I believe the most helpful questions we can ask ourselves meet these three criteria.

They don’t try to predict the future or figure out the past. (Sorry, Freud!)

They are simple, simple enough that our hearts and souls can hear and understand them. Once a question gets too complex and weighty, only the frontal cortex can understand it – and when it comes to the questions that matter most in our lives, the frontal cortex probably doesn’t have the answers. We need to speak to ourselves in language simple enough that our hearts and souls can understand — and then reply.

These questions also begin with “what.” “What” questions open up a space for naming what is happening, for creating possibilities, for generating ideas. They don’t demand an answer about “how” (“how” comes later, after a gorgeous and rich and wise “what” is uncovered) or try to figure out “why.” The “what” leads the way.

So try it this week. Set aside the why questions, the complex questions, the either/or questions. When you are reflecting, or journaling, or talking with a friend, think in terms of questions like these: big, open-ended, simple, short, “what” questions.

See what gifts show up in the answer.

Love,

Tara

This post is part of the “Blog Crawl of Self-Love” hosted by Molly Mahar of Stratejoy. You can check out other great posts by bloggers Amy Kessel, Rachel Cole, Randi Buckley and many others. Find out more about The ABC’s of Self Love Blog Crawl + Treasure Hunt here.

Love,

Tara

She says, “I just have so many interests. I’m excited by so many different things. I try to do too much. I end up juggling a million things. What can I do about that? Any recommendations on how I can FOCUS?”

The first time someone said this to me, I had a hunch about what to say back, so I simply said it: “Is this – the juggling, the million interests – actually a problem, or did you somehow get the message from someone else that it was a problem?”

“Hmmm….interesting,” she replied. Then she sat quietly for a few moments. “I guess it’s not a problem – I actually love everything I’m doing and I don’t feel scattered in the way people seem to think I would, given how much I have going on. Sometimes things get very overfull and chaotic, but I don’t actually mind that – I even kind of enjoy it.”

This – this conversation – keeps happening again and again: women are sure they aren’t focused enough, when it turns out that their abundance of interests are serving them beautifully. It’s as if there is a special kind of inner critic weighing them down, the “make choices and focus!” critic.

Here’s the ridiculous narrative most of us got as we grew up: You pick your “interests.” You are allotted a hobby or two, and a professional focus. Then you just stick with those things, and live a sane, serene kind of life, where you have plenty of time for your work focus, your hobby, your family, and for making a lovely dinner every night! The implicit message is: If you are sane, if you are strong, if you have a good moral compass, you’ll be able to focus. If you can’t, you should feel a little ashamed, and like a bit of a mess. People who can’t choose a narrow focus never complete or accomplish anything.

So what if this wasn’t true, at all?

Or what if it was true in an era when people stayed in jobs for 30 years and needed a very specific technical expertise to get a good job — but is not true in the era that is ours?

Or what if this idea came from a patriarchal culture obsessed with labels, categories, compartmentalization and “focus? A culture terrified of anything having to do with the messiness, the overfull-ness, and the mysterious connections between the disparate parts of life?

And what if you could totally let go of that internal voice of should saying you should love less and focus more, and instead begin to see the beauty and wisdom of each choice you made to place something in your market basket?

I know a lot of women who love a million things. We really only love a few things, but those few manifest in a million ways, and we love the diverse manifestations.

We juggle. But our juggling doesn’t actually look like a panicked, clumsy rush to catch all the balls. (You know, the kind that graces all the magazine and book covers, showing the crazy women pulling her hair out trying to manage it all?) Our juggling doesn’t look like that. It looks like the expert’s juggling. It’s graceful, beautiful, practiced. It’s a sight to see. It’s a gorgeous dance.

If you feel like you have too many interests, if you feel like you lack focus, I urge you to rigorously ask yourself: is there *really* a problem here? A problem in my getting things done? A problem in my working myself to exhaustion? If yes, address those specific problems – don’t hack away at what you love or tell yourself you need to love more narrowly.

If the answer is no, if in fact there is no real problem, then you’ve probably just absorbed a kind of criticism often labelled at creative women: focus. But the people who were threatened by your garden of interests, don’t know you, and they don’t know your rhythms. Only you do.

Love,

Tara

***

I’m coming to NYC next week, to do a few speaking events. One of them is open to the public and will be a small-group evening salon. I’d love to meet you! Tickets here.

Love,

Tara

***

“One of the biggest problems of modern life is that time has become the enemy.”

He spoke about how so many of us struggle with time: we struggle with how much we have, we struggle to fit things in, we complain about the lack of it.
 
Yes, it’s problematic that the pace and expectations of modern life leave us without time for white space, for reflection, for downtime.
 
Yes, “lack of time” is an ever-convenient, oft-used excuse for not following one’s passion, not doing one’s art, not tending to their spiritual lives.
 
But until I heard John O’Donahue say, “One of the biggest problems of modern life is that time has become the enemy,” I hadn’t realized the depth of the problem. When you set yourself up in that oppositional relationship to time, you are cutting yourself off from the very flow of life.
 
Whatever this magic-carpet-ride of life is, time is the backdrop. Time is the fabric of our lives. Time is the sea in which we swim.
 
Time is mysterious, ancient as the cosmos, holy as breath. Do you really want to live in a fight with it, or a complaint against it?
 
Make love to time. Listen to its music. Spend time with it, lovingingly. Hold it with a soft, open hand and allow it to show you its secrets.
 
Find out how soft it is. If its a fabric, it’s silk. If it’s a music, it’s a sound that rolls and leaps like the wind.
 
You’ll find out that time is wise, and alive and making a quiet music.
 
Today, make love to time, and see what you two create.
 
Love,
 
Tara
 
Please share in the comments: what is your relationship to time, and what comes to mind when you think of “making love to time”?
****

Special Course for Entrepreneurs: Abundant, Happy Launches

As you know, I’m just coming out of the Playing Big registration period. I’m excited and proud that 140 women from around the world are participating in the program.
 
I’ve been thinking about how much I’ve learned about marketing and product development that allowed me to successfully fill a program with a large group – and wanting to share what I’ve learned with you. I’ve created a short class in which I’ll do just that.
 
I know that, like me, many of you run small businesses that offer something needed and positive to the world – as coaches, wellness practitioners, artists, consultants. Many of you are walking the exciting – yet frustrating – path of promoting products or services online. (Or you are thinking about doing so soon.)
 
You are probably excited by the potential of how many people you could reach and the possibility of creating something financially scalable and sustaining. But you are also probably frustrated with launches that landed with a thud – when you announced a product or service online and saw no – or very low – sales. It’s such a disappointing, ouch, icky moment. I’d like you to not have those disappointing, ouch, icky moments anymore.
 
I’d like to share what I learned with you – the strategies that work and how to build successes even out of the things that aren’t doing well so far. This is marketing – but with special attention to the approaches that bring together integrity, authenticity, and effectiveness. CLICK HERE to learn more.

Photo by Arvalee Knight

Your playing big isn’t defined on the world’s terms. It isn’t necessarily owning an empire or making millions. You know what playing big means for you. It’s following that inspiration that is in your heart. Seeing it through. It is getting out there – visible. It is your voice, your vision, your unique contribution, flowing forth, no longer shrunken down, stopped up inside you, or compromised.

Playing Big Registration Closes Tomorrow.

Click here to get your spot.
 
A short video about my secret agenda with Playing Big. Click here to watch.
 
Last week’s free Information and Q&A Call about Playing Big. Click here to listen.

Want to learn more about my women’s leadership program, Playing Big?

Click here to join us live TODAY at noon PST for a free informational and Q&A call about the program! If you can’t make it, no problem. Sign up anyway and you’ll be emailed the recording!
 
Love,
 
Tara