87: Playing Big and Living in Alignment (with Tara Mohr)

We often know intuitively what we should be doing with our lives, but our inner critic can get loud in its efforts to protect us from the unknown, making it hard to move forward on the path of sharing our gifts. In this episode, Tara Mohr shares how you can more easily listen to your intuition, overcome the 2 types of fear, and keep moving forward on your path of purpose – even when your inner critic is shouting.

You can explore more at www.taramohr.com or check her book, “Playing Big – Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create and Lead”

Nuggets of Wisdom from Tara:

“May I be the representative of love. Focus on what I can give to others and service and emanate love – a non-personal, very non-specific love. For me, that’s a spiritual thing. That’s like a wellspring that never runs out.”

“I think we all have to listen to our own pain, and in our culture, sometimes we feel that we have to numb the pain. I know in my own life, the amount of pain I feel is exactly proportional to how out of alignment I am with my soul. For me, that was a profound realization because the amount of pain you feel isn’t really based on what’s going on in the external circumstances in your life. It’s really how in line are you with what is true to your soul – what nurtures your soul – and the perspectives and the ideas that feel true from a soul alignment place. When I am in a lot of pain, whether it’s challenging things or not, it’s because that part is out of balance. Listening to the pain and taking it seriously is telling me something valuable.”

“A lot of times, we are kind of pretending we don’t know what our intuition is saying…. But what we really mean by saying that is, ‘Damn, I don’t know want what my intuition is saying because it is so inconvenient to my life', right? It means I’m going to have a difficult conversation. It means I’m going to have to do something scary.”

“One of my favorite, favorite lines is: ‘Our intuition is always right, but sometimes we interpret it wrong.' It’s very vulnerable and scary to use your gifts. A lot times we self sabotage ourselves because of that. One of the ways we self sabotage is by making it really dramatic and high stakes financially for ourselves, so we aren’t setting it up in a sustainable way. Or the fear sets in.”

“There are two ancient Hebrew terms that are used in the Old Testament, a new, very old way of looking at fear. Two words are used for fear, one of them is Pahad. The definition of pahad is the fear of productive things or imagined things. So when we imagine what could happen, when we project the movie with the worst case scenario that might occur. Most of us are familiar with that kind of fear. That kind of fear tends to be overreactive, not based on reality and very misleading for us. It also gets in the way of our ability to think clearly when we’re feeling it. When we’re feeling that fear, we need to shift out of it. There’s a lot of things we can do, from mindfulness to visualization, to becoming the representative of love. We can start living out of it.”

Some of Tara's Favorite Things:

Routines: 
“Exercise is non-negotiable. I’m doing the most physical job of my life right now… I need to train for it and support my body to do what it needs to do.”
“I’m very committed to having my breakfast and green tea in the morning no matter what else is going on.”
“I call my friends a lot. I have a lot of long-distance girlfriends over the phone.”

Favorite Book: “The Chalice and the Blade – anthropology and history. The author is Riane Eisler.”

What does it mean to be a Vibrant Happy Woman?:

“When I’m living in alignment with my soul and the things that make my soul feel alive and grateful and vital.”

A Challenge from Tara:

“If you feel you should do something, think about if you had a new kind of relationship to your self doubt, what would you do? Go do something about it even when your inner critic is talking to you very loudly.”

Resources

www.taramohr.com

Playing Big – Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create and Lead

The Chalice and the Blade

Subscribe to the Vibrant Happy Women Podcast:

Apple Podcasts · Android · Overcast · Castbox · Radio Public

How to Leave a Review:

Give us a Rating & Review · How to Leave a Review

Ask Jen a Question:

Have a comment or question for me? Email me at support@jenriday.com. I'd love to hear from you!

OTHER WAYS TO ENJOY THIS POST: