Wise Living Blog

Hi there,

Big, contented sigh. I have been very, very busy spreading the word about Playing Big over the last several weeks, writing curriculum, lining up speakers, and learning more about credit card processing than I ever wanted to know.

Registration closed on Monday, and I’m thrilled – and so honored – that 110 remarkable women joined the program, from Dubai to Nairobi to Sydney to San Francisco.

When I imagined Playing Big, the intention in my heart was to support women in playing big in order to serve, heal, enrich the world. It wasn’t about helping women get their names in lights on the big marquees. It was about drawing together visionary women who want to move our world forward in some important way – but aren’t doing that something as boldly, as courageously, as big as they could — and who long for more.

As I’ve read the introductions of the women who have signed up this week, I can see that that is exactly who signed up, and that the community they are forming is as important as what will happen in the program.

I’ve been hearing from several of you that you’d like to take the course, but now wasn’t the right time. If you’d like to find out about the next session of Playing Big as soon as I’ve set the date, and be eligible for early bird discounts, sign up here.

On a different note, I wanted to invite you to come to an event I’m very excited about. On May 14th, there is a one day retreat on “A Life of Service” being held at Spirit Rock Meditation Center (near San Francisco) with one of my favorite writers and spiritual teachers, Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. You might recognize Rachel’s name – she’s the author of The New York Times bestsellers Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal and My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge and Belonging. Whether or not you can make it to the retreat, I recommend you get her books right away – they are so beautiful, comforting and healing – and I often turn to them during difficult times.

Rachel was trained as a physician (I think at Harvard, if I remember right) and herself lives with Crone’s disease. In my mind, Rachel is, first and foremost, a remarkable spiritual teacher. She was one of the early pioneers in mind-body medicine and has become a nationally recognized medical reformer and educator who believes that the practice of medicine is a spiritual path characterized by service, harmlessness, compassion, reverence for life and love. She is Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine, a co-Founder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, and the Founder and Director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal. Here’s a podcast interview with her.

If you can make it to the retreat – let me know – I’ll be there and I’d love to say hello. Either way, I invite you to check out Rachel’s incredible writing.

…and have a wonderful weekend!

Love,

Tara

This post is a special sneak peak into the first lesson of Playing Big, on callings. Today is the last day to register. Click here for the details.

How do you recognize a calling? Look for one or more of these clues:

1. You feel an unusually vivid pain or frustration around the status quo of a particular issue or topic. You strongly feel or clearly see what’s lacking.

2. You see a powerful vision–vague or clear–about what could be. That vision keeps filling your mind or tugging at your heart.

3. You feel inspired or even compelled to act. You have a mysterious, felt sense of “This work is mine to do.” You feel as if you’ve received an assignment, rather than that you chose the particular task or cause.

4. You find that actually doing the calling is a magical, strengthening process. While your inner critic might show up now and then, and while it’s hard work, you receive energy and a sense of meaning, and rightness, from doing it. You feel a kind of flow while working on it.

And… (these are the most important – and most surprising qualities of a calling)

5. You feel huge resistance. A part of you wants to run the other direction. You feel like the task is huge, and you just couldn’t possibly be up to it. It feels like this upends your plans, and doesn’t quite fit with what is convenient in your life. Keep this in mind: in the archetypal hero’s journey, step 1 is “hearing the call”. Step 2? “Resisting the call.” It’s normal. It’s part of the process. The key is eventually surrendering that resistance and stepping into the calling.

6. You don’t – yet—have everything you need to have to complete it. It’s not just irrational fear talking. It’s the truth. You don’t have everything you need. There is work to do, resources you will need to gather, and things you will need to make happen. That is a part of the beautiful stretch of the calling.

7. You aren’t – yet – the person you need to be to complete the calling. It’s true. It’s not just your inner critic. You aren’t quite up to the task. You don’t have all the qualities and strength you’ll need. And you’ll get them by doing the calling. Callings always grow us in some meaningful way. You will have to evolve, develop new capacities, and show up to life in new ways.

Now that you know about qualities 5, 6, & 7, what looks different in your life? What might you do differently, when it comes to that which you feel called to do?

This post is a special sneak peak into the first lesson of Playing Big, on callings. Today is the last day to register. Click here for the details.

The warmth of the hearth in my chest
and the breath of warm enoughness
and something like love in my throat,
a dense goodness covering –

all this: because I am home.

Because I fought the fight,
as difficult as Odysseus’ journey.
I slayed dragons, and scaled steep peaks,
laid down in a bed with fear,
and walked through the woods in the night.
A thousand trials to get home.

Yet the journey was also this:
Dorothy clicking her heels three times,
and being instantly transported there,
the moment she called for it.
Home coming like rain, like grace—
without struggle or trial or mud.

The long road and the non-road home:
perhaps we are always walking both, like train tracks.

Home on the other side of the door.
It’s as simple as knocking and as far as a thousand miles to get there.

In that home place, I can see:
nothing was ever broken.
Warmth savors up from our chests like a hearth
and love is in our throats, lunging outward,
and the world becomes a basket of gifts,
and we sit in it, and look around,
and tears rise, at the intensity of it.

-Tara Sophia Mohr

The world tells us in a million ways – whether through the bodies on covers of women’s magazines, or in ranking us with grades in school – that we aren’t enough, that we don’t measure up, that we have to change and reform and tweak ourselves to be acceptable.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We aren’t merely “enough,” but so much more than enough. Human beings come into this world overflowing with brilliance, shining with the sacredness that all human beings are.

As the world reflects back to us messages that we are flawed, we believe what the world tells us, and we begin a new way of looking at ourselves – full of stories about where we don’t measure up, how we are this type of person or that – and the light of us gets dimmed.

If there is any transformation to make, it is the one of coming back to awareness of our own goodness, wholeness, enoughness, trustworthyness, sacredness.

Those of us interested in inner work might talk about the glory of human beings and our souls and all that – but underneath that, we are saying: I need to change. I need to fix x about myself. There’s actually a lot of striving in the self-help world. The overarching paradigm is “I’m at point a, and I want to get to point b.”

I get that – because we all end up in adulthood carrying a lot of junk. Unhelpful fears, limiting beliefs, coping behaviors that don’t serve us, etc. We have an instinct to seek a freer, lighter, more joyful existence.

But it matters if you know, at the foundation, that you are shining and sacred and incredible and whole and nothing can take that away from you. You are already that. And life too, is already shining and sacred and incredible and whole, and nothing needs to change for you to awaken to all of that. You just need to ask to awaken to it, and to find doorways – whether reading scripture or meditating or painting or running – that helps you wake to it.

I’ve been noticing this distinction – striving for the goodness vs. coming home to the goodness that is – more as I’ve been writing more poetry. I trust what shows up in the poetry because it comes from something bigger than me, and it seems to speak to something deep in people. I started to notice: what shows up in the poetry feels so different than what shows up in my coaching or workshops. The poetry is really not about what could be, with “inner work” and change. It’s about the glory of what is. It’s not about who we could become – the potential we could fulfill. It’s about the miracle that we are.

Beside all our meager chatter about changing ourselves, a quieter voice endures, and it speaks with authority. It’s the silent, powerful mountain next to all the skirmishes happening on the land. And the mountain is whispering to us about our fundamental shining sacredness.

If there is any “transformation” to be had, it is only that, the transformation of coming home. Of seeing the utter sacredness that is present in our midst. I want to offer work that speaks to this.

Love,

Tara

(and…Playing Big registration closes on Monday, so this is the time to type in your name and sign up. Join us for a gorgeous journey into playing bigger, by which I mean, letting go of the junk and coming home to the bigness of your contribution. Click here for details.)

I have a new article up at Huffington Post today, and as you’ll sense when you read the words, I’m passionate about this topic. Click HERE to read the article, “Women: Stop Calling Yourselves Controlling.” If it speaks to you, please share with others, or leave a comment with your thoughts!

Hugs to you all -

Tara

For me, playing big is. . .

. . . realizing my voice deserves to be at tables that matter, and acting accordingly.

. . . submitting an article to the NY Times, and not only to blogs read by a few people.

. . . taking seriously my desire to be in major media and getting trained to be in it.

. . . saying the controversial stuff in my writing.

. . . speaking up, speaking up, speaking up.

If we want to play big. . .

. . . we need to become extremely skilled at dealing with fear.

. . . we need to learn to live with fear as our travelling companion – present, but not in our way.

. . . we need people who “see the future that hasn’t arrived yet,” who see a vision of us playing big before we see it.

. . . we need training in the tactical stuff: speaking with power, pitching for impact, negotiating with strength and grace.

. . . we need purpose, because purpose lifts us out of fear into a bigger game.

Would you play bigger if you were less dependent on others’ praise?

Van Gogh sold his work in exchange for sandwiches. People many not “get” your work during your lifetime, and that doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable.

Would you play bigger if you were less afraid of criticism?

If we are afraid of criticism, it’s pretty hard to play big, since playing big means being revolutionary and that means invoking criticism.

Often the criticism we are most afraid of is what we already believe (deep down) about ourselves. When we change the beliefs we have about ourselves, criticism bounces off.

The Dalai Lama said it, not me.

“The world will be saved by Western women.” That’s what he said.

That will be pretty hard for us to do if we aren’t playing big.

Love,

Tara

Learn more about my women’s Leadership–Share Your Voice–Change the World program, Playing Big, HERE. Today is the last chance to sign up for a free call about the program. Sign up here, to listen live, today 12-1pm PST, or to get the recording.

Hi Everyone!

Last week Charlotte Dixon interviewed me to kick off her new “Creative Cognoscente Interview Series.” Who knows why, but in this interview I was able to really clearly describe my writing process, and lots of other stuff. This interview just really feels like me, and says a lot of things I want to say. So, I wanted to share it in a special way here.

Particularly if you are a writer, or interested in the creative process in any way, or are a fan of my poetry, I think you’ll enjoy it. Here it is.

Love,
Tara

Hi everyone,

Writing with a few exciting updates!

This Thursday, March 31st, 12-1pm PST, I’ll be holding a free informational call about Playing Big. If you are still thinking about joining, but aren’t sure – this is the perfect opportunity for you to:

-Get a taste of the Playing Big program
-Hear why I created this program – and think this is the #1 way I can serve the world
-Get clear about all the nuts and bolts of how the program will work
-Ask any questions you have about the program

Next week is the final week to sign up for Playing Big, so this is the time to decide! I hope you’ll join me for the free call. CLICK HERE to sign up. You’ll need to register with your name and email address, and then your call-in # and passcode will be emailed to you. If you can’t make the call time, but would like the recording, just SIGN UP and you’ll receive it by email.

Seattle and Portland Events Coming Up Soon…and Selling out Fast

If you live in the Seattle or Portland areas, I hope you’ll join me for one of these fabulous events:

“Unhooking from Praise & Criticism” – Portland: April 5, 4:30pm: I’ll be speaking on this juicy topic at coach Regina Perata’s monthly salon. Click HERE for more info and to RSVP. Half the spots are already sold out, so sign up now to save yours!

“The Brilliant Women Salon” – Seattle: April 14th, 7pm, I’ll be speaking with three other fabulous women – coach Amy Kessel, coach Molly Hoyne Mahar, and PowerChicks founder Lynn Baldwin Rhoades, about my article, 10 Rules for Brilliant Women. Click HERE for more info and to RSVP. This event is also selling out fast!

Love,

Tara

If your life doesn’t often make you feel
like a cauldron of swirling light –

If you are not often enough a woman standing above a mysterious fire,
lifting her head to the sky –

You are doing too much, and listening too little.

Read poems. Walk in the woods. Make slow art.
Tie a rope around your heart, be led by it off the plank,
happy prisoner.

You are no animal. You are galaxy with skin.
Home to blue and yellow lightshots,
making speed-of-light curves and racecar turns,
bouncing in ricochet -

Don’t slow down the light and turn it into matter
with feeble preoccupations.

Don’t forget your true name:
Presiding one. Home for the gleaming. Strong cauldron for the feast of light.

Strong cauldron for the feast of light:
I am speaking to you.
I beg you not to forget.

–Tara Sophia Mohr

Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer and personal growth teacher. Click here to sign up for her Goals Guide, Turning Your Goals Upside Down, and Inside Out (To Get What You Really Want). Click here to learn about her new women’s leadership program, Playing Big.

Hi there,

A special (and time-sensitive) request.

My dear friend and fellow blogger Tara Gentile and I have applied to speak at Blogher ’11 this year, and the speakers get chosen through a voting process.

So, if you are a Blogher member or are thinking of attending the conference:

1. Please visit THIS PAGE.
2. Login or create an account (top right of screen)
3. Head back to THIS PAGE.
4. Click on “I would attend this session” at the bottom of the page.

It looks like voting might end today (the website isn’t so clear) so I appreciate your help with this today! Thank you!!

Hugs,
Tara