Tara Mohr's Blog, page 2

Living in Longing

There’s a word that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: longing. I think it’s an incredibly important word, one that we don’t use or talk about enough.

Longing is, according to one official definition, a prolonged unfulfilled desire.

Do you know any humans that live without prolonged unfulfilled desires? I do not.

Longing for more success, longing for a different financial reality, longing for recognition for our work, longing for community, longing for a more harmonious family life, longing for adventure or change, longing for peace and rest. We live, we long. 

We all have different sensations associated with longing. For me, it’s an ache in the chest—an uncomfortable feeling, sometimes a subtly uncomfortable one, sometimes more intensely so. It can have a restlessness to it. It can be a fire that motivates action. It can devolve quickly into inner critic narratives if I let it, as in “uggh, this desire is still unfulfilled because I’m not doing it right, because something is wrong with me.”

I believe that longing, prolonged unfulfilled desire, is with us because it’s as inevitable a part of the human experience as breathing, or fatigue after a long day, or tears of sadness.

Longing is a core part of the human experience for the most beautiful of reasons: within each of us is an essence that longs for more love, more goodness, more gentleness, more beauty, more justice, more connection, more luminosity. What feels like home to our souls, to our deepest selves, is experiencing those qualities in full expression, everywhere and in their totality. Yet that is not what our souls find here, in the limited and imperfect realm of human experience on earth. Here, we find those qualities present in ways that are partial, more sporadic, and dimmed.

If we aren’t conscious about longing as an enduring and intrinsic part of being human, we end up being run by our longings, spending all of our time trying to end them, to fully quench the thirst they carry.

I wonder, what might happen if we seek to name the deeper spiritual layer of the longing, what it’s really for, and then let that longing be there ongoingly, a sign of something good, not a problem to solve?

Our longings for order, for beauty, for justice, for connection, for love, for ease, for liberation are important because they reveal to us the secret story of who we are. We are beings that find a sense of home in these qualities. Here on earth, where these qualities show up only in glimmers and glimpses, we are always in some sense, homesick.

Longing is our turning toward home in our homesickness and saying to Source, I miss you. I yearn for you. Longing, if we welcome it, can be a way of staying in touch.

Love,

Tara

Top photo credit: Chris Lawton

When (and when not) to give advice

Since the early days of my work over ten years ago, I’ve generally been an advocate of us all doing less giving advice and less asking for advice. Women—as well as others in our society with less power because of some aspect of their identity—are ceaselessly given advice by our family members, friends, by the culture, the experts.

Far less frequently do we get the message from the world: Turn inward. Trust yourself. Find your own right answers. You are powerful and trustworthy.

But, remember my recent post, It Depends? Lately, I’m really interested in the exceptions to my own rules. Yes, advice is often unhelpful. It can send us down distracting rabbit holes of someone else’s agenda or projections, or leave us feeling unseen/unheard.

On the other hand, sometimes it is fantastically useful. I live in the neighborhood I live in because a friend said, “go check out that area, I think you’d like it.” And I started a blog in 2009—a blog that opened up my creativity and led to the work I do today—because after listening to me talk about my writing struggles, a friend said to me, “you should start a blog.” I mean, she even used the word “should”—a no-no word in the personal growth world! And you know what? That advice was very helpful.

And so, with the matter of giving advice, I am interested in getting more granular. When is advice helpful and when is it not? How do we get more of that magically-just-right advice, the kind my friends gave me, and less of the other, unhelpful kind?

I recently brought these questions to a discussion with a group of alumnae of one of my courses. To start, I asked the group to reflect back on their experiences and estimate: what percentage of the time has advice they’ve received actually been helpful?

The majority of the group said that of all the interactions when someone has given them advice, the advice was helpful to them only 10-25% of the time. In other words, most of the time, advice is not helpful! That alone is a really important thing for us to consider.

Then we looked at the data of our own lives, considering what distinguished helpful and unhelpful advice we’ve received. What we discovered was illuminating.

For this group, here’s what commonly characterized the times when advice was not helpful, or was even harmful:

The advice was not asked for.The advice didn’t reflect careful listening to the other party.The advice seemed to come from fear or projections of the advice-giver.The advice was based in assumptions, and/or reflected blindspots related to the privilege of the advice-giver.The advice felt like it contained a criticism, judgment or condescension.

On the other hand, here’s what was present during times advice was truly helpful:

Trust—they trusted the person who was giving advice.Permission—they asked for advice or the other person asked for their permission before giving advice.The person was not pushy about the advice, and was not attached to them following it.Often, the advice-giver was able to put the advice in the context of their own experience, and make explicit that the other party’s context/experience/goals may be different—in other words, they didn’t assume lessons from their own life would necessarily apply to the other person.The recipient could feel that the advice came from a place of love and caring. (Note, this is very different from the advice-giver feeling their advice comes from a place of love and caring. Here what we are talking about is that the recipient actually feels, in their own being, that the advice is coming from a place of love and caring.)In some cases, there was also a sense that the advice-giver saw potential, talent or possibility in them that the person did not see in themselves—and the advising was about helping them step into that potential. (In co-active coaching terminology, what we would describe as “calling forth” the other person.)

So, if we were to extrapolate some guidelines for giving more helpful advice, those might include:

Wait to be asked for advice, or if you feel inspired to share advice without being asked, authentically and gently ask permission first.Listen carefully and deeply to the other party before ever moving into advising. You might want to even repeat back to them the key themes of what you heard and check with them—did I get that right? Am I hearing you?Start from the assumption that the other party’s experience, circumstances and goals are different from yours, not the same.  Start from the assumption that what worked for you in your life or career is not a universally applicable approach, but was shaped by your particular identity and forms of privilege.Do your own inner work to unhook from any projections or attachment to outcome that’s present in your stance toward this person or their situation. That inner work may take days or weeks! Then, after you’ve done that work, see what’s left over that you really feel moved to say.

Big picture, collectively, I continue to think we benefit from leaning much more heavily on other ways of supporting people (besides giving advice). We can draw on generous listening, asking powerful questions, championing others, and modeling/embodying positive qualities and actions via our own behavior (versus advising others about them). These are all skills I love to teach, in the Playing Big Facilitators Training and The Coaching Way.

And yet, at the same time, there are exceptions to every rule. Should we give advice? It depends. Some small percentage of situations are ones where, if we listen carefully and lovingly, we might just be able to give the piece of advice that is transformative for someone else. I think those are the rare occasions, not the usual thing. Maybe a good way to think of it is that advice isn’t the main course of how we support people, but the occasional garnish on the plate. Carefully chosen, carefully placed.

Love,
Tara

 

It Depends

There’s an ancient rabbinic commentary that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Two rabbis, great sages, are arguing about how one should comfort a friend in distress. One rabbi argues that a person should simply be with the friend in their distress, listening to them, letting them cry, not trying to change a thing. The other rabbi says, in effect: No, no. The best way to comfort a friend in distress is to cheer them up, whether by making them (truly) laugh or taking them to do something fun or uplifting, or distracting them from their sadness.

Each rabbi brings compelling arguments to support their points. And each shares examples of times they’ve used their approach, with great results.

So, how does the argument get settled? What’s the answer? I imagine that you, like me, wish we were given one! But the text ends right there, in the middle of the disagreement. It seems to be suggesting: there are two valid paths here. Both approaches have their place. I can no longer remember—and couldn’t find—the source for this text (my apologies), but it comes to mind for me frequently these days.

As someone steeped in the personal growth world, I’m much more inclined to have a kneejerk response like the first rabbi’s—to think that the way to be of support is to lend a listening ear, and just be with someone in their distress. But I can certainly think of counterexamples in my own life.

Once, when I was in the midst of a tough few months mothering a colicky baby, I called a friend in tears and shared my overwhelm and feelings of failure. That friend is a therapist. She knows and lives the value of listening to people in their tears. And she’s very comfortable doing that. But she didn’t do that on that particular day. She listened to me for about five minutes, said she was coming over, and then showed up at my front door wearing a truly ridiculous costume that can best be described as Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour Meets Rugby Playing Sesame Street Character. Then she stayed for a while, rocked the baby, and kept the energy upbeat. It was such a surprise, such a hilarity, and such an expression of love, that it completely changed my mood. It did, in fact, cheer me up. Rabbi #2 approach.

I think about this principle in my relationship with myself, too. Sometimes, the way to respond to my own sadness or angst is to open up toward it, and to unravel it through journaling or a conversation with a good friend, to really dig into it. But sometimes, I choose instead to get absorbed in a word game on my phone, or call a friend and chit chat about other things entirely. Sometimes, that also has its way of working.

But the larger point I want to make today is not about dealing with upsets. It’s about how we can get caught up in our absolutes about how to do this or that, to think some single principle always applies when it comes to wellbeing, healing, personal growth. I am a part of the personal growth / self-help field, and one thing people in my field often do is state absolutes about wellbeing, relationships, healing and so on. The absolutes are many: “Prioritize self-care.” “Feel your feelings.” “Focus on gratitude.” “When someone is upset, just be with them, don’t try to change how they feel.” “Do work you are passionate about,” and so on.

For each of these absolutes, there are counterexamples. If you have a family member who is at the end of life, maybe, for a while, self-care doesn’t get prioritized and that feels really right because it gives you more time with them. Maybe you aren’t ready to “feel your feelings” about some difficult thing just yet—and your psyche will let you know when it’s time.

Sometimes, or for some of us, focusing on gratitude is a great prescription, one that can help us find more joy and contentment. But for someone else, at another moment in time, focusing on gratitude might get mixed up with their pattern of suppressing anger or pain that deserves expression. Sometimes, doing work we are passionate about transforms our lives for the better. In other situations, doing work that feels mundane is fantastic, because it allows time for hobbies or relationships to take center stage.

It can feel a little scary—or very scary—to let go of our absolutes. Thankfully, I don’t think we need to let go of all of them. In my own life there are touchstones that I find to be pretty reliable absolutes: Find a path of love. I/we can turn toward a power greater than ourselves for support and guidance. Connection is good. But, at the same time, I think we can love ourselves and each other more wisely, more fully, if we don’t default to our old absolutes so often. Because if we really look at the data of our lives, our true lived experience, often the answer that reveals itself is: it depends.

As I get older I notice that now more and more I say: it depends. I say it more in my own life, but I especially notice I say it more in answer to questions people ask in my courses and workshops. Where I used to give a single recommendation, now I’m much more likely to say, “It depends. Sometimes, this can be a great tool/approach for that kind of situation. And other times, this very different, near opposite approach can be the way forward.” At times I have also gleaned some of the patterns about what works when, but sometimes there is a lot of mystery to that. Especially in my work, it feels like a really strong form of integrity to say, “I’m not going to pretend there is one right answer to the complex questions that we grapple with. There is not.”

Sometimes, the answer is stretching out of our comfort zones. Sometimes, the answer is shoring up in what brings us comfort.
Sometimes, the way to get to a breakthrough is to work hard on the problem. Sometimes, the way to get to a breakthrough is to rest.
Sometimes, when we are lost, we need community. Sometimes, when we are lost, we need solitude.
Sometimes, the path forward is acceptance. Sometimes, it is endeavoring to make a change.
Sometimes, growth comes with sticking it out. Sometimes, growth comes in letting it go.

Let’s let life be as surprising, as varied, as dancing-in-motion-with-us as it really is.

Love,
Tara

Top photo by: Unma Desai

3 Crucial Communication Tools

Recently in our Playing Big Facilitators Training course, we had our class about powerful and effective negotiation. We got into an interesting discussion about different aspects of communication skills and I wanted to share some of that with you. All of us need these three kinds of communication in our toolkits – certainly for our Playing Big, but also for taking good care of ourselves in relationships:

1. Requests

Many of us never learned about making requests and don’t have this skill in our toolkit. It’s so important! A request sounds like, “Would you be willing to turn the music down?” or “In the future, could you give me more of a heads up when there is a change in scope to the project?” or “When I’m speaking about my day, could you be in more of a listening and empathizing mode, and not offer immediate solutions about the things I’m sharing? That would feel so much more loving to me.”  

If you are living a life in this messy world full of people, you will have some requests arising inside of you! And when we do not have comfort making requests… well, I bet you can see the problem already. You may get passive aggressive, or suppress or try to rationalize away your own needs, rather than making requests. Or, you may grow resentful because somebody did not read your mind about your requests and instinctively honor them!

Making a request dramatically increases the chances your request will be met, but it certainly doesn’t guarantee it. Lots of time, the people in our lives – whether the ones we love dearly or the ones we work with, or the ones we just briefly cross paths with – will say in response, “No, I can’t.” ”No I can’t give you more of a heads up because I don’t have time to…” or “No I can’t just listen. I need to share my thoughts!” or “No I can’t turn down the music.” Sometimes, their “no’s” may feel hurtful, uncomfortable or even infuriating to us.

When you get a yes to your request, wonderful! When you don’t, then it’s just time to decide what you want to do next. You may choose to initiate further conversation (even entering a negotiation conversation – see #2) around the issue to see if, with some further learning about each person’s desires and constraints, a good solution can be developed. In other situations, you may choose to set a boundary as your next step (#3), if appropriate, and if possible given your role in the situation.

2. Negotiation

In the Playing Big model, we define negotiation as “a process in which two or more parties with differing interests or perspectives are exploring whether they can find a mutually agreeable plan/solution.” This is a definition from negotiation coach Carrie Gallant, and I love it, for so many reasons: 

It makes clear that a negotiation is not just what we do once a year when a salary conversation comes up with a supervisor, or if we are buying a car! No, no, no. Negotiation is an every day skill. We are in LOTS of situations with two or more parties with differing interests or perspectives – negotiating the holiday plan with relatives… negotiating who takes on the extra workload after a staffing cut at work… negotiating dishwashing duties with family members… and so on.
This definition also helps us remember there’s usually not a bad guy in the negotiation but there are always multiple parties, who – understandably and inevitably – have differing aims and perspectives.
And it makes clear the purpose of a negotiation: can we discover a plan/solution that is mutually
agreeable? Where both parties’ priorities/needs are addressed? The good news is that we don’t have to get there through deception or forceful arguing – it’s actually much more likely to be effective if we approach a negotiation conversation as a focused process of first inwardly clarifying our own needs/wants, then listening and inquiring toward the other party, communicating about our needs, and creative brainstorming to find win-wins. If we discover in such a process there really isn’t a “fit”, a mutually agreeable solution, we may need to take another approach – like get more help for the conversations, or find a way to meet our needs outside of the negotiation. 

3. Boundary

A boundary is about what we will and won’t tolerate, or what we are or aren’t up for. A boundary is saying: I don’t do meetings in the morning because that’s my writing time. Or, I can make it to the meeting but I’ll have to leave right at the planned end time. Or, I’m very willing to have this conversation with you, but not when your voice is raised. I would be happy to talk about it with you when we can communicate about it calmly. A boundary comes from a quiet inward discernment of what feels loving and comfortable for us. It usually also depends on a kind of self-love and sense of deserving. And a healthy boundary doesn’t try to control what others will do, it is just a clarification of what we will do in the face of others’ behavior.

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   . 

That’s a quick intro to what I see as three foundational parts of communication for our playing big, and for our well being. If much of this is feeling new to you, don’t feel badly! Most of us did not get much training or modeling around these practices. If you look at a situation now that’s been difficult, what do you notice about what requests, boundaries, or negotiation conversations could help?

 

Love,
Tara

 

Top photo credit: Susan Wilkinson

But can I make money doing this?

Lately, I’ve been hearing from many women about a certain kind of feeling, a certain set of thoughts –

“I want to do x, but will I really be able to make money at it?”
or
“I love my business/side hustle/passion project doing x, but the next big step for me is to see – can I bring in significant revenue with it? Will people pay?”

I want to talk about the way we ask these questions.

If you are looking to make money doing your beloved, passion-fueled work because you think it would be joyful, or fulfilling, or wonderful to sustain yourself financially doing it, these are perfectly fine questions to ask.

But there’s another way I am hearing women asking these questions: Am I good enough at this to make real money at it? Is it legitimate enough that I could sustain myself financially by doing it? Do people like me, like it, value me enough to pay me significantly for it?

And here’s where I think we are doing ourselves a disservice. When women are asking these questions, they often think they are stepping into a place of greater empowerment around money and worth. That they are finally opening the door to considering asking for more money, or for the first time opening their minds to the possibility that they could love their paid work. These are important movements – especially for a population that has been deprived of so much economic freedom and power.

But I also want us to understand that when we say, “Am I good enough at this to make real money at it? Is it legitimate enough, or special enough, or amazing enough that I can sustain myself financially doing it?” what we are really saying is:

I will submit myself and my work to the evaluation system of the status quo culture and economy and see what that system has to tell me about me. And I will believe whatever I think it’s telling me.

Our culture is dysfunctional. It economically values things that do not foster human wellbeing (whether gems harmfully taken from the earth or companies selling toxic food or workaholic schedules). And our culture places little economic value on things that create a tremendous amount of human wellbeing – amazing caregivers, brilliant teachers, visionary art, profound healing work…there are far too many examples to name.

If you are looking to that dysfunctional system to tell you – through the dollars it feeds you – whether your work is legitimate, amazing, special or needed, well, then, we have a problem.

The status quo system doesn’t deserve that authority in your life.

So if you have a beloved idea you’re hoping can also be a source of financial sustainability, you can certainly begin what is often a zig-zagging trial and error process of testing what may work to help you get there. But please don’t do this with the story that the money you make tells you about the worth of the work.

You can suspend questions of value for now, if that feels right. Or, find other ways to assess the value you are bringing: What do you hear from the people you’re working with? What differences do you see you’re making in those you serve? And what difference is pursuing the work making to your own heart, your own growth? What value might yet manifest because you’re still germinating and planting seeds for the future?

But please do your thing. Do it for an hour or two a week if that’s all there is room for right now. Do it in the wee hours or the weekends or the moments you find. Give it some loving attention and see what happens.

We have to be far-seeing enough to listen to our callings and be creative about pursuing them – whether or not the world is ready to deem them economically valuable yet. That’s part of the change we are all here to make. That’s part of how we say no to what is, and collectively, dream our way into something different.

Love,

Tara

 

Photo credit: Corrina Peat

Sunday Session Resources

Below you can find resources to support your wellbeing, based on the content of previous Sunday Sessions.
You can find the full archive of Sunday Session recordings here.

Worksheets from Previous Sunday Sessions

Eden Gratitude Practice Journaling Worksheet (watch the full video related to this topic here)

Authentic Choices Worksheet (watch the full video related to this topic here)

Navigating Friction in Relationships Worksheet (watch the full video related to this topic here)

Daily Practices for Work-Personal Harmony & Integration (watch the full video related to this topic here)

External Firsts Worksheet (watch the full video related to this topic here)

Antagonism Journaling Worksheet (watch the full video related to this topic here)

Unpacking Dips in Motivation Worksheet (watch the full video related to this topic here)

Additional Resources

Journaling Questions for Difficult Times Worksheet (read the full post here)

You Aren’t Lazy! Let’s Figure Out What’s Going On Instead Worksheet (video for this worksheet is here)

Inner Mentor exercise can be found here.

 

 

image by: Timothy Dykes

 

 

 

Cultivating Eden Consciousness

Cultivating Eden Consciousness

In this Sunday Session we come back to the special type of gratitude practice I’ve been using in my own life, what I call an Eden Gratitude Practice. If you could use more gratitude in your life, or a refreshed gratitude ritual, check out our session here.

Download a PDF version of the Eden Gratitude Practice Journaling Worksheet we used in this session here.

You can download an audio version of this session here.

 

Check out the full archive of Sunday Session recordings here.

 

 

Questions to Ask Yourself in Difficult Times

Recently I was thinking about questions we can ask ourselves when we are in a difficult situation, or when we’re going through a difficult time.

After all these years of journaling, and of working in a coaching approach, I am a big fan of paying serious attention to what questions we are asking each other and ourselves. Our questions determine where our minds wander to, and what they seek out. They determine whether we see possibilities or narrowness. Our questions can lead us deeper into the thick muddy places, or they can take us where the ground is more solid and clear.

These are some of my favorite questions to ask myself during difficult times. I invite you to use them as journaling prompts, when you need them. One, or some, or all may be appropriate for your difficult situation – some you may feel are not. Take the ones that feel useful and leave the rest. And a heads up – I use God language in some of the questions below. Please feel free to use it if it’s useful, or replace with your own term for the vast creative force of Life.

Journaling Questions for Difficult Situations* 

What is my soul learning here?

What is this situation calling forth in me?

What would it look like to be loving to myself in this situation?

What are ways – within my agency – to more fully support and care for myself in this situation?

How can this experience draw me closer to trust, to acceptance, to understanding?

What is this whisper from Life/Wisdom/Love about – what is this experience truly for, in terms of my growth and evolution?

God/Life/Love, what do you want me to remember in this situation?

God/Life/Love, what does it look like to walk with you in this situation?

 

Remember, writing about these questions is very different than “thinking about” them. Differing things will come from the writing. Wishing you an illuminating process of discovery as you do so. You can download a PDF version of these questions here.

 

*You can download a PDF version of these questions here.

 

image by: Sixteen Miles Out

Your True Purpose: Part 1

Your True Purpose: Part 1

What’s my life purpose? What’s your life purpose? In this session, we talked about how I see questions of life purpose – and how we can all start living lives with more purpose (and therefore more joy), right now, today.

You can download an audio version of this session here.



Check out the full archive of Sunday Session recordings here.

Happiness Is…

Earlier this week, I heard author Eve Rodsky say, “Let’s remember, happiness is sustained attention to something you love.”

This is one of the most helpful notions of happiness I’ve heard (and trust me, I’ve heard a lot of them!). For me, it’s also one of the most resonant.

My happiest times are indeed those in which I bring sustained attention to something I love. A creative act. A work of literature. A certain way of gathering with people.

Defining happiness is tricky business – are we really talking about contentment or joy or something else? How do we account for the vast cultural differences around the expectations for happy affects and happy attitudes? Are our aims for “happiness” realistic? And what does happiness even mean in times like these?

We also must name that getting to think about and seek out happiness is a privilege. It means we are safe and free enough to not be thinking about our survival. That’s important to remain aware of.

If our lives hold that gift of a clearing in which we can pursue some kind of happiness, this idea of it, “sustained attention to something we love” might help. It tells me that if I want to be happier today, I need to find a window of time and focus to give sustained attention to something I love.

I love that this definition doesn’t ask us to seek continual, generalized happiness. It guides us to find oases of happiness within our days.

So, to make that practical:

Do you remember what you love? 
There have been times in my life when I couldn’t. It’s okay to be in one of those times. Start journaling, start remembering, start bravely experimenting, and answers will come.

Do you have that window of time and space to give sustained attention to something you love? 
If not, how can you carve it out? Maybe just once or twice a week to start. What conversations do you need to have with loved ones to change things around to open up that time? Or what might you need to delegate, simplify, or drop off the to-do list for now?

What distractions or compulsions keep you from giving sustained attention to something you love? (I’m looking at you social media & email!) 
What boundaries do you need to put in place around that?

Thank you for thinking about this with me today. And, join me for an upcoming live Coaching & Conversation to talk more about topics like this and other questions that are on your heart.

Today, may we all give sustained attention to something we love.

Love,
Tara

 

photo credit: Virginia Lackinger