Tara Mohr's Blog, page 6

when you don’t know what to do

What do you do, when you don’t know what to do?

I was struck recently reading these words from author John Holt:

“The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do, but how do we behave when we don’t know what to do.”

What if our capability is determined not so much by what we know, what we’ve mastered, but by what we do at those critical junctures when we don’t know what to do? How profound. And how opposite to what most of us learn growing up.

Every creative journey takes us to places of I haven’t been here before. I don’t know what comes next. I don’t know what to do.

Every relationship brings us to those moments of I don’t know how to solve this conflict. I don’t know what to say. Or perhaps, I don’t know how to take away your hurt, or mine.

Developing any body of work will bring us those moments of I don’t know how to fix this problem. I don’t know where this is meant to go from here. I don’t know how to grow into the person this is asking me to grow into.

The question that Holt prompts us to ask ourselves is, What do I do when I don’t know what to do? How robust is my toolkit for those moments? How helpful are the actions I turn to?

When I don’t know what to do, sometimes I go to learn, to read, to seek inspiration. Often, I pray for an answer, a direction, some shift – and then wait for it to come in some form. Other times, I journal or go to a coaching session, to use words to help make something buried and murky come to the surface. All of these things help.

I also sometimes do some things that aren’t so helpful, like think I am supposed to know. Or hide from the issue or from talking to people about it. Or forget I can say I don’t know. What a relief, and release, to remember.

What I wish I used more in that toolkit: the habit of trying things out, experimenting, to find my way. Reaching for help from others sooner.

When you don’t know what to do, what do you do? What is in your toolkit? And what might you like to add to it?

Any interesting journey will take us again and again to the crossroads of not knowing. To be human is to again and again and again not know. And what we do from there makes all the difference.

Love,

Tara

 

Photo by Jan Kahánek

the nameless next

I read some words recently that I just loved, so of course I wanted to share them with you.

MIT Lecturer and author Otto Scharmer writes,

“The future arrives first as a feeling…”

The thoughts come later, he says.

I think this is true of our collective future and our individual ones. First there is a feeling – some new rising energy, or a new discontent with what is. Not a feeling in the sense of an emotion, but rather a budding, a current, a coalescing that we feel.

Now, you and I live in the land of the linear. We were raised here. In this land, we look for every energy to become some *thing*. And immediately please. Anything that is showing itself to us? We want to get to the point of it. We believe in progress that we can describe and map.

But this is merely one way. In other lands, things grow unseen. Their unfolding is not linear, but it is real. In this land, not everything is a “thing” – there are other forms – burgeonings, waves, accumulations.

I see so many of us discount what is arising in us because it shows itself first as some unspecified, indescribable feeling. From here, we waste a lot of time and energy trying to see the plan, or the point. We kill a lot of what was just starting to grow.

Though you can’t name it yet, today you can softly carry the future that is arriving within you.

With love,

Tara

Note: Otto Scharmer quote is from the Ulab online course here.

 

Photo by OC Gonzalez

hungry for validation

Today’s post is a Q&A, although that term feels a little absolutist for my taste. Let’s call it a D&E – Dilemma & Exploration.

Here we go…

Dilemma: I feel so disappointed when my writing doesn’t get much praise or attention. I’m wondering – is that just ego? Or being addicted to external validation? I feel like I shouldn’t be so focused on what other people think, but on the other hand, another part of me feels like it’s okay to want to be recognized for my work.

Exploration: Let’s begin by pulling apart two things.

Thing 1. It’s true: a lot of us are held back by the need for praise. How can we do radically innovative work if we also want a crowd to applaud us? How can we pursue our unique individual paths, if we need all the people around us to understand what we’re up to? There’s a kind of dependence on approval that gets us stuck.

But then there is thing 2: the deeper longing to do our work and have it be seen by and appreciated by others in the human community. I believe this is a healthy longing, one to listen to and respect.

We are each a cell in the larger body of human community. We are meant to live and work in circles, to make our contribution to the whole.

Because this is who we are, when that truth is not reflected in our lives, we suffer a kind of soul sickness. It is not a small thing. I honor everything you are doing to discover what your real work is and how to bring it forward in the human community where it – and you – can be seen, known, and embraced.

And here are some ways to discern the difference between these two hungers:

How do you experience that hunger for approval or praise, or the dependence on it?

How do you experience that deeper longing simply to be known and valued in our human community?

To fulfill our longing for our work to be seen, known, and received by others with love, we first must bring out what is inside of us: speaking the messages, using the talents, bringing forth the work that we each want to share in the world. 98% of our fulfillment comes from this part.

Then a nice additional 2% of sweetness shows up in the words and faces of those your work has helped.

To find that sweetness, don’t get lost in imagining some distant and large human community. Today, life has put your next circle right in your midst, closer than you think. Give your gifts to them.

With love,

Tara

 

Photo by Matt Seymour

something very difficult we must do

There’s something very difficult we must do.

If you’re an artist, you must do this thing again and again.

A writer? You too.

Entrepreneurs? Academics? Yes, you too.

Any of us who want to make a distinctive impact?

We must do this.

Here’s the task: Be different.

Yet our minds tell us: Be the same. Blend in. Follow the ways of the tribe.

We’re hard-wired with the instinct to blend into the group, to find safety in sameness. Long ago, when our  physical survival was uncertain and highly dependent on the cohesion of the group, perhaps it was wise to let this instinct dominate.

But now, when it comes to our creative and professional lives, the penchant to conform tags along where it is neither needed or useful.

In my ten years of writing online, the pieces that have resonated the most with audiences are the ones that made my heart pound with fear to publish. Those pieces each seemed alien – even to me – when I looked at the words on the page, like the ideas were so strange. Those writings did not feel like they belonged, yet they are what brought my work the deepest belonging to my readers and my field.

The challenge for all of us, again and again, is to trick (or perhaps more kindly said, retrain) the mind to go for being different, even as it keeps thinking that safety lies in blending in.

And for women especially, the next trick is to remember that we don’t have to change or improve ourselves to do distinctive work. We just need to do our real work, bravely, and unblock the way to our self-expression.

Sending love to you today,

Tara

 

Photo by Nitish Meena

Have you been called “abrasive” or “too direct”?

Doing this work, I hear a lot of painful stories from women who have been told they’re “abrasive,” “too direct,” or “too aggressive” at work.

The words often arrive like punches to the gut. They stay with us for years or decades following. And they often leave us afraid of fully using our voices.

If you have in your own history the experience of being called too direct, too aggressive or abrasive, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the hurt of that and for what it likely did to your voice afterward. I know it was not a small thing.

You are not alone. In fact, you join millions of women around the globe who, like you, were trying to get some important thing done and stopped sugar coating – for a moment.

In that moment, you broke an unwritten rule for women. You didn’t tamp down what you had to say, or make yourself tentative and small.

But the truth is you are not abrasive, or too direct, or too aggressive. What that other person was really saying was, “I have no idea what to do when a woman talks this way. And I’m uncomfortable with it.”

They told you something about themselves, and they revealed what we collectively permit in women’s self-expression.

What about when we talk about other women in this way? Quite often, the people calling other women too direct or too aggressive or abrasive are other women. I think every single one of us has done it.

If we haven’t said it aloud, we have certainly thought, “She’s not being nice enough about that. She sounds abrasive.” Maybe you gossiped about her to someone else. Maybe you silently penalized her for the strength with which she shared her voice – distancing yourself from her or simply liking her a little less.

We can understand this with some wisdom and compassion. Women are taught to soften or silence our own voices beginning early in girlhood. We learn to tone police ourselves. It then feels excruciating to encounter another woman who is not tone policing herself.

What we do not allow in ourselves, we will never allow in another woman.

We ask her to strangle what we have strangled, using words that wound and shame: you are too aggressive, you are too direct, you are abrasive.

Next time, what if we don’t give her any feedback at all? Instead, we can use a provocation to go home and reflect, to examine what is comfortable and uncomfortable for each of us when it comes to other women’s expression of their voices.

We won’t have a world filled with vocal women leaders, until we do this homework.

Let’s find our way back to strong voices.

Love,

Tara

 

Photo by rawpixel

Do you ever feel like you have too many ideas?

I often hear brilliant, creative women say, “I have too many ideas.”

“I don’t know which one to choose, so I’m not doing anything” or “I never finish anything because I get distracted by whatever new idea comes along.”

Today I want to talk about this “having too many ideas.”

I don’t think the problem is really that we have too many ideas. The problem is that we have forgotten how to live as prolific idea-havers (even though that is our natural state).

Children have dozens of creative ideas each day. Sitting at dinnertime with a four-year-old, in a mere five minutes you hear a stream of them: Here’s what else I can do with this straw! Here’s what happens if I make a castle out of these mashed potatoes! Oh, and here’s an unconventional way I can sit in this chair, mom! 

As we grow up, our idea-generating atrophies. We learn to worry about whether our ideas will be seen as “practical” or “smart.” We become less open to novel possibilities as we form a narrative about the ways of the world.

Fast forward…in our adult lives, an idea for some new project comes to us. Maybe the idea to bring a new product or service into the world through a business. Or to share our story in some particular way. A sliver of that lost self – the idea-haver – peeks out.

Most of us nearly panic! Is this a good idea or a bad one? I don’t know exactly how to make it happen! And I have other ideas, too – how to choose?! 

We’ve forgotten – that having an idea is no big deal, that at our very core we are idea-havers, that our natural state is to have a copious flow of ideas coming through, all the time. 

So, if you are struggling in your playing big journey because you have multiple ideas pulling you in different directions, what can you do?

You can remember it is healthy to have lots of ideas in a week, or in a day, or in a particularly fruitful hour.

You can remember that ideas come to you not because each one needs to be realized, but because you are a creative, creating being.

You can hold your ideas lightly, playfully, with a wink that says to them, “I see you. You’re delightful. And you’re welcome here.”

You can even think of ideas like movements of the body, simply signs of your aliveness. You wouldn’t say, “I moved my body in so many different motions and directions today – walking and sitting and getting up and driving and cooking – and I’m overwhelmed by all the different movements.” Ideas are just like that – naturally coming forth from us – because we are alive.

From there, how can we choose which ideas to go further with?

Some ideas will especially call to you. They will nag you in the nicest way. They will likely feel scary but they will also feel right. That’s good information.

As you get to know those ideas, some aspects will show themselves to be most feasible – that’s good information, too.

From there, you can choose an idea to dance with, to travel farther with, for a time.

Please think of it like that. Not with judgement and high stakes and a demand for a life plan, but as a further journey of discovery you’ll take with this idea, or a courtship between you and it. Go for it with the focus and the joy of a child who just discovered a new spot of terrain to explore in the backyard. Look up close, and dig, and get messy.

And never forget, that’s simply you: Ideas, ideas, ideas. Impulses to create, forge, and make manifest.

Love, Tara

(P.S. One more thing – if instead you are in a drought of ideas, if this post has made you realize your idea-fountain has gotten dried up, that’s okay, too. That happens to all of us in some chapters of our lives. A great way to start to get things flowing again is my free guide on Everyday Creativity: 50 Simple Ways to Be Creative – download your copy here.)

 

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon

Could it be that simple?

Before we jump into today’s post, I want to make sure you know: The Playing Big Program is opening up soon! This is our program for women who want to learn our powerful model for playing bigger in their lives and careers. Get the details and learn more here.

*   *   *   *   *

 

Lately, I’ve been noticing something coming up again and again in my conversations with women who want to bring forth some important message or work in the world.

It’s a theme I’m seeing more clearly than ever before, a major obstacle that blocks many of us from stepping into playing bigger.

I was speaking with one woman about what direction she should take her business next. The problem felt complicated to her – there were so many variables to consider, and she had lots of thoughts about each of the options.

But when we slowed down, when she checked in with her inner mentor voice, the answers she heard back were so simple. Go with where the most energy is for you, it said. That was it.

She instantly felt the resonance that came with that guidance. And she understood what it would direct her to do next. But her mind said back: “It can’t be that simple, can it?” There was relief, but also fear in her, because if that is the answer, there was nothing left to do but begin.

Another woman I was speaking with the next day explained to me that she was not sure how to get started pursuing her entrepreneurial idea. She’d received conflicting advice from others about what steps to take, plus she had her own additional ideas about ways to begin. It wasn’t clear to her what the right answer was, so she was stuck.

With her too, when we slowed down and moved out of the chattering mind, the answer that came back was simple: “It doesn’t matter which route you take. Just begin with a small step, see what it teaches you, and take a new one from there.” She smiled as she felt the sense of ease and lightness that came with this answer. But it couldn’t be that simple, right?

I could share with you a hundred more examples of the almost eerily simple guidance women hear when we slow down and turn inward for answers. I’ve seen up close, again and again, working with women in the trenches of discovering and pursuing their dreams, that the way forward always can be described in just a few short words.

Our problem is that it is hard for us to believe it could be that simple.

After all, we’ve learned in school that everything important and sophisticated must require hundreds of pages of reading to master, or hours of laboring in hard work to understand. We’ve learned to associate the simple with the unrealistic, and the complex with what’s smart. This may be true of solving engineering problems or making a gourmet meal, but it is not true of the questions about how to move forward in our lives.

There, the real answers are elemental, almost pre-verbal in us. The simple answers – just trust, just start, go do it, do what brings joy – these kinds of answers require our courage, because they leave us nothing to distract ourselves in – no complex dilemmas to hide behind or stall in. They make a clearing, a space for forward action, for stepping out and doing something vulnerable, for taking a step we did not take the day before.

Today, listen to the simple answer that is waiting for you, and take a step you did not take the day before. It really can be that simple.

And if you would like support finding your own voice of clarity and wisdom, and trusting what it says to realize your playing bigger dreams, join us for the Playing Big course – starting soon.

With love,

Tara

Photo by Annie Spratt

 

The answer I didn’t expect to hear…

Before we jump into today’s post, I want to make sure you know: The Playing Big Program is opening up soon! This is our program for women who want to learn our powerful model for playing bigger in their lives and careers. Get the details and learn more here.

*   *   *   *   *

 

When I was pregnant with my son, in one of our early appointments, I asked the midwife – What about exercise? How often do you recommend, and how much?

It was my first baby. I brought my good student mentality to the project. I wanted to do everything by the book, and I thought someone else could give me all the answers.

She was very nonchalant about the question, probably compensating for her clientele’s overwrought concerns about exercise and “staying fit” during pregnancy.

“Take lots of walks,” she said, “and if you are liking the prenatal yoga you are doing, great – do that,” she said casually, almost with a shrug.

I was unsatisfied with this answer. “Okay. How often should I do the yoga?” I wanted a program, a should, something I could give myself a gold star around – or (let’s be honest) more likely, feel like a failure for not fulfilling.

She looked at me as if this was a rather odd question. “As often as your body needs it,” she replied, shrugging again.

What? What did that mean?

In my 30+ years of American female societal conditioning around nutrition, fitness and exercise, in all my travels – through the land of gyms and diets and fitness books and feminist and anti-feminist approaches to the topics – I had never heard that idea in quite this way: “as often as your body needs it.”

But as soon as she said it, I understood exactly what she meant. After I did a yoga class, my body felt more open, and more awake. Then there was a certain point when that feeling wore off, and I began to feel tight and cloudy again. That, she was telling me, could be the cue it was time to do yoga again. No abstract schedule, no absolutes, but that.

I love this story for the healing balm it can be for women’s shoulds about our bodies. It reminds us: Turn inside to find the answers. Trust your rhythms. Listen to the cues. Make your own routines, paint your own canvas, sculpt your own life.

But I also love its broader truth. Women have absorbed just as many stories, as many shoulds about everything else as we have about our bodies. About everything – humanity’s potential, politics, money, education – it’s time for women to stop looking to the world to tell us how things must be.

Instead, we will show the world how they can be – how they can be better, different, whole and humane.

Love,

Tara

Photo by Alex Eckermann

 

The early years of self-employment

Before we jump into today’s post, I want to make sure you know: The Playing Big Program is opening up soon! This is our program for women who want to learn our powerful model for playing bigger in their lives and careers. Get the details and learn more here.

*   *   *   *   *

 

Are you in the first few years of self-employment? Or thinking about one day embarking on that path? If so, today’s note is for you.

For me, the early years were full of places I thought would feel like paradise, and instead felt like the wilderness. I can remember vividly one moment, several months in, sitting in our bedroom telling my husband through tears, “I can’t believe how hard it is. I just didn’t expect this.” 

I was lonelier than I thought I would be. A lot of days it felt like I was wandering around – both literally, as the hours passed slowly, and metaphorically, as I explored one or another direction of how to use my time – all of them feeling aimless. And there wasn’t a big positive response to my work, I felt so discouraged.

Talking with hundreds of women about this over the years, I’ve learned: the early days are tough for most of us. Sometimes the challenges are external – no one is buying my thing. Sometimes they are internal – I’m isolated. I’m confused. I’m scared of putting myself out there even though I know I need to.

Today I want to share a few of the things I struggled with during that season, and what I learned that helped.

1. The doing does feel different than the dreaming, and that’s okay. I took my leap onto an entrepreneurial path with passion and inspiration. But after the honeymoon phase ended, the actual work felt very different than the dreaming had. I think these early difficult feelings are absolutely normal and most important: it doesn’t mean the path you’ve chosen is the wrong one for you. 

However, my experience wouldn’t have been so painful if I had just understood one important thing…

2. The first phase of a new venture is *not* about running a thriving business. It is about the process of  figuring out what product or service is going to work out there in the world. The early years are about a kind of structured trial and error to find out what your business is going to be. 

We start our entrepreneurial journeys with lots of unanswered questions. Who will want what I have to offer? What of all that I have to offer is there truly an audience for, and what do people actually want to pay for? What language do I need to use when I talk about it, so that my audience grasps what I’m talking about and sees it as for them? What can I build a sustainable business around?

The first many months, or often the first couple years of the entrepreneurial path, are about answering these questions by trying things out in the world. They are about putting things out there to an audience and learning from what happens. If you see each trial that doesn’t work as a failure, your morale will be absolutely doomed. If you see them as exactly the process you are supposed to be engaging in, and you engage in it deliberately, you’ll be able to see all the learning as progress. And if you know that’s what the beginning is about, you can set your expectations – both financial and personal – accordingly. 

3. Go forth and be with the people.  If you’re an extrovert like me, you especially need to design ways to MAKE HUMAN CONTACT in the early days. But even if you are an introvert, you need your healthy dose of this, too. There are two types of human connection I’d like you to think about here.

The first is your water cooler. Where are you going to get your water cooler conversation now that you aren’t showing up to an office? I’ve used co-working spaces, informal co-working groups (rotating in members’ homes), online courses (and hosting in-person gatherings of those course participants from my area) to meet this need for myself.

Second, go do your work with your people. Most of us know we’ll be working with lots of people when our businesses are humming along. But in the early days, when we likely don’t have a team or many customers, we can get very isolated, very quickly. The more we are being perfectionistic, overthinking things, and using classic brilliant women hiding strategies, the more this is the case.

So do your work with your people in whatever scrappy and immediate way is available to you. Send a quick email to get a first few clients through word of mouth. Whatever group you are planning on facilitating someday, start the pilot version NOW. Commit to having five conversations with potential customers each week. Get out there with the people. It will feed your soul, fuel your productivity, and keep you tethered to the real world.

Got it? Good! Please share with another woman early on her entrepreneurial journey if you feel this could help her, too.

Sending love to you today,

Tara

Photo by Analia Baggiano

 

my definition of playing big

Before we jump into today’s post, I want to make sure you know: The Playing Big Program is opening up soon! This is our program for women who want to learn our powerful model for playing bigger in their lives and careers. Get the details and learn more here.

*   *   *   *   *

 

What is playing big?

I often hear from women that when they hear the words “playing big,” they have a kind of mixed reaction.

On the one hand, the idea of playing bigger calls to them.

They don’t want to keep having that subtle, sneaking sense that they are playing small – holding back, hiding, waiting on what they most want to do.

They want to have a greater impact for good. They want to feel free, comfortable in their skin – no longer hesitant in sharing their ideas, their creations.

On the other hand, the idea of “playing big” gives them pause. They know their plate is full (or overfull) already.

Is this just going to be one more item on their to-do list? And do we all really need to play big, they ask. Isn’t that yet more macho, egotistical thinking?

Of course, all of these questions are valid.

Let me tell you what “playing big” means in the work I do.

My shorthand definition of playing big is this:

Playing big is being more loyal to your dreams than to your fears.

I believe your dreams are important – extremely important. I believe that they tell you about the life your authentic self wants to lead. I believe they tell you about your purpose here. And I believe they tell you what kind of life and career will bring you fulfillment.

And yet, for all of us human beings, life poses so many challenges in honoring our dreams. Fear and self-doubt storm within us, especially when it comes to our most important dreams and callings. We find subtle ways to hide, or to rationalize why we need to postpone stepping into playing bigger.

On top of the inner challenges, as women we often face bias and stereotyping. And we are rightly concerned with the practical matters – financial constraints, caregiving responsibilities – and it’s usually not clear how to boldly go for our aspirations in the midst of them.

Playing Big is about navigating all those inner and outer challenges so that you can indeed live a life and pursue a career that is aligned with your dreams, your callings, what holds meaning for you.

Let’s make that kind of playing big happen. We need women playing big, following our authentic callings, because as we do, we bring forth the sanity and compassion that our world desperately needs.

We are graced by you showing up as you, giving what is in you to give.

Love,

Tara

 

photo by Moritz Schumacher