This is a Guest Blog Post by my Mentor, Tama Kieves, a Harvard Attorney who “left it all, to have it all.” She took a huge risk and followed her Dreams! Enjoy…
The Most Significant Choice You Will Ever Make: Are you Inspired or Tired?
I work with coaching clients every day involved with different stages of creative projects, ruling small countries, creating empires, and finding their own way out of paper bags and into the sunlight. And this much I can tell you. No one is always doing great. I’ve never met anyone who sells every donut in their bakery, cultishly sticks to their writing schedule or has a breakthrough hourly. Most of my clients have some jamming moments in life. And that’s what I hunt for—the moments when the truth prevails.
An Inspired Moment is a Branding Moment
An inspired moment is a branding moment. It claims you, authorizes you, and instructs you. It introduces you to who you really are.
When I coach someone, I’m not looking for years of productivity. I’m not looking for streaks of dragon- breath peak performance. I’m looking for moments, moments of being inspired. It’s a moment when you knew you were born under a red star and meant to do something outrageous and significant. It’s a moment when you knew you were singularly designed to do your task– to launch a thousand ships with just one talk or a piece of software innovation. It’s a moment when you smiled at the Gods and one winked back.
These inspired moments are real. The inspired moments are the times when you connected with your spirit, your potential, your genius, your love. These were the moments you felt improbably free and complete. These are the moments you felt solid and alive.
The Choice to be Unlimited—An Example
The technology behind living an extraordinary life– is to trust your inspired moments more than you trust in anything else. That’s a revolutionary stance in a culture of hesitation. Most of us are subtly or overtly encouraged to trust our limitations more than our inclinations. But you don’t have limitations. You have limiting beliefs.
Let me offer you an example. To become a professional speaker, I had to get past my limiting beliefs. I’d had a lot of fear. For years, I’d be panting at the thought of speaking, not in excitement, mind you, but more like the cat in a carrier speeding down the highway.
“You see this speck,” said my friend Paula, as she pointed to some pock mark in the wooden table. “That’s your fear about speaking.” I wanted to interrupt her and tell her that no, really, my fear was Godzilla with a toothache, marching through mid-town Manhattan, roaring and crushing skyscrapers like origami. She pointed to the speck again, “that tiny, tiny, nothingness is all it is.”
Then, like magic, I suddenly had the image of a canker sore, a tiny white dot in your mouth that feels like a rock concert in a phone booth, intense and overwhelming. I got it. The speck wasn’t my identity. It wasn’t the full-time me. It was a loud and angry dot. It felt like all of me at the time. But it wasn’t. There is another me who speaks. She is pure and clear and connects with the audience, as though she’s reaching across the kitchen table passing the biscuits. She is in her element.
I’m embarrassed to tell you that I’d allowed the angry dot to make my career decisions for years. I sided with the tiny frightened me. I didn’t see it as fear. I saw it as my true bruised and diseased identity, kept under wraps, the one I secretly spoon-fed and soothed in the basement, while people mistakenly praised my abilities. Psychological experts have coined the term “The Imposter Syndrome,” where high-achieving individuals do not believe in their achievements, and rather feel as though they are scamming the world. I could have been the poster child.
If you’ve ever felt this way, I’ve got news for you. Fear has been scamming you. It’s the fraud. It’s the one in the shiny cheap suit hustling you to believe in its sad portrayal of your possibilities. It’s selling discouragement by the truck loads on every street corner in the world.
Only Your Strength is Real—Everything Else is Practice
This is what I want you to know. Only your strength is real.
Everything else is just everything else– not nearly as relevant as you think. The wisdom teachings of A Course in Miracles teach that “Only the love is real.” Everything else is fear. Everything else is what’s burning away, passing away, being worked away. Everything else– is what’s in the way of who you really are and what you’ve come here to experience. It’s mist on the mountain, but not the mountain. The truth is real. Love is real. Your inspiration is real. The times you got it right, that’s what’s real.
When you’re not inspired, you’re not in your right mind. The power is off. You’re not plugged into your love. But just because the plug isn’t in the socket, doesn’t mean the electricity isn’t real. You may experience times of disconnection, but disconnection doesn’t mean the power isn’t going to your house.
Still it’s status quo to be suspicious of excitement and dreams. Others see inspiration as just a sugar high of the mind, unsustainable, fluky, and quietly suggest you shouldn’t operate heavy equipment- or your life- while under its influence. There’s a tension that comes into the room when you throw around bright possibilities. Now pessimism, we believe in. Homelessness and cancer and stock market crashes we can sink our teeth into. We trust our cynicism as though it’s made of good sturdy oak. We believe negativity is heedful clarity, not a perversion. We don’t see fears and elaborate anxieties as flights of imagination. We see them as possibilities.
But what about the possibilities of your dreams taking off? Writing a screenplay that Hollywood buys? Hitting the bestsellers’ list, buying the home of your dreams, starting a foundation that serves millions of individuals for decades to come? Why are these seen as detours and idles instead of possibilities? “Take it down a notch,” a voice within hisses. Be practical. Be realistic. Be depressed. Be middle of the road. Be sad. Be “smart.”
Dave launched his new photography business after coming to one of my retreats. He wrote in recently, “This is the best Christmas morning I’ve had in years. And it’s only Nov 18th.” Another client said he heard Broadway show tunes playing in his head as he got ready to do a media interview. Another sold a story and saw dominoes falling into place, click, click, click, a crescendo and culmination, finally, the reason for every one of her degrees and her misadventures. These moments of becoming are real for all time. These are the times you gave yourself a chance. These are the times, when like Goldilocks, you met your destiny– you sat upon your throne and it was “just right.” It was a moment that made you know that everything—your past, your present, and your future—were just right.
When I say only the strength is real, I don’t mean you will never hit challenges. Someone can sizzle on national television, launch an internet business, or sign a string of clients…..and yet still hit bumps in the road or scramble to pay bills for a period. It’s the nature of growing into your full potential. It doesn’t happen all at once.
But do the bills negate the chills?
Do the bumps define the journey– or does the scenery?
Or do you let them cancel each other out like my client Mike who thought “he had to balance out his peak moments” by telling me about the times he didn’t bang the drum. I don’t believe in this balance. I believe in progress. I believe your inspired moments show you who you are and where you’re going. Everything else is practice.
How will you choose to define your identity and navigate your life? Are you an inspired soul of promise who has moments of disconnection? Or are you a “loser” who just “got lucky” for a moment before falling back into a birthright of pain? It’s the most significant choice you will ever make. You make it not only for yourself, but for all of humanity.
I’ll tell you to remember what you knew when you were on fire, not when you were tired. Stay faithful to what you knew when you were most alive. Those are your diamonds. Everything else is an angry or fearful dot.
I don’t know about you, but when I leave this planet, I’m taking the Roman Candles in my heart with me. I’m taking the diamonds. I’m taking the love. I’m taking the truth. I’m not taking the moments where I didn’t hit my note. I’m taking the moments where I did.
Tama
P.S. I have a self-loving suggestion for you: if you want daily inspiration, motivation, and reminders, come join me on my Facebook Fan page. In addition to my daily post, you’ll enjoy the love and intimate sharing that goes on there. Join us now and tell your friends and loved ones, too!
©Copyright 2011 Tama J. Kieves. All rights reserved.
