by Tara Joyce | Nov 11, 2014 | Cultural Creativity
If the pain is going to be there either way, why would I choose to feel it?
If I feel it, I can actually heal it. If I don’t feel it, I can not know its true state, and I can not start to heal it.
Whether I like it or not, feeling my pain fully is necessary for my healing, for my whole-ing.
I can not reduce my pain when I don’t acknowledge it. I can not feel more whole and healed when I deny parts of my experience.
When I want to hide from my pain, I remember that in facing it, I start to heal it. Stuffing it down only guarantees I will hold onto these feelings longer.
My pain is inevitable but my suffering is optional.
So I practice feeling it and not fearing it. I practice believing I can face and handle my pain. And ever single time I do, I find I’m right.
photo credit: Lein C. Lau
by Tara Joyce | Jul 9, 2014 | Innerpreneurship, My Journey | What's On My Mind, Pay What It's Worth Pricing
A Calling
I’ve always wanted to — and knew I needed to — WRITE a BOOK.
If I knew anything about myself, I KNEW this. And this KNOWING was so powerful that it became incredibly painful.
Resistance
But I didn’t know how, so I tried to escape from IT. The pressure of IT. For a while.
With time and practice, it became not so much the WRITING that weighed, but THE (unwritten) BOOK itself. As did my resistance to ALL THE MEANING I had now placed on IT.
Nothing meant more than creating THE BOOK I always dreamed of, and so under this heavy weight IT sat stagnant.
IT meant too much to move, the fear of not getting IT right or not getting THERE at all hovered. The seriousness of the endeavour weighed. I NEEDED to do this.
Acceptance
Five year ago I started writing THE BOOK I dreamed of creating, and today I am ready to share it with you.
It’s taken lots of work on myself, and spending the last year writing the start of a fiction series, to reach THIS place where I am ready, willing, and able to write and share my BOOK that meant so much.
I can now see and trust that this BOOK that means so much, is one of many inside me. I now know I am able to do IT.
And IT doesn’t mean as much as I made it out to. And yet IT means so much more.
I feel ready now to step fully into who I am. To feel FREE to collect and share my words and thoughts with you. And to KNOW it means something when I do, but this meaning isn’t there to scare me, only motivate.
A Heroic Journey
And so, with no further ado, I am proud to share with you my first book, Pay What It’s Worth: Building Your Sustainable System for Not Setting Prices.
May it take you on an adventure the way it has taken me.
by Tara Joyce | Jan 13, 2014 | Self/Business Growth
What stops you dead in your tracks?
One thing that stops me is thinking about my performance. Whether it is before, during, or after an action in which I want to perform and do it well, thinking about my performance paralyzes me.
For what I am really doing in that moment is judging my performance, but more specifically, what I am really, really doing is jumping to (very negative) conclusions about my performance.
I am deciding I know exactly what You think about it.
Except every single time You are actually Me, as my worst version of myself.
Quick, what’s the absolute worst thing you could say about this totally piece-o-shit performance? Ha ha, nice! Burn. And so true!
Is it any wonder I find myself paralyzed?
What’s cool though is now that I see how my reaction looks — how I jump to conclusions and paralyze myself — I can begin shifting my thinking around this behaviour.
In recognizing it, I now have a choice if I want to continue engaging with it, or if I want to respond to my mind, and it’s harsh paralyzing judgements, with an understanding awareness and a willingness to let them pass. I don’t need to hold on to them. They aren’t helping.
I like the power in this, and with practice, I trust I can create the mental freedom I desire. Because in the end, I perform because I need and want to, and nothing, not even my own harsh judgements, are going to stop me from doing what I love.
photo credit: Crashmaster
by Tara Joyce | Sep 10, 2013 | Cultural Creativity
A reflection of our disdain for authority in our own life.
The things our critic says are likely things we heard from an authority figure.
Things we did not agree with — but heard anyway.
Things that once were someone else’s ideas about us, that have now become our own.
It’s not the truth.
It hurts us anyway.
We hurt when we allow those ideas to have power over us again. Whether they come to us from an external source or from inside.
Our pain is our disdain for the un-truths we believe.
Our pain can be a tool.
If we observe it, it can support us in letting go of what we are holding onto inside.
It can show us where we can create more freedom. From authority. And from our own critical self.
When we drop the disdain, the judgement of authority, we can too drop the pain.
If we let go.
Of thinking we aren’t good enough. Of the stories we tell our self.
Can we accept that all the people in our life, even the most controlling, have added value?
Are we willing to let go of our pain around the authority that hurts us, and release the power our inner critic has over us?
Can we accept that our greatest pain can be our greatest power?
photo credit: mason bryant
