By Tama Kieves on March 23, 2012
Want the best year of your life? Then follow a tour guide that’s on fire. Get out of your mind and into your passion. Get affected. It’s where you long to go and where you belong. This year, follow your heart – instead of your head.
Most of us have been taught that it’s “safer and more practical” to listen to our heads instead of our hearts. I’ll tell you otherwise.
The mind makes rational decisions based on history. The heart connects to something mystical and dynamic. As we enter changing times in the world, it’s wiser to listen to a guide that does not require stasis. Love can blast past facts and provide a security that transcends all circumstances.
Believe me, I know what it’s like to make “rational” decisions and ignore your “irrational” heart.
I ached to be a writer. I loved freedom and expressing my joy through words. But I made a “practical decision” and chose to be a lawyer, going all the way with honors from Harvard Law School. I practiced law because I thought it could provide a stable income and allow me greater freedom. This made “sense” on paper. But that’s because on paper, I had no emotions or needs. Yet in daily life – where I lived out my mind’s tidy plan – chaos prevailed.
I was a young litigator in a huge law firm and I billed my life in six-minute intervals. I worked 80 hours a week, and lived on Diet Pepsi and adrenaline. Senior partners would dump case files on my desk on late Friday afternoon and casually scribble “Get this to me by Monday morning.” My knees would buckle with frustration. I had never been less free. Then, at home, my personal life assaulted me like a neglected garden, rampant with decay and weeds. I was so tired I’d stare into space.
When it finally got to the point of true depression and even, secretly, not wanting to live anymore, I knew this was not a “practical” path. I had thought my real desires were unsafe. Turns out that living a life — without real desire — is unsafe. I left the law to save my life.
Finally, when I started to follow my spirit, I began to see the shocking limitations of the mind. I realized I had negated my most holy desires, merely based on “thoughts” I’d had about how life worked. I had chosen everything I did in my life based on filtered information. I trusted ideas I’d heard all my life, about how “creative people didn’t make money,” “how hard it is to start a business,” and more. But my spirit urged me to discover my own life and data. My heart compelled me to step beyond my mental ideas of life and discover the reality of my own possibilities and even destiny.
I have to tell you, all these many years later, I am floored, humbled and awed by my experience. I tentatively dared to walk past some limiting thoughts in my own life. And my desires evolved into a calling and a ride I could never have imagined. I wrote the book I longed to write – “This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love” and got it published by my dream publisher Tarcher/Penguin. I began teaching at world-class retreat centers. And through my writing, facilitating and coaching, I have opened the door for tens of thousands of others to live their excitement and their mission on earth.
My heart led me to walk past every limitation and fear that had ever held me back. I found courage sliding down the rabbit hole through the portals of a meaningful life. I had no idea that meaning could change everything. I suppose it’s what seekers feel who sit with gurus in India or walk mesas with a shaman. I thought I was just giving myself permission to write in this lifetime. I didn’t realize I was changing the axis of my earth, the pivot of my moon, the way I breathed and how I spoke my name. My life will never be the same again because I dared to pursue my love of writing. I want this for you. I want you to taste your real life, the life that awakens your powers. I want you — this very year — to step into a life that makes sense.
What do you really want this year? Don’t pick a packaged goal, a homogenized goal, a safe desire. You may not have time for accommodation. Choose what you really want. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You don’t have to quit your job or marriage today, or pack your bags for Paris. Following your heart can start with your toes. Dip one in the water. Write on Wednesday nights. Take a weekend retreat. Leave the office early and walk your basset hound. I’ve had clients who stayed at their jobs and pursued their passions on the side. The moment they started giving energy to their real desires, they found more peace in their current careers and improved their health and relationships. Following your heart isn’t about taking unnecessary risks — but necessary ones. It’s about inviting the real into your life and organically taking the steps that arise.
Choose to listen to your heart and obey with your intelligence. Choose to experience a life on fire. If you have come here to make a difference, your experience will be different. You were born to be so much more than someone who writes safe little goals on a list of paper. Let this year be the year you return to yourself. Let this be the year you heed your heart. Let this year be the year you hunt, chase and dive into what you really love.
For more by this author, visit ThisTimeIDance.com.
Photo credit: Shandi-lee
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By Tama Kieves on November 14, 2011
Inspiration is an invitation to uncharted abundance. It’s not just the invitation to create a song, a yoga studio, a screenplay and some good money. It’s the invitation to create yourself. The creator is changed by the created. Yet if you refuse to listen to your own beckoning ideas, you hold back exponential resources within. You may think you’re just being practical. But how practical is it to deny your greatest powers?
You wouldn’t tell a baby to never expect to walk. Why would you tell yourself that you could achieve only what you’ve already experienced? You are still developing, aren’t you? It’s never “realistic” to deny your miraculous creative impulses. It’s self-annihilating. The reality is, you are a miracle. You are a growing, conscious spark of unparalleled energy. Your heart is the compass between the landscapes of what you currently know and what you can yet know in your lifetime.
I had a therapist who always talked about doing new things. She loved to challenge herself. The woman was a black belt in kung fu “just for fun.” I guess listening to everyone’s problems all day made her need to attack something at night. But she was frisky and creative, and urged me to try new things. At the time, I couldn’t imagine voluntarily adding some challenge to my life. I was doing everything in my fizzling power to avoid them. That zealous healer babbled on about the joy of expansion, and I looked at her with bleary pleading eyes and said, “English please.” But all these many years later, she remains with me. It’s not what she said. I remember the sparkle in her eyes. I remember the ease of her skin. She wasn’t just getting through her life like everyone else on the bus. This woman was alive.
Doing something new allows you to discover more of your natural largesse. I recently put on a new seminar. I was a bit nervous. I’ve taught thousands of workshops, but this one was all fresh content. I didn’t know what questions participants might ask. I didn’t know the catchy way to answer things. I wasn’t a well-oiled machine. I felt this gnawing in my stomach — not butterflies, closer to buzzards. I’m a bit of a control freak, though very shiny and spontaneous about it all. See, I like doing well. I’ve built up “buzz” and reputation. Truth is, I love having my workshops leave participants gazing at each other, dazed, happy, and as though they might just light up a cigarette afterward.
But I had to allow myself to grow. I had to flex new muscles. I had to take the chance that I could fizzle, which for me, would feel like having the worst hair day of your life, having your photo taken, and then maybe, if you’re very lucky, being burned at the stake. I had to walk my talk, which, by the way, never feels powerful until later, when you’re safe, fat and happy, and can entertain your friends. At the time, it means just walking forward and trying not to cry in public. But here’s the part I forgot: I’m not in control, but I am in the proximity of grace. I am not alone. I am not limited to the crude strengths I’ve experienced thus far. I am co-creating with a Universe that does not ever have self-esteem issues or a lack of horsepower or compassion. I am becoming more of myself — by using more of myself —discovering unknown power as I walk into the unknown.
Here’s what happened. The participants had breakthroughs, insights and stories I never could have predicted or manufactured. Something else was going on. This same essence often takes me by surprise in retreats. It’s a presence in the room, a love that’s in the water, where laughter erupts and tears glisten, or maybe our crown chakras open up like guppies swallowing the light. I don’t know. I do know that the attendees share unbelievable things. I say incredible things. This unrepeatable waltz begins to happen as though it had been reenacted a thousand times. It couldn’t go any better, though some insane part of me will dissect it later, anyway. It’s humbling. It’s moving. And it’s so far beyond anything that I alone could ever make happen. And I would have missed this if I hadn’t dared it. The experience reminds me of this line from “A Course in Miracles” — “The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence… What He enables you to do is clearly not of this world.”
Russell Simmons, the hip-hop mogul with record labels, fashion labels, and multiple HBO reality shows, says he co-created his success by following an inner voice and taking risks. He says, “Time and time again I watch as the people who listen to their higher selves move on to bigger and better things, while the people who listen to the low notes end up stuck in one place or fade away altogether. They never realized that in ignoring their higher selves, they’re blocking their ability to be blessed.”
Where might you be blocking your ability to be blessed? Fear keeps you small and smallness keeps you fearful. It’s a pitiful system and it ages you like trauma, cigarette smoke, and too much gossip. Keep listening to your sweetest truth. Your truth is never an instinct that diminishes you. Remember, you have a presence within you that can do anything. You are not limited to what you’ve experienced in the past. You are not limited to what someone else has experienced in the past. There is something alive and inspired that wants to come through you. It’s an evolutionary impulse in your cells to grow and expand. You’re hungry for the new because you hunger for yourself. You know there are still unexpressed reserves within you.
Go beyond what you have done before. Expose yourself to grace.
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By Tama Kieves on July 26, 2011
I wrote this letter to the part of myself that dared to listen to her pain more than her need for stability. That part helped me write my first book, “This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love,” and discover my best life.
Years ago, I sat on a beach and considered ending my life. I didn’t see another choice. I was an honors graduate of Harvard Law School on partnership track at a major law firm. I couldn’t bear my day/evening/weekend job, even with its lush paycheck. I couldn’t figure out any other options with my frantic, analytical mind. I had no glistening faith or trust in myself, the universe or even the tooth fairy, back then.
You build that faith when you leap, not before.
So I screamed and cried in my journal. I let out one desperate wail near sunset. This letter is to her with my love and gratitude.
You wanted an impossible life. You wanted freedom. You wanted to rip off your lawyer clothes and identity and walk on beaches on a weekday. You didn’t even really know what you wanted. You just knew you wanted to live and that there had to be something more. You thought you were imbecilic or weak for wanting fairy-dusted utopia as you saw it, without a plan, money or a strand of reasonable possibility. But you wanted it so much that you didn’t want to live if living meant existing in the life you knew, the “responsible” life that did not involve sand in your toes and being yourself.
I remember your wail, your helpless, crazy cry. It was as though you fell to your knees and screamed “Uncle.” It was in that wail I believe the angels heard “Yes father, yes mother, yes universe, yes life energy, yes love, yes, yes, yes.” You didn’t know that saying no to the only life you knew was saying yes to the life that would come. I have this life now because of your courage and dignity, your commitment to dreams you couldn’t even name. I am beyond grateful.
You wanted to be a writer with all your heart, though you considered that forbidden territory to be childish and reckless. Well, I want you to know you weren’t crazy. You were meant to write, and that desire has saved your life, mine and probably many others’. I wrote a book and it got published by a major New York house and it hit some bestseller’s lists. Because of my writing, I have a devoted following of smart, creative people who attend my workshops, retreats and coaching programs.
Once I led a women’s retreat on the whitest sands anywhere on a beach in Mexico and I thought of you, sitting on another beach, in another time, as I led those women to their freedom. I’ve taught in the rain forest of Costa Rica, zip lined through a jungle. I visit San Francisco often and hang out with creative, brilliant friends, some of them famous. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself famous, but my fans would, so maybe I am a little.
Now you’ll love this, because I know it will tickle your writer’s heart and the Brooklyn girl in you, eyes clumped with mascara and insecurity, who once dreamed of being in Manhattan with reason to be there. Well, I stay in Greenwich Village, write in artsy coffee shops and meet my publisher for lunch, not because he’s my publisher but because he’s my friend.
I live in Colorado under blue skies, with golden sun, trails, mountains and parking spaces for everyone. I get up when I want to and I am free. I have people who work for me. Yes, I can pay other people’s salaries, all because you chose your silly reckless dreams; you chose to write.
I finally feel like I belong in this world. I get to have life-changing conversations with people, almost daily. I meet visionaries and business leaders and actresses and authors and I meditate with them, lecture and, at the most beautiful retreat centers in the country, watch them melt and laugh and discover and grab their own inspired calling with both hands and one ravenous heart. It’s magic. It’s breathing. And I am paid for this. I can die with peace in my bones now because I know I have done something here on earth that matters. I’m so proud to be using my gifts in this way.
Here’s what I’m trying to say: I’m so grateful you believed in something more. I am so grateful you allowed everything you knew to unravel. I am so grateful you questioned what was available in life. I am so grateful that while you were terrified, you still chose to be different. I am in awe of you, because you knew there was something else and you believed even when it was excruciatingly painful to believe. I am grateful you chose the unknown, because I am living in its abundance.
I would have missed this life if you had gotten yourself under control, buckled down and accepted the status quo. I would have missed this life if you had allowed the pain to weigh in one more ounce than your thinnest hope, and you had ended it all instead of begun it all. I am terrified that others might not realize they have a choice or that their pain is not a lack in them, but their own flare of unexpressed wild beauty, creativity, heightened potential and the golden-eyed jaguar that resides within them. It motivates me to keep sharing. I don’t want someone to stop believing on my watch.
I am grateful to all parts of myself that chose this journey over and over, because it has required choosing over and over again. I am living this life because of every one of your decisions, through doubt, exhaustion and dim determination. I am grateful.
What letter do you need to write to part of yourself?
For more information on how to optimize your life, visit http://www.ThisTimeIDance.com/.
Photo credit: Cassandra Rae
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