by Tara Joyce | Mar 17, 2016 | Self/Business Growth
It needs to be good. No. It needs to be great. If it isn’t, it’s not worth anything.
My sentiment is, of course, not true. Despite how I may feel, the worth of it, of anything, lies not in its goodness (or lack thereof) but in what is being expressed and shared through it.
After all, “goodness” and “greatness” aren’t real measures of anything. You may feel it’s good, while I may feel it’s not. Who’s right? We both are.
So who really cares what’s good? Why let your fear of not being IT stop you from expressing? If you are doing your best, that is what matters. As creators, what we truly desire is to do our best with the resources we have. Good or not, your expression has value.
As you expand your resources, you’ll find you reach a place where you can do better than you did before. You may find yourself feeling your work from before is not as good as you feel it could be today. This is not a sign of your ineptitude. This is a sign that you have improved and grown. You now have more information, more practice, and more support than you’ve ever had before.
You are better, you have improved, and now you’re seeing how you’ve grown. Resist the temptation to feel upset by your previous expressions, feeling they are not good enough. They are beautiful artifacts of your growth between now and then. Before, you simply weren’t able to see how you would and could express yourself better—and now you are. That’s invaluable stuff.
photo credit: Ana C.
by Tara Joyce | Mar 7, 2016 | My Journey | What's On My Mind, Self/Business Growth
You are well equipped to face whatever challenges are placed in your path. In all ways.
Whether you see them or not, you have been provided with an abundance of resources to draw upon.
Whatever your objective, if you can trust that you have the resources to handle it, you’ll find yourself responding capably when challenges present themselves. Trusting your resilience, you’ll find yourself naturally employing your resources effectively and efficiently.
Your challenges, whatever their nature, are here to support you in proving to yourself that you are as capable and skilled as you desire to be. In immersing yourself in these taxing situations, you empower yourself to test your grit—and you expose your true resilience.
The challenging situations causing you pain compel you to utilize all of your strengths and resources, just to stay afloat. What’s beautiful is in bravely and competently facing these challenges, your confidence increases and you discover within you the will and the ability to accomplish almost anything. Now, you truly understand what you’re capable of.
photo credit: Jeremy Thomas
by Tara Joyce | Feb 24, 2016 | Cultural Creativity
Psychology is to money what an engine is to a car. Your motives — what drives you — determines your experience with it.
Increasing the quality of your thoughts, your wealth increases. In valuing yourself more, you naturally exchange this greater sense of worth with the world around you.
In building credit with yourself, you build credit in the world.
But in order to increase the quality of your thoughts around money, in order to build your credit, you first need to do the work. Your work with money, and with worth. To fully recognize and grow your credit, you need to identify the outer work and the inner work you need.
Your Outer Work with Money Includes…
- Marketing Yourself – Identifying & communicating the value you offer
- Creating Opportunities for Higher Pay – Growing your wealth
- Managing Your Money – Caring for your wealth
Your Inner Work with Money Includes…
- Transforming Your Thoughts, Feelings, Beliefs, Attitudes and Decisions About Yourself and Money – Connecting with the value you offer and the abundance of wealth you possess
In exploring both aspects of your experience with money and yourself, you’re doing the work you need to build the credit you inherently hold, and you’re supporting yourself in realizing the abundant life you deserve. Working on the quality of your thoughts, you improve the quality of your experience.
photo credit: Simon Cunningham
by Tara Joyce | Feb 16, 2016 | Personal Branding, Self/Business Growth
Have you noticed — when you are living for the moment — you’re not attached to some fixed idea of who you are? In those moments of presence, you are you — you are nobody. There is no attachment to any idea of who you are.
In those moments, you experience ultimate freedom.
Our ego holds a powerful hold over us — and it causes us a lot of trouble. Situated in our lower mind, our ego is the part of our mental construct that needs for us to be a fixed thing, and one which is desirable and knowledgeable. Whereas our higher mind understands the freedom of being nobody, of needing no sense of fixed self. It knows the value of letting go of the desire to be desirable, and it accepts that our ignorance is our path to freedom.
Despite what our ego tells us, what we need is to be open and learn. What we do not need is to give into our desire to be seen as special. Only when we’re not attached to who we are, can we allow ourselves to be — and be seen.
photo credit: Chris Brown
by Tara Joyce | Jan 27, 2016 | Cultural Creativity, Personal Branding, Self/Business Growth
In whatever shape it may take, whenever I hear a story, I find myself wondering how it is serving the person who is telling it. I understand what’s being presented is not the whole story, and perhaps, it’s not even half. It’s the version of the story the storyteller wants to share with me and it’s the version of the story they want to see.
We can have a lot of unconscious motivations and intentions behind the stories we tell, and while it would be lovely to think they are all pure and love-filled, this may not be true. We share stories to share a story—to share a version of events that we feel will be emotionally impactful. It’s not the truth per say, otherwise we might call it that.
I suppose I don’t put a lot of value on my own stories and those of others. They are there to entertain and educate, but to hold them as “the truth” and/or to hold my own experiences up to them in comparison, feels like a fool’s game. A story might sound complete but the truth is, it only contains the parts wanted to be shared, the parts that keep it intact and “true.” The whole truth is far more nuanced and complex than any story can tell.
Stories by their definition and essence are leading. They are meant to take you on a journey where the course has already been planned. We need to see stories as such, for our own health and happiness. We need to know they are not “the truth,” and are not intended to be. They are simply creations of our experience and our imagination, and how we need to perceive things. There is no need to attach to them.
Write your stories. Love your stories. And acknowledge them for “the truth” they are not. See the stories you attract—and are attracted to—for what they are: expressions of you, and how you perceive your world.
photo credit: duncan c
