by Tara Joyce | Jan 7, 2015 | Innerpreneurship
You make a difference by being what you truly are. You change your world by being the light you naturally are and by holding onto it, no matter what externally flies your way. In living your True Nature, you support others in realizing theirs.
Another can hurt you, or attempt to, but in knowing and holding your light, their is no need to reduce yourself in reaction to them — despite their desire for you to do so. Reacting to them with fear only results in you holding less of your light and in you feeling less than. The cycle of fear and of drama continues.
When you can accept the pain you feel, you can find the strength and presence to respond with your light. You have the right to hold the light you naturally are, no matter what externally flies your way. You have the power to respond to other people’s darkness (and your own) with fairness and compassion.
Others darkness and how they use it does not have to change your light. Unless you choose for it to.
photo credit: Dave King
by Tara Joyce | Dec 23, 2014 | My Journey | What's On My Mind
I love the magical feeling this season brings. While it may be snowing and storming (literally and metaphorically) outside our windows, within we have our love to keep us warm.
May you enjoy and share in the warmth and cheer this magical season brings!
All my love and my warmest wishes for a joyful and abundant 2015,
Ho, Ho, Ho!
photo credit: Bud
by Tara Joyce | Dec 19, 2014 | Cultural Creativity
We share stories to share our voice and our perspective in a way we feel will be emotionally impactful. We craft our stories in a particular way, changing them each time we tell them. We craft them from our experience and imagination, and the beautifully unique way we each perceive our world. They’re not the truth, nor our truth. They are our stories.
It’s not even the whole story that we get the privilege of hearing or sharing with each other when we’re storytelling. It’s only a glimpse that we can see, and/or show in our moment of connection together. It might sound like the complete story I’m sharing but please believe me, it’s only part of a greater whole. The truth, my truth, is far more nuanced and complex than my story can share.
If our stories were our truth, we might call them that.
I love stories… but I don’t put a lot of energy into them. My stories and the stories of others are here to entertain, to persuade, to educate but to take them as “the truth” or to hold my own experiences up to them in comparison, is a game I’d rather not play.
I’d rather work on treating stories lightly, for my own health and happiness. They are not “the truth”, nor “my truth”. Our stories are a reflection of us and our own unique way of perceiving things. They’re our version of events. They’re our tools for connection, for empathy and for identity. They’re integral to us but they are not, and can not, be all that we are. We are so much more than our stories.
photo credit: Alessandra Di Nunno
by Tara Joyce | Dec 8, 2014 | Innerpreneurship, My Journey | What's On My Mind, Personal Branding
There’s a growing phenomenon in Business, specifically in Marketing and Branding trends, of increasingly emphasizing the importance of telling your story — or more truthfully, selling your story.
This concept confuses me.
Asking me what my story is confuses me. You knowing what your story is confuses me.
When I’m asked what my story is, for instance, I may think about my “Innerpreneurial” story just to help my mind focus, but even then I fragment into a million directions. Do I want to share about getting my business starting? Do I want to share about reclaiming my artist and overcoming my creative and mental blocks? Or do I share how I’ve managed my home when both my husband and I are entrepreneurs? What about how I’ve needed to and have completely redesigned my life and world? Where and what part of my life experience is the part that sells?
Maybe this whole story business is suppose to confuse me. Maybe there’s benefit for me to be confused and feeling unsure. Maybe there’s benefit to you seeming clear in your story, and I, not. Maybe then I will more easily buy your story.
Maybe I’m to be confused by the idea that I have one powerful story to tell and sell, and that I can neatly fit my life and my experiences into it. Maybe that’s the point. To present life, or me, or my product, as more simple and clear, together and whole, than your life currently is. Maybe then you will buy the story I’m selling and telling.
There are so very many experiences and learning within me that when I attempt to present you with just one, I wholly feel the incompleteness of the perspective I am presenting. This feeling leaves me wondering, how valuable is it for us to be attached to our own and others stories? What value do we get from these stories we repeat about our Self and others?
There are so many potential stories within us, the ones we attach to and share, what do they say about us and how helpful are they?
photo credit: Venture Vancouver
by Tara Joyce | Dec 2, 2014 | Cultural Creativity, Self/Business Growth
In order to write Pay What It’s Worth, my first book of what I hope is many books, I needed to trick myself into not being so scared. I didn’t believe I could do it. I didn’t trust that I had what it took to fulfill a dream I’d held for so long. I couldn’t see how I could clearly share everything that was within me.
As time passed and I continued to struggle with inaction, I decided that a re-framing was in order. I needed to see my newly forming book not as a static unchanging expression (a singular book) but rather as a system of expression (a book that could be upgraded with new versions as my learning and growth arose). Complex systems get created incrementally, layer by layer, by implementing sequential and layered designs that connect to deliver a better whole. They are not formed all at once, nor are they formed perfectly.
I understood this truth, lived it in my non-writing work, and with space and continued struggle, I saw the necessity for this thinking to be applied to my writing work. I was paralyzed without it, stuck reaching for the impossible goal of permanent perfection. I desperately needed to see beyond my ego needs. I desperately needed to understand that there was no real reason that the systems thinking I had grown to love and trust, to incrementally connect things layer by layer, could not be applied to my (or any) book, or to the introduction of an idea and approach I desired to share.
By embracing this systems perspective in my book writing (and in my sharing of an idea close to my heart), it helped me to create freedom to take action on my ideas. In shifting my thinking, I allowed my creation to be imperfect, and I was able to accept that these imperfections would be highlighted and gradually improved upon with time-space and experience. As a person that uses perfectionism as a tool for inaction, this shift in thinking was critical for me to be finally able to move out of the stuck place I was in. I needed to get outside my own desire to get everything exactly right, whatever that meant.
I needed to think about my creation as a layered, changing system so I could feel free in it — free to change, free to grow, free to not know, free to let it out as it was. Seeing my book as system to be grown incrementally helped me create the freedom I needed to move forward to create and express. Systems thinking released me from the unreality of perfection. Systems thinking allowed me the space to naturally make the connections I needed to grow, and systems thinking will continue to support me in growing and building the freedom of creation I desire.
photo credit: Georg
