How does Tara Sophia Mohr practice self-trust?

and how it can help you

This is part two of this month’s theme around self-trust - part one is here - and now I’m so happy to share Tara thoughts on self-trust!

I first connected with Tara maybe 15 (16? 18??) years ago when she reached out to tell me how much my first book, The Woman’s Comfort Book, had meant to her as a young woman. We stayed in touch, talking about writing, teaching, and when she attended one of my writing retreats.

I’ve been so impressed with Tara’s impact on women’s lives in the last decade — helping women stand up for our voices, our ideas, our lives. I’m sure you know her book Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead, and her leadership courses, the Playing Big Program and the Playing Big Facilitators Training. If not, check them out!

Jen, thank you so much for inviting me to do this! It's a pleasure and an honor. You are such a model of creative integrity to me, and I love the way you do your work - writing, teaching, and creating with substance and heart, and letting it evolve and evolve again along the way.  

Jen: Self-trust has always felt essential to me, especially as a creative person and a woman living in a patriarchy, yet also elusive to define in a way that isn’t blind to my foibles. How do you define self-trust?

Tara: Yes, no doubt that for women, self-trust has been steadily, powerfully eroded by the norms of our culture, the messages we receive from media, and from all kinds of authority figures in our lives. I think for women, reclaiming self-trust is connected to reclaiming self-worth. And it’s connected to honoring everything patriarchy erases: like the primacy of emotion, connection, enoughness, and joy.  

But for me there’s some nuance around self-trust - because I know there’s a lot in me I want to trust, and I also know I can sometimes mislead myself! I think of times I’ve made a professional decision I regret (because I was feeling fear or external pressure when I made it). Or I can think of a few resentful emails I’ve sent that really landed with people poorly and made situations worse. 

So for me the question really is: which parts of myself, or which states of being of myself, are  trustworthy guides for me?

• That deep, totally solid, emotionally uncharged inner knowing that comes from time to time, usually around an important decision or topic. 

• The sense of inspiration that comes when an idea shows up within me – something that feels like mine to do.

• The calm wisdom that emerges if I slow down and ask for clarity or guidance around something. 

When I am in other states, like fear or worry, comparison, jealousy, insatiability, blame, resentment, exhaustion, I take those as important indicators that something in me needs attention, but they aren’t states I want to exactly “trust” – meaning, take action from.

When I am in one of those less centered states, the next step for me is to engage in inquiry about what’s going on, to process, allow feelings, and invite in grace / a spiritual power to help me with healing and clarity. 

So, for example, if I feel a deep strong sense of inspiration and calling to start a new project (without any compulsion or fear driving it), I’d lean into self-trust. But if I feel a raging, urgent sense that I should control what another family member does, I’d lean into my tools for processing and inquiry. 

Jen: Self-trust plays a big role in venturing into projects and adventures that feel too late and in playing big. How do you suggest women increase their self-trust to follow the call of their desires? 

Tara: It really helps me to remember we are each sacred, we are connected to and a reflection of the divine. When we trust our callings, we’re not merely trusting our little/human/bounded selves. We are trusting the larger force of creativity and inspiration that we are in partnership with. In other words, we venture into those new playing big projects and life chapters not because we’ve pumped ourselves into confidence about them, but because we are actually surrendering to something bigger than our confidence/worries/fears – we’re surrendering to the calling and creative energy itself. 

Jen: Have you encountered any misconceptions about self-trust? If so, where do you think those spring from?

Tara: I’ve been sad to see how in our social-media era, there’s so much content that seems to equate self-trust with blotting out or blocking out others’ ideas or opinions. There’s an important place for learning to discern when boundaries are needed, and for learning how to hold those boundaries. But I also think we need to lean back into our capacity to hold conflicting truths with wisdom and equanimity, to believe we and others can have different, but valid truths, and to not be as quick (or frequent) to dismiss others as crazy or toxic. 

Jen: Do you have any personal practices that help you trust yourself or reorient if you feel out of contact with yourself?

For sure! I use practices to get back into connection with the parts of my self, or the states of self, that I find to be more trustworthy. They help me move, for example, from fear to calm, or from insatiability to satiability, from comparison to gratitude. I have a lot of practices that help with that, such as: 

• Physical movement, especially walks and dance because they allow for a kind of organic processing to happen in my body. But also any kind of vigorous movement helps with a physiological reset. 

• Sleep, including naps! I am a passionate midlife napper!! (Jen me too!)

• Talking through challenges and issues aloud to a friend. (I often do this back and forth via long voice memos with a few good friends, and it’s very therapeutic for all of us! We leave say, 3-15 minute or so voice memos processing what’s up in our lives – I highly recommend! And we don’t respond to each with advice, but with listening, empathy, follow up questions, virtual hugs. Regular voice memos on the phone or the Voxer app are great for this.) 

• Checking in with my inner mentor to ask how she would approach something 

• Structured journaling processes with specific prompts for working through a fear or resentment.

• Turning over a problem or a resentment to a power greater than myself (Life, God, Love). Every night I make a list of the issues or questions I am surrendering to something larger than me, and I find that really helps me – not only to release control and gripping, but it also helps me open up to better solutions! 

Jen: Has your perspective on self-trust changed as you've aged?

In my mid-40’s, I have a better sense of what practices work well for me. Many of those that I listed above I’ve been returning to for a good twenty years or so now, and there’s now a sense of familiarity with them; they are like my good old buddies now. 

The other thing that’s changed is that I’m more willing to speak up for myself. I suppose we could say that my self-trust more easily flows into voice. 

Just the other day, I was walking down a staircase outside my daughter’s theater rehearsal and looked over to see a huge dog – a breed that can be really aggressive – walking toward me up the stairs, not on a leash. I was not comfortable with it. I was tired, this kind of dog scares me (and it was not a place dogs were permitted to be off leash).

The owner was standing a few feet away, and I asked him to hold the dog while I walked by. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he tried to convince me. “It’s fine.”

I asked again: “Can you hold your dog please?” 

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he said, in a tone that was so familiar to me – this sort of condescending, “I will tell you how it is for you / lady, stop being a pain.” 

I stated, in a fairly heated tone, “No, it is not fine with me.” 

He sighed at me with some frustration and annoyance, and walked over to hold his dog. 

It was an interesting moment for me – one that made me reflect on a lot of things that strangers (typically men) have said to me over the years on the street – all kinds of comments that made me uncomfortable, and how rarely I’ve been able to find and use my voice right in those moments, and not care whether I’m seen as nice or not. Something was different in that moment: I knew I had a right to feel comfortable going down the stairs, and most of all I knew that I was the authority on what was and wasn’t okay with me. 

Jen: What's something in your life that felt "too late" that you realized wasn't? What was that experience like for you?

You know, the way my particular brain and inner critic work, I don’t so much end up thinking any particular thing is “too late.” Instead I just feel generally late. Like I’m just late on writing the next book, on reaching some next professional milestone, and also on having a perfect life – gosh I am running real late on that! So my work is to continually ground in trust of the timelines of my life, to find peace in the timelines just as they are.

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Thank you so much Tara for these beautiful rich thoughts! To learn more about Tara’s work, go to www.taramohr.com.

If you feel moved, please share this newsletter with someone who might like it or give this post a heart. Thank you!

I hope self-trust is growing for you in rich and wonderful ways. If you missed the intro post for this topic, it’s here. Next week I’ll share how self-trust is helping me deal with the fear of finishing the first draft of my novel.

Love,

Jen