What I missed on the way to my dreams

What I missed on the way to my dreams

by | Mar 16, 2023 | Brules of Life, Coaching, Create Your Life!, Dream Acceleration, Manifestation, Tara Sage Coaching

On a good day, I felt restless. On a bad day, I felt like a caged animal.

Exasperated, I came home from work to my dark, musty, basement apartment – a glaring reminder that I was not just figuratively, but literally, underground. Drowning in student loan debt, I rarely answered my phone because collection agencies were calling me daily. Trying to find my way in the world wasn’t easy. Emotional and practical baggage of difficult family dynamics and estrangement seemed to be hitting me all at once. I felt like a victim of circumstances, dealt an unfortunate hand, profoundly alone in my struggles.

The job I begrudgingly got at an Ivy League university to establish some stability, looked good on paper, but my soul was dying, a little more every day. If I had to sit through one more hour-long meeting that could have been communicated by an email, I was going to lose it. Things were done in inefficient ways for no reason other than it’s the way they’d always done it. This felt archaic to me, but rethinking conventions wasn’t welcomed or encouraged. Waiting for that clock on the wall to read 5:00 felt like an insult to my personal integrity and pride, not to mention that I’d finished my work hours earlier. And the starched button down shirt I wore, because I thought I should, felt like a straight-jacket, a costume that belonged to someone else – but not me.

I knew I couldn’t stay.

While going through the motions on all the things I thought I was supposed to do, I was losing myself. On autopilot, I’d drive to work, or the grocery store, or the gym (when I could get myself to go) feeling more and more disconnected from who I was. I wasn’t challenged. I wasn’t inspired. I felt contained, micro-managed, and caught in status quo games that I didn’t want to play.

I felt like I was drowning, and I knew no one was coming to save me.

Underneath my restlessness and frustration, was a growing sense that I was meant for MORE, that this couldn’t possibly be all I was meant to do, be, or have.

I knew I needed to take the reins and reshape my life, to reshape my reality, to figure out how to not live in a basement apartment forever, to create a life that was my own, that reflected the truth of who I was.

It was from that dark musty basement apartment, that I gazed out that teeny-tiny window with a view of the sidewalk and the tires of cars passing by … and I’d dream.

I dreamed of:

√ having the freedom to travel when and where I please
√ having my own location-independent company so that I could work from anywhere
√ a home with lots of natural light
√ becoming a bestselling author
√ wealth on my own terms
√ finding love
√ having time and energy for creativity and play
√ making a positive impact, serving others in meaningful ways that made their life better
√ being myself without boundaries.

The voice of my soul, and seeds of my own self-actualization, were surfacing.

There was a huge difference between the caged, soul-crushing, autopilot life I felt constrained and uninspired by, and my dreams. The problem was I couldn’t figure out how and where to find a bridge between the two.

A few things were missing, and when I finally figured those out, everything changed. Quickly.

What was missing was…

  • Self-trust
  • Belief that dreams my were possible – for not just other people, but for me
  • A way to see and transform my blind spots and expand my thinking

I needed to step up for myself, rather than waiting around for things to change, or others to approve. I needed to go from complaining about what my life currently was to becoming the person that COULD and WOULD move out of it.

What I needed to learn was…

  • How to manage my energy
  • What to do with fear
  • How to navigate naysayers

I needed the skills and support to take the REINS on my life, to listen to my heart, and really take ownership of the life I dreamed and envisioned for myself. To stop fear from running the show, I needed to get out of my head and shift my focus from all the seeming limits of my current circumstance to finding strategies and ways forward that I couldn’t yet see but chose to believe were there to be found.

What I needed to do was…

  • Get the right support
  • Take brave consistent action
  • Show up fully for what I was saying I wanted

I needed support from someone who’d been there. And perspective OUTSIDE what I’d already tried, a shift out of what had created the life I had, and into creating the totally different life I wanted.

So, I got support. And I changed my thinking. And I became a different version of me.

Spoiler alert: It worked.

Not only have I achieved my “impossible” dreams and the freedom I so craved, I have built a business and a profoundly fulfilling, decades-long, career around helping others rethink conventions, chart their own course, live their dreams, rediscover themselves, and realize what’s possible.

I help you create the life you think you cannot have. 

Your dreams, like mine, are fuel on your path to self-actualization.

The first step along the way to THAT life? Want the key to reclaiming what’s missing, to create everything you want for yourself, to finally make that change? >>> The Only Skill You Ever Need

xo,

P.S. Going after your dream life, finally living it, moving from your life now to the life you want to have – all of this can feel completely overwhelming! How do you know what you want? How do you GET what you want? Where do you start? How do you face all the uncertainty and that huge climb from where you are now to the life of your dreams?

There’s one skill that unlocks all the rest.

And my totally free and totally updated Only Skill You Ever Need guide and bonus chapter goes through exactly that.

Ready for that dream life of yours?

This takes your dreams from sepia to color

This takes your dreams from sepia to color

by | Jan 18, 2023 | Coaching, Dream Acceleration, Tara Sage Coaching

Ready to bring your dreams to life?

Something I’ve long taught my coaching clients is that you can’t create what you can’t imagine.

I recently learned some fascinating brain science research that seems to suggest too that you can’t imagine what you can’t REMEMBER.  << My overly simplistic version but keep reading to see that it’s not all that far-fetched, and why it matters!

Let me explain.

First, memory recall, across the board, is very inaccurate and therefore very unreliable. This is true across all ages. The evidence is abundant that your memory, and mine, is weak at best. From witness identification errors, to recalling personal circumstances of past experiences. It’s been widely documented that most memories are totally erroneous despite the fact that people believe they are remembering accurately.

Bottom line: When it comes to memory recall, inaccuracies are consistent.

This begs the question: If memory is so unreliable and inaccurate, what then is the evolutionary purpose of memory?

Scientists have wondered, if it’s not for the value of accurate recall, what is memory FOR?

Another important discovery: Those with memory disorders (whether due to a traumatic brain injury, or Alzheimer’s, or brain surgery where part of the brain was removed or impacted in a way that caused significant memory loss) … these folks don’t only have trouble recalling the past, they ALSO have tremendous difficulty imagining the future!

This fascinating fact has led scientists to a new theory about the evolutionary purpose of memory: That memory’s evolutionary life-sustaining purpose is less about accurate recall and more about how the function of memories enables and supports the ability to imagine the future.

Ok. Here’s where all these dots connect in my mind:

As someone whose entire educational foundation, extensive experience, and decades-long career has been centered around psychology, human behavior, and systems change … this brain science theory makes a whole lot of sense to me!

Here’s one way to think about it:

Imagining the future is a bit like painting a picture.

“Paint me the picture of what you would like your life to be. Help me see it with you.” << This is something I often ask my clients to do, so that I can see, imagine, delight in, and ultimately help them move forward to CREATE their desired future.

But – what if you were asked to paint a picture and you only had blue and black to paint it with?

How vivid a painting could you paint with just that limited palate?

Not very, amiright?

So … circling back to my opening statement that you can’t create what you can’t imagine, let’s break it down:

You can’t create what you can’t “see”.

And you can’t see what you can’t imagine.

And, perhaps too, you can’t imagine what you can’t remember…in the sense that memory serves as the palate you draw from, and therefore can create from.

The science suggests that memories support imagining!

And you know what imagining supports? Innovation.

Your memory therefore supports – or limits – your ability to design your future, to innovate about what’s possible.

Isn’t that fascinating?

THIS is why when a client comes to me feeling uncertain about what they want in their life and the picture of their desired future feels blurry and vague, a great place we often start is: remembering.

Drawing from your PAST, from your life experience, you have decades of recall opportunities about what you want to create, design, and experience going forward.

As you imagine, and reimagine, your future, a great place to start is to recall what has been fun, luscious, joyful, dynamic, nourishing, life-enhancing, and pleasure-filled from your past — be it 5 minutes ago, or when you were 5.

The science suggests that the more you are able to pull from what’s stored in your memory, the more colorful, luscious, and dynamic your future can be!

This is just one piece of what we unpack together in my 6-week No-Vacation-Needed Blueprint Training – enrolling now for just $197.

Let’s reimagine together.