Playing Big: For Women Who Want to Speak Up, Stand Out and Lead
We feel pachad when the ego perceives something it feels will wound the ego’s fragile self-concept in some way. We feel yirah when the ego perceives that something has the potential to bring us into transcendence of the ego. Playing Big graduate Diana Tedoldi said it beautifully: “Yirah is the fear of dissolving a boundary, while pachad is the fear
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Where the inner critic rants and raves, the inner mentor speaks softly. The inner critic interrupts and invades our thinking. The inner mentor almost always waits to be asked for input before she speaks.
Tara Mohr • Playing Big: For Women Who Want to Speak Up, Stand Out and Lead
Recall an experience of yirah. What was it like? What brought it about?
Tara Mohr • Playing Big: For Women Who Want to Speak Up, Stand Out and Lead
Yirah brings butterflies where Pachad is tight, makes it harder to breathe. Yirah has the nervousness of excitement which can feel the same as just nervousness in the body when we don’t investigate it. I feel Yirah every time I publish a blog post, publish a new podcast, or put a new post on Instagram with writing that comes from my soul. I also feel it when I step into the seat of the teacher, which is really new for me. Not so much for single meditations though, more the courses
“It’s a failure of imagination. If people haven’t been taught how to use their creativity, how to imagine, then they can’t create a dramatically different reality than what they know today, because they can’t imagine it.”
Tara Mohr • Playing Big: For Women Who Want to Speak Up, Stand Out and Lead
Some are what I call heart-based tools. These use emotions as the way in to reducing fear. Some are cognitive tools that utilize our rational thinking to help us reduce fear. Some are somatic tools, which use the body as the entry point.
Tara Mohr • Playing Big: For Women Who Want to Speak Up, Stand Out and Lead
The Big Ideas In the Old Testament, there are two different words used for fear. Pachad is the fear of projected or imagined things. Yirah is the feeling that we have (1) when we suddenly come into possession of more energy than we are used to, (2) when we inhabit a larger space than we are used to, and (3) when we are in the presence of the divine
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Think back to the three definitions of yirah: The feeling that overcomes us when we inhabit a larger space than we are used to The feeling we experience when we suddenly come into possession of considerably more energy than we had before What we feel in the presence of the divine
Tara Mohr • Playing Big: For Women Who Want to Speak Up, Stand Out and Lead
“Well, of course,” she said. “That’s because American women are liberated but not empowered.”
Tara Mohr • Playing Big: For Women Who Want to Speak Up, Stand Out and Lead
Principle 5: Ask, What’s More Important to Me Than Praise?
Tara Mohr • Playing Big: For Women Who Want to Speak Up, Stand Out and Lead
few years ago, I came across a teaching that completely changed how I understood fear. I was reading the book Be Still and Get Going by Rabbi Alan Lew, a brilliant writer and spiritual teacher.1 Rabbi Lew explained that the Hebrew Bible uses two different words for fear. The first word is pachad. Pachad, Rabbi Lew explains, is the fear of projected
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