Today I'm delighted to bring you a conversation with my friend and mentor, Jen Louden. Jen's work has spanned many topics dear to my heart: women and comfort, retreating, creativity and writing. Recently, she's been turning her attention to teaching. She's helping service-minded women and men to start teaching now....

Several months ago, I lost a friend. Her death was caused by a messy knot of physical, emotional, and financial problems: emotional wounds that led to addiction, addiction that led to physical problems and that made it hard to earn a living, then inner blocks and financial limitations that kept...

I notice that many people want to teach about or speak about or write about something, but think they can't do that until they've mastered the that thing.

It sounds something like this: "I want to help women who struggle with overeating, but how can I do that when I...

Up until I was about 30, I didn't know I had "an inner critic." Yes, I had heard the term here and there. Yes, I was mildly aware that sometimes cruel words about myself chattered away in my head, but that was it. Meanwhile, my inner critic was...

Ellen Goodman

Ellen Goodman is one of our most wise and most widely read columnists. She's a Pulitzer Prize winner and was the first to open up the Op-Ed pages to women's voices. In 2010 she founded The Conversation Project to help people...

Ellen Goodman is one of our most wise and most widely read columnists. She's a Pulitzer Prize winner and was the first to open up the Op-Ed pages to women's voices. She has written extensively about social change in America specifically about...

A few weeks ago, I sat down to talk with Tracy Mack-Askew, a vehicle line manager and rising star at General Motors. Tracy had some wise words to share about how to find mentors and the mentorship mistake so many women make.

TARA: What role has mentorship played in...

A few weeks ago, I sat down with General Motors' Vehicle Line Manager Tracy Mack-Askew and Aerodynamic Development Lead Engineer Suzy Cody to talk with both women about what it's like to be a woman building cars in Detroit.

Here's what they had to say.

TARA: Tracy, How did...

A few weeks ago, I sat down with one of my greatest teachers, best-selling author and spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson, to talk about women, politics and her upcoming, unprecedented event Sister Giant.

This is part two of our conversation (you can read...

Earlier this month, I had the joy of talking with Marianne Williamson about her work and her Sister Giant project. Here's part one of our conversation:

Tara: I am honored and have a huge smile on my face to be talking...

Today I want to share with you a concept I teach in my Playing Big leadership program for women.

A while back I started to notice a particular kind of pathology in myself and in the women around me.

We were

over-preparing,

Today I want you to meet a very special woman who has written a very important new book.

Grandmother Power, published this week, documents a remarkable global phenomenon. Around the world, grandmothers are coming together to change their societies and ensure a better world for their grandchildren.

The woman...

Women often wonder: How do I know if I'm hearing my inner critic or if I'm just being realistic?

Is that my inner critic telling me that I am not ready to start the business -- or is that realistic thinking?

Have you ever wondered why your inner critic speaks up so suddenly -- and so viciously -- in moments when you least expect it?

In this video I share when you are likely to hear from that mean voice of self-doubt and what to do to quiet its voice.

In this video, I'm sharing my favorite teaching about fear, which comes from the late Rabbi Alan Lew. This simple, little-known idea about fear has been life-changing for the women and men I work with.

Watch it here:

As discussed in the video, Rabbi Alan Lew explains that in biblical Hebrew, there are several different words for fear.

Pachad is "projected or imagined fear," the "fear whose objects are imagined." In contemporary terms, that is what we might think of as overreactive, irrational, lizard-brain fear: the fear of horrible rejection that will destroy us or the fear that we will simply combust if we step out of our comfort zones.

There is a second Hebrew word for fear, yirah. Rabbi Lew describes yirah as "the fear that overcomes us when we suddenly find ourselves in possession of considerably more energy than we are used to, inhabiting a larger space than we are used to inhabiting." It is also the feeling we feel when we are on sacred ground.

If you've felt a calling in your heart, or uncovered an authentic dream for your life, or felt a mysterious sense of inner inspiration around a project or idea, you recognize this description.

We often conflate or confuse the two types of fear and simply call what we are experiencing "fear." But we can discern them more closely, and in doing so, more effectively manage fear so it doesn't get in our way.

Next time you are in a moment that brings fear:

1. Ask yourself: What part of this fear is pachad? Write down the imagined outcomes you fear, the lizard-brain fears. Remind yourself that they are just imagined, and that pachad-type fears are irrational.

2. Savor yirah. Ask yourself: What part of this fear is yirah? You'll know yirah because it has a tinge of exhilaration and awe, while pachad has a sense of threat and panic. Lean into -- and look for -- the callings and leaps that bring yirah.

Tara Sophia Mohr is an expert on women's wellbeing and leadership. Visit here to get Tara's free guide, the 10 Rules for Brilliant Women Workbook.

For more by Tara Sophia Mohr, click here.

For more on becoming fearless, click...

Are you wondering how to discover your calling?

In this video, I share seven simple ways that women can identify their callings -- including three surprising ones that nobody talks about!

WATCH: 7 Surprising Ways to Discover Your Calling

Tara Sophia Mohr is an expert on women's wellbeing and leadership. Visit here to get Tara's free guide, the 10 Rules for Brilliant Women Workbook. To watch the earlier video in this series on Callings, click HERE.

For more by Tara Sophia Mohr, click...

Are you wondering what your calling is?

In this video, I talk about why asking the question "What's my calling?" leaves so many of us feeling stressed and unfulfilled -- and why it's really the wrong question to be asking.

I'll tell you the question I've learned to ask...

In this month's Atlantic cover story, Anne-Marie Slaughter writes about stepping down from her "dream job" in order to be more available to her teenage sons, and concludes that "women still can't have it all."

Many of us remember a similar cover story from about 10 years...

You feel the desire -- to write the book. To start the business. To launch the nonprofit organization. To build that beautiful, unique home for yourself and your family. Whatever it is -- you feel called to create something remarkable in the world.

Sometimes you wonder, is my dream...

You were so good at school. A smartie. You wrote great papers that the teachers marked with A's. You knew how to study for a test. You were a diligent, hard-working, careful, successful student. And you are (quietly) proud of that.

Now you want to thrive at work. You've got...