Jen Louden is the best-selling author of 6 books, including the pioneering best-sellers The Woman’s Comfort Book and The Woman’s Retreat Book. Her retreats are richly creative experiences, and often booked months in advance. She’s the proud mom of a college freshman, and the creator of the beloved course Teach Now.

You can sign up for a free sampler of her Teach Now program, a live class, on April 4th, here.

Jen is a teacher’s teacher, and my dear friend. I’m delighted and honored to share her wisdom with you. In this conversation, we talk about teaching as a sacred path, as service, as a calling that taps us on the shoulder in unexpected ways and won’t be denied.

We also talk about the practical aspects of teaching — what makes it effective, soul-filled, rewarding, and profitable? How do you know when you’re ready to teach? How do you begin?

Listen in on our conversation here:

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or right-click here and save the audio to your computer to listen to later.

If you teach, or want to, sign up for Jen’s program. It’s a remarkably rich and rewarding 6-week journey that will take you to the heart of why and how you teach, and offer you the skills and tools to share what you know, most beautifully. You’ll also learn from the wisdom of more than 44 master teachers whom Jen interviewed for this series — including Natalie Goldberg, Sharon Salzberg, Christina Baldwin, Elizabeth Lesser, Mark Nepo, Parker Palmer, among others.

Freedom aligns your desires and intentions with your soul’s purposes and your true nature.

Freedom is a quality of your soul, so it’s who you are, not something you acquire.

The mark of freedom — and of alignment — is effortless creation.

Where in your life and your business do you experience unfettered creativity, true freedom?

Where are you bogged down in struggle, difficulty, grim sweat?

What — in your life, in your business — is calling to be re-aligned with who you are and what you are here to experience, express and contribute to your world?

Explore the path of freedom this week.

In the spirit of curiosity and adventure, play with effort and effortlessness.

Align yourself with your deep desires.

Do what comes naturally — which is not at all the same thing as digging deeper into the grooves of old habits.

Breathe a clearer air, and discover who you become when you are yourself — without hesitation, hiding, or apology.

Celebrate!

This is the journey of incarnation — to unfold the essential pattern of our lives, which is held by our souls and shaped by our everyday choices.

When we are very young, and dependent on the grownups around us to keep us safe, alive and growing, we mold ourselves to what we think they want us to be. We do this so they will take care of us, but also because we believe that this is what we have to do, to belong, to stay connected and close.

And yet, the habit of reshaping ourselves to fit into the world around us takes us away from our own essence, away from the Belonging that is our very nature. We feel hazy, not-quite-real, lacking in solid substance because we have abandoned ourselves in order to fit in.

The journey of becoming sovereign calls us to resume our natural shape. To discern and honor our deep desires, fill our lives with our own presence, and return to the elemental truth of the body, which is the most concrete manifestation of our infinite soul.

Incarnation is a grand and glorious adventure. As we free ourselves from the self-created prison of fitting-in, we return to the Land of Belonging which is our true home. What’s more, we become beacons of Belonging for the world around us. By being ourselves, we make it safe for everyone around us to be themselves too.

Our world needs each of us, in all our uniqueness, to be fully ourselves so it can become fully itself too. The soul of the world awaits our belonging.

A couple of days ago, a woman I know was telling me about a friendship in which she felt she was doing all the work. She told me, in considerable detail, of all the ways in which her friend did not value her, only had time for her when it was convenient, did not share anything of significance about herself or her life, withheld her approval and attention in a hundred painful ways.

The longer she spoke, the more resentful and unhappy she became. This was a story I had heard from her many times before — in the past, it has colored her relationships with members of her family, with her friends, colleagues, acquaintances. It was a story of betrayal and abandonment, of not being seen, valued, loved. A story in which she felt righteously aggrieved, hurt, angry, victimized.

As she continued on, her voice stretched thin, the story took on a life of its own. The pain of which she spoke had the shimmer of unreality, like something remembered but not felt. She seemed absent from her own story — as though, in telling it so often, she had slipped into an ancient groove and was slogging along it without any real feeling, presence or volition.

This, to me, was the voice of her soul saying: Here’s a story that has me in its thrall. It’s no longer real. And I don’t know how to climb out of the furrow I have plowed by telling and re-telling it.

Whether your story is about love or money, success, failure, redemption, shame or blame, ill health or reasons why you aren’t living the life that’s yours to live, it’s your story. It may have been shaped, a long time ago, by your history, your lineage, your experiences with family, friends, life or circumstance. But, here and now, it is your story.

No matter what shaped it initially, you are an incarnate soul. No story is more powerful than you are. You are not your stories.

You have the power to shape your unfolding story, to choose the stories that shape your life. If the stories you tell don’t serve the life you want to live, pay attention to the ways in which you tell and re-tell them.

Stop telling the stories you don’t want to live.

Take back your power to choose and create your own evolving story. The story of your sovereignty. The story of your freedom. Powered by your soul, infused with the love and blessing of the Sacred, and buoyed by all the powers of Wholeness.

Choose the stories that are yours to live. They want you. They choose you. Now, choose them. Bring them home where they belong.