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What would happen to your business if you weren’t running on shame? ​
​Inspired by Amazing Grace, Reimagined by Shaneh Woods

If there’s one thing I want for you and your business, it’s this:

Stop punishing yourself 🙅

…for the courses you purchased but never watched.
…the business model you were excited about but couldn't make work.
…the sales that slipped away because you flubbed your pitch.
…good advice you ignored because you wanted there to be a shortcut.
…all the shortcuts that didn’t work.
…all the times you started back at the beginning.
…for that email that someone got mad about.
…that time you got called out even though you still don’t understand why.
…the people you hurt.
…the clients who didn’t get the results they hoped for.
…all the times you maxed out your credit card.
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Whatever is there. My guess is that your list is way longer than that because mine definitely is.

I still kick myself for spending five thousand dollars on a TikTok program with Keenya Kelly that I abandoned after making about five reels. That was FIVE YEARS AGO. Or that time I issued a public takedown of Amy Porterfield without talking to her about it first. Or the day I let go of all of my employees without warning, after years of reassuring them we were in it together and their jobs were not going anywhere. Or that one time on a mastermind call I literally looked one of my members in the eye and said, “The problem is you.”*

I could do this all day.

The list is long and full of stories.

When you punish yourself, it’s a subtle rejection of the soul. It says, “I can’t trust myself. I don’t make good choices. Others should not trust me either.”

Just for today, what would it look like if we both took a break from self-flagellation and gave ourselves just one inch of grace? What if you could recognize that every choice you ever made in your whole life was the best you knew how to do at the time? That every time you tripped and fell, your wounds knitted together to make you stronger.

When something doesn’t work out like you thought it would, it doesn’t mean it was a mistake. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. Maybe it’s just bad luck or bad timing.

Every time you outsource trust to someone richer and skinnier who has a bigger Instagram following is an opportunity to return to yourself, and make a different choice next time.

Shame keeps you stuck in a cycle of buying stuff you don’t need and constantly finding yourself back at the start line.

Grace gives you wings 🪽

It opens you to creative flow, to inspiration that comes from somewhere beyond the realm you inhabit daily. It’s a doorway into curiosity and doing things you’ve never done before. Making that ask. Sending that email. Pressing record on a voice note you wanted to send six months ago but were too afraid.

Grace is the way home, Reader.

I’m telling you this as a world-renowned self-flaggelator who also knows that feeling shame is part of being human. It never quite goes away, that awkward roommate we all have to learn to live with.

So, on that note: What’s one thing you want to be celebrated for today?

Hit “reply” and share.

I’m celebrating this email, which I think is a banger and took me less than an hour to write.

Tarzan Kay Kalryzian [she/her] Did someone forward you this email? ​Subscribe here​. Follow me on ​LinkedIn​.

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*Thank you for not writing me off forever, Liz Wilcox. Your grace and patience with me allowed me to give that to myself. I am so glad to have known you all these years.

And to everyone else reading this, I’m doing a much better job at masterminds. I have ongoing training and oversight, and would never weaponise people’s business struggles by blaming them. (Anyone interested should look here.)

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