Happy Holidays from Sounds True

Tami Simon —

November 25, 2019

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”

—Meister Eckhart

I believe that if people from all of the different wisdom traditions gathered together and were asked to agree on one focus for a special day of reflection, “giving thanks” would be somewhere at the top of the list.

Gratitude changes us. Instead of looking at what’s wrong, we turn our hearts for a moment to what’s right. And there are so many things that are right.

For example, the appreciation of one complete breath (as corny as it sounds, whenever I turn my mind to gratitude, this is the first place I start)—feeling the fluttery exhilaration of the inhale, the excitement at the top of the inhale, the relaxation of a full and deep exhale, and then the interesting open space that awaits when our exhale is complete (you can tell I feel grateful for breathing).

And then there is the feeling of air on our skin, and the faces of the people we love, and the beauty of trees and the natural world … and we can each go on and on and on and on.

And let’s do that! Let’s go on and on and on and on about all of the ways that we appreciate what is right and beautiful in this moment (and if you’re at all like me, with a tendency to focus on problem-solving, this might not be your usual perspective).

And if you do go on and on and on and appreciate the beauty that is right here, you probably won’t need science to tell you that you have shifted the neural pathways in your brain (although scientific studies will certainly confirm that)—you can feel the immediate shift.

As I write this, I feel appreciative of so many beautiful “presences” in my life, including the presence of YOU. I am grateful that you read these posts, that you feel in some way connected to Sounds True, that you are interested in personal transformation, in being wholehearted and of benefit to others. I am grateful that, even though it is through this weird form of a mass communication from me to you, we are connected.

At Sounds True, we are grateful to the entire ecosystem of which we are a part: to our authors, to the ideas themselves, to our vendors and manufacturers, to the buildings that house us, to the natural world, and to future generations.

And most of all, we are grateful to you, the individual person who enjoys and derives benefit from the learning programs we create. And we want to make sure we are meeting you “where you are at” and that our programs are accessible and you feel encouraged to explore and learn from different teachers. Like most companies, our deepest discounts of the year are available between now and the end of December, and I want you to know about this, if you are interested. To learn more about these special offers, just click here.

Gratitude creates a circle of appreciation. When we express our gratitude, the recipient feels it, lights up, and appreciates our existence in return. I love being in a virtuous circle of appreciation with you.

With love and a grateful heart,

Tami Simon

Founder and publisher,

Sounds True

P.S. Once again, our deepest discounts of the year are now available. Please click here to learn more.

Posted November 25, 2019

Tami Simon

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Tami Simon started Sounds True at the age of 22 with a dream and a tape recorder. Though she had no experience running a business and only a vague idea of what she wanted the company to be, Tami had her guiding principle strongly in place: to disseminate spiritual wisdom. Over its 36-year history, Sounds True has grown into a multimedia publisher that has produced over 6,000 titles, has been included twice in the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing companies, and is North America’s leading publisher of spoken-word spiritual teachings.

One of the world’s very first organizations to focus on multiple bottom lines as part of its founding mandate, Sounds True has expanded steadily over the years while staying true to its original mission. Partnering with the leading spiritual teachers of our time, Sounds True now has a successful book publishing program (distributed by Macmillan) and has grown to produce events, certification programs, and transformational online learning experiences.

Tami hosts the popular Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge, which has now been downloaded more than 20 million times. She is also the founder of the Sounds True Foundation, which is dedicated to bringing spiritual education to people who would otherwise not have access. She lives in Boulder, Colorado, and in British Columbia with her wife, Julie Kramer, and their two spoodles, Raspberry and Bula.

Author photo © Jason Elias

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Tami Simon: Being a Spiritual Entrepreneur

Tami Simon — August 22, 2023

A magazine article about Sounds True founder Tami Simon referred to her as a “spiritual entrepreneur.” At first, Tami wasn’t sure about the label. Yet over time, she came to appreciate and embrace it. Today, the art of spiritual entrepreneurship is a central facet of Sounds True’s Inner MBA® program.

In this host-only episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami shares her thoughts and feelings about what it means to lead a company dedicated to the well-being of its employees as equally as it is to business success. For anyone looking to bridge their innermost values with how they make a living, Tami reveals seven principles of the spiritual entrepreneur, with insightful guidance on honoring the voice of the heart; leading with presence; why relationships need to come first; creating a culture of care, engagement, and well-being; alternating between high performance and good rest; how to embrace challenges as growth opportunities; claiming our personal agency and doing the work of “cleaning up”; business as a means to address real social needs; maintaining trust in the unfolding process; making a commitment to “lift each other up” in the way we do business; recognizing our interdependence; and more.

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Standing Together, and Stepping Up

Tami Simon — June 12, 2020

Dear Sounds True friends and community,

While holding a mirror to our own organizational accountability, Sounds True unequivocally stands in solidarity with the Black community, the family of George Floyd, and the many others who have been victims of police brutality and ongoing racial injustice.

We stand with and for our Black employees, our Black authors and colleagues, our Black customers, and all of the protestors and social change activists—past, present, and future— who are working to put an end to racism in every corner of our society.

And we are committed to not just stand in solidarity but to step up.

Since George Floyd’s murder, we have been having many in-depth discussions among the 125-person staff at Sounds True about the most meaningful actions we can take as a transformational learning company to help educate ourselves and our community and contribute to the dismantling of racism.

We have been asking ourselves questions such as:

How can we best use our platform to better amplify the voices of wisdom teachers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)?
What’s in our Shadow, as individuals and as an organization? What unconscious areas must now be brought into awareness?
And how do we actively address these areas so that we can evolve as an organization and be a force of genuine service in the world?

The answers to these questions are not simple, quick, or easy. It has taken me a while to write this email to you, our beloved customers and Sounds True community, because we have felt as a team the need to listen carefully and look deeply within in order to lay out an action plan moving forward that will contribute to meaningful and substantive change.

Anything less falls short of what I believe this moment is asking of us.

We also want to learn and evolve in partnership with you. We are learning and growing together as a community, and it has been important for us to create a moving-forward action plan that invites engagement from our entire audience.

With arms wide open, I invite you to witness, support, and step up with us in the following ways:

Over the next two years, Sounds True will be undergoing an in-depth Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training in the workplace. This training initiative has been in development for over a year, and will be provided by TMI Consulting, led by Dr. Tiffany Jana. Dr. Jana is coauthor of the books Overcoming Bias, Erasing Institutional Bias, and Subtle Acts of Exclusion. As part of the training, we will be uncovering how unconscious bias, microaggressions, and micro-acts of exclusion show up in the workplace, in our personal lives, and even in our products. The training also includes a thorough audit of Sounds True’s hiring practices, HR policies, marketing materials, and more.
Sounds True also wants to include our customers, authors, and partner businesses in the introductory phase of this training process that we will be embarking upon. With that in mind, we are hosting a three-part webinar series on “Healing Racism” with Dr. Jana, beginning on Wednesday, June 24, at 8:00 pm ET | 5:00 pm PT. The series is free, and we are inviting our customers, authors, and business associates to join the Sounds True staff for this online training and to walk this part of our journey together. As someone on our email list, you will be receiving all of the details in future emails.

WATCH HERE

It is clear to us at Sounds True that we need to publish and otherwise amplify the voices of more authors and presenters who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. If you have ideas about new BIPOC authors you would like to see published at Sounds True or included in our summits and online offerings, please write to us at acquisitions@soundstrue.com.
The Sounds True Foundation, formed in 2018, is increasing its efforts to raise scholarship funds for BIPOC students to attend our Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program and become trained as mindfulness teachers who will bring this practice to diverse communities all over the world. We will be hosting a virtual fundraiser on June 30 for this initiative and will be emailing you with more details.

As I mentioned, working to dismantle and heal racism—in ourselves, in our organization, and in our world—is not a flash-in-the-pan effort at Sounds True. This is a long-haul commitment to the creation of a different world that is just, kind, and equitable. And we have a heckuva road to travel with you to get there.

And we are committed. We don’t want to simply talk about spiritual awakening. We want to embody it … as individuals, as a company, and as a force in the world. Humbly and boldly, we are going to give everything we have and invite you to do the same. This is the time for us to step up, together.

With love on the journey,

Tami Simon

Founder and Publisher, Sounds True

P.S. You can learn more about our commitment to creating a more compassionate world here.

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Happy Holidays from Sounds True

Tami Simon — November 25, 2019

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”

—Meister Eckhart

Gratitude changes us. Instead of looking at what’s wrong, we turn our hearts for a moment to what’s right. And there are so many things that are right.

And then there is the feeling of air on our skin, and the faces of the people we love, and the beauty of trees and the natural world … and we can each go on and on and on and on.

With love and a grateful heart,

Tami Simon

Founder and publisher,

Sounds True

P.S. Once again, our deepest discounts of the year are now available. Please click here to learn more.

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We are facing what is perhaps the greatest civilizational crisis of our time, the global ecological emergency. If the underlying challenge to climate change (and other systemic social problems) can be traced to human disrelation—a state of being out of accordance with nature, ourselves, and other humans—then I propose it to be a fundamentally spiritual problem, as much as an environmental, scientific, technological, cultural, psychological, economic, or historical one. At the root of this spiritual problem is collective trauma.

My work as a teacher over the past 20 years has focused on the integration of science and mysticism. Over time, as my training programs and retreats developed what emerged was a clear need to address collective trauma.

Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World is a guide for anyone committed to the healing of our struggling world. With practical instruction on reducing stress and building resilience, along with practices such as transparent communication, my book is intended to support each of us and our communities in embracing our interdependence. As you learn to attune to others, you begin to refine your capacity to relate — and to walk the profound journey of healing individual, ancestral, and collective trauma.

The complexity of challenges we face in the 21st century demands a new level of human collaboration. To respond with creativity and innovation to these challenges, we must think holistically. In this way, we awaken our most intrinsic biological gifts: the powers of our soul’s intelligence – that which inside us knows how to heal and restore.

Perhaps, rather than finding ourselves alive in a time of exponential, unstoppable decline, we will discover the power to access the evolutionary gifts that appear dormant in us. To accomplish this, I believe we must do it together—not separately, but in relation, as communities dedicated to healing our collectives.

It may take only a small number of us to establish a new level of collective coherence—to share our light, heal our wounds, and realize the unawakened potential of our world. Will you join me on this journey of attunement?

With gratitude,

Thomas Hübl

Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change by integrating modern science with the insights of humanity’s wisdom traditions. Since the early 2000s, he has led large-scale events on the healing of collective trauma, with a special focus on the shared history of Israelis and Germans, and facilitated healing and dialogue around racism, oppression, colonialism, and genocide, among other topics. He is the author of Healing Collective Trauma and Attuned (both with Julie Jordan Avritt). He has served as an advisor and guest faculty for universities and organizations, and he is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute. For more, visit www.attunedbook.com.

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Maggie Smith — August 8, 2023

Bestselling poet Maggie Smith has a gift for embracing the complexity of our human experience—and for writing about it with piercing intensity, clarity, and beauty. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Maggie about her approach to her craft and to life, and how writing can serve as a pathway to self-discovery and release.

Featuring a reading of the beloved poem “Good Bones,” this insightful episode of Insights at the Edge explores metaphor and life in sensory experience; poetic memoir; Maggie’s “drill-down” exercise; entering the territory of our pain; balancing a creative life and domestic responsibilities; the notion of “containing multitudes”; being an integrated, whole person; intuition and the deep knowing of what is brave, real, and true; sitting with the splinters (instead of sanding them down); allowing “full wingspan” for both individuals in a relationship; endurance versus closure; forgiveness versus acceptance; taking a bird’s-eye view of our experiences; making life more beautiful for everyone; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

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Five Dos and Don’ts for the Minimalism-Curious

Light Watkins — July 14, 2023

My recent book Travel Light is a how-to guide for the practice of what I call “Spiritual Minimalism,” which is not to be confused with regular old minimalism.

Long story short, in 2018, I was living in a beautiful two-bedroom apartment in Venice Beach when I felt an inner calling to get rid of everything that didn’t fit inside of my 22-inch carry-on bag. My bag would effectively become my new apartment as I would begin living nomadically around the world.

It took me 30 days’ worth of yard sales and Craigslist posts to get rid of over four decades of furniture, art, photo albums, yearbooks, letters, clothing, knickknacks, winter coats, books, my cars, Vespa, and everything else.

And about six months into my nomadic journey, I realized something: I still had too much stuff. So I got rid of the carry-on bag and downsized into a backpack. And now, five-plus years later, I’m still happily living from a backpack as I continue to hop around the world, from hotels to Airbnbs to friends’ extra bedrooms.

Travel Light is written for those who also feel called to live with less, but you’re not sure where or how to start. Truth be told, there are numerous ways to start, depending on your individual situation.

If this approach intrigues you, I want to share five common mistakes many new minimalists make—and a handful of simple recommendations to get you started on a more mindful, purposeful minimalism journey:

Don’t get rid of too much too fast
Although I completely emptied my entire two-bedroom apartment within 30 days, I had been intentionally prepping to live from a carry-on bag over the previous year by experimenting with taking only what I actually used while on my dozens of work trips. So in 2018, getting rid of my stuff was merely the final step in a long progression of steps.

My first recommendation is to go slow. Decide what sort of end result you desire, and start experimenting with what it would be like to only use what you envision keeping. Maybe get a storage room and put a handful of items in it each week until you run out of things you don’t use. Otherwise, going too fast could prove to be unsustainable and discouraging.

Don’t make it about the external space
Getting rid of clutter doesn’t resolve deep emotional wounds or past trauma. And some of that could be the root cause of why you engage in retail therapy or why you may cling to stuff you don’t use or wear. And until you start doing deeper work on yourself, you can live in the most minimal-looking setting, but still feel cluttered inside.

Commit to daily meditation as a means of efficiently releasing stress, and engage in other inner work, such as therapy, journaling, seva (service), and daily gratitude practices to clear away the internal clutter. This is what is meant by Spiritual Minimalism. It’s minimalism practiced from the inside-out.

Don’t treat minimalism as a one-time experience
Minimalism is less of an act, like Spring cleaning, and more of a lifestyle, like getting into shape. It doesn’t end once you get rid of your stuff. Like being in shape, minimalism continues to inform what you do, how you do it, where you go, why, and pretty much every other choice you make in life. In other words, you recognize that every choice you make is either supporting the lifestyle or taking away from the lifestyle.

Start seeing everything you do (big and small) as an opportunity to reinforce the minimalist mindset, and make choices that support your desired mindset.

Don’t forget to adopt a larger purpose Getting rid of stuff for the sake of looking like a minimalist is ultimately unfulfilling, and it’s recommended to adopt a larger purpose for your minimalism adventure. That way, you will bring more enthusiasm and passion into your minimalism choices. You’re not just getting rid of something for the sake of getting rid of it. It’s going to help you by making space to exercise, create content, or to use as the meditation corner of your home.

My recommendation is to answer this question: How does becoming a minimalist help you help others? The answer is a clue into your purpose, and just know that there is no wrong answer. Or rather, it’s an ever-evolving answer that will come into greater focus as you begin your journey. All you need for now is a loose idea of your why.

Don’t compare yourself to others
The quickest way to make minimalism a drag is to compare yourself to other, more popular minimalists. It’s certainly good to be informed of best minimalism practices and get tips from minimalist influencers, but their paths or suggestions may not work as well for your situation.

Be open to blazing your own path into minimalism, and be willing to adjust along the way. If you treat the entire thing as a learning experience, there are no mistakes. And you’ll have a lot more fun along the way.

For more tips and insights on the ways of the Spiritual Minimalist, I invite you to check out Travel Light: Spiritual Minimalism to Live a More Fulfilled Life.

Light Watkins

Anonymous says:

November 26, 2019 at 8:44 am

Thank you Tami Simon and all the Sounds True Staff, I listen to the weekly podcasts and appreciate the work you do. Working on Calm presence. Blessings to you.

Jill says:

November 26, 2019 at 10:20 am

I’m very grateful for the Sounds True organization, and for the many interviews I’ve listened to, books I’ve read, and courses I’ve enrolled in. Truly an inspiration for leading a better life. Thank you Tami!! Sincerely, Jill Y

Kathy says:

November 26, 2019 at 10:23 am

Tami, I am not one to write in these comment sections but feel
Compelled to write to you personally for all you are doing with this platform to reach, inspire and bring people together. Your voice, your outlook, even this lovely greeting just reflect so much love. I’m very appreciative for the gifts Sounds True makes possible and for the reverence authenticity is held.
Kathy

Marie Kelly says:

November 26, 2019 at 12:59 pm

Tami, thank you for that lovely piece of reading on Gratitude, very uplifting. Blessings to you.

Carlotta Smith says:

November 26, 2019 at 2:58 pm

“i love being in a virtuous circle of appreciation with you.”
There is so much to feast on with these words placed on the table. I have been impacted by Tami’s words, thoughts and actions for years. To inhale that we co-inspire in virtuous circles is the ultimate circle game. I appreciate every collective breath we take and release, expressing interdependence and inclusiveness.

Rebecca says:

November 26, 2019 at 4:30 pm

Thank you, Tami and Sounds True Staff, for providing much needed teachings and courses to help all of us grow into the most radiant and authentic versions of ourselves. Now more than ever, all of us must show up as beacons of light and love for our country and the world. Bless you all at Sounds True, and Happy Holidays.

White Hawk Medicine Woman says:

November 26, 2019 at 9:19 pm

I felt compelled to post this information to you Tami. I did not see where I could send an e-mail. It is in response to your revealing about nail biting. I heard Whoopie Goldberg say one day on the View that she use to bite her nails. Then, she found out one day through a study that even if you wash your hands really well there still is microscopic amounts of urine and poop still there. That was enough for her. So, she stopped biting her nails.

Alina says:

November 26, 2019 at 9:54 pm

Dear Tami I also feel compelled to thank YOU and your team of helpers. This year I have had the good fortune to have more time to explore the Sounds True offerings. I am sooo grateful not just for what you offer but for the spirit in which you do so, an exemplary model of integrity, generosity and higher purpose. Thank you for being you. May your holiday season be nurturing, joyful and full of delight.

Jane Ewins says:

November 27, 2019 at 5:09 pm

I am grateful that your offerings reach all the way to Australia! In appreciation of all you “do” and “be”. Thank you Tami! Kind regards and love. Jane

Happy Holidays from Sounds True

Tami Simon

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Happy Holidays from Sounds True

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