Tama J. Kieves is the bestselling author of THIS TIME I DANCE! Creating the Work You Love (How One Harvard Lawyer Left It All to Have It All!) She is the founder of Awakening Artistry and a sought-after speaker and career coach who has helped thousands world-wide to discover and live their true life’s work.

What is  your highest bliss?

I love my work! I love that my writing and speaking draws intelligent, wildly creative, powerful people to me and that I am helping to inspire their genius in this world. I am 27 clouds above cloud 9, when I get emails from readers saying that This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love or one of my free e-newsletters cracked open their world or nurtured their soul. They’re crying, but so am I!

You took a major leap of career and faith, moving from successful attorney to inspirational writer, speaker and coach. What courage, resources, wisdom…did it take to allow for that?

I have a saying in my book, “If you’re this successful doing work you don’t love, what could you do with work you do love?” Our desires aren’t frivolous or arbitrary. They house rocket fuel. When I finally embraced what I loved, I awakened the Beloved within me that helped me live life from inspiration instead of fear. The misery, pain, and desperation I felt practicing law shoved me towards courage. I have studied and taught A Course in Miracles for over 20 years and that’s been my source of equilibrium and grace.

What was the 12 year journey to allow your book “This Time I Dance” to ‘write you’?

For me, it wasn’t just about writing a book. It was about re-writing the reality I’d known. I’d grown up in an orthodox Jewish New York family, and I’d attended Harvard Law School, so I had to “unlearn” a fearful way of thinking that I had thought was “practical.” I was integrating this book as I wrote it, because it was what I needed to hear and experience to live this inspired life. Also, I wrote this book without an agent or publisher, “trusting” that something would come. Of course, later it was discovered and published by my dream New York publisher Tarcher/Penguin, but at the time, I had to write past ranting doubts and fears.

Can you please speak about the book…the vision, the ideas contained within?

I was so frustrated reading all the “5 easy step self-help type books.” This Time I Dance! walks readers through my (and their) real journey: freaking out and staying inspired as you leave a “safe” life to create a soul-inspired living. Readers have loved the honesty and humor. The book is a personal mentor, a champion of your gifts, and an advocate for your dreams. The main thing it does it help you to TRUST your desires, your creative gifts, your inspired leanings, and this amazing journey that takes you past every limitation you think you have.

How can we “awaken our own artistry?”

Ask what you love, not what you love that will make money. It can be walking along the beach. Stay honest. Only the real dream has the power. The more you feed your initial desires, the more they expand and lead you. Listen to your joy, not your doubts.

 Visit her at www.AwakeningArtistry.com and sign up for FREE inspiration and support through her monthly e-newsletter, blog, or download her FREE Transformational Report on “Finding Your Calling Now.” Join her inspired tribe on Facebook.