About the Workshop

Nike, you got it wrong. 

“Just do it” is a simplistic mantra. Very unhelpful, too. 

Just do it … really?

If you could have just done it, you would have. There are lots of things we want to do, and need to do. But we find ourselves blocked, over and over again. And then we can’t help but turn on ourselves, wondering, What is wrong with me?

What happens when you say that enough times to yourself, or when you hear it from others repeatedly? That place inside of you, your inner landscape, starts to erode. I call that inner space mattering. 

And what happens when we don’t matter? Hard to get out of bed in the morning and show up to our life. And along with our hope, our life gets smaller and smaller.  No hope, no life.

AND YET, somehow you know that you are here to matter. To make a difference. A great one, in fact. And no matter how loud that voice says that you don’t matter, there is something inside that is fighting back, I do matter. I must matter. I will find a way to matter. 

And so you reach deeper inside to explore, What’s in my way? 

I want you to consider this, right about now: 

Challenges are not in the way; they lead your way!

And that is why I wrote Dare To Matter: Lessons In Living a Large Life. 

I was given the script of not mattering very early on in my life. Being compared to Aunt Rosalie, my personality-disordered aunt who didn’t seem to matter much to anyone meant one thing: I would not much matter either. 

The script sounds like this: Do not be who you are. Worse, who do you think you are? 

There I was, this complicated child who was heavy, often scared and lonely, slow to understand her schoolwork, in an image-driven culture into which I did not easily fit. In fact, I was way out of step. 

Hard to get out of bed in the morning when it doesn’t matter. How many times can you face your own disappointed hopes and the feeling that nothing about your life matters?

I wrote this memoir in response to that core pain of not mattering, of that primal wound of feeling small without any clear destiny calling my name. In exploring this pain through the prism of relationships with my family, religion, and the American culture focused on appearance, food, and money, I learned this: I could not buy or borrow my mattering, but I could create it.

The Power of Dare ™ workshop is based on the book’s objective lessons that I call Matterings.  While the story in the book is deeply personal (which by the way was the #1 challenge I had to overcome in writing it), these Matterings for rebuilding our collapsed inner space that holds us back are the takeaways.

You will learn how to take the false messaging and DARE IT ALL DOWN. How to smash those emotional idols that will destroy you, if you don’t neutralize them. You will do this as if your inner life depends on it, because it does. You have one life to matter. 

In this workshop, we explore how to opt into, and rebuild, our lives:

• Learn what is at the heart of our non-mattering
• Understand why the core feeling of not mattering is considered a trauma
• Create a framework to reposition our emptiness towards satisfaction 
• Discover why we might  be scared to matter
• Explore the 3 Keys to shifting Inner Power 

When I finally decided to write this book, a close mentor and friend said to me, “If you don’t do this now, you won’t ever. This is your time and this is your chance.” He was right. 

And I say the same to you: Now is your time. And this is your chance.

Because until your light shines bright, this world is not whole.

THOSE WHO DARE THE GREATEST …

LIVE THE LARGEST LIFE.

Radio host and author Judith Krummeck calls DARE TO MATTER “both a call to action and a deeply personal account. A transformational memoir, it explores in clear and lucid prose whether mattering is something that happens to us, or it is something  we can dare to direct for ourselves. It is very courageous…”

Brigadier General John E. Michel, author and Executive Director of Skyworks Global commented that DARE TO MATTER “helps us understand how our individual uniqueness is a gift, one we should enthusiastically share with the world. Shifra compels her readers to rethink their circumstances and to rediscover how we all possess personal power. I am excited the world will soon be able to experience her fabulous insights.”