The day after Christmas I decided to take a staycation. I woke up on December 26th and felt the overwhelming need to slow down. So many creations occurring. In my physical body I am growing a baby. In my business I have added Ayurveda consultations and group meetings in the past seven months. In the Yoga studio we launched ten new classes in October and added several new teachers to the schedule. Last January my husband and I moved into our first house. And this coming February we begin another 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training Program.
I have my mind on expansion much of the time. And much of that expansion depends on my ability to stay centered and take care of myself. It also depends heavily on my ability to push myself to new limits as a studio owner, wife and expectant mother. Real growth means that I foster a new identity with my actions. If I want the things in my life to grow, I can’t expect to approach those things from a mentality of lack.
I would like to think that I don’t suffer from a lack mentality. But there are so many areas of my life that I have out a cap on in terms of what I think is possible or probable. I have limited my happiness and success because I have seen myself in a certain light.
For example, when I started my business in 2010, I told myself I wasn’t a business person. I also told myself I was an introvert. I didn’t expect a lot of people to be part of the community. I struggled to run the studio. But I persisted anyway because I wanted to share Yoga with the world and create an intimate community. So it worked.
I have spent a lot of years trying to unwind these beliefs of being an anti-business introvert. And I have seen these self identifications drastically weaken over time. As I continued to apply the principles of Yoga, Ayurveda and psychology of the mind, I realized I was capable of becoming in essence whoever I dream of becoming. And in order to really break through the beliefs of my ineptitude, I had to act in ways different than my current MO.
I had to stop being afraid of rejection. It is easy to attach my worthiness to whether or not someone likes or identifies with the service that I offer. This was me for a long time. But I realized I just had to put myself out there; and do it repeatedly. I put myself out there in enough different ways through enough different avenues to realize what was right for me.
Another way I have healed is through learning from people who have already achieved the things I seek to achieve. As I learn from someone just a few steps ahead, I realize that successful people think in a different way. And that I can learn their thought processes and adopt them.
It’s time to start embracing the reality that personality isn’t permanent. Our brains are high functioning machinery. We are capable of massive transformation if we put our minds to the test.
Here is something that has worked well for me:
For a long time now, I have integrated into my self identity the idea that I am the kind of person who continually changes. So if there is one constant within me, it is change. If I believe that CHANGE is the person that I am, then when I go from being introverted to extroverted, from having an aversion to sales to seeing it as a service, from wanting so much time to myself to being able to generously share that time with other people, it isn’t a surprise. It isn’t out of my wheelhouse. It is something I expect and perhaps even the people around me come to expect as well.
It’s time to start envisioning what we are capable of instead of what we have been entrenched in. And it’s not because we are not enough. It’s because life is a beautiful journey of discovery and unfolding and it is our privilege to embrace its mysteries.
