No one speaks to you as much as you do yourself. Our own voice, our own opinions and our own feelings are the ones we are most familiar with and the ones we are most accustomed to hearing. This is why what we say to ourselves, and how we speak to ourselves, is so important.
Often, if you compare how you speak to your friends, and how you treat yourself, you’ll find that you have so much more space, so much more patience, so much more compassion for others. You let them make mistakes, and you forgive them; you give them a safe space to feel their feelings; you have so much time for them.
But when it comes to you, you’re so hard on yourself! You don’t let yourself make mistakes, and you struggle to forgive or forget the ones you do make. You minimize your feelings so that they won’t take up too much space. You berate yourself when things don’t go as planned.
Just think: if you could lift yourself up as high as you lift your loved ones, the sky would be the limit!
All it takes is for you to start treating yourself as a friend.
“It’s okay. You made a mistake this time, but remember yesterday? You did so well! And the day before! Tomorrow, you’ll do well again.”
“You are enough. Let’s make a list of all the times you have been enough.”
“Of course, you feel tired. Think of all the things you’ve been juggling! How can I help?”
“It’s completely understandable that you feel sad. Lot’s of stuff has been going on for you these days.”
Rewrite your self-talk. When you hold yourself accountable with #Love and #Compassion and own all of your achievements and positive qualities, you #empower yourself to reach your true potential.
I just spent a weekend in Mammoth Mountain with @donbaeyoga and @aybaebay. I’ve never been a winter-sport kind of person, but both Don & Casey love skiing & snowboarding, respectively. I’ve gone snowboarding just once before 7 years prior, so I was both excited and anxious about going out on the slopes. Admittingly a novice, and not quite honoring that, I went out on a slope that was too advanced for my level. After many falls, tumbles, bruises, bumps and feelings of failure (scroll to laugh a couple videos), I had to rein in my ego and decided I needed to take lessons and start from point A.
This realization reminded me so much about yoga. As a teacher, I’ve seen many new students jump into an advanced practice without knowing the basics, only to hurt themselves or develop bad habits.
While listening to my instructor, two lessons kept coming back to me time and time again. Whether it’s through witnessing someone else’s struggle or learning the lessons again through personal experience, I’m always reminded of the importance of #Patience and #Humility.
We can sometimes approach new challenges with impatience and pride, seeking out immediate gratification, validation of ourselves and believing ourselves to be ‘ready.’ We aim high straight off the bat—the most complex asanas, the steepest ski runs, the most intricate book, the heaviest weights. No matter how ready we believe ourselves to be, Patience and Humility are never far behind, waiting to teach us, again and again, the lessons we forget.
You can’t build high without solid #foundations. Aiming for the top without #grounding yourself can become such a terrifying, off-putting experience that regaining the #trust and #courage to start again feels impossible.
Humility teaches us that we are not above the baby steps and the small beginnings—and this is okay.
Patience teaches us to see further than tomorrow, to know the value in taking our time, to understand the nature of #growth.
They are loving teachers who always reward us for coming back to them, for swallowing our pride and returning to the basics, to the foundations, to the beginning. The most valuable journeys we take are those through which we grow the most.
When one door closes, another door opens – we just have to be willing to see it.
When we are told ‘No,’ when a job opportunity falls through, a relationship ends or never even starts, our funds don’t allow us that vacation, that car, or that school, it feels like a door we’ve been walking towards confidently and hopefully has just been slammed in our faces, and there’s nowhere else worth going. It feels like the world turned its back on us and shut us out. It might even feel like the world is out to get you.
You have two choices at this point. You could stay where you are, pounding on the door, yelling in frustration and anger about what you feel you’ve been robbed of.
Or you could turn around.
Let’s face it: you didn’t really know what to expect behind that door, so why are you so attached to it? Why is that door better than any other door?
You could turn around and notice the other doors that are available to you. Maybe you hadn’t notice them before, when you were so focused on that particular option, but the other doors are there, waiting for you to try them.
Some will open, some will not. Some will do so easily, some will require tenacity and persistence on your behalf. But they are there.
Trusting that there are plenty of doors we could try, knowing that those which open will work out for us, perhaps in unexpected ways, makes it easier to see a closed door in a positive light. A closed door is simply an opportunity to try something else, something new, something unexpected. To open our mind and shift out of our comfort zone. To switch up our perspective and remain receptive to our blessings.
Where is Home? 🏠 A place or a state of mind?
We closed on our house in Lake Forest today. It took a while to sell it but now it’s officially final. I thought I had already gone through the tears, the memories, the goodbyes but, oddly, the finality of selling the house makes it all too real (again). When you think you’ve felt it all, you discover you actually have an unlimited capacity to feel. It was our home for 22 years. So, now, where is home?
“Home is where the heart is,” is what @donbaeyoga and I jokingly say to each other. It’s true and I believe that, but why does it feel like we’re without a home? Whenever we’d return from traveling, there’s no other feeling like coming home…to your space, your bed, the familiar, the comfort. Home is a place of safety and refuge, where all barriers can come tumbling down and you can be your raw, unfiltered self. It’s a space you know, in which you don’t need to ask any questions.
We’ve been living in CA five months now and I’ve noticed that when we refer to anything in Chicago (family, friends, our house) we call it “home.” Very rarely have I called our place here in Venice “home” because it doesn’t quite feel like it—yet. Maybe we’re not home? Maybe this is just a pit stop. Maybe this is trial run. Maybe this is a transition. Maybe it’s a pause—that place in between.
Is a home somewhere you grow into? Will California feel like home in a month, a year, a decade? It’s impossible to live up to 22 years in 5 months. Like a new relationship, a new home needs to be negotiated without comparison to its predecessor. But when a place has held your heart for 22 years, that’s a hard philosophy to follow through on.
Even if Cali isn’t home, even if it is a pitstop, a transition – that’s okay! The moments in between, the stepping stones, are just as important as the destinations, if not more so. However long we are in CA for, we will grow, we will learn, we will be strengthened. We’ll meet new people and have new experiences. We are always moving forward.
If the time comes to move on, we’ll know. If the time comes to accept California as our home, we’ll know. I trust whatever the Universe has in store for us😉