Resourcing the Revolution

confessions

Confessions of a Wannabe World Changer – Part 3

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It’s confession time. Again. (And again.)

I crashed and burned this week.

The past month has been… full.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s been good full, with lots of positive, fun things: traveling down to North Carolina to hang out with my work team, getting ready for the Eco Fair, prepping the garden and getting everything planted, and getting the house ready (finally) for our housewarming party.

Last weekend we made a quick trip to visit family and see a presentation by Joel Salatin, and when we got back I dove headfirst back into work. Writing deadlines looming, meetings, last minute subbing for a yoga class…

It’s all been good stuff — how do you say “no” to any of the things that you really want to do, even if it starts to get overwhelming?

So I didn’t say no. I said, “I can make it all happen.”

And for the past week or so, I’ve been tired. Exhausted, even.

But I kept pushing through, looking at the calendar and thinking “if I can only make it to next weekend, then I can rest.”

Remember how I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago, and talked about our bodies being smarter than we are?

Well, mine is no exception. It started telling me to slow down, and I didn’t listen. I heard what it was telling me, but I thought that I could ignore what it was saying…

And, well. It schooled me: a solid crash that ended up with me laid up on the couch (where I had been longing to curl up and relax, but hadn’t given in to that desire).

I could have listened, backed off, and taken some time to unwind.

But, instead, I gave my body an opportunity to remind me why I should not only be listening, but taking action on the cues it gives me.

The rest of the week and this weekend, I’ll be taking it a little easier.

And then on Monday I’ll be back to it, one life lesson wiser, and hopefully a little more open to paying attention.

What about you, fellow changemaker? As the spring begins to bring more activity back into your life, are you listening for cues about when to relax instead of continuing to press forward?

A Welcome Back, and Where I’ve Been

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Two years ago, Rebel Yogi first saw the light of day — what started as a January 2014 “lightbulb” moment took shape as a first post on March 19th and my teacher training that spring, with all the pieces falling together at what felt like lightning speed.

Yoga has always been a guiding marker in my life, a stake in the ground while the rest of the world spins wildly around it.

In the time since I wrote here last, I taught in yoga in three different states during a transition back to the east coast to be closer to family, and did my “best” to keep up with my meditation practice.

And during this time of transition, life happened, as it usually does. Finances, the day to day… and a decision.

Putting an intention out into the world, I announced that there were big changes coming to Rebel Yogi that fall. Little did I know how literally those changes were going to take shape.

I like to think that the universe has a sense of humor; while I intended to take a break from writing on the site while I made some changes, I didn’t intend for what happened next.

With the financial belt tightening to a point where I couldn’t ignore it anymore, I took a job. I don’t regret this choice, because it taught me more than I could have ever imagined, but it pulled my focus almost entirely away from anything and everything else.

There’s a balance to life, and I had let mine get all kinds of out of whack. When you’re in debt with no new funds coming through the door, there’s no possibility of balance — there’s only the stranglehold that it puts on every aspect of your life.

So with this decision, I spent the next year bringing my finances back into balance… while pretty much ignoring every other facet of my life.

Long story short, and with a fast forward to the end of last year (because really, all I was doing was sitting in front of my computer working), I reached another decision.

This time the transition was to work that (so far) seems to fit really well into the rest of my life, as well as the opportunity to finally put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and start writing again.

I’ve missed you all dearly, and have so much that I want to share with you from my time of silence — including more mistakes that you can learn from (I seem to be pretty good at making those) and some pieces of wisdom that I’ve gleaned along the way.

So sit back and relax, and let’s take a trip down “lessons learned” lane.

Nourishment is a cycle

We all know that we need to eat, to fuel our bodies and replenish our energy — same thing goes for our cars, our electronics. But do you ever think about the fact that so many pieces of our lives require a cycle of nourishment?

Not only food, but also our sleep patterns, our exercise… and even our finances.

I’ve come to realize that my time away was an opportunity to replenish my financial nourishment, which had almost dried up. Every business has to bring money in the door, so that they can continue to provide their products or services to the people they serve.

It was the same with me. I had spent too long without focusing on the inward cycle of financial nourishment, and it took some time to bring myself back from that point.

Even the “right” thing can be wrong

And yet, even though I was replenishing my finances by taking that job, I was also swinging the pendulum to the extreme opposite end of the spectrum.

Yes, now I was bringing money in the door, but at what cost? When you spend so much time working, under a heavy load of both work and stress, you’re still out of balance.

The time I spent in that high-octane environment just reminded me that at this point in my life, I need to pay far more attention to my stress levels than I was able to in that situation.

It’s easy to come back too fast

I think we all have this tendency — we think that we can accomplish far more in a short period of time than we actually can.

And when we’re starting something new, it’s easy to get really excited and try to take on ALL THE THINGS at one time.

I had spent so much of the previous year since my diagnosis being careful about how much I took on, that when I finally decided to come back, I just jumped in the deep end. I survived, but I didn’t do myself any favors in the process.

Looking back, it would have been far more beneficial to ease in a little slower, rather than my dramatic cannonball reentry!

We only have 100% to give

I was at a writing workshop with Jon Morrow last April, and one of the things that he said really stuck with me.

He was talking about how becoming the best writer you can possibly be meant that there would be some kind of sacrifice — was it going to be your relationships, your health, your job, or your hobbies?

It might feel a little extreme, but he hit on something important: we only have so many hours in a day, so much focus, so much energy. Where are you putting yours?

So many of us (myself included) think that we can sacrifice our health, without actually realizing that’s what we’re doing.

  • We sleep too little, because we don’t have time for sleep, and it’s an easy thing to sacrifice in the short term.
  • We don’t eat well, because cooking takes time that we could better spend elsewhere.
  • We don’t exercise… because? Time!

Our bodies are smarter than we are

In doing all of this, we start to cause long-term damage to our bodies. We give up something that’s really important, without noticing.

But here’s the thing:

Your body knows better than you do. And it’s generally giving you lots of signals when you’re doing things it doesn’t like.

The problem that we run into is that our society moves so fast that we don’t actually take the time to listen to what our bodies are saying. It may have to scream at you before you even notice.

That’s where having a regular exercise program and doing something every day to be mindful comes in handy — it starts to tune us in to what our bodies are telling us.

You have to give yourself permission to take it slow

In this mad dash of a society that we live in, it’s easy to get swept away in the current of “go-go-go”.

Distractions are everywhere. It’s so easy to fall into a rut and let your health be your last priority.

And time passes by so quickly that the times where you think, “oh, it will be okay. I just have to deal with this for a little while” can turn into a significant amount of time before you realize it.

It’s not an easy thing to do, but there comes a time when we have to say “enough” and give ourselves a break. Despite what society says, we don’t have to do it all. We can step away from the mad dash.

Yes, we might miss out on some things, and we’ll figure out that the world will keep spinning without us (which can be quite damaging to the ego).

But when we take the time to slow down and be in the moment, choosing our actions with intention, we have the opportunity to really start to enjoy the things we choose to experience.

So I’m back. Now what?

I’ve been doing a lot more here in Charlottesville over the past few months – teaching yoga at a local studio, doing more festival yoga – and I have some more fun events and workshops up my sleeves.

And like I mentioned in the beginning of the post, I’ve picked up a whole bunch more “wisdom via mistakes” to share with you as we continue down this path together. That means I’ll be writing regularly again on the blog. (I promise!)

If you’ve been here with me since the beginning, thanks for sticking around. And if you’re new here, welcome!

I’m so grateful to be traveling the path (again) with you.

Reflections on Giving Yourself Permission

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These days, I’ve been starting off my yoga classes with a reminder to my students: every time we step on to our mats, it provides an opportunity for us to practice being okay with both where and who we are at this moment.

It’s an opportunity to give ourselves permission to be okay, to take a look at ourselves (bumps, bruises, rough edges and all) and honor that this is the very best version of ourselves that we can achieve in this moment. There is nowhere else we have to be, there is nothing else we should be doing, and to expect more is doing ourselves a disservice.

What’s funny is that even though I speak this truth every time I sit down to teach, I have a really hard time following it in my own life. It’s a fairly classic “do as I say, not as I do” scenario, and it goes hand in hand with making excuses instead of just following my own advice and taking care of myself.

This is where I fall into the “not enough time” trap, or where I end up “trying to take care of myself” instead of actually doing it. We can make all the excuses in the world about why we can’t do certain things, many of them completely viable. But in the long run, we’re missing out on making a positive impact in our lives by making these excuses.

My question is: why in the world do we do it??

Why, when we know that we need to get enough sleep every night, do we cut corners and try to get away with the bare minimum? Why, when we know how good we feel after a yoga class or a good workout, do we procrastinate and end up skipping it? Why?

I think it’s because we’re human. We’re these inherently flawed, yet unimaginably wonderful and capable creatures who are wired for immediate gratification, and our human nature often wins out over the intellectual argument between our bodies and our minds.

And speaking of the mind… we often live so deep inside a constantly active, chattering, future-thinking, past-remembering clump of synapses that we forget about this moment. Remember in last week’s post where I compared the mind to a drunken, scorpion-bitten monkey? It’s no wonder we have such a hard time just being, much less being okay with where we are in this moment.

Toward the end of the last Skype call I had with my business coach, we touched on this subject. Between being in location transition and it being summer, I have the perfect opportunity to really settle in and do my own work. Instead, I’ve been beating myself up about all the things I should be doing, and the fact that I haven’t progressed as quickly as I would like in certain aspects of the business. Instead of being honest with myself, I claim that I’m “trying” to take care of myself. Instead of being proud of the things I’ve accomplished, I beat myself up over what hasn’t happened.

One of the things that I hold dear with Rebel Yogi is the chance to be transparent about the process. Yes, it sucks (a lot) to admit that I struggle as much as the next person. But my hope is that by laying open the dark side of the story, rather than just the bright and shiny side that is usually the only side of the story that makes a public appearance, we begin to see that we’re not alone. We are all on our own twisty journey – the yoga journey (of the self, through the self, to the self) – but we do have traveling companions along the way.

It’s the major reason I started the Changemaker Q&A series – to share the stories of those fellow travelers, to remind us that we’re all in this together. We all struggle, we all fall, and we all have this beautiful opportunity to smile anyway – to get back up after those falls, to dust ourselves off, to find the beauty in the struggle – and to find a way to be okay with where we are, even in the midst of that struggle.

So am I okay with where I am in this moment? If I’m being honest: most of the time, no. But I’m making an effort to be more aware of the times when I’m not, and taking those opportunities to pull myself out of the boiling pot of mind-stuff, to become present in the moment, and to just be.

Our lives are a work in progress. Let’s give ourselves a chance to open up to that idea, and maybe ultimately to be okay with it.

I’m in. Are you?

Confessions of a Wannabe World Changer – Part 2

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It’s confession time. Again.

If you recall from my original confessions post, one of the key tenets of Rebel Yogi is this: you, fellow change maker, are just as important as the work that you are doing.

I came back from the Ashram feeling so good – better than I had in recent memory – and I guess I thought that I could just charge full speed ahead again. Finishing up with teacher training meant that I had the foundation built for moving forward, and I could get back to normal.

What I forgot is that my “normal” no longer is. Add on to that, I forgot to do my own work.

And this week, my body has been reminding me of that fact. It started small: not eating quite as well as I could, not getting to bed at a reasonable hour, letting the stress of this new project start to build up, not keeping up with my physical yoga practice. The pushback started small, too. An ache here, a little bit of sluggishness in the mornings; nothing I couldn’t push through.

Now let’s stop for a moment. See what I did there? I was noticing the fact that my body was giving me signs, but I decided to ignore them, to push through. I feel like I should know better by now, but it’s just a good reminder that we’re all constantly walking this path. Sometimes we stumble along the way. Rather than letting those stumbles take us off the path, we have the opportunity to stop and pause, to reset, and to move forward again with a renewed sense of who we are and why we’re doing this – to champion our selves as we do our world changing work.

I had intended to post up something else today, but it felt like I needed to come clean and be honest about what’s going on behind the scenes. I hadn’t intended for the “Confessions” post to turn into a series, but here we are! We’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming next week. This week is all about recharging, reflecting on how to move forward, and really committing to taking care of myself along the way.

I hope that my stumbles can help serve as a reminder for everyone out there to take some time this week to do the same.

Confessions of a Wannabe World Changer

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It’s confession time.

First, that post I promised you last week, the second piece of the origin story? It’s coming next week.

But most important, one of the key tenets of Rebel Yogi is this: you, fellow change maker, are just as important as the work that you are doing.

That means it’s important to take time to take care of yourself – getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet at consistent times, getting out and moving your body, taking space for yourself – among other things.

At the time I wrote this post:

  • I had gone to yoga twice in the previous two weeks; two classes in two days, and then nothing for 10 days.
  • I spent an entire day hunched in front of my computer, stressing about getting things done, all knotted up inside, to the point that my stomach hurt from the tension.
  • I sat down one morning to finish up a few details for getting a blog post out, and forgot to eat until it was almost 4 pm.

Some might say that I’m doing a terrible job at doing my own work, practicing what I preach – however you say it, I’ve been negligent to myself. I’ve fallen right back into old patterns without even realizing it.

But, one of the reasons that I’m bringing this to light and sharing with you today, is that this is a journey. I’m giving myself a pass, acknowledging that I’ve stumbled, and knowing that the reminder is good for me. One stumble does not a total failure make. The times that we trip over ourselves just happen – we’re human. The key is forgiveness, and the commitment to pick yourself back up and set yourself back on the right track.

Stumble, fall, get back up. Repeat. The rockiest paths often bring us to the most stunning views.

And, the yoga class that I did after ten days of nothing? It felt so good.

I’m leaving for the Ashram in just under a week and a half, and I have spent way too much time freaking out about how much I have to do before I leave. I’m living in the future, worrying about something that has yet to happen, sending my body all these messages that give it permission to knot up and get out of balance.

Another confession: the phrase “OMG I’m leaving in two and a half weeks” left my lips a solid 25 times during one particular day last week, much to the chagrin of everyone listening.

I think the key is admitting that we’ve stumbled, taking a moment to learn whatever we can from the moment: what set of circumstances set us up for the stumble, how can we avoid the same situation next time, how we can more delicately tread a similar path moving forward, or even just how to recover a with a little bit more grace.

For me, this means acknowledging that launching a new venture is going to be more stressful than my past few months have been, and will involve more time spent actively working.

I’m learning how to be me, and how to move forward, learning new healthy patterns and ways of doing things. It’s not going to be easy, but with a new outlook on how I balance along the path, it’s shaping up to be a much more stunning journey.

For the time I have between now and flying east, I’m making myself a promise – I’m going to move easily through the planning and preparation, scheduling out time for yoga (aiming for 4 classes per week), making sure that I get enough sleep, taking time to eat, and prioritizing snuggles with my puppy.

Because, really – there’s nothing more important than us, no moment more important than now. Our work and our future all branch out from this moment, so we might as well enjoy it while it’s here.