Recently, I have been working through a business coaching session and they asked the question: what are looking forward to the most? For the last few months, I have been looking the most forward to a tax planning training I will be attending in San Diego and while I am very excited about the opportunity, I am also anxious. I have never been a confident flyer and I haven’t been on a plane for several years. It’s not that I’m scared the plane is going to crash and burn mid-flight, but more that I don’t like the lack of control I have over how I am going to get there. When I’m in a car, for the most part, I can get where I need to go on time, but on a plane, you are at the mercy of the airline. Any number of things can happen: the plane takes off late, I miss my connection, they lose my luggage, they can’t land, etc. That coupled with this being the first time I’ll be away from my dogs for longer than a few hours have me feeling mixed emotions about this adventure.
Now, I have always found that the best way to deal with my anxiety is through exercise, particularly through practicing yoga. I have been a yogi for longer than I can remember. I was an anxious child and my mom introduced it to me as a way to help me get out of my head and into my body, basically to help me live in the moment and not worry so much. Some people think yoga is just stretching, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s a way to practice mindfulness, a way to challenge and improve your strength, and a way to overcome negative thoughts.
The fact is there is more in this world that you can’t control than there are things that you can control, but the one thing that you can control, is how you react to it. Any time I go out of town, I always have to do a weeks’ worth of work in a couple of days. It can be overwhelming, but when I get overwhelmed, I always stop and take a few deep breaths and remind myself to live in the moment. That’s something yoga has taught me. Most people are probably familiar with Child’s Pose, or Balasana, which is a kneeling position where you rest your upper body on your thighs with your arms stretched out in front of you. It’s a pose you usually do after a lot of hard work, kind of like a reset to bring you back to your body. It reminds you that while you don’t have control over everything, you do have control over yourself. This is usually when you take several deep breaths and surrender.
A common phrase in yoga, usually used when you’re in plank, is “you can do anything for 20 seconds”. So, you hold plank for 20 seconds, then another 20, then another, soon you’re able to hold a one-minute-long plank with no trouble. Yoga improves your strength subtly by using your own body weight and isometric holds. Through muscle and core engagement, it emphasizes mind-body awareness. It also teaches you that when you are faced with challenges, the best thing for you to do is push through.
You can do hard things, or as my yoga instructor eloquently shouts during our workouts: you can do hard shit! The thing that is stopping you is your mentality. Negative thoughts creep in and convince you that you can’t, but yoga teaches you that you can. A few months ago, I thought I would never do a burpee. My arms are too short, my belly is too big, I can’t do it. Now it’s the exercise I look forward to the most every class. In fact, if we have a class where we don’t do any burpees, I’ll do a handful of burpees when I get home, so I feel like I got a complete workout. When I’m faced with a difficult task, I remind myself that I went from not being able to do one single burpee, to loving them in only a short amount of time. It’s staunch evidence against any negative thoughts that I have that I can’t.
I really didn’t mean to make this a post about yoga. I more meant it to be a post to encourage you to find some way to train your brain that you can do the work. Owning a business is not easy and some days it feels almost impossible. On those days, take a deep breath, and remind yourself a time that you thought you weren’t going to be able to do something and you did it. Remind yourself of a time when you did something that was hard. You can do hard things because you’ve already done it.
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