Pang

After it happened, I was moving slowly anyway. So, I deliberately hung out in the locker room knowing she would eventually come in to rinse off and grab her stuff.  I was determined to confide in her and see what she had to say. A major muscle in my back was seizing. Unfortunately, I knew this drill; I sought from her an explanation of its root cause and cleaved to the idea of a cure.

Being an instructor and an avid yogi herself, not only was she knowledgeable about the tantrum my muscle was throwing, she periodically found herself in the very same clutches, and shared the physical therapy no muscle relaxant-prescribing doctor would ever suggest. But more than anything she reassured me I had not injured myself, and that in her experience an angry muscle was a sign she was on the verge of a breakthrough, able to express a posture at a new level once the pain subsided. While I left the studio in physical misery, hope sprouted in my heart.

“Growing pains” is actually a thing for some children who complain of aching legs just prior to a growth spurt. I put some thought to this idea in the context of yoga and decided quickly it makes a bunch of sense. The concept is ubiquitous, but we’re so afraid of hurting, we often fail to acknowledge or accept the role pain plays in activating growth.

 

Every time I transition into a new role at work, I can count on an awkward block of agony where I question my capabilities and struggle to retrieve the confidence so accessible when I was at my peak doing the job I just vacated in the name of career growth. Even in the artistic world, so many creatives will tell you their first work was crap. Amazing art or writing belongs to those who put in the work every day to hone their skills, the ones who instead of giving up keep practicing and turning out the mediocre until one day there is a body of work that when presented together communicates a marked and almost miraculous evolution. I need only to look at my collection of handmade holiday cards dating back to the turn of the millennium for proof.

But, oh, the pain!  When your back, or your heart, or your mind, or your pride, or your grief aches so profusely and incessantly, how are you ever expected to keep going? For those of us lucky enough (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) to have been here before, we know that this too shall pass.  For everything else, it’s probably a little bit of faith and trust.

I will say that nursing my screaming back was much easier to manage now that I was armed with the good counsel of my trusted yoga teacher. I carried out her prescription of backward bends religiously, and true to her word the non-negotiable recovery time of two weeks I had experienced in the past was reduced to a mere two days.  I was back in yoga class by the end of the week, kicking out my leg and sustaining the hold in standing head to knee pose for the first time in five years of practice.

It’s a routine playing out repeatedly in life. As I heard myself confidently presenting a recent success story to a group of colleagues today, and letting the dissenting opinion wash off my back, I realized I am over the hump once again of crippling self-doubt and jumbled nerves threatening to hold me at bay just before I make the leap to the new level of leadership I need to embrace.

As we come out of the backward bend that is camel pose, the instructor will often say if you feel a little sick or uncomfortable, you’re doing it right. We probably don’t spend enough time telling ourselves or each other those feelings are normal. Imagine life if we did.

Ditch

I count four white toilets as I drive through the neighborhood. Our normally neat street is lined with old sofas, appliances and broken children’s toys stacked at the curb. Tomorrow is Community Clean-Up Day, a moment of amnesty for those wishing to toss out ugly, unwieldy, unwanted trash at no charge. And we know a few things about trash.

Renovating a home while living in it propels the occupants into an iterative cycle of assessment.  Items are packed up and forgotten, unpacked for short term use, and then packed up again as spaces are systematically taken down to the studs and rebuilt. Each phase presents an opportunity to re-evaluate the same item, to decide if you really need that table lamp with the misshapen shade or the juicer that’s never been out of the box. While I purge a fair amount, like many of us, I find parting to be sweet sorrow, and therefore I retain far more than I really need.

 

My appraisal process is suspect. Sadly, the obvious questions carry the least weight and are the last to get asked:  Does this fit me?  When was the last time I used this?   The deciding factors generally revolve around far less practical criteria:  Can I see myself using this sometime in the future?  Does this have sentimental value?  Is this beautifully designed or constructed?  Does this appeal to my senses?

 

Maybe the most valuable question of all is one I’m not asking:  Does this still serve me?

It’s a philosophy my favorite yoga instructor writes about regularly, connecting a yoga practice to the journey of finding your true self. As she inspires us to go after the lives we dream of living, she asks us to consider what behaviors, activities, and people in our lives are no longer serving the person we are becoming. I’ve considered this, and admittedly been shallow in my approach.  I identify what it is I need to step away from, but never dive into why I need to step away from it.

 

I’ve glossed over what it means to hold on to what no longer serves me.  The idea that my habits, my routines, the people I’ve always hung out with, the soundtrack that plays in my head could be a security blanket, fueling my fear of the unknown and providing the excuse I need to stay put instead of moving forward.

I see clients demonstrate this all the time:  Even though they’ve hired us to do the bulk of the work for them, they continue to do their jobs in the same way they always have, creating redundancy and confusion instead of moving into different and more interesting roles.

I start to think about my own behavior.  As the parent of grown children, I find myself wanting to step into their lives in inappropriate ways, tempted to treat them as kids rather than adults who need something very different from me now.  And as a partner, I’m known to choose lecturing (which always gets me in trouble) when what’s desired is listening.

The breakthrough for me in all of this is that I have held steadfast to constructs about life that no longer serve me. Somehow being scolded as a child that I should “know better” manifested into a belief that anything less than omniscience is unacceptable. The quintessential rule-follower and teacher’s pet still believes her place in any hierarchy requires obsequious behavior.

As we move into the final stages of construction on this house, less and less of what I was certain I needed to bring with me feels like it has a place in this new space. I could hold on for nostalgia’s sake, or for pride, or to make a statement about independence, but that’s not what I’m choosing to do with this next phase of life.  I’m going to take advantage of Community Clean-Up Day and leave what doesn’t serve me at the curb.