Almost 9 years ago, I remember standing in front of my yoga class and expressing how utterly nervous I was .
I wasn’t nervous about teaching yoga or being in front of people. I was shaking in my boots because at 39 years old, I was about to embark on perhaps the largest endeavor of my life, a massive journey, a challenge I’d never ever done before: becoming a dad.
I mean, I had been a step-dad for about a year to that point but my step-son was already quite independent (17 years old) when we became an official family so I didn’t have the experience of taking care of an infant.
It just felt like such a HUGE responsibility, you know?!
I expressed my nervousness to my class and agreed to welcome that feeling, recognize it as an emotion, and witness it as I responded to it by allowing the energy of that emotion to drive our yoga practice for the day.
Well, a few days later I showed up to teach a yoga class at the studio and waiting for me on the desk was a cut out from a magazine with a sticky note that had my name on it.
This …
Boom.
Mind. Blown.
I love this so so much because it taught me the essential truth that many times in life we want to wait for the perfect moment before we feel qualified to embark on the journey that we know will change our life forever—that relationship, parenthood, starting a business, or that project or training that will help us to put our gifts out into the world.
But what is often more true is that we need to just dive in and allow the experience to teach us, that it’s the experience itself that turns us into the kind of person we thought we needed to be BEFORE we started.
Whoever it was who saw this in a magazine and ripped it out for me, thank you, thank you, thank you.
It has made a massive impact on my life and almost 9 years later, I still hold onto it as a reminder of this essential truth. In fact, in the photo above, the little hand holding this clipping for me is my son’s.
What are the experiences that have transformed YOU to become the person you are to to teach you those essential lessons of life?
May we all practice courage as we embark on those life-changing journeys that are calling to us. Surely whatever the journey, it’s not something perfect people do but rather something that will surely perfect the person in the process.
