The Stories We Tell Ourselves

We are the stories we tell ourselves.

 I plug along and listen to so much great input from many sources and then bam, I hear something like I never heard it before.  And then I get IT.

Iyanla Van Zant was discussing the stories we tell ourselves on one of Oprah's Lifeclass Tours and it hit me lot a ton of bricks.  When you tell yourself a story long enough, you believe it and this is the kicker, it isn't necessarily true.  All of a sudden it occurred to me that it applies to a simple issue involving how I think about practicing yoga.  I think practicing yoga is "supposed" to look a certain way and if it doesn't look that way, it isn't doing yoga.  And then I just give up because I haven't done it in so long, and I lost my muscles, etc.

I tell myself, I don't go to yoga class enough.  Yet in reality, I can practice at home.  I've done enough classes over the years that even if I go through some poses for ten minutes, I HAVE practiced yoga. That is not what I tell myself.  My messed up thinking is that I might as well not do anything.  I asked a friend of mine if she had ever done yoga.  She says that she does a tape at home.  Ironically, I didn't question that she really practiced yoga. Why do I question myself?  It's the old track going in my brain that what I do isn't enough.

It really is high time I break that track.

I have felt the need to get on the floor lately and I did.  Yoga was calling me and  I did a few minutes of poses.

The next day I practiced using a 15 minute session on DVD.

I AM practicing yoga.  I just have to keep telling myself that in a kind way over and over until I rewrite that track.