creating space.

One of my main goals with this blog was to help myself find and maintain balance in my life, my relationships, my emotions, and my very own being.  What I've learned during this time goes deeper than my posts each week and far beyond what I'm striving for each day.  I say this because I'm the type of person that no matter how far I've come, I am typically going to want more.  This blog has been a wonderful outlet for me.  It's been a blank space for my thoughts, my ideas, and my words which ultimately have helped me be myself in front of nothing but a sheet of paper and a coffee mug.  But I want more.

Yesterday, I took 60 minutes to lay out goals without the fear of never reaching them.  I stood their on my mat, realizing how much I've missed the silence in my days in order to become strong.  I exaggerated each breath and held each pose a little longer than normal so that I could feel every piece of space that my body was creating.  As my body was cleansed my mind struggled to find peace and I suddenly realized that goal setting and wanting more is, in fact, more than just writing on an empty sheet of paper day after day.  While a blank canvas for our lives is important, maybe the more critical side of ourselves is the one that is putting the goals into practice.  It sounds pretty simple but if your mind is a runner like mine, taking time to slow its pace and simplify your roots can be very difficult.  I've got all these plans.  I have nearly one thousand dreams on hold.  Yet each day passes and I'm still not quite sure how to reach them.  The class slowly transitioned into balancing exercises which have always been the most difficult for me.  I think I get uncomfortable because I fear that physically trying to balance my body will only match the way my mind lived for so long.  I grabbed my my ankle, grateful that the lights were dim and no one was behind me.  I fell one time.  I fell again.  I fell a third time.  I wanted to be done.

It's like I wanted to stand but didn't know how.  Much like my goals.   I want them, need them, hope for them, but I find myself not knowing where to begin.  I did my very best to focus on one word and one word only - stand.  So there I stood, once again asking the Lord to clear my head of my insecurities and instabilities and I reminded myself that the world will never judge me.  It will not judge me on a yoga mat and it will not judge my dreams.  I was standing there and looking up, realizing that I have a front row seat to the best life ever and while goal setting often starts on paper, it reallyyy starts by believing in ourselves.  Belief in yourself comes down to details.  Personal details in the privacy of your own mind where you first and foremost do not critique yourself and then you answer yes to each and every question.  Will I be good to myself?  Will I be kind to others?  Will I trust myself?  Can I overcome this fear? Or that one? These small moments are the building blocks to having a fulfilling relationship with the one and only you and they are the source of your ability to believe.  If we do not give these small and more simplistic goals even a moment, they slip beneath our toes and they take our biggest dreams with them.

This all happened fast and it turned a five minute balancing sequence into a life lesson.  It brought me to a place where I feared many things and the more I thought, the harder my life became.  Our minds are extremely powerful things and oddly enough the most simple situations can lead us down a destructive path.  I wasn't believing in myself on my mat and therefore I wasn't able to truly believe in myself off of it.  I inhaled hard and it exhausted me even more than the 90 degree heat but I wasn't going to quit.  This belief in myself - along with a belief that everything in life, no matter how challenging it becomes allowed me to exhale my doubts and brought me to a place of opportunity and growth.  

We are all created to be believers.  Self doubt happens because certain situations in our life can make us uncomfortable and when we start having this disbelief in one area of our life it can be very easy to transition it into another.  I am no expert and while I strive to set goals and stay committed to them my fear of failing often gets in the way.  As I consistently try to work on this each day I try to remind myself that failing is good.  Failing is not getting the job you applied for because a better one is waiting for you.  Failing is not running your fastest mile ever because there is a brighter, more beautiful day for that.  Failing is not getting everything you want out of life all at once so that God can give you grace periodically as your heart requires.  And lastly, failing is not doubting each moment and praying for its end because it is moments like these, the ones where quitting, running away, and giving up seem like the right things to do, where the little lost hearts in ourselves often begin to beat again.

Yesterday I was reminded that time is beautiful, that pain can be peaceful, and overcoming failure starts by standing up tall and squeezing belief into every space of our life, and our yoga mats.  I will forever want more from these moments and I will forever keep searching.