This year has urged me to harvest my greatest life lessons. Nothing happened the way I wanted it. I usually have a very strong vision for creating the reality I want, but this year everything felt through the cracks. I started to experience fits of insecurity – something that I had never struggled with before. That was not part of my make-up either. My to-do-list never got done. The work agenda never completed. Unfinished work sat on my desk for months. I was putting off meetings, events, projects…The procrastination intermingled with emotional pangs of remorse for not having met my deadlines. Doubt crept in and made me second-guess myself in every instance. Who was that person that all this turmoil was happening to? Certainly not me… I had a hard lesson to learn – to embrace uncertainty.

I had recycled this mantra countless times in class. One of the concepts in Buddhism… Nothing is permanent, everything is transient. Our thoughts, ideas, even the material things that we build are perishable at some point. I had to find a breakthrough method for achieving peace of mind when facing the unknown. We all have dreams, ideas, and aspirations.  Some are achievable goals, others – bubbles of illusion. How do we tell the transient from the pertinent? I was clearly at a crossroad. Totally unhappy with myself for not being able to run on schedule and do the things I was supposed to. But was I really supposed to?

I knew the recipe – I had taught it over and over to my students. Change the routine, stop planning and stuffing the schedule with tons of duties. Carve more time for reflection. Observe yourself and the world around you….Bla bla bla….It didn’t work. What really worked was going back to my favorite book – “The little Prince”. Exupery was the real sage. I cracked the book open to read just what I needed “As for the future it is open, your task is not to foresee it but to enable it”…Bingo

It dawned on me. I wasn’t living, but pushing against the grain – setting false expectations, getting upset when things did not pan out the way I wanted them. So I made an experiment for a month. I threw away my every day planner and enjoyed my day without directing it. It hard at first, as I had reset the way I do things. From a very organized and disciplined mind I went into a spaced out and contemplative mode.

I did that, but I still felt stuck, wishing for a new junction to appear, so I could veer in a new direction. I stood around waiting for change, waiting for the signs to come and show me the new path, for a contact to call me up with a new offer, for a path to be laid out neatly in front of me. But it was the other way round. I had to go in the footsteps of the little Prince – coming to grip that we sometimes wait for a decision to drift our way. But in the end we have to come up with the decision. We are the catalysts for change. We just need to be open to change, but proactive to initiate the changed when the time comes. There are things in life we can affect. This is our part of the work. And there things that are out of our control. Being out of control is a great state of acceptance and self-inquiry. Contemplation is a great tool to tap within and release the impediments on the road, but conscious action that is not only goal-driven, but open-ended will always spark opportunities while reminding us plant our intention and come fruition when the time is rite and when we are ripe.

Advanced Yoga Routine: Embracing Uncertainty

This advanced yoga routine blends all types of poses to stretch the mind and enlighten the body, while bending, curving, arching, twirling and getting into a state of organic flow that helps you appreciate each moment as a stage of growth.