Sweat dripping down my back, music playing deep into my soul. The temperature so hot that every tense muscle in my body surrenders, complete relaxation.
It’s been six months, half a year, 180 days—however you slice it, it’s been my longest departure from hot yoga in nearly 20 years.
This isn’t about yoga. This is about remembering who the f*ck you are.
There’s no other way to put it—on my second push up of the class, it just connected and dropped deeply into me—a remembering. Remembering who I am. Remembering my purpose. Remembering my light. Remembering what I came to this world to do.
I’ll be honest with you, before that I was struggling.
In the last few months there have been moments when I have succumb to stress, doubting myself, letting the “what if” narrative poison my mind. We’ve all been there, when the script in our head is talking so much sh*t that we start feeling like sh*t and then our actions just don’t feel like they match up. We fall off our path or out of our heart and deep into the recesses of our head. A place I often refer to as a bad neighborhood in Compton.
Struggle doesn’t have to mean that things are falling apart—you can still be holding it all together and going through the motions of your life. But that’s what it feels like—it feels less like you are ALIVE and more like you are just going through the motions, doing what needs to get done but not actually FEELING your life.
Ever been there? Yup, me too.
So, how do we turn that ship around? I found for me that it was a gradual departure, so slow did I forget myself that I hadn’t realized how disconnected that I had become. I was still checking the boxes, doing what needed to get done. But I hadn’t realized how much I wasn’t feeling like ME. Until I did again.
It’s like the first bite into a cold, ripe watermelon at the start of the summer. If you’re a runner—it’s the first run back after a long hiatus. Same thing if you surf—the first day back in the water after a draught of waves. Whatever it is, returning to yourself feels like home again.
Here’s the deal—what allows you to remember who the f*ck you are.
What reminds you of your light? Your strength? Your power, possibility, and capability?
I think so often we get stuck in the paradigm of living “the story.” Whatever are the “shoulds” or expectations, we start living by what is dictated by the role we have or the title on our business card. We get into the motions of just taking care of our responsibilities that we forget ourselves.
What allows you to remember? Is it a song? A smell? A place? A movement? A conversation?
Remembering yourself should feel both light and free, solid and endless. Remembering yourself feels infinite. It feels both quiet and contemplative as well as loud and bold. It feels like putting yourself out there AND going deeply within. Remembering who you are and why you are here in this world with this one precious life feels like freedom and possibility.
Limits are let go of. “What if” worries feel distant. The world feels like your oyster. It’s not the absence of the hard things. It’s the willingness to embrace what’s hard, walk through fire, and feel fully yourself.
Remembering yourself is not about compromise, it’s about the embrace. The arms wide open embrace of remembering that you have but one life. One life where you get to live well, love well, get it wrong, get it right, learn, try, and ultimately live exactly in the way that feels most YOU. No “shoulds,” just you. The real you. The one with bumps and bruises, the one that’s figuring it out, the one with a long haul ahead but the ability to take it all on in the spirit of curiosity.
In that yoga moment, it clicked. I remembered me. I realized that I had been feeling sorry for myself and telling myself a bunch of low-grade crappy stories. I decided to just let that sh*t go. I left on my mat my crappy story, stresses, worries, and what ifs. Instead I decided to turn up the light that lives within me.
I’m not special—It lives within you too.
Let’s stop playing small, let’s stop waiting for someday. Let’s do this. The big scary thing that you aren’t sure of. You don’t have to have it perfect or all planned out. Just go for it. Trust me, you’ll figure it out. If it’s meant for you, it will always work out and you’ll learn some lessons along the way.
And not tomorrow. Let’s turn on our light today.
What can you do to remember who you are? What allows you to reconnect with who you truly are and your purpose in the world? What lights you up and allows you to let go of your headstory?
Here’s to our next level, let’s rise and step fully and confidently into who we are always meant to be.
Love,
B.
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Beautiful! Well said and totally agree ! Be that light so more cane shine…. we are stronger together xo
Thanks for the love Maria–we each have our light to shine and the work is really in learning not to dim ourselves!