As I lay down on the yoga mat, dripping in sweat from the heated room. A familiar sense of ease washed over me.
I remember this. This is home.
Today I chose to go back to Bikram yoga after a 3-year hiatus. Not because I hated it. But because I had made everything else a priority in my life: work, time with friends, having fun, making money.
As life gets busy the thing that seems to become less and less important is my relationship with my body.
For as long as I can remember, my body and I have had a rollercoaster relationship. One moment I loved it, the next I was disappointed in it.
For years it has served as a litmus test for when I wasn’t listening to my inner GPS.
When I was ignoring my feelings and red flags I would gain weight and feel lethargic. I would get aches and pains and look in the mirror and think, “Oh Lord, I really need to lose weight”. Or on really bad days “Ew, who is that”.
In short, I would create so much discomfort and pain (self-judgment, criticism, disgust, shame, etc) in my body that I would need to stop and make a change.
Sometimes the change was in how I was treating my body and other times it was in some other part of my life that I had been ignoring.
This was my cycle of creating change that served me powerfully for many years.
As I look around at the people in my life – family, friends and clients – I see where they too engage with a similar cycle of creating change. They subconsciously create enough pain in one area of their life that they have no other choice but to change, or die (not necessarily literal death… but that’s another conversation for another day).
What’s most interesting is watching these same people become more aware of their nudges (signals from within that draw your attention to something). They often are aware that they desire change way before they create intense pain!
That was so me, until I realized that different was possible.
I realized that this “intense pain cycle” is linked to our primal instinct to survive. And so I began to ask the question. What would it take for us to thrive? For us to create change without the need for intense pain.
This led me to what I now call the “inspiration cycle”: creating new behaviors and ways of being that support change from a place of inspiration versus intense pain. Rather than focusing on surviving we are focused on thriving.
This means, we now choose to create change in places where things are good, so that we can experience moments that are exceptional.
However, there is a key ingredient that is needed to move from good to great. CONFIDENCE.
We must embody deep self-confidence to let go of something that is good.
This is why we believe developing deeper self-confidence is key to transforming your life.
Are you currently in the intense pain cycle? Are you …
- in a relationship that you know isn’t what you desire but you are still going through the motions?
- in a job that depresses you rather than energizes you?
- ignoring the signals your body is sending?
No matter where you are, in this moment you get to make a new choice. A choice to recognise that you are not where you desire to be, and to take ONE action towards making a change.
This is what I did today by going back to yoga. By also engaging my tools to change my mindset so going to yoga doesn’t feel so “hard”. By tapping into the vision I have for my transformed physique.
I chose to transform my relationship with my body before I was crippled in pain, self-judgment, and self-hate.
What are you willing to do for you?
If you would like support for your journey we have 2 programs that may be right for you:
OR
Feel free to book a discovery call to explore how we can support you on your journey of moving from surviving to THRIVING and turn your pain into purpose!
Love,
Matthew