is it hard because it's just hard (or because something's not right?)

a mental checklist to help you figure out the difference

Everyone has this idea of what life as a yoga teacher looks like.

Long, spacious days. Hours that stretch out in front of you where you can roll around in beautiful spaces, becoming your most enlightened, flexible self without a care in the world because your cup is so filled from all of that soul-filling spiritual work you’re doing.

Dreeeeammmyyyyy.

Except it isn’t quite like that. Granted, there are snatched moments in my life as a yoga teacher where I do want to pinch myself because everything feels so fucking beautiful (like the closing scenes of a 90s rom com, when it’s all a bit too sickly sweet to be true) but that’s not the full picture.

We all have our fair share of stomach churning moments where we’re like

‘what the fuck have I done?’

‘I’m not cut out for this’

or simply

‘wow…this isn’t what I thought it would be’.

They’re definitely not all the time (at least, I hope not) but most paths we take in life are far from picturesque and all-figured-out all of the time. And this isn’t exclusive to yoga teachers. The same applies in everything we do.

We have this expectation that we’ll move through life in a series of beautifully laid out steps - each one edging us closer to that mythical land where we’re successful, have all our shit figured out and finally feel like grown ups.

Okay, perhaps they’re just my own mythical promised land. You’ll all have your own dream destination of choice.

But our path along any walk of life isn’t predetermined and it definitely isn’t beautifully laid out in clear stepping stones which you can hop and skip along.

It’s rocky. It’s swampy. Sometimes you feel like you can’t even SEE the path, let alone feel brave enough to take a forward step.

Even ‘forward’ itself is such a weird concept. We’re quite literally ALWAYS moving forward in time (sadly…there are some occasions for sure I wish I could turn the clock back on) and yet in other ways we can find ourselves making decisions that feel like regressions, or steps backwards.

The corporate world has fucked us over on this front with the advent of the ‘career ladder’.

You start at the lowly bottom rung, and spend your whole life looking at the arse of the person on the rungs above you as you allegedly aspire to climb higher and higher.

I remember that moment in my last official 9-5 job before I left for the murky waters of the self employed. Not literally looking at the arses of my coworkers I hasten to add, but having that real, vivid moment of looking at my boss, and my bosses boss and thinking ‘is that what I want for my future?'.

Clearly the answer was a resounding no, which is why I left and never once looked back, even when times got tough.

And yet, even though I picked a better option (or rather, moved away from the thing I knew wasn’t right for me) it still didn’t mean I had my new, ideal route all figured out.

I’ve spent years winging it. Trying different things on. Hopping about all over the place to see what fits and what doesn’t.

Never really looking to reach some ultimate destination where I feel like I’ve made it (because I don’t think that exists) but always wanting to feel like I’m still moving forwards in terms of growing and learning what’s right for me, as well as moving forward through time.

A lot of it is still incredibly challenging though, and it’s never felt like the easy route. It’s the more right route for me, for sure, but that doesn’t come without its own hurdles.

This morning I was writing out a little set of questions to accompany an episode I recorded for Anchored (which is a program for new yoga teachers that I’ve been running in the background over the past few months). All of the topics this week have been around making this teaching thing work for the long term, and more specifically, navigating some of those rough moment.

Those times we feel stuck, or overwhelmed or seriously tested and end up thinking ‘fuck, what do I do?’.

More commonly, these are the moments where everyones favourite uninvited guest, imposter syndrome creeps in and we start asking ourselves if we’re really cut out for this, or if we’ve made a horrible mistake.

But what I shared in that episode feels like it’s relevant to more than just new teachers, so I wanted take the mental checklist I shared there, and dive into here with you too.

Life is lifing hard for me at the moment and in my own work, this topic feels more present than ever.

I say ‘topic’.

It’s more of a question….

When things feel like they’re getting on top of you and that bright, breezy, romanticised version of life as a self employed yoga teacher seems to be evaporating in front of your eyes, ask yourself this….

Is what I’m doing hard, or is it fundamentally not the right direction I should be moving in?

Because there’s a difference, and when we’re drowning in the swamp it can be difficult to know which it is.

Hard things are just that.

They’re hard.

They’re challenging. They’re uncomfortable. They stretch and push and poke us in all sorts of ways that test our boundaries, our skills and our resilience. They force us to grow in ways we aren’t entirely sure we signed up to.

ANYTHING good worth doing is hard though, and something being hard doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. We just don’t always like growing pains, and that resistance in us can make us feel like we’re not making the right choices or following the ‘right’ path, because it doesn’t feel ‘easy’.

Often, it’s just the case here of muscling through. Realising that it won’t be hard forever and doing what we can to upskill ourselves (to get better at the new thing) or simply riding out that wave until it passes.

Sometimes though, what we’re doing isn’t the right thing. We tried something new or took a route that ultimately doesn’t marry up with what suits us, our energy or our values.

Perhaps we did what we thought we should, followed an opportunity without really understanding what was involved or didn’t pay close enough attention to our gut instinct waving a red flag in the first place.

In these cases, that resistance is our brain, our body, our gut all going STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING, YOU’VE GOT IT WRONG.

Maybe it’s a commitment you took on that you need to gracefully bow out of, a project that doesn’t look like you thought it would or a relationship or venture that’s run its course for you (even though on paper, it still looks to be ‘working’).

Your response will be very different, and if you want to keep moving forwards without feeling chronically overwhelmed, or forever doubting yourself, it’s important you learn to pay attention to the difference between the two.

These are the prompts I’m giving to my Anchored group next week and I thought you might find them useful too…a quick and dirty checklist that might help you decide whether to press on through the discomfort, or course correct and take a different path.

Bank them to come back to next time that resistance shows up.

When something is HARD (but ultimately is probably still the right thing for you to be doing…)

• You feel stretched, but still fairly curious or motivated about the future

• There’s a good chance you’re uncomfortable because it’s new and different

• You feel a healthy kind of tired - more like growing pains, rather than bone deep depletion

• You get little glimpses of momentum, even if they’re small, as if you’re ultimately moving in the right direction

• You’re still pretty proud of how you show up, even when it’s tough

But when something is MISALIGNED (and so usually needs a shift…)

• You feel consistently drained or resentful, in a way that’s more than just feeling tired

• You dread the thing more often than not

• You feel like you’re pretending or compromising too much

• You keep justifying why you should stay, even if those reasons aren’t entirely true for you anymore

• Even your best efforts aren’t shifting how it feels to make it any better

This isn’t an exhaustive or bulletproof list, and it’s not particularly revolutionary. But perhaps it’ll plant the seed that you never knew needed planting - ready for the next time you’re in the trenches and wondering what the fuck you should do next.

The difference between hard and misaligned will be unique to each of you too, and no-one can make the decision on your behalf. What feels aligned to someone else might feel completely off for you. What stretches you in a good way might completely break someone else.

This means you have to start to get to know what your version of tricky vs off feels like - especially in the world of self employment where many times, you’re a party of one and don’t have anyone else to make those decisions for you.

We’ve been trained to push through discomfort (‘no pain, no gain’) but there’s a power in knowing when that discomfort is a warning signal that something is fundamentally out of whack. It’s up to us to use these kinds of mental checklists to harness that power, so we don’t end up in a mad tailspin when we hit every roadblock, or spend longer than necessary on a path that doesn't serve us.

So come back to this idea anytime you’re feeling resistance. Meditate on it if that’s your vibe, or just spend 30 seconds running through the questions I listed if that feels better. But take some time asking yourself which kind of hard is it you’re actually experiencing, so you can keep moving, in whichever direction forward looks like to you.

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We’re coming into the last month of Anchored - it’s been a live program but I’ll be taking all of the content (60 episodes of podcast style content, and a bunch of supporting resources like this) and making it available on demand later this year for any teachers who are new to this life and looking for some support.

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