Contradicting Myself

 Last week I wrote you a blog post titled: 20 Business Lessons I’ve Learned in the past 8 years.  #11 said: You won’t always feel inspired to do the work you’ve been called to do, even when you love it, professionals keep doing the work anyway. If you want to be a professional, put your head down and keep working.

I will keep preaching this advice over and over yet I also want to say that sometimes life happens. We get sick, our family gets sick, there are major life events that throw things off.  I adhere to a schedule of work in my business, I’ve created this mostly arbitrary schedule for myself and every once in a while, life shakes things up. 

I have a special online community where I curate events weekly and monthly.  It’s called “The Gathering” and everything we do in The Gathering supports lifestyle habits I believe are important such as  

·      1 weekly live meditation every Monday morning

·      2 weekly yoga classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays

·      A new moon gathering and a full moon gathering each month

·      Monthly Sacred Maker’s happy hour

·      Monthly Writing Workshop

·      Monthly Group Coaching

·      Monthly Book Club

And yet November is a tough month for me, a little seasonal depression kicks in with the time change, the dread of my dad’s birthday and it’s proximity to my birthday all wrapped up together.  These are emotionally dark waters that I need extra space around.  In October when I was mapping out what would be offered and when in November, I took a long look at my calendar and made the hard but personally necessary decision to proactively in advance cancel the Tuesday and Thursday live yoga classes for this week.  I’m still working, I’m still doing almost all of the things I normally do, but I needed extra space.  

 Basically, I eliminate the thing that’s the hardest for me to show up emotionally and physically for.  It’s complicated to explain why teaching yoga is the thing that feels hardest physically and emotionally but it is.  Students aren’t left high and dry without class though. The beauty of showing up even when I might not want to is that I’ve recorded over 50 yoga classes while teaching this year so even though I’m not teaching live this week students can take one of the over 50 recorded yoga classes we have in The Gathering’s library of resources. 

I believe professionals put their head down and work even when they are not inspired, but I also believe that there are times to be gentle with ourselves. The key is to know yourself as well as you can so you have an idea of when being gentle with yourself could be extra important.  It’s also helpful to plan ahead, I was able to tell my students at the beginning of the month when yoga would not be offered this month. 

Sometimes my advice is both and, a contradiction and I’m ok with that. Where are you disciplined and where in your discipline do you allow space to be gentle with yourself?