Honor Your Truth

“Surrender, and accept your current situation as it is”

Have you heard this in a yoga class before?

I’m here to tell you, that’s a lie. Read on.

Okay, so the statement itself isn’t necessarily a lie, but how it often is interpreted is.

You see, when we are unhappy or dissatisfied with something in our lives, we can DO something about it. By listening, and then acting on that dissatisfaction, you’re honoring your truth, and that is just as important as accepting a situation.

In our life mastery code, the first pillar is truth.

What I want to focus on is what truth means as it relates to our Yoga Life Mastery Code.

When we say truth, we mean telling the truth as it pertains to you in your life right now.

Another way to define truth is to ask the question: what is the factual information about what my life is like right now?

As an example, let me tell you the truth about my life when I was younger.

There was a period of time in my life when these facts were all true:

I was waiting tables three nights a week. I was teaching adult martial arts three times a week. I was teaching adult yoga two times a week. I was also teaching kids yoga and martial arts two times a week. I was making twenty thousand dollars a year all together. That’s the factual information.

But how did that make me feel?

Well, I felt like a failure. I was struggling because I felt like I was running around with my head cut off. I felt overwhelmed.

Yet, I also knew that I some element of my life was lived out with a real purpose. I had this feeling of purpose when I was teaching yoga. I felt connected when I was teaching martial arts. When I was doing those things, I felt right.

But the facts of everything I was doing – waiting tables, teaching kids, teaching martial arts, teaching yoga – all that combined made me feel completely overwhelmed and dissatisfied because I was only making 20,000 dollars a year. I felt unsuccessful and I knew that wasn’t right. I didn’t feel good about my life as it was.

So, there’s true, factual information about what was going on in my life. Then there’s the emotional honesty that showed me I didn’t feel like that was where I want my life to be. With that, I felt the energy that was the motivation for me to really take my life to that next level and say, “no this isn’t what I want.”

It’s really important to note that there was a period of time where I was lying to myself and saying that my life was okay how it was. Unfortunately, you get taught this type of “acceptance” with where you are in life a lot in yoga.

However, this is a false acceptance.

Some people feel like acceptance is a type of resignation to just be happy with where you are, no matter how crappy it is. They say that this sudden desire to excel and evolve to that next level is somehow not a part of the yoga path. But that’s complete BS.

That feeling of life not being as good as I wanted it to be was exactly the spur of motivation and energy I needed to take it to that next level.

When I experience the truth of my life as it is and I recognize that my life isn’t in alignment with what I want, all that energy shouldn’t be pushed down.

I shouldn’t lie to myself about how I feel because that will take the very motivation that I need to change my life for the better out of the equation.

The real key is being honest with yourself.

That raw honesty means that, in the moment you accept your life as it is, but you also accept that you can choose a different path and you can take your life to the next level.

Watch out for our next blog post about the next pillar of our Yoga Life Mastery Code!