My Best Self 101 Blog
A journal excerpt from seven years ago reads:
“Last night, I was awake half the night with a new baby. Today, I chased a toddler, ran elementary kids to gymnastics and soccer, navigated the emotions of a middle schooler, attended choir and orchestra concerts at the high school, helped my junior with math homework, encouraged my senior to apply for college scholarships, and led the parent drama board. Oh, and kept everyone fed.”
For a long time, I had a lot of false assumptions about yoga. Before trying it out myself, the only examples I had of individuals doing yoga in my life were women, so naturally I thought it was mainly an exercise for women. Yoga seemed like a weird workout where you sweat and twist yourself into pretzels. I figured you had to be flexible to do it, and I have always been very inflexible. So all-in-all, I thought that yoga was not for me. As I got into college, I got very stressed with everything that I felt I had to do. While studying psychology, I learned that exercise is crucial to regulating anxiety and other symptoms like depression (APA, 2017). However, I have never been good at consistently going to the gym. At that time, someone recommended yoga to me, citing all the benefits of how it might help with anxiety. I was skeptical because of all of my misguided assumptions. I lingered on the idea and when the time to sign up for more college classes came, I noticed my school offered a yoga class for a credit. I figured if I had to attend a yoga class at school, then I would be more likely to consistently do yoga.
Tara Brach defines being as “when we’re not on our way somewhere else”. Being is a sense of connection and acceptance with what is and who you are in this moment, while over-doing might involve acting to change or improve something because you perceive yourself or your situation as unsatisfactory. Over-doing might serve to hide the parts about yourself you don’t like or to control or change others. And when we’re hiding from ourselves or trying to control others, we’re disconnected from ourselves and others.
Stress has been a constant companion in my own life, one that was often an unwelcome guest. I still remember my first efforts to eradicate it completely from my life, and much to no one’s surprise but my own, the attempt was largely unsuccessful. In trying to eat healthier, exercise, and drag my feet to get to bed at a decent hour, I was perplexed when my stress didn’t magically vanish. Instead, I felt like it added new stresses as I realized I wasn’t perfectly implementing my well thought out plan! What I didn’t realize at the time was that we will always have stress, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Let’s dive into positive and negative stress, how to change our outlook on it, and how to minimize bad stress in our lives.
