SMALL TOWN YOGINI

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that I love Brene Brown's book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Her work on vulnerability and courage has changed my life and I highly recommend this book if you haven't read it.At the beginning of the book, she references the idea of wholehearted living, which is from another book of hers, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. She describes it like this...

​"Wholehearted living is about engaging with our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, "No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough." It's going to bed at night thinking, "Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging."I think her idea of wholehearted living covers a lot. It's accepting the messiness of life and still being content. It's knowing you're not perfect, but loving yourself anyway. It's not being so hard on yourself and embracing joy, laughter and lightheartedness. It's learning how to play (see photo above). It's seeing vulnerability as a strength instead of a weakness. If you think about it, experiencing vulnerability and still trying is really more like courage. Courage takes work, and showing up even when it's scary builds courage just like exercising muscles makes them stronger. Those who live wholeheartedly have the courage to be themselves and offer their best to the world-- even when it's scary. [I've specifically blogged about this before in a post, Year 6 As A Yoga Instructor: What I Learned.]

In the book, there's this list that I LOVE. The list is what she calls guideposts for wholehearted living. I read it to my yoga classes a few times a year, and every time I read it, at least one person approaches me after class and wants a copy of it. Every. Single. Time.

Here is it (below). Each guidepost contains a thing to let go of, and a trait to cultivate. I tell my classes... if one resonates with you, hold on to it for a while (hours, days, weeks). For me, I like to write it down and keep it with me for a time. I've found that when I re-visit the list after a few months, a different one speaks to me.  It's a good list to return to over and over and over.

1. Cultivating Authenticity and Letting Go of What Other People Think
2. Cultivating Self-Compassion and Letting Go of Perfectionism
3. Cultivating Your Resilient Spirit, Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness
4. Cultivating Gratitude and Joy, Letting go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark
5. Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith, Letting Go of the Need for Certainty
6. Cultivating Creativity and Letting Go of Comparison
7. Cultivating Play and Rest, Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth
8. Cultivating Calm and Stillness and Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle
9. Cultivating Meaningful Work, Letting Go of Self-Doubt and Supposed-To
10. Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance. And Letting Go of Cool and Always in Control

Did one resonate with you? Use it as a motto for a while and let it transform your outlook on life.Love & Light.