What If It Does Work?
In December I was catching up with a dear friend of mine who was working on a project that will be in front of more eyes than she is used to. We had the classic what if conversation. What if I fail? What if it’s criticized? What if it’s not good enough? Insert several more what if’s here.
And I said to her, you know what? Those are all distinct possibilities (she laughed). I then reminded her it’s also possible that people will not even care. Or that folks will be very impressed by her work and grateful for it. I said these outcomes are all equally as probable.
It brought me back to an important moment in my first few weeks of teaching yoga classes. Seven years ago I taught my first “official” yoga class and I was pretty sure it was a disaster. I switched up the sequence I had been committing to memory for months and got stuck on one side of the flow trying to remember the next pose. Though this lapse in memory lasted all of five seconds, it felt like an eternity. I felt that familiar sinking feeling after class. Students emerged, thanked me, and all the while I was convinced I had done a terrible job. At the time I was reading Daring Greatly by Brené Brown and digging back into the book the following week.
Early on Brené shares her experience of being backstage before her second TED talk. Her first talk The Power of Vulnerability was an an unexpected roaring success so naturally she was feeling the nerves. She recounts the moments before walking on stage like this:
“I took a deep breath and recited my vulnerability prayer as I waited for my turn: Give me the courage to show up and let myself be seen. Then, seconds before I was introduced I thought about a paperweight on my desk that reads, ”What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" I pushed that question out of my head to make room for a new question. As I walked up to the stage I literally whispered aloud, “What's worth doing even if I fail?”
When I read that final line I burst into tears. This question hit the nail on the head of a deeply imbedded fear I had been carrying around. The fear of not doing a good job. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of misrepresenting a practice and subject I hold so dear and in doing so confirming that I was a fraud.
This question marked an important paradigm shift for me. And it is one I have wrestled with throughout my career, some days more than others. It is a question that has gripped me particularly tight in these recent months as I continue to discover what it looks like to sustainably emerge from my teaching sabbatical. The day I read this question I knew teaching was worth it and I had to play the long game. One class of mistakes did not make up the entirety of what I had to offer as a teacher and it certainly wouldn't be the last mistake I made doing my best to share this subject of yoga.
This question to nudges us towards the both/and. It invites us to explore the practice of shifting away from the very limiting either/or. I am reminded writing this very message that what I do is worth it even if I fail. That our perception of failure is often (almost always) skewed by unrealistic expectations. That most of the time what we even label as failure is actually just a completely normal part of learning. It is more important to learn from our missteps than spend most of our energy trying to avoid making them entirely. Whatever it is we are uniquely drawn to do is worth it and goes beyond the limiting binary of failure and success.
There are still plenty of days where I find myself stuck in the what if’s. What if people don’t show up? What if people aren’t interested? What if I’m not knowledgeable enough? What if I misrepresent the subject? What if, what if, what if. I feel that deep familiar fear of not being good enough and my system creating this story trying to protect me from potentially screwing up something important to me.
And so now, when I can (and often with the help of the precious humans in my life who I get to be in relationship with) I try to usher in all of the other equally probable possibilities. What if people do show up? Spoiler alert: they have. What if people are really grateful for the information and space I hold? What if this does work out? What if people are happy to see me? What if everything goes really well and I want to keep going? What if, what if, what if.
This month I compassionately nudge you toward remembering to make room for these possibilities as well. And I know this can feel hard because when we are stressed and overwhelmed it can be challenging to access the part of our brain that can create space for the both/and. So can we allow ourselves in those spaces to be reminded that these what if’s can be true too? To be gently nudged towards the both/and even if we are simultaneously very aware of all the ways it could be a disaster. There are endeavors worth the missteps along the way. Worth many “failures”.
We are not meant to do things perfectly. We are meant to keep learning, showing up and doing the best we can with what we have for the things that are worth it to us. To - as Brene reminds us - step into the arena of our lives bravely, boldly and courageously saying I know by doing this I risk failure which feels so fucking scary AND this is worth it anyway.