Σιγά σιγά (slowly slowly)

Patience is one of the virtues that I have struggled with for a while. Like many people, I crave instant results. With my yoga practice I’ve had to learn patience with my flexibility, since I’m not a naturally flexible person and it takes time to see results.

In addition to patience with my body, I’ve been working on patience with myself as I’m going through a lot of life changes. Oftentimes I put pressure on myself to have everything figured out, but the more pressure I put on myself the worse off I am.

When I left Facebook in March, one of the things I was dealing with was stress, but almost all of it was self-induced. I wanted to be the best version of myself, which is a good thing, but I would set unrealistic expectations for myself and be frustrated and disappointed when I didn’t measure up.

As I was leaving, I finally began to realize that I was putting myself through all the agony and stress for no reason. It’s important to challenge yourself to be great, but there’s no benefit from being too hard on yourself and setting unrealistic expectations. Instead of motivating me, it was backfiring and causing me to feel like a failure and not good enough.

Something similar happened the other day, and I had to laugh at myself. I really wanted to get a photo of myself doing a headstand, and since I was alone, I was using the self timer on my phone. Every time I pressed the button, I rushed to try and get in a headstand, and every time I stressed myself out and fell.

After about five or six attempts, I finally stopped myself and realized what was happening. I know how to do a headstand. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I was trying to rush myself and was putting too much pressure on myself.

As soon as I realized that, I slowed down, took a deep breathe, got into the headstand on my first try, and got the picture. The funny thing is that it ended up being a pretty unflattering photo, and I actually like the outtakes better. :)

Any time I find myself getting stressed out or worked up, I try to slow down, take a step back, take a deep breath, and come at the situation with a relaxed and calm mind.

When I was trying to rush myself it definitely didn't work. Once I saw what was happening, I literally laughed at myself and took a selfie to document it.