Over the past few months, I have had the opportunity to make some pretty significant changes in my life: first by becoming a yoga teacher and getting to teach to real, live people (adults and children!) and then getting a new job that not only affords me the time to teach yoga, but is also going to give me incredible travel opportunities and challenge me professionally. Right about now I would have to say my life is pretty grand. I keep asking myself, how the heck did this happen? Am I just a stupidly lucky girl who was in the right place at the right time? Maybe. But I believe it’s a little bit more than that.
Less than three months ago, my life was still pretty great. I was pursuing teaching yoga and had a fantastic job teaching preschool with wonderful teachers and students. Yoga was really starting to take off and I was getting a lot of opportunities to teach. One such opportunity was teaching children in a pediatric unit at a hospital in Brooklyn. Amazing! But all of this happened while I was on summer vacation. How could I make this work with 8-hour school days and an hour commute to and from work each day? I knew that I was going to have to make a change; I began thinking that yoga would have to wait a year, and then I’d figure out another way to do it. I considered leaving New York when the school year was finished. I even submitted a resume to a school with a better commute and shorter hours, thinking that would solve everything. Not only was I thinking these things, but I began voicing my concerns to friends and family. “How great would it be to be able to teach school while having time during the week to teach yoga?” was something that I often thought to myself and aloud.
Then one morning I was having brunch with several girlfriends after teaching a yoga class, and one of them asked if I’d be interested in a new opportunity as a private teacher traveling with a family. My initial thought was, sure, that sounds amazing, but I can’t do that, I have a job. But as the day went on, I continued to think about it until I said to myself, “But really, why not?” Over the next few weeks, I talked to my friend about the job a great deal more until I finally came to the conclusion that it was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up.
Perhaps it is all luck. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right friend who had this opportunity for me. There is definitely some truth to that. But there is another factor, or rather, factors. The first being: me. My willingness to bring change into my life. And with that, an open mind. Just putting something out into the universe isn’t going to give us exactly what we want (because if that’s the case, money would be raining down from the sky all over the country). No, once you put something out there, it’s important to be open to the fact that sometimes what we want comes to us in a completely different package than we were expecting–like this job, which I wasn’t looking for but turned out to be exactly what I needed. And other times, we don’t get something we thought we wanted because something even better, that we really need, is right around the corner (For example, that other school I applied to? I never even got an interview. At first I was disappointed…but now? Really grateful.).
Recently, a friend shared with me this saying: “The universe is all green lights.” Meaning, whatever we put out in the universe is what we will get. If you are a person that says, “I always lose my keys,” then…you will always lose your keys. But if you say, “I am learning to remember where I put my keys,” then maybe, just maybe, you will start remembering (my friend says this has really worked for her!).
It’s not about being unrealistic. It’s about being willing to make changes and having the ability to recognize the open doors, even if they’re where you never expected to find them. I am extremely grateful I saw the green light and walked through my door. Have you found yours?
Yoga Snax 