Coulda, woulda, shoulda

This morning mid way through my yoga session I caught myself engaging in some negative self talk. I've been struggling with Crow pose for years and was once again attempting to get in to it this morning. I tried once and fell out of it and then heard myself say "come on, you should be able to do this by now" - I'm sure I've had this thought many times but this time I really heard it and thoug
ht that's such an unkind and unconstructive thing to say to yourself. I instead told myself that it doesn't matter how long it takes you to get in to this pose, you have to fully accept where you are at and just keep trying with humility. What happened next surprised me - I tried the pose again and with no expectations or tension in my mind my feet lifted off the floor as if I weighed nothing - I was in Crow for the first time. As I placed my feet back on the floor a huge grin spread across my face and I thought to myself, lesson learned....if you allow negative self talk in to your practice, it literally weighs you down.

I then started to think about the amount of times each day we allow the word "should" to weigh us down. "I should have done my meditation practice today, I should have got in to work earlier, I should have kept to my diet". In the words of Carrie Bradshaw "we are should-ing all over ourselves". As soon as we say "should" we open the door to feeling inadequate, incapable and a failure. How can we get the most out of ourselves, how can we learn and grow when we have this kind of negative self talk basically telling us not to bother trying because we're going to suck at it anyway. I'm setting myself a challenge to catch myself each time I say should and try to replace it with something more constructive, perhaps turning it in to a determination "tomorrow I'm going to make more of an effort to meditate" or acceptance "I'm not there yet but I'll keep trying". It's mainly about being kind to yourself and saying the things that you would say to your friends and family to yourself. My Guru, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso teaches that if we accept people for who they are that they relax and their good qualities can shine through, so imagine if we did this for ourself how much better we'd feel and how much our self confidence would improve. Give it a go yourself.

For today I am happy that I got in to Crow Pose and tomorrow I'm going to try to hold it for longer, with no expectations and no shoulds :)