There are some things I wish we could know about ourselves ahead of time. I wish we could know how we’re going to handle the thing we’re worried about before it happens. I wish we could know we’ll make the right decision when the moment comes, that we’ll figure out what to do when the plan changes, that we’ll be okay when something we counted on suddenly isn’t there anymore.
Mostly, I think we’d like to know we’re strong enough before life asks us to prove it. But that doesn’t seem to be how strength works.
One of our teachers, Sara, said something during our conversations that has stayed with me: “What I’m learning is I’m stronger than what I thought. And I feel like everybody out there is stronger than what they think.”
There is something about when she said, “than I thought,” that gets me, because she isn’t saying she suddenly became strong. She’s realizing the strength was already there. Somewhere along the way, life gave her enough evidence to see something in herself that she couldn’t see before. Maybe that’s true for most of us.
We tend to imagine strength as something we should be able to summon when we need it. We picture ourselves rising to the occasion, taking the deep breath, making the brave choice and moving confidently forward. Sometimes that happens. And sometimes strength looks a lot less impressive while we’re actually living it.
Sometimes it looks like getting out of bed and doing the next thing because there really isn’t another option. It looks like making the phone call you’ve been avoiding. Sitting in the uncomfortable conversation. Asking for help. Starting over. Saying no. Saying yes when yes scares you more. Changing your mind. Letting someone see that you don’t have it all figured out. Sometimes it is simply making it through a day you weren’t quite sure how you were going to make it through.
We usually don’t call any of that strength at the time.
We call it Tuesday.
Then enough Tuesdays pass, and eventually we look backward and realize we did something we once weren’t sure we could do. Maybe, just maybe, strength is easier to see in the rearview mirror.
We see that on the mat too. There are poses that once seemed impossible until one day they aren’t. But the interesting part isn’t necessarily the day we finally hold the pose. It’s everything that happened before it. The shaking. The falling out. The modifications. The days we felt strong and the days we absolutely did not. The hundred tiny adjustments we made without noticing we were getting stronger along the way.
And sometimes strength on the mat has nothing to do with doing more. It can be backing out of something when your body says enough. Taking the option that you used to think was the easier one.Resting while everyone around you keeps moving. Letting today’s practice be different from yesterday’s without turning it into a judgment about what your body should be able to do.
That counts too.
Maybe that’s part of what it means to EVOLVE LOUDLY. Not constantly proving how strong we are but allowing what we’ve lived through to change what we believe about ourselves. Because the evidence is probably already there.
Think about something you once wondered whether you could handle. A change you didn’t ask for. A decision you didn’t feel ready to make. A beginning you couldn’t see the other side of. Maybe you handled it beautifully or maybe you were a complete mess. Most likely, if you’re anything like the rest of us, it was some combination of both. But you’re here. And I don’t mean that in the tidy, everything happens for a reason kind of way. Some things are just freaking hard. Some things leave marks. Some things we would never choose again just to prove we could survive them. We don’t have to be grateful for every difficult thing that has happened to us in order to recognize what we learned about ourselves while we were living through it. Maybe we learned that we can ask for help. We can leave or we can stay. We can begin again when the first beginning didn’t work. That yes, we can be strong and scared at exactly the same time.
The point isn’t to become someone who never doubts themself again. I’m not sure that person exists. Maybe it’s simply to have a little more evidence the next time that little voice starts asking, can I really do this? You still may not be sure, but you probably know more about yourself than you did the last time you asked.
So here’s something to notice this week.
When you look back at something you weren’t sure you could handle, what do you know about your strength now that you couldn’t have known then?