“Wonder if I just wasn’t that anymore?” I remember one of my yoga teachers sharing this thought during my first teacher training. When she’s spiraling in sadness or frustration about some identity or circumstance, she asks herself, wonder if I just wasn’t that anymore.

And she wasn’t talking about quitting a job or moving great distances or any other sweeping life pursuits towards ‘not being anymore’. She was talking simply about changing our mindset. Finding a way to convince our greatest judge and critic, ourself, that there’s just a glimmer of possibility that something we’re so obsessed with thinking might not even be true. 

Another moment in this teaching for me came one evening in my Buddhism class. I asked “what do we do if we feel like we are backsliding?”. This is actually one of my scariest thought loops, that instead of transforming and growing I could just be backsliding. And when the words left my mouth and I saw the absolute attention and compassion they struck in my teacher, I immediately regretted sharing them. Why did I feel like I was backsliding?– he asked. I thought I was going to full blown sob in front of this whole room of people. But miraculously and without any trace of doubt he stated that I wasn’t backsliding, there wasn’t any way I could be. That instead what was happening was I’d adopted progressed ideals for myself. That I’d so fully been doing the work that I was now able to measure my actions on a minute scale, and see the occasional moments that could have been better. Talk about a pivotal moment and gift.

And then it’s the little moments too. I was talking to a dear friend the other day and she shared how she admires that I don’t have “any clutter”. This is because when I moved from Chicago I sold or gave away most of what I owned. And truthfully this didn’t feel like my choice and I’ve spent a lot of time having a lack mentality about it. Everything I physically gave up to pursue this new life. Everything I don’t have any more. But this simple outside observation and choice of a new word “clutter” suddenly felt completely different. Maybe I’m not in the lack without my old possessions, maybe I am liberated.

So taking that all as true and tying it together– it’s about shifting our consciousness. Not by any great force or effort, but just by pausing long enough to entertain something different. Wonder if the bad things swirling in our minds were just no longer true. Wonder if we got to choose what to think, what to be.

Moment of Gratitude: We do.