I go to a hot yoga class six or seven days a week. Not because I love it, because I would never put
the word “love” together with that kind of heat. And it is hard
work. But I do love how I feel afterwards—strong,
and confident, and able. And, too, I don’t ache
like it did back when I ran millions of miles—that was me, the feeble and never-blossomed
marathoner.
So I’m all in on the hot yoga thing. The past couple years, I’ve even gotten a
little playful with it. A little
gymnastic-y. Which makes me feel fancy,
and kind of legit.
This morning, I
fell into a nice rhythm, sneaking in a couple of great handstands and
headstands. I was sweating from every
pore, cleansing my toxins; I was looking toward a good day. I felt like
a badass. A badass in charge of stuff. I felt good.
Then, the teacher directed us into a pose that naturally led
to a headstand. Legs gracefully in the
air, I did a couple of curls and turns (fancy me, right?), and then—whoops—I wobbled a
bit. No
big thing, I thought. My mat was near a wall, right? —So I’d just tap on it
and get back upright again. You have the wall. Tilt toward the wall. Reach.
Toes. Reach. Reach--?
And then: Oh, no. You were working from the back of the mat,
you dolt. You forgot where you were. There’s no wall.
I floundered and fumbled, legs all flopping and flailing, down
down down, and then: Splat. Flat on my back. Loudly. It sounded like a sweaty, middle-aged body crashing
to the floor, which of course is exactly what it was.
I scrambled up and around, excusing and apologizing, saying something about a wall, and there was awkward laughter from the other (heretofore stoic) faces in the room, and the teacher asked if I was okay, and everyone was all ha, ha, ha. And then, blessedly, everyone went back to business, serious and focused as before. Upright again in body and mind, I closed my eyes, marveling at the speed with which my confidence had turned into a clumsy fall, and how quickly I’d gone from feeling like a ballerina to a one-legged goat.
I thought about it as I went through my day—about being
confident and still having humiliating, inevitable crashes. Confidence is, after all, a funny thing. Leaders need confidence. We’re weak and untrustworthy without it. People need to know we can stand up and be
freakin’ awesome. But the minute we
think we’ve really got it—that we’ve mastered it—that we're done—our confidence may splat itself into bits on the floor.
And then—?
Each time we splat, we need to get up again. That's the secret: Get back into the pose, the groove, the
rhythm. Avoid pouting or feeling downtrodden
along the way; just accept the collapses and move on. If we plan on the wall, and there’s no wall,
well, then, there’s no wall. Reaching
for it won’t do a bit of good. Fall... and stand up again. That's all.
