As part of my weekly exercise routine 10 years ago or more I began practicing yoga. In the beginning I couldn’t do all of the yoga poses. Some of them I could do fantastically and others I could just not do for the life of me. I always found this really annoying and couldn’t understand why I struggled to do the more difficult poses. I thought to myself, “well I’ll be able to do them in another month or so. I just have to keep practicing”. I had heard over and over if you just keep practicing eventually you’ll be able to do all the poses, it’s just a very slow process. Keep at it… every day and eventually you will see progress. It will be very slow but with persistence you can do it. And so it went.
I persisted. I am stubborn which, in this case, actually worked out for me. One year, two years, three years went by {I told you, I’m really stubborn} and still there was one pose that I just couldn’t get for what seemed to me to be a very long time. I think most people would agree with me, that doing something for a couple years and not seeing much, if any, progress could feel very frustrating. But I kept stubbornly continuing. I talked with older, wiser, more experienced yoga practitioners who kept encouraging me to continue and assured me that eventually it would happen one day. I would be able to do these poses that just seemed like an impossibility. I distinctly remember at some point during all this saying to myself, “This is bullshit!! I don’t know what these people are talking about. I’m never going to be able to do these poses. This may be true for some people but it obviously isn’t true for me.”
Then one morning I got up and I started doing my yoga routine and I had the bright shining moment where it just clicked. I was finally able to do this pose that I hadn’t been able to do for five years. In that moment I understood!!!
Now, I had heard the many people that kept encouraging me to keep going, to keep trying and to just take it very slowly and of course a large part of me didn’t want to listen to these people at all. I kept thinking they were out of their cotton picking mind until I finally had that moment. I share this with you and also to remind myself of the importance and value of the lesson that slow and measured steps can and will yield your desired outcome with loving kindnesss, patience and persistence. This I learned from yoga.
Recently I have had a similar experience with my meditation practice, feeling unsure I was getting anywhere with it. Was I even doing it right? Then in a reflective moment of realization I came to understand that indeed the seeds of meditation were quietly working their way into my life as well, as they had with yoga. Maybe not as firmly evident but just as significantly – maybe even more so. {Ironically, if you think I did yoga for a long time then it wouldn’t surprise you to know I’ve been doing meditation for even longer.} I hope that if you are finding it hard to see progress in something you are pursuing right now that you will take it to heart that with loving kindness, patience and a little persistence the seeds of your labor will soon grow. {It may take much longer then you think!} This is how I must approach life these days.