Yes You Can

For all of you who follow me on Instagram, you already know what I’m about to say. But whatever, I’m going to say it anyways:

Mentorship sessions are my favorite part of my job. 

Look, we can get into a whole blog post on what the hell my job even is nowadays. Because, although I still like to tell people I’m a yoga teacher whenever I asked dreaded question:

“So what do you do for a living?” 

The truth is, this year I’ve taught less yoga than ever before in my 10 year teaching career. A lot of that has to do with the fertility process of it all. But it also has a lot of do with my interests changing when it comes to work specifically. 

It’s not like yoga itself isn’t a part of my life anymore, because I still practice every day along with a long ass meditation. 

The thing with being a yoga teacher is that you’re pouring outwards. Like, a lot. Yoga teachers reading this are probably nodding their heads emphatically, because they know exactly what I mean by that. 

And where I’m at right now is less giving to others, and more about giving to myself. It’s been a hell of a year (more like two, at this point), and at some points I’ve kind of been hanging on by a god damn thread. 

So, instead of doing what twenty something Kayla would do, which is keep going full steam ahead until she’s literally hospitalized….

36-year-old Kayla has learned from those mistakes, and decided to back off on what I’m giving to others so that I can keep myself, my marriage, and my family’s relationship full. 

Wow- that was a tangent. 

The point is really just this:

I do a million and one things for work. I’m not “just” a yoga teacher anymore. 

And one of those things is holding mentorship sessions for solopreneurs, small businesses, and (a lot) of yoga teachers who are looking to start and/or grow their brand and business through social media and marketing strategy. 

Honestly, a few years ago I’d have looked at that description and thought:

Sounds kind of boring. 

But the truth is, it fires me the hell up. Why? Because I love watching people talk openly about their dreams, goals, and desires….and then actually do something about it.

It takes courage to do that. Trust me. 

And that’s exactly why we’re here today. To talk about fear and courage, and doing the damn thing. Because if there’s one thing my jam packed mentorship calendar has taught me recently, it’s that we’re all going through the same thing, just in our own ways.

It doesn’t matter if I talk to a yoga teacher one day, an author the next day, and a dog product brand the next day…..

The patterns are pretty much exactly the same. 

You know me, whenever I notice that I’m getting the same questions in my DMs, or see the same themes pop up in mentorship- this tells me that the topic is blog-worthy. Because if even just a handful of people are repeatedly wondering the same thing, that means there’s a lot more of you out there in the same boat. 

So, let’s get into it, shall we?

Yes You Can

Alright, this first step is going to sound simple. Or maybe it sounds a little cheesy. You might even roll your eyes when you read it. 

Great! I don’t care. 

Let me know how it goes once you actually close your eyes, and try it okay?

All I want you to do is get quiet for a second- maybe that’s eyes closed and deep breaths, maybe it’s full blown meditation, or prayer….you do you. 

In that place of quiet, I want you to be really honest with yourself about what you want. 

While I work with people exclusively around what they want in business (because, hi, I’m not a therapist), you can also think about something in your personal life if you feel totally 110% fulfilled by the work you do.

What I will say is that I’ve never actually met someone who wouldn’t want to change something about their current work situation. Even those who would describe themselves as fulfilled. 

Take myself for example! There was a time where I fell in the bucket of not wanting to change a damn thing. In fact, that lasted for a long time. Like, most of my teaching and retreat career.

But the thing is that even if the work stayed the same, I changed. My life circumstances changed. My priorities changed. And yes, my needs changed. 

Plus, I personally think it’s pretty damn normal to not want to do the same thing forever, decade after decade, even if our Boomer parents drilled something very different into our brains. 

I mean, let’s face it- we don’t live in a world where you get a job after college and stay there until you retire anymore. 

Needless to say, after 10 years of doing the same thing, I wanted something different. However, I didn’t feel like I could just drop everything I’d built and do a 180 degree change without potentially throwing away years of hard work. 

Put a pin in that, we’ll get back to it in a second. 

Now, back to you. 

You’re in your quiet place, and you’re getting honest with yourself about what you want. Not what you think you’re supposed to do. Not what your parents have always wanted for you. And certainly not what society has told you to be….

But you actually want to.

Maybe you want to go back to work, because you’ve taken a step back for motherhood. Or maybe you want to scale back the number of hours working, because you want to spend more time with your family. 

Perhaps you desire to work remotely so you can travel more. Or you’ve always dreamed of turning your passion project into an actual real business.

There are so many ways this can go. 

The only thing I want you to do is be honest. Sounds simple, but sometimes it’s hard. 

Why?

Well, usually because that’s when fear starts to creep in. 

Identify Your Fear

This brings us to step two, which tends to ride on the heels of the answer of number one:

What are you afraid of that’s stopping you from doing what you want?

Let’s say you’re the person who wants to monetize their hobby, and you finally admit that to yourself in your own version of quiet for the first time. Oftentimes, the next thought is something like:

Yeah but, I could never do that because ______.

And then we tell ourselves all the reasons why our dreams don’t make sense, or aren’t practical, or are just downright impossible. Essentially shutting ourselves down, before we even open up enough to take even the tiniest baby step forward. 

So, if that happened to you once you got honest with yourself about what you wanted- just know that’s it’s perfectly typical. Do your best to just notice the thoughts, rather than beat yourself up over them, okay?

Notice when the fear creeps in. Notice where the “yeah but” statements follow. Then, notice when you’re shoulding on yourself. 

No judgment, just observing. 

This is helpful information for you to get to know you a little better. You can start to notice your own patterns of standing in your own way. 

Or, to put it a little more frankly: you can notice when fear is cock blocking your dreams. 

Working With The Fear

For those of you who have taken my handstand workshops, you’ll know that I talk about fear a lot when I teach inversions. I love bringing you through a long, guided meditation before we even think about getting upside down, because tackling the mind can be a helluva lot more powerful than doing a million rep of tiger curls. 

I’ll say the same thing here that I do in my yoga classes when we’re talking about fear:

Fear is not a negative emotion to avoid, but rather a teacher that we can all benefit from understanding more of. 

Trust me, if you have teachers who are telling you to “let go” of your fears, or to shove them down because they’re a part of “scarcity mindset….” 

Run. 

Emotions are more nuanced than positive and negative, masculine or feminine. Let’s steer clear of the black and white nature of it all, shall we?

The truth is, fear is a part of our survival instinct as humans. It’s connected to our intuition, which helps to keep us safe. You know all know the bad feeling in your stomach walking down a dark alleyway example. 

It’s like that. 

If we completely disregard fear as “bad” anytime it comes up, then we’re actually disconnecting from a freaking ancient biological tool that has helped us to survive for years. 

Here’s what I want you to try, instead. 

Take a pause when you feel the fear in the pit of your stomach (or wherever you feel it). Or take a pause when you notice those cock blocking statements come up when you think about your dreams. 

In that pause, ask yourself: is this real?

I’m not going to lie, this took me a lot of practice. And it’s still a work in progress. But as someone who’s prone to intrusive thoughts that can run absolutely wild if I allow them to, this practice is something that’s really helped me differentiate between my body keeping me safe by sending those fear signals saying abort, abort whenever I’m about to make a huge mistake. 

Verus 

My mind sends fear signals to my body, which are really just made up stories that I’m telling myself to maintain an illusion of control, which feels like safety. 

For me, I feel (like, truly physically feel in my body) a big difference between real fear keeping me safe, versus fear that comes from my mind that’s just getting in my way.  

You’ll feel it in your own way, in your own body. It shows up differently for everyone. But it really just starts with noticing. Pausing. Noticing. 

I might add it’s damn near impossible to differentiate between what’s real and what’s a story if you’re in a heightened state. That’s why taking a beat is so important, because it’s really in that space where we can hear the truth. 

Like the real deal kind of truth. 

The First Step

Okay, so you’ve let yourself feel exactly what you want, you’ve noticed the fear that’s standing in the way of you doing the damn thing, and finally you identify if the fear is actually protecting you, or standing in your way. 

So now what?

Well, for most of us, fear is blocking us. There might be elements of truth to it, but it’s not the whole truth. It’s really more of an excuse to not take a step forward. 

Remember how I asked you to put a pin in my personal example from my career? Time to unpin, and keep going. 

When I asked myself what I really want with my career, the real honest answer is that I want to be a writer. At least primarily. I still love doing the menagerie of other things, but I’d like primarily to be a writer, and yoga/wellness/teacher/etc secondary. 

What’s the fear?

Uh….how much time do you have? I could write a novel on all the ways in which I’m terrified to write the book that’s been sitting in me for years. But, because I’ve already kept you here long enough, I’ll keep it simple. 

I’m afraid it’s going to suck. I’m afraid it won’t do well. Also, I’m afraid for it to be judged. And I’m also afraid of transitioning to a career where there’s not exactly a ton of money to be made, when we need my salary right now. 

You’ll notice that there are two kinds of fear there: one is a story, and one is real. 

For any of you who have financial fear with your dreams, listen up. This one's for you. 

Financial fear is real. Don’t ignore that. You’ll never catch me telling people to say fuck it, quit your job, and trust the Universe to catch you with some magical safety net. 

I’m just not that whimsical kind of yoga teacher, okay. 

Sure, making a plan doesn’t mean everything is full proof. Life happens, and plans are constantly shifting. Entrepreneurs know this better than anyone. 

I like to think of it like yoga, where we have a balance of strength and flexibility. We need both in order to achieve the deepest expression of each posture. When we’re too strong, we tend to be stiff. And when we’re too flexible, we’re unable to support our joints with strength, causing injury overtime. 

I like to make plans in the way I like to build strength. There’s structure, there’s reps, it’s secure and boundaries. But there’s also flexibility along the way. So, I know where I’m going because of the path I laid through the brickwork of strength, but that path isn’t so rigid that I can’t change directions every once in a while. 

Since I’ve been an entrepreneur just about my entire adult life, I learned at a very young age that I’m absolutely not someone who thrives under pressure. 

I’m a creative, right. All of my work, my businesses, all that I do comes from that place of creating rather than doing. 

And in order for me to be creative the most effectively, I need space to breathe. 

Some people perform under pressure, and those people might be the ones who would benefit from quitting their job and taking the leap, because they need it to work. 

Couldn’t be me. 

I was a nanny and bartender for years while I side hustled on yoga and Instagram, because I felt like if there was pressure for those things to pay for my rent as I was in the baby beginning phases of building them- it would actually kill my joy of creating altogether. 

And without joy, I create garbage. 

I preferred to have other jobs, even if those jobs weren’t my life’s freaking purpose, because those jobs still allowed me to get closer to what I believed my life’s purpose really was. 

All of this is still relevant now. 

My financial fear is real, because I’m growing a family. My salary is an integral part of our life, and when it changes, it doesn’t just impact me anymore. 

Plus, I spent a decade building all that I’ve built, and I don’t want to throw it away. And, let’s not forget, I still love what I do! Just not in quite the same way I once did. 

For me personally, if I decided to quit teaching, and quit Instagram, and stop providing online courses all to pursue being a full time writer….

My book would flop. 

Because the pressure of that one thing providing for me would suffocate the joy out of creating it at all. 

I know there’s a lot of you in the same boat. I know there’s a lot of you who want to monetize your side hustle while working a job you’re trying to get out of. My advice to you is this:

Consider that financial fear to be real, one that is protecting you. 

Create a timeline in which you believe you can leave your current job, and make your side hustle a full-time gig in a way that won’t be financially stressful. Use your current job as a tool that can help bring you closer to what you really want to do so you can see it gratitude, rather than showing up every day with resentment because you’re not fulfilled. 

If you’re like me and your real fear is coupled with false fear- you know, the stories of “I’m not good enough,” or “smart enough,” or whatever the hell your brain is trying to tell you. Well, that’s not actually keeping you safe. In fact, it’s keeping you stuck.

It would be easy to tell you to just tell that fake fear to fuck right off, but it’s not always that easy is it?

Most of the time limiting beliefs like not enoughness and other veins of imposter syndrome come from something deeper. Therapy can be your best friend to work through those. 

Ultimately, the first step is really about accepting those fears to a degree. I mean, they’re probably never going to go away. They tend to continue to creep in, even when you “master” whatever field you’re in. 

In my case, it’s about accepting that not everyone will like the book. Accepting that people are going to judge the shit out of it, and it’s going to be scary as hell to have my insides available for everyone to read on the outside. 

It’s about accepting that I’ll probably look back on my first book however many years from now, and cringe a little, because I’ll only get better at my craft as time goes on. Accepting that I am a newbie, I’m not an expert, and that’s okay. 

Basically, it’s about meeting myself where I’m at so that I can become who I want to be. 

Phew- super simple right? (I hope you know that was sarcastic.)

And the next step is actually doing something about the thing you’re thinking about. For me, I can keep whining about how I want to be a writer for the next 30 years, or I can actually- hey, I don’t know- start writing!

It doesn’t mean I have to start writing the book per se. And it doesn’t mean the writing has to be perfect, or even monetizing. It’s simply an action that’s exercising the muscle I’m trying to strengthen, because otherwise I’ll stay stuck. 

For you that might mean starting to post on your socials about the thing you want to one day sell, or make into a business. Or, maybe it’s starting to look into retreat venues for the first time, because you’ve always dreamt of leading a retreat. (Retreat Lab will help you with that, too, by the way.)

Honestly, one of the biggest (and also smallest) steps you can make is just telling someone for the first time- especially if you’re someone who usually keeps your aspirations hidden, because you’re afraid they sound dumb. 

There are so many teeny tiny baby steps that you can take to actually move forward. But you have to just…..

Go. Do it. 

No one is stopping you, but you.

Where To Go From Here

If there’s one thing I hope you take away from this rambling, it’s this:

Fear is a teacher. But it’s up to you to listen to it. 

It’s not a “bad” emotion, despite what the yoga world likes to tell us. It’s a part of our protection mechanism. Also, it’s something deeply connected to our intuition. And it can do a whole lot of good so long as we know how to translate the delicate nuances of it. 

Like any emotion, fear just is. It’s how we understand, relate, and respond to it that deems it “positive” or “negative.”

Sure, if your fear is cock blocking your dreams….that would fall in the “bad” category. Because it’s keeping you away from who you want to be. Who you’re supposed to be. 

But it’s up to you to actually practice the quiet, notice, pause, notice of it all so that you can get more fluent in the language of your own emotional body.

It might not be quite as exciting as learning how to handstand, but it’s an equally important practice, nonetheless. 

Trust me, if you’re running in circles on a hamster wheel feeling stuck in the direction of your life, you’re going to stay that way forever without honest introspection, inner observation, and understanding of self. 

It doesn’t have to be a long, serious practice with the perfect crystals set out and sound bowl meditation music on at the right frequency in order to be effective. 

In fact, I think it’s best achieved in the little micro-moments of your day. Quiet, notice, pause, notice, repeat. Just a few breaths. 

That’s all it takes. 

And remember: 

Yes. You. Can. 

xx, 

K