"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
On the 4th of July, I hit the 180-day mark of my 360 days of yoga. That’s six months. I’m over half way there.
I gave my father this little update on the phone the other day. He said to me, “My God, you’re really doing this, aren’t you?” Yes, Dad, I really am. I really am going to see this project through, from start to finish.
In the past few years, I’ve had some issues with completion. Lots of unfinished business. Some people get hung up on starting things. Not me. I start things left and right. I love starting things! The big finish is where I get stuck. Thus, I am a person who habitually:
- Cooks an elaborate dinner, leaves dishes piled up in the sink until the next night, or next week.
- Mixes up ingredients for homemade ice cream, and passes off the hand-crank ice cream maker to someone else.
- Folds laundry and leaves folded clothes in the laundry basket/on the sofa instead of putting them away.
- Knits the sleeves, front, and back of a sweater, never sews the pieces together.
- Starts writing a story, or a blog, leaves the piece at day’s end, and never returns to it.
I could go on.
FYI: There are an obscene amount of albums called "Unfinished Business."
So when I decided to do 360 straight days of yoga practice, one of my goals was not “to complete something for once in my life.” Yes, my ultimate goal is to complete 360 straight days, but I didn’t think of it as a giant exercise in seeing a project through from start to finish. However, that’s exactly what it is.
With this goal of completion, there is a danger of looking at this year in terms of success and failure. This way of thinking doesn’t fit with yoga at all. When Patanjali uses the word “yoga” in his Yoga Sutras, it means “a state of wholeness” as well as the different practices (postures, pranayama, etc.) associated with this state. Should I step onto the mat everyday with the idea in my head that, “I have to do yoga today so I don’t fail,” I would be approaching my practice from a limited outlook. Yoga would become a chore (which I’ve discussed before), and I would be practicing with an ugly sense of obligation, with a fear of failure, and from a place of self-judgment. I would not be in a state of wholeness; I would not be open to whatever experiences might unfold while on the mat; and it wouldn’t be fun at all! As long as I upheld this outlook, even if I “succeeded” in practicing every single day, my yoga 360 would still be a failure.
In her book, Living Your Yoga, Judith Lasater says, “The only real success in life is living with an open, loving heart.” I think that’s true. If I do miss a day of yoga, if I say to myself, “So you missed a day—it’s not worth beating yourself up over and discrediting all the yoga you did before today and all the yoga you’ll do after today,” then that, frankly, is a tremendous success.
Don’t get me wrong: I fully intend to keep doing yoga every single day until New Year’s. I intend to complete this thing. And it is a gigantic exercise in seeing a project through from start to finish. But it isn’t a gigantic exercise in NOT FAILING to see a project through from start to finish. It is a gigantic exercise in dedication and commitment. I am dedicated and committed to seeing this year through from start to finish, and more importantly, I am dedicated and committed to living with an open, loving heart—today, next month, come January 2011, come January 2021, and so on.
That's right, I'm the bacon.
Namaste!
