Making Mistakes

People often told me that I was grown up for my age when I was a kid. It usually made me feel like I was missing out on something, growing up too quickly.

Nowadays, there’s a reoccurring scenario wherein I don’t always react like an adult. It happens whenever I make mistakes. I’ll give you an example:

Last week, I took a challenging yoga class. I was really enjoying the teacher’s pace and felt like I was in “the zone.” We were doing a series of forward bends, and the teacher said we could try a “tripod headstand” if we wanted to.

So, I went for it, and didn’t hit it as solidly as I had hoped. It was ok though, because I’d used the wall for support.

Apparently, the teacher was watching me, and when my feet hit the wall, he took a sassy tone and said, “mm-hmm… and that’s not a tripod headstand anyways,” in front of the whole class.

It felt like a flashback to elementary school: I’d answered a question incorrectly and the teacher called me out on it. I was embarrassed. More so though, I just felt so guilty. I hadn’t listened; I’d messed up.

I spent more poses than I should have talking negatively to myself. “You really need to listen better, Jaime,” and, “that’s what you get for trying something and failing at it,” and, “you know this means you’re terrible at yoga, right?”

Just before entering shavasana, I realized how childishly I was responding. I reminded myself that Yoga is intended for exploration. Plenty of instructors encouraged this in other classes, telling us that we could try and fail at a new posture, or do a different pose as needed. If this is a practice grounded in exploration, then why did it matter if I fell or did the wrong pose?

Further, I’d let the teacher’s words ruin my focus to a point where I just wanted to leave the class and bow my head in self-pity. Yes, I was embarrassed, but that didn’t mean I had to let this incident spoil the rest of the class.

The way I saw it, I had 2 options: I could be passive aggressive, not thank the teacher and never take his class again. Or I could let it go, thank him and come back (hell, maybe I’d even learn how to do an actual tripod headstand).

I chose the later… it seemed like the grown up thing to do.

Letting it go also silenced that inner critic, the voice that chimes right in when I’m not perfect. Because, really, I don’t want to devote my time to that sort of self-deprecating talk anyway. There are way too many conversations with real people just waiting to happen–and they are much more worth having.

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