Owning Your Personal Path to Thrive

We all know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. As we start on our paths to become Yoga Health Coaches, we are put in a community and given systems that drop us onto an efficient and straight path to thrive. However, sometimes our unique personal life conditions will drop obstacles into our straight path. As that happens, we must decide whether it’s best to work through or around the obstacle, using inner guidance as to which way is safest. Some meandering and pitstops off the straight path may be needed to find a more stable, effective, and therefore impactful path.

Being a part of the YHC community allows us to witness and be a part of all different kinds of paths as we discover our own. We all came to this community with our own unique histories and talents. Most of us probably came to this community for similar reasons, but because we all have different starting points and life situations, the path will look different for all of us. Some who are here are already wellness pros, some are looking to become just that, while others are somewhere in the middle. It’s these different levels of experiences that make the community so dynamic and rich with knowledge.

While we all are learning and growing through our unique struggles to become thriving Yoga Health Coaches, it’s important we own our path, however it ends up looking. It’s easy to get caught up in the celebration of those on a more straight, stable, and quick path. Though we are always joyous over the success of our community members, it can also cause self-doubt and shame to those of us on a more meandering path with pit stops. If that last sentence resonates with you, I want to share a graphic to represent an example of what the path might look like.

The graphic above represents my personal meandering YHC path that started over two years ago, but I’m sure there are many of you with similar, yet different meandering paths. Just insert your personal BIG life event that upset the straight path and follow where you have been led since then. Over two years after starting on a solid and straight path I am still not to the “End Here” point that I hoped to be thriving in last year, and I’m finally feeling okay about it. When I was in the beginning of the certification process, that BIG life stuff happened. I changed my career of 14+ years, left my marriage, and the moved out of the home that we had put so much time, love, and energy into for 10+ years. Since those were all my decisions, I had no idea of the intense emotional obstacles that would be dropped on my path as a result. As I was shaken off the straight path, I was filled with doubt and self judgement. Once I was overtaken by those low vibrating emotions, I veered even deeper off the path and took a pit stop there for a while.

Now as I tell you this, I’m not trying to give anyone permission to meander off their path to take a long pit stop unnecessarily! That pit stop was not a good place to be in that moment. However, since I’ve left it and got back on the path, I find it important to acknowledge that I was there. Taking ownership of those pit stops on my path is easier in hindsight, as I now see how it was necessary to find more solid ground to walk on. So, if you want to meander off the path, try not to by reorienting toward your reason for being on the path in the first place. If you’ve already meandered off of it, get curious about what you need to do to stabilize and get back on the path. How did I get back on the path? I found that there are four key factors that helped me get back on and stay on the path. The first three are also starred on the graphic above.

Have an accountability partner.

Not only is this one of the action steps of the certification process, but it is also so important in the event that obstacles are presented in your path. While on a straight and stable path, our Accountability Partners are friends with a common vision that we can bounce ideas and dreams off of, they can also be the rope ladder that pulls us out of the deep whole of our pit stop. And we can also be the same for them! Without my accountability partner, I may have created a comfortable home in my pit stop off the path. Though it might have been comfortable for a bit, I knew it wouldn’t lead to thrive.

Live the habits.

I know this seems so obvious, but whether you are veering off the path now, or have at other times in your life, you know what I mean. As we are off the straight path and in our pit stops trying to climb out, it becomes easy to trade good habits for lesser “quick fixes” to get by. That leads us even deeper into the pit stop. My accountability partner was the one to remind me that I need to be practicing the habits in order to feel greater stability. While she didn’t exactly say that, she would consistently bring my focus to Easeful Living. It was through that reminder where I eventually realized that I needed to bring back certain habits that I’d lost in to feel easeful in my life and closer to thrive.

Be part of a community that inspires you on the right path.

Once again, this may seem obvious. Especially since this is part of the YHC mission of building these dynamic communities! However, when we are so far off the path, it is easy to forget. When we aren’t connected to what inspires us, it keeps our thoughts and actions at a lower vibration, grounding us deeper into our pit stop of choice. As I left my pit stop to get back on the straight path, I realized that I needed to be connected to a community for support and inspiration. I wanted this to be the YHC community, but by the time I realized that, my time in the community had expired. I knew I wanted to get back in, so once again my accountability partner helped me as she told me to look into the Paths to Leadership. And here I am!

Own your path.

Now that I am on the path once again, it’s easy to look back and own everything that happened in veering off of it. While I could hold on to the judgement and disappointment in the time spent off the path, I know that these pit stops were there to give me more solid ground and make me a stronger and more impactful coach. If I just plowed through on the straight path with all the obstacles, I would have missed some key lessons needed from meandering into the pit stops. I needed this personal experience of how to pull myself back onto a stable path so that I can help others do the same. I joke now that it was my “regression to progression” path.
Take a moment to acknowledge your two points: where you were when you decided to become a Yoga Health Coach, and where you are now? What is your big “why” that keeps you going? What has your path looked like, and does it feel stable? While you can’t predict the future, what can you do now to ensure what lies ahead keeps you stable and going in the right direction?
Wherever your path has taken you so far and wherever you have yet to go, own it. It is your unique path, no matter how meandering with pit stops. You can trust that it will lead to a bigger impact and your deepest thriving life.