When did you last experience a difficult time? How did you get through it? I had a difficult experience recently, and I learned that tapping into my inner strength took using tools for calmness, and asking for help.
I am not always strong. There are times I feel that I just don't know how to keep going. Do you ever feel that way?
I had many grueling moments over a recent 10 day period helping my mom pack for movers, and the drive from Arizona to Florida.
Here's a moment when I lost it last week: After a 9 hour drive from El Paso to Austin, Texas as part of our trek, we visited my baby brother Matthew and had a nice dinner together. I made sure to leave by 7 pm because I knew we only had about 1 hour to get to our hotel before it got dark.
One of my biggest fears is driving at night, especially in a big city that I don't know. Guess what? Our GPS got us lost so that we ended up in an abandoned parking lot. After circling for a bit, I called the hotel to get instructions, only to find that they had canceled our reservation, even though I had called to let them know we were arriving late.
At this point I began to panic, because it was now completely dark, and I had no idea what to do. Mind you, this was after 5 days of packing, and 2 full days of driving. I was exhausted and scared. I wanted to crawl up into a ball and give up.
Fortunately, my mom kept me calm, and my husband guided me to another nearby hotel by phone. We got some sleep and kept going 2 more long days to get home: through some heavy traffic construction areas, and a time we thought we were going to run out of gas looking for diesel fuel.
Here's what I learned: we can do hard things when we need to. For me, remembering the WHY of why we were working so hard, and pausing to use my yoga breath helped. I'm rested and doing fine now, and my mom is beginning to settle into her new home.
If you want to practice yoga with me to build inner strength, I provide many yoga options, includinggroup classes or 1-on-1 sessions via Zoom or in-person, and video recordings.