May Your Dreams Be Bigger Than Your Fears!

At the completion of hosting my first retreat, I was kindly handed a journal by one of the attendees that said “May Your Dreams Be Bigger Than Your Fears.” The message touched my heart and evoked me to reflect on the scary journey that brought me to Tulum, Mexico leading a yoga retreat. (By the way, I love the fact that I am always learning from my students.) My journey was scary and the one that follows may be scary too, but I feel it is crucial to face these fears so that you can be happy, healthy and whole.
My journey to yoga was needed. My journey to becoming a yoga teacher saved my life. Yoga became my coping mechanism while completing my Masters in Business while working full-time and putting my husband through college. I needed all the yoga I could squeeze in a day. A few years later, it gave me the strength to leave a job, which was impacting my physical and mental health (This is a long story that I hope to be able to share with you one day!). It took me months to make the decision to leave. At the age of 27, I was at the top of my career, I had great benefits, a great salary and I had a great team working for me. I felt like I was living the American Dream and everything I worked for in college, but it was a façade for what was truly going on in my mind and body.
I needed to face my fears and jump full force. I left my job with no real plan, except to change my life. My journey started by working as a marketing and business consultant for area businesses. I loved helping my favorite local businesses thrive and I felt like I was making a difference. While doing consulting work, I was teaching yoga part-time. As my popularity as a teacher grew, my requests to teach started to overwhelm my schedule and I felt torn between teaching yoga and consulting. I decided that I needed to focus my energy in one direction to be truly successful. This was another scary decision!
The girl with the MBA who always wanted to thrive in the business world was choosing to be a yoga teacher. This was scary stuff!! However, I knew that I would use all those years of education to be a better yoga teacher as well as a better business minded yogi. It is amazing how both worlds began to melt together. I began to realize that this, yoga, could become a career that I loved and could be successful at. It was scary planning workshops, networking with big name yogis like Sadie Nardini, and then being on her TV show and now helping her with her marketing efforts, teaching at large charity events, such as Musikfest and then eventually hosting retreats. Then, I realized only the dreams worth reaching for were the scary ones. I love where this scary journey has taken me and I cannot wait to see where it will lead me in 2013.
What are your fears? What is holding you back from moving towards your dreams and away from your fears? Are you in career you hate or is not helping you be the best you can be? Are you in relationship that takes more from you than you are receiving? Is this relationship holding you back from achieving your goals? Where do you want to go in your life and who do you want by your side? Stopping to reflect on the fears you have already overcome throughout the years will help give you the strength to move forward and empower you to accomplish your dreams. No dream is too big! The sooner you understand that, the quicker your dreams will come true. I wish you a life full of fears, it definitely makes life interesting, and dreams so big that nothing will get in your way of reaching them.
XO