How do you choose to show up and Why?

How do you choose to show up and why? Who or what are you devoted to? What’s your reasoning behind the choices that you make? Before I start my yoga practice I always tune in to these questions. Why am I showing up? Who am I showing up for? Why did I choose to come to the mat today? Sometimes my reason is simple. I am showing up to the mat because my back hurts and I need to move my body. Other times my reasons stretch far deeper and I’m showing up to remember what it feels like to feel alive in my body. We all go through moments where we are stuck in our heads, worrying about the next thing, and navigating life’s demands. Life does not come without challenge and we all need something we can lean into when the times get tough. However, these questions impact far beyond the yoga mat for me.

Why do you choose to show up and why? Why do you choose to get out of bed in the morning? Why do you choose the morning beverage that you drink? Why do you make your bed or leave it messy? Why do you work in the profession you are in? Why do you wear the clothes that you wear? Why do you eat the food that you eat? What’s your reason why? Every choice we make greatly impacts the next one. I chose to stay up way to late to start writing this prompt and therefore I also chose to snooze my alarm when I needed to rise up for work the next morning. I chose to wear baggy, loose pants because I was tired and didn’t feel like squeezing myself into a pair of jeans. I chose coffee… well.. because I like coffee. Most importantly, why did I choose to show up today over all? Why am I here? I could have chose to sleep in. Stay in bed. Disconnect from the world. I could choose to ingest plant medicine, turn on Netflix and let me responsibilities float out the window. I choose to show up in the ways that I do because I know what it’s like to idle at zero. I know what it’s like to waste day in and day out by numbing myself, checking out, and distracting myself with sex, drugs, and mindless activities. I once let life make the decisions for me and when I didn’t like the way it went, who was responsible for it? Me.

Every day is a new opportunity. There are 24 hours in the day. When you add 2+4, it equals 6. Six, in some numerology translation has been giving the meaning of “new beginnings”. So, to me, every day is a new beginning. A clean slate. A chance to make better and bigger choices. During the time of my life that I spent “checked out”, I reaped consequences that still affect me 5 years later. I’m still repairing and rebuilding things that were dismantled and broken. I’m still returning back to my integrity over and over and being reminded that it was never anything outside of myself that made me choose the things I was choosing. It is always within me. When I was choosing that life, I lost sense of what my “why” was. Why do I choose to show up? Why am I alive? Why do I have goals? I thought for a while that I didn’t matter. If you read my bio, you have learned of the early days of my self esteem, sometimes that old belief system will surface it’s way up. It’s not because we haven’t truly done the work, it’s just the belief pattern we work with from time to time. It invites us to remember the practiced we learned and re-apply them again and again. When we forget our "why” those fearful, insecure voices and feelings can take over the mind and body. Add that with substance abuse and it’s a painful cycle to go through or witness another go through. It wasn’t until I hit my, “rock bottom” that life had to remind me what my “why” was. Remember, I was letting life decide everything for me at that point. When you aimlessly let life lead without direction, discipline and boundaries, you can be lead down some pretty rocky pathways. However, when you remember your why and you CHOOSE to make decisions that support that, then life’s paths begins to shift because now you’re actively engaging in the making of your own destiny. We often think of destiny as something that sums up the ending of our lives, but we are living our destiny every single day. We imagine that we have our whole lives to fulfil our destiny, but we only live one day at a time. What does your destiny look like at the end of the day when you’ve laid your head on the pillow before sleep? What’s your daily destiny and how do you contribute to it? Why do you contribute to it? Who are you contributing to it for? Is it for you? Your children? Your family? Your dreams? Your clients? Why are you showing up?

The sequence of a yoga practice often reflects the sequence of a story line. We have a beginning, a middle, an end. A start, a rise, a peak, a descend, and an end. Just like our 24 hour day, and just like our the span of our individual lives. In yoga, a sequence is typically ended in shavasana, “corpse pose”, it is a representation of death. Yogis have practiced this asana for centuries in order to prepare for death, or for the end of their legacy/destiny. In my opinion, when we lay down at the end of the day and prepare to go to sleep, our 24 hour, new beginning is coming in to corpse pose and preparing us for the next new beginning. How does your daily destiny feel at the end of the night? When you’re reflecting on your day, how do you feel about the choices you made? We cannot be in control of that which is outside of us. We do not always have the upperhand in the cards we have been dealt in our lives or even in our day. Sometimes, you’ll wake up to a broken coffee pot or a tree limb on your car, how are you going to navigate these things? What choices will you make to support yourself when outside circumstances throw you curve balls? Why are you making those choices? What’s the outcome you are trying for? Can you observe these questions and answers without judgment on yourself? Every answer and realization that comes up is merely a teacher, not a standard in which to shame yourself for if you’re not meeting it.

We are not in control of everything. We cannot be. We can’t control the weather, other people, certain circumstances or unpredicted changes, but what we can control is our mindset and actions. There’s no puppet master pulling strings on your arms making you choose to sabotage yourself or support yourself. We are not helpless to our own choosing. How are you showing up when life gets tough? Are you happy with the way you’re living? What gradual changes can you make to support the life you want to live? Things do not shift overnight when we decide to make a change. It happens in little, baby steps. First we crawl, next we decide to stand.. and THEN we do it. It might be wobbly, you might fall down at first, but it’s through the fall and rise again that we learn better. We stand stronger, we discern wiser. Little by Little, gradual change occurs and life begins to reflect the choices you made.

I didn’t rebuild my life the first day I chose to “better” myself. Life did not become instantly easier and blissful. There are still days where I question my “why” and purpose, 5 years later. Sometimes, I remember how easy the choice is to “check out”, but the consequences of that choice are much harder to live with. Every day in some sort of way, I choose to show up to better my life. Whether that be by choosing to practice movement and meditation, nourishing my body with healthy food, or by choosing to turn the phone off and go play in the park. This is just a tiny glimpse of some of the ways I choose to show up for me. Other ways can look like, observing my bank account and managing my expenses, writing out my goals and desires for my life to simply be reminded, journaling my thoughts, listening to an informative podcast, or cleaning out a drawer in my nightstand. These small choices make great impact on the rest of my life. Every day, I choose to tune in to what my body and spirit needs and I do my best to support myself in those ways. Simply setting my best intention and meeting that in the smallest ways possible when I don’t have the space to honor that in larger ways is more than enough. It doesn’t have to be grand to make an impact. It only takes one match to make an explosion, it only takes one choice to change everything.

What will you choose today? Why do you choose it? Who are you showing up for? Are you showing up? How are you making the most out of every opportunity handed to you? You decide. It’s all up to you. Little by Little, you’ll find yourself there. Just keep choosing you.

Thanks for reading.

Love,

Kala