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Grace during transitions

Transitions are hard.  And often times feel awkward.

Between meetings at work, where one meeting ends at 10AM and the next one begins at 10AM and you find yourself rushing from one meeting to the next, without any time to prepare.

When a project at work fails.  And you have to tell your boss what happened before starting on the next one.

When you lose your job and you have to find a new one, with limited time and money on your hands.

And in yoga, when it’s halfway through class, and the tough postures are starting.  The instructor calls out one tough pose, then another, then another.  Meanwhile, you’re exhausted and can’t imagine being graceful for one more second.

In life, we often get wrapped up in these endpoints.  We want to get deeper into poses, do well on our presentations, ace our interviews, move on to the next project, or get funding four our company.  And we tend to focus so much on the endpoints that we forget the importance of the process.  Of what we can learn from our experiences.  What we can take with us.  And how gracefully we can move between the endpoints.

Sure, periods of transition always carry with them a fear of the unknown.  But they also provide opportunity.  To do something you’ve never done before.  To find comfort trying something you’ve never tried before.  To learn.  To find balance and composure.  To fail gracefully and refocus your compass and radar to get closer to the right path.

Every big innovation that’s ever existed at some point hadn’t been done before.  Almost every best-seller came after 5 books that never made it big.  And almost every great yoga instructor spent time playing with awkward transitions.   But the people who found success failed often, focused more on the process than the outcome and learned to have grace when transitioning.

So it would seem to me grace during difficult and awkward transitions is one very important step to success.

Just a thought.

Tags: yoga