Inner Best Friend

Happy Monday! 

I hope you had a great weekend. Tj got home just in time for dinner Sunday night and it's nice to have him back :) I made a lot of food, trying to get ready for the upcoming week. Tj also specifically requested some white food so I made him shepherd's pie and grilled cheese hahaha. I also made a delicious fruit salad and banana bread mmmm.

I feel like I went to the grocery store so many times this weekend. Seriously, it was a weekend of doing nothing and yet I got so many steps in every day. I did a lot of walking and that means a lot of listening to podcasts. I go through phases where I only want to listen to music, and then I'll only want audiobooks, and right now I only want to listen to podcasts. I listened to an Oprah podcast about  Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) - did you know he played for the CFL?! He got cut.

And then I listened to a very powerful podcast by Yoga Girl, Rachel Brathen.

I'm pretty sure I've written about meeting Yoga Girl before, but I've not sure if I told the full story.

Back in 2015, it was the middle of summer and I had been living in London for about a month. I had my first job interview, and I was nervous and it was hot out, and there was a tube strike (London subway). I decided to walk to my interview, and then afterwards I was going to walk to an Anthropologie store where Yoga Girl was having a book signing and then walk home.

The interview was a bomb. I had to do an analyst Excel test before the interview, and I was out of practice and couldn't remember anything. Then, the interview was only 5 questions. No 'Tell us about yourself', or 'what is your greatest strength. Just straight into the questions and that was it. I left feeling super bummed. I knew I didn't get the job.

I'm sure I could've taken buses, but I think when I looked it up it was just as long to walk to the Yoga Girl book signing after the interview. I had been following Yoga Girl on Instagram for some time, and I loved her pretty pictures of her doing difficult yoga poses in cool places. But I really loved her captions. She was always honest and raw and would write long posts about whatever she was thinking or feeling in the moment.

By the time I made it to the book signing I was hot and sweaty and uncomfortable in my interview clothes. And there was Yoga Girl, super tall and wearing super comfy looking clothes and she just seemed so calm.  My bad mood went away because it was like when I met her I realized that that wasn't the job for me and who cares. I shouldn't be upset about something that wasn't right for me. I was a lot lighter on my walk home after the book signing, although my phone died and I had to keep stopping in Starbucks to use their wifi and my iPad to see where I was and make sure I was still going in the right direction haha. Eventually I made it back home.

Anyways, a week later I got the call that I officially didn't get the job. But I wasn't that upset. And that same day Yoga Girl posted the photo below, with the caption "Every time you think you are being rejected from something good, you are actually being redirected to something better. Trust the process. These twist and turns are taking you to all the places you need to go."

It's like she was speaking directly to me!!!!!!! How did she know!? I've always felt such a special bond with this stranger on Instagram since then. 

By that time, I already had my next interview lined up for the job I DID get - and it was a better fit, paid a lot more, and was in a better location!

Back to this weekend and the podcast. Yoga Girl has a weekly podcast called From the heart: Conversations with Yoga Girl. Over the past few weeks, she has been talking about the yoga teacher training they are doing at her yoga studio in Aruba, and how special the group of women in this session are.

So this podcast was part 1 of all 50+ women sharing as part of their yoga teacher training. They all went around in a circle and said something that their inner critic says to them. You're not good enough, or smart enough, or why me. And then they had to say something their inner best friend would say to them. A lot of the women were emotional or cried a little, but it was very special to hear them share and be vulnerable out loud, and hear them lift one another up. 

The point is that can be so hard on ourselves. Our inner voice can be so mean! Hence your inner critic. We would never talk to another person that way! So when you are feeling hard on yourself, or unmotivated, or whatever - if your inner critic is taking over, you need to shut that biatch up and think how would you speak to your best friend? What would you tell your best friend if she said she didn't feel good enough or strong enough, or felt ugly or was putting herself down?

Sometimes these lessons pop up when we need them. This is another good reminder from Yoga Girl that I thought I'd share with you today, in case it's something you needed to see!

You can find the podcast episode here. 

I hope that's a bit of positivity for a Monday morning! Have a great week :)