That's NOT Me!

To many good and great things in life, I tend to say, “That’s not me!”

I don’t go to manicure salons.

That’s not me.

I don’t have girls nights out.

That’s not me.

I don’t wear red lipstick.

I don’t go to school social gatherings.

No Dr. Seuss-themed posters in my classroom. No yoga studios. No housewives of Beverly Hills.

That’s not me!

“That’s not me!” has become quite convenient to eliminate things I have to participate in, places to go to, people to meet.

I’ve been living 30 min from New York for more than ten years, and I’ve never been to a Broadway show. While many times it was all due to work and day-to-day routines, the real reason for not doing it was “That’s not me!” attitude.

I couldn’t imagine myself doing things that seem so simple, and yet they were scary because you need to raise your butt from the couch, get into the car, and do it for goodness sake. I would always find “better” things to do: laundry, cleaning, organizing my school stuff, grading, planning, complaining, and being lost in social media.

I realized, “That’s not me!” has become my enemy, my fake friend who wants to keep me away from real joy in life, from stepping outside of the comfort zone.

I felt comfortable and confident in my “That’s not me” boring reality, and I thought I was serious about life while others have nothing better to do but waste their time on being somewhere different and doing something out of the ordinary.

Well, I had to ditch “That’s not me!” cover once I hit the wall, and I started struggling with finding strength and energy to do my job and just being a happy person.

It became apparent that things according to the schedule were killing me, and the weekend spent on laundry and cleaning was a waste of time. I was neither happy about the clean bathrooms nor excited about the completed lesson plans for the week of school.

I just felt I couldn’t do it anymore, and I needed some fresh air in my reality.

How do you break away from “That’s not me!” attitude?

Well, it’s simple. It would be best if you started doing uncomfortable things, not ordinary to you things, go to the places where you never expect yourself to be and try something you would never ever think of doing before.

One of those things I started doing was yoga.

It felt entirely fake at first.

I was sarcastic about my choosing the yoga app, buying a yoga mat, changing into yoga pants. I laughed, trying to do the tree pose and looked around to see if my husband was there to witness my awkwardness. But I persisted.

I put the reminder on my phone to bug me about the next yoga workout. I followed instructions, tried to breathe and catch the inkling of me liking what I was doing.

There is some extraordinary power in DOING things.

Doing things reprogram our mind and body, and we no longer feel like purple cows taking on a new project and routines. Most importantly, this feels liberating and energizing.

So why not continue doing what is so not natural to us as we think and trust that “out-of-the-ordinary” will become ordinary.

By the way, the Yoga app I was talking about is called YOGA FOR BEGINNERS.