When something keeps showing up, pay attention

    I remember the specific yoga class I was in 4 years ago, when I first got it. Not a perfectly balanced tree pose or my first headstand because those didn't come until many years later. I was in pigeon, my now favorite yoga pose, and got this intense bolt of connection. Connection to myself. It was the first time that my mind and body caught up and were in the same time zone as each other.  Everything that I had been separately thinking and feeling were now here...in the present moment, staring me in the face as if to say "We've been waiting for you."
   Previous to this class, I was in autopilot. I routinely went through the motions of my days, ignoring the messages my heart was whispering. It told me that I was not in the place I was meant to be in. It told me that it wasn't in the cards for me to feel unhappy everyday. It told me that there was something greater, bigger than myself that I was meant to discover and share. But like any fear driven, confused and exhausted workaholic, I ignored it. 
    These messages had been coming in whispers for a long time and like that squeaky sound your brakes keep making in your car that you keep ignoring, you can only play deaf for so long before you are careening down a hill at speeds faster than you are comfortable with, with no way of stopping. It gets louder and louder until there is no ignoring...there is only clarity.
    That was the moment that I got honest with myself.  I knew then that there was no turning back.  As Maya Angelou said in one of my favorite quotes "When you know better, you do better."  Once your message moves from a whisper to a scream, the only direction to go is forward.
    The details of my turning point are not as important as the turning point itself. My thoughts here are simple ones. When you hear those whispers...those tugs at your heart, that unease in your gut...tune in. Tune in and be honest with what you are feeling. Give it a name. Give it multiple names. Then try to dig deeper to figure out WHY you are feeling this way. Is this surface feeling masking something bigger? Ask yourself WHAT it is trying to tell you? Only then can you get honest and attempt to right your course. 
    It may feel daunting, but I promise you this; if where you are is not healthy and not where you want to be, you owe it to yourself to start constructing a better future. Everything happens FOR you, not TO you. This is just an unexpected turn. You are strong, you are smart and you are worth all of the grand possibilities life has to offer!