„Embrace struggle. While almost all yogis struggle with the poses, the struggle is meant to be a teacher. Wherever you meet your challenge is where your yoga begins.“

(Kino McGregor)

This is not only true when it comes to yoga, but exactly the same off the mat. When accepting this while practicing, the next level is to integrate this approach – or is it an attitude? – into the rest of our lives. 

My call was yesterday. Early morning, my home office desk packed with two laptops and two mobiles and I put my cup filled with hot lemon water on the desk. You guess right…. somehow my hand sticked to that cup when I turned…. yup, my work laptop received a hot bath, while everything else just got a bit wet. I stayed surprisingly calm, but hesitated slightly what to rescue first. It was a disaster. The entire desk turned into a pool. After drying everything, it didn’t seem to be too bad, all was working. Well, for 5 minutes. The screen started flickering and boom, dead. My day packed with meetings and no work emails or work chat on my mobile. I couldn’t tell anyone. Baaam.

IT wasn’t much of a help, as they deal with PC, not Mac. Plus, home office doesn’t really support any quick fix here.

Embrace the struggle. What was it teaching me? That I should get my work emails on my phone? Eventually. What else? To stay calm. To figure out, what I can do, accept what I can’t. The world will continue moving anyhow. My old me would have panicked, making a huge noise, driving everyone mad…. somehow I managed to stay calm, even understanding those who could not help at all or reacted a bit shitty. Overall grateful for an idea that somehow lead to the next and the next and finally to a new laptop. 

Later in the evening, when I kind of collapsed on my sofa, I felt this internal restlessness and it took me hours to release. The effect of keeping countenance all day long. Of practicing yoga all day. Yes, yoga off the mat.

Today I laughed about it. Even though I lost many files and notices. So what. I can’t change anything about it. I’m proud that I managed this challenging situation this way. My yoga is paying off. Very grateful.