May 13, 2025 • 31 mins
Today’s episode is a love letter to anyone who feels like they are fumbling and stumbling their way through something right now. Whether it’s work or working out or parenting or creativity, if you feel like a beginner or like you don’t know exactly what to do next, you’re normal, you’re doing great, and this episode is for you.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
Follow Ally on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allyfallon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write. All the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You've got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cold it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about fumbling your way through things. This is something that
has come up for me so many times in the
past couple of days and weeks and even months, and
(00:45):
it's something I wanted to extrapolate from my own story
and my own life and also just offer up to
you as an invitation if it feels like it fits
for you. And so I wanted to share a little
bit about why I've been thinking about this and what
it's meant for me to see my life through this
new kind of lens. And if you're someone who is
very type A, or you're someone who has been perfectionist
(01:08):
in the past or still is a perfectionist, or if
you're someone who has notoriously just been very hard on yourself,
which I think is so many of us. Then I
think this message is really going to speak to you,
and it might actually seem kind of basic at its core.
But what I want to do is invite you into
this same process that I'm in, of learning the discipline
(01:29):
of fumbling our way through things, of being willing to
try something when you really aren't yet that good at it,
when you don't know exactly what you're doing, when you
aren't sure what the next right step is to take,
and yet you have to take a step, and so
you just take a step that may or may not
be the quote unquote right step, and taking the pressure
(01:49):
away from needing to know the next right step, just
being willing to exist and try and put your neck
out there and put your heart out there and take
a chance on something. So after you listen to the
episode of this is something that resonates with you, that
speaks to you. Come find me on Instagram. Tell me
your story. I'm at Ali Fallon on Instagram. Tell me
(02:10):
your story, tell me what you're going through, tell me
how you've applied this to your life, because, as you'll
see after listening to today's episode, this applies in a
big big way to my life right now, and I
would just love to connect with you on that front. Okay,
So the big announcement that I need to make that
I've already made on Instagram, so maybe you've seen it there.
But the announcement is that, after months and months of privately, secretly,
(02:35):
somewhat secretly training to become a yoga teacher, I am
officially starting to teach classes at a studio called Hot
Yoga of East Nashville, which, serendipitously, or maybe not so serendipitously,
I don't know, is the studio where I started my
yoga journey many many years ago. In twenty fifteen, I
stumbled down the street in my neighborhood to the first
(02:56):
location of Hot Yoga East Nashville and took my very
first Hot Yoga class, probably my very first yoga class.
I had taken yoga before, not even taken yoga. I
had practiced yoga before. Do you remember the P ninety
X yoga that was like ninety minutes long. I had
done that P ninety X yoga before, and I had,
you know, like learned some yoga pastures and some yoga moves,
(03:18):
as I would have said, at the time, but I
had never gone to a studio and taken an actual
class from an actual teacher, and I knew I really
wanted to get in shape. This studio was right down
the street from my house. It was low hanging fruit,
it was extremely easy. But what I didn't know when
I walked into the studio that first day and just
basically fumbled my way struggled my way through that very
(03:39):
first hot class. The instructor this is a side note,
but when I sign up for the class and you know,
checked in at the front desk, the instructor was like,
just so you know, your goal in this first class
is just to stay in the room because the room
is heated to one hundred and two three four degrees
somewhere in that range, and you're doing all these yoga
pastures while in that heat, and especially if your body's
(03:59):
not used to it, it can feel really disorienting and
sometimes you can get dizzy or lightheaded. And so your
goal in that first class is just to stay in
the room, like, don't leave the room. If you get
overwhelmed by the heat, then sit down on your mat
or lay down flat on your back and find a
minute to reconnect with your breath and then rejoin the
postures when you're able. And so, as I'm fumbling my
(04:20):
way through that first class at Hot Yoga East Nashville,
I had no idea that my world, my life as
I knew it, was about to completely crumble. And to me,
it's no coincidence at all that I started going to
yoga at the same time in my life that my
life was about to explode and fall apart. I don't
think of the synchronicity as being just that these two
(04:42):
things happened at the same time, and so I had
the support of yoga to carry me through that difficult time.
I actually think of it as even more synchronous than that,
in that the yoga itself is what put me in
touch with what was already going on in my life
that I couldn't see before. And once I began to
do yoga and connect with my breath and connect with
my body and be embodied, you know, be inside of
(05:03):
my own skin and feel what I was feeling, I
could no longer ignore the situation that I was in,
and it opened my eyes and opened my awareness in
a way where you know, yes, a few weeks later
did I discover information that changed the way that I
saw my marriage. Sure, but I don't think I would
have been able to discover that information. I don't think
I was ready for that information until I had this
(05:27):
practice in place of yoga. And so this is twenty fifteen.
I stumble into this yoga studio in September. November nineteenth
is the day that my life imploded on itself. And
you know, of course, you know the story now if
you've been here a while, which is that my life
on the other side of that explosion or implosion is stronger, better,
richer in all the measurable ways that you could imagine.
(05:49):
And I'm more connected to myself, and you know, I
have just deeper, a deeper partnership, a deeper connection to self.
I have these two beautiful kids who have come out
of this. I have this wonderful relationship with Matt. So
many good things have come out of that, you know,
fall apart, and I was able, thanks to yoga and
thanks to staying connected to myself and remaining embodied, I
(06:09):
was able to really rebuild my life from the ground
up on a very very sturdy foundation. So I owe
a great debt of gratitude to yoga and to my
practice of yoga. And I have since then been able
to practice at a lot of different studios around the world,
actually because I did a ton of travel for work
and would practice, you know, all over the place wherever
I would go. And then I moved to California for
(06:31):
a short bit, so I practiced there. Actually, Funnily enough,
I practiced in California with Dylan and Nicki, who originally
I met at Hot Yoga East. We each moved to
California at very similar times, and they opened a studio
in California with another couple, Patrick and I'm forgetting right
now Patrick's wife's name, but the two couples opened to
(06:53):
the studio together, and Patrick and his wife had come
from Seattle area, and so I got to train with
them a little bit too, and then came back to
Nashville and started taking classes at Ola Yoga. And so
I've gotten to practice with lots of different instructors and
in lots of different places, and also taken some time
to develop my own personal practice. But then when the
pandemic happened, when the world shut down in la and
(07:17):
life changed so drastically, and I was also, you know,
four or five months pregnant in March when the shutdown happened.
Nella was born in July, so I guess that would
have been five or six months pregnant in March when
the world shut down. I did keep walking, but I
didn't keep practicing yoga for very long. At one point,
I think I registered for the Gaya subscription and started
(07:39):
taking classes via the Gaya platform, and I would put
the you know instructor on my TV in my living
room and practice by myself. But there was something missing
in that for me. The doing the practice at home,
which can be an amazing supplement and it also can
you know, drive your practice at a studio, but for me,
at least practicing alone in my own home was not
something that was really all that interesting to me. I
(08:01):
just lost interests. I was like, for me, it was
about the community and coming together and practicing with other
people and with an instructor, and having that shared energy
in the space, and having the face to face interaction
and communication with a teacher and getting that real time feedback.
All of that was so important to my practice that
I just fell off the map. In about mid twenty
(08:23):
twenty before Nella was born, I just stopped practicing yoga
altogether and then didn't really come back to yoga. I
did when I moved to Nashville at the end of
twenty twenty started practicing some at Ola yoga. I got
pregnant with Charlie shortly after that, and you know, through
that pregnancy, I didn't practice much yoga either. I was
out of shape. I was just kind of, you know,
(08:44):
in survival mode. I was just trying to fumble my
way through life, speaking of the theme of this podcast episode.
And so I was fumbling my way in that season
of life and didn't really pick back up on my
yoga practice full time until very recently, when I was
researching some studios in the area that might be offering
a teacher training because I was really interested in getting
(09:05):
my teacher certification. And I thought, Okay, I'm stepping back
from my coaching practice. I'm clearing a little bit of
space to do something that might be nurturing for me.
What could that look like? And I knew teacher training
was on the list, but even as I was researching
the teacher trainings, I was a little bit like, I
am not sure if there's going to be enough space
for this. I'm not sure if I'm going to be
able to find something that works or that fits my
(09:26):
schedule or you know whatever. I'm a very busy person.
I've got two little kids who need a lot from me.
The whole point in stepping back from coaching was to
spend more time with them, and so I can't really
afford to be trapesing off to Costa Rica for a
month at a time or anything like that. So some
of the trainings that I looked at were just an
automatic no. Because of that, I had started looking at
(09:47):
trainings in Ashville and it was like, oh, I can't really,
I don't have the resources right now to just pick
up my family and go to Ashville for six weeks
and train there. Although wouldn't that be lovely? But again,
it's no surprise to me that the stars aligned apps
stely perfectly, and the synchronousy worked for me. Again when
I stumbled across the teacher training at Hot Yoga of
East Nashville, and the first thing I noticed is that
(10:09):
the dates for the training were like the perfect dates
for what I needed. In fact, there were a few
weekends in January and February where I knew that there
was no way that I could be in teacher training
because I had prior commitments. And the way that the
weekend trainings were laid out in January and February literally
matched perfectly with the weekends that I was open and
(10:30):
the weekends that I was unavailable, and so that really
caught my attention. Also, you know, it was my home studio,
and over time practicing at the studio, I became friends
with Brook who's the one who started the studio, and
she's not only a good friend of mine, but also
I'm just so inspired by her and her story and
how she started the studio. And she's also from the
West Coast like I am, so there's a lot of
(10:51):
camaraderie there. I think it's incredible the way that she's
built the studio environment to have such a beautiful diversity
to it. I think a lot of times yoga, particularly
in the United States, can skew kind of like white
female and one of the things that Brooke has done
beautifully is that she has created an environment where lots
(11:12):
of different types of people feel welcome to come and practice.
And so because of that, her studio is full of
men and women it's full of lots of different body types,
it's full of lots of different skin colors, full of
lots of different faith backgrounds and religious beliefs. It's not
you know, some yoga studios, especially in California, when I
would go into yoga studios there, it was much more like,
you know, Buddhism and Hinduism are historically attached to the
(11:37):
practice of yoga, and so it's not surprising that those
two things would be attached when you walk into a
studio in certain places. And I found that to be
true oftentimes in California. But at Brooks Studio at Hot
Yoga of East Nashville, it's not really like that. It's like,
you know, come as you are, Come whoever you are,
bring yourself exactly as you are, and just come practice
(11:58):
yoga with us, and you know, get your sweat on
and detox and do what you can and lay down
when you need to lay down. And I just really
appreciate that approach. And so when I saw that, thought
the schedule for the teacher training at how Yoga East
was going to work with my schedule. Immediately texted brook
and was like, Hey, I'm thinking of doing the teacher training,
and this is just a fun story. This part of
(12:29):
the story is not necessarily connected to the message that
I want to share today, but I'll just share this
for fun. That when I texted Brooke and said, Hey, Brook,
I'm interested in doing the teacher training, she was like, oh, great,
are you going to come to Mexico or Montana? And
I was like, Mexico or Montana. I did a double
take for a second, and then I responded and said,
I don't think I'll be able to come to either
(12:50):
because of the kids. Obviously, you know, I'm pretty tied up.
I don't think I can leave for a week and
go go on a trip. And then she texted back
and was like, well, go basically read the requirements of
the training because we're going to do some training in Nashville,
but then the second half of your training will either
be in Mexico or Montana and you can pick your location.
So sure enough, I was like, oh, I didn't read
(13:12):
enough about you know what this training was going to
require of me, And I started going down the path
of like this isn't going to work. There's just no
way I could make it work. Well, then the next
morning I woke up with this still on my mind,
so I went to go look at the dates for Montana,
and I just put the dates on my calendar. In June,
Ali goes to Montana and rode in the calendar. Where
(13:33):
there's a will, there's a way. Ali goes to Montana
for teacher training. And then invited my husband to the
calendar invite and put it on our calendar and blocked
those dates, thinking like, Okay, we're just gonna see if
we can make this work. And sure enough I was
able to make it work. And Matt, being the amazingly
supportive husband that he is, is more than willing to
jump in and cover from me while I'm gone, which
(13:54):
is no, that's no small deal. It's different if you
know a spouse one of us is going away on
a work to where we're gonna make money for the family,
You know, to contribute to have the other person cover
for seven whole days while your spouse is gone. We
have done that before in our relationship. I don't think
either of us have ever left for seven days. Actually
that's a really long time, but for something that's just
(14:14):
for fun or for your own kind of nourishment or edification,
our kids are just at an age where it's really
challenging to do that. I'm not saying you can't, and
plenty of couples do, but I knew that it was
a big ask. Let's just say it that way. I
knew I was asking a lot of him to say, Hey,
can I go out of town for seven days and
can you cover the kids while I'm gone and also work,
by the way, you know, and hold on your regular job.
(14:36):
I say that not because I'm the mom, but just
because we're two parents who have two really young kids.
So all that to say, everything came together. I've been
able to take the teacher training. I still go to
Montana in June, but I've completed enough hours that I
can actually teach, and so I start teaching at Hot
Yoga at East Nashville. By the time you hear this episode,
(14:57):
I will have already started teaching. So I'm teaching today
for the very first time as I record this, and
by the time you hear this, I will have already
taught that class. And I will be teaching every Friday
at four point thirty a community class, which means that
it's by donation only, so you don't need a membership
at the studio. You don't need to pay. It's by
donation only. So if you like to donate to Thistle Farms,
(15:18):
that's the organization that the donations will go to. But
you could also come take class for free and join
me in the studio if you are in the Nashville area.
I would love to see you there. I would love
to be in class with you. I'd love to practice
with you. I would love to share my love of
yoga with you. And yet here's the reason why I
share this long, long backstory, which is that I'm having
(15:40):
to learn to be willing to fumble my way through
this yoga instruction. Being a yoga teacher is brand new
for me. And anytime you start something that's brand new,
whether it's something like teaching yoga or something like writing
or something you know that's creative like that, or you
start a new job, or you start a new relationship,
or you start a new habit, or you start to
(16:02):
break an old pattern or break an addiction or something
like that, anytime we do something brand new in our lives.
Of course, the first couple of times that we do it,
it's not going to be clean. It's not going to
be perfect. There's not going to be an exact process
to follow, or maybe there is an exact process to follow,
but we don't really know what it is. And by
(16:23):
the way, one of the amazing things that yoga has
taught me over the years is this concept, this idea
of being an embodied person who is messy, who makes mistakes,
who not even makes mistakes is kind of a weird
way to even say it. Who tries things, who is
curious and experiments with things to see if they work.
(16:44):
That's a better way to say it than even makes mistakes,
because it's like, makes mistakes assumes that there's one right
way to do it and one wrong way to do it.
And yoga is all about experimentation. It's like, yes, there
is a posture, and we're going to teach you the
structure of the posture, and we're going to offer cues
to you to help your body move its way into
that posture. And yet every day that you show up
(17:04):
to your practice is a day where you get to
experiment and see if your body wants to move into
that shape today, and maybe today the body's like Nope,
we're not doing that today. And maybe today the body
offers you some allowances that it didn't have to offer
you yesterday. And that's why we keep showing up to
the practice, is so that we can keep experimenting and
keep trying, and keep putting one foot in front of
(17:26):
the other. And I think one of the things that
is being unraveled for me during this time is this
idea that there's one right way to do things, and
I have to figure out the right way to do them,
and then I have to execute it perfectly. So I
don't know if that is something that I was taught
I don't necessarily have a memory of being taught that,
or if that's just a way that I've learned to
(17:47):
survive in the world, if it's like a pattern that
I created in my body that was out of survival.
It's like I can come into a room, read the room.
I can tell you exactly how I'm supposed to act,
how I'm supposed to address, who I'm supposed to be,
who I'm supposed to talk to, who I'm not supposed
to talk to. Top to bottom. I can tell you
exactly how I'm supposed to be and to present myself
(18:08):
in the world. And I have worked exceedingly hard in
my life at meeting those unspoken expectations. And I guess
in certain ways, meeting those expectations has worked out for me,
And I could put that on air quotes like worked
out for me in that meeting those expectations has gotten
me a lot of external validation, a lot of praise,
(18:29):
a lot of accolades, a lot of success, a lot
of monetary success, a lot of you know, other types
of success, sort of prestige. In my small communities, I
think I have relished in the past being praised for
things like being a hard worker, being responsible, being committed,
always showing up for things, always doing my best, always,
you know, being the one that other people could count on.
(18:52):
And one of the things that I'm learning via the
teacher training, via yoga in my life and also just
in this career transition that I'm in or whatever is
happening there too, is showing me that there's so much
more to life than getting it right. There's so much
more to life than being perfect. There's so much more
to life than surveying the scene to see what other
(19:14):
people want from me and then performing to execute that
to their satisfaction. That whole song and dance is extremely
empty at the end of it, and I needed it
for a period of time, and it worked for me
for as long as it worked for me, and I
reached the end point very recently where it stopped working
(19:34):
for me, and it started to become a massive burden,
and I realized I couldn't live like that anymore, and
I needed a reset. I needed to turn over a
new leaf and to be in the world in a
different kind of way. And so this yoga teaching for me,
which I'm recording this episode, and in a couple hours,
I'll go and teach my first yoga class, and this
(19:55):
represents for me a new way of being in the world.
I've had several people reaching out and say, like, how
are you feeling about class tonight? You know, are you excited?
Are you nervous? How are you feeling? And I'm extremely nervous.
I'm actually like, I feel like a high level of
nervousness about teaching this class. And I think the reason
that I feel such a high level of nervousness is
that it's not just that this is a new thing
(20:17):
for me. Teaching yoga is, yes, but the real new
thing for me is not just teaching yoga. The real
new thing for me is being willing to go into
a space where everything is new, where I don't know
exactly what to do next, and to let it be
okay that I just feel my way through this thing.
I just fumble my way through it, and not everything
(20:38):
is going to be perfect, and I'm not always going
to get it quote unquote right, mostly because there is
no such thing as a right you know. Again, there's
postures that have certain alignments that we queue for participants
or that are cued for us in order to keep
our bodies safe in the postures that we're doing. And
(21:00):
yet it's all about experimentation. It's all about seeing, like,
what is your body going to offer you today? And
every day it might look a little different. Every day
it's going to look a little bit different. So can
you stay with your body, tune into your body, experiment, practice, play,
get curious and figure out what your body wants to
show you and what it wants to teach you in
(21:21):
this exact moment. This is such a new way of
being and of acting and of moving through the world.
It's extremely uncomfortable for me. I also recorded an episode
for the podcast earlier this morning while my kids were
still sleeping. And I want to share this because you'll
never hear what I'm about to talk about from that
podcast episode, because I have a producer named Houston, who's amazing,
(21:44):
Hi Houston, who makes me sound like it's effortless for
me to just fly through forty minutes of a podcast
episode start to finish, and like I don't fumble over
my words, and like I don't forget what I was
going to say, and like I don't have no idea
what I'm gonna say next. So thanks to Houston, you
don't have to sit there and listen to me ham
and ha. And Yet this morning's episode, partly because it
(22:07):
was five thirty in the morning when I recorded it,
and partly because there's just days like this, this morning's
episode was extremely hard for me to record, and I
had to fumble my way through the entire thing. And
I was it was a topic that I was excited
to talk about. It was something I had a lot
to say about, and yet, for reasons that are unknown
to me, I couldn't seem to get the words out.
(22:28):
And I was trying and trying and trying, and I
just couldn't get it exactly quote unquote right the way
that I wanted it to be. But at that point,
I was fifteen or twenty minutes into the episode, and
I just thought, like, am I really? Am I really
that attached to getting it perfect that I'm not even
willing to let my producer Houston, who's here to literally
help me, that's what he's here for. Am I really
(22:49):
that embarrassed to let even Houston hear me fumble with
my words or stumble over my words or struggle to
get the message out. And I keep having these moments
in my life where the mirror is being held up
for me and I'm being shown how difficult it really
is for me, and how vulnerable it feels to be
willing to try something that I don't feel one hundred
(23:11):
percent comfortable with or I don't know exactly where I'm
headed with it, and to be willing to just let
myself fumble my way through it. And yet, and yet
this is life. In fact, one of the things that
I've been spending the past couple of weeks of my
time on is getting the proper zoning and the proper
licensure to turn the addition in my mother in law's
(23:32):
house into a little homeschool space for my kids. So
my plan is to do a trial here this upcoming
fall homeschooling my two kids who are three and four,
and hopefully to invite some of their friends into the
(23:54):
mix and to homeschool the kids together in a little
like co op style homeschool. And one of the things
that I have heard myself say so often, and that
is pertinent to this conversation, is that the reason that
I want to create this education space for them is
to just give them permission to practice in play, to
give them permission to follow their own curiosity, to give
(24:16):
them permission to try stuff. And if we're going to
call it making mistakes, then yeah, to make mistakes, but
not really that, to more experiment and see what takes place.
Because learning happens when we experiment and we see what happens,
we get real time feedback on our experimentation. That's how
learning happens. And so if we see learning as that,
(24:41):
and yet we expect ourselves as adults to be people
who have it all figured out, who know what to
do next, to have the perfect strategy, who know the
perfect plan, who have read all the books, and we've
got those spreadsheets and you know, we've got everything on lockdown.
It's like, so, then are we saying that learning is
complete and that I've learned everything I need to know
and I I don't need to know anything else because
(25:01):
I've already learned. It Is that what I'm saying? Or
does it make more sense to say that even though
I'm almost forty two years old, that I'm still a
work in progress. I'm still learning, which means that it's
about experimentation. It's about trying things and getting real time
feedback and being willing to put that real time feedback
into practice to keep on coming back to myself. And
(25:24):
so this is something that I'm learning in my yoga practice.
It's something that I'm learning in my business, in my
career practice. It's something that I'm learning as a mother
as I discipline my children. It's something that I'm learning
in literally every aspect of my life. To let go
of the perfectionism, to let go of the need of
need to control everything. That's really what perfectionism is, right,
(25:45):
I Mean, that's a tangent I could go on for
a long time, but perfectionism is a need to control
your environment, to control the situation, to control even others
around you by performing for them in order to get
a reaction from them. That is how you need them
to react. That's a little complicated, but let me say
that again. Perfectionism is in some ways, or what I
(26:05):
described even a few minutes ago, that people pleasing is
almost like a way to manipulate the situation so that
you can get the reaction that you need from others
so that you can feel okay. So if I walk
into a room and I scan the room and go,
what do these people need from me? Who do they
need me to be? And then I perform to live
up to that standard that I think they're expecting of me.
The reason I'm doing that is to keep the peace
(26:28):
in the room, to keep everyone happy, to keep everyone
thinking I'm good and thinking I'm a good person, so
that I can feel good about myself. Meaning if I
believe that to be true, that I need them to
think I'm good so that I can feel good, it
means I don't actually feel good in my own body.
And so when I learn to fumble my way through life,
not only do I stop having to expend all the
(26:50):
energy and the effort of people pleasing and perfectionism and
all of that, you know, kind of garbage. But also
I come face to face with my own shame, my
own feeling of I'm not good enough unless other people
think I'm good. And so, no wonder we put this off,
and no wonder, we don't want to do it, and
no wonder we avoid this at all costs, because yeah,
(27:11):
it's super uncomfortable. To come face to face with your
own shame is what that's really called, you know, that's
what I would call. That feeling of not good enough
is shame, and to come face to face with your
own shame is an extremely uncomfortable feeling. And so no
wonder we tiptoe around it and we avoid it, and
we would rather not do that. And yet this is
(27:31):
our doorway to freedom, coming face to face with our
own shame, coming back to the body, coming back to
the self, tuning in to what's really going on, and
instead of perfecting our actions to live up to some
invisible standard that no one has even asked of us, really,
instead of doing that, giving ourselves permission to experiment, to practice,
(27:54):
to play, to fumble our way through this thing called life.
Because really, what can anyone else do but fumble their
way through life? Anybody else who thinks they have all
the answers, who thinks they've got all the hacks, who
thinks they have it figured out. Anyone else who says that,
who acts like they've got it all together and they
know what to do, is not telling the truth. They're
(28:14):
not being honest with themselves first and foremost, and they're
not being honest with you. So my invitation for you
in all of this is this, which is, what area
of your life, or maybe more than one area, do
you need to put down your perfectionism, put down your
people pleasing, put down the need to control how others
see of you, how you look, how you appear, what
(28:37):
others might think of you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
doing it perfectly, getting it right, being good? What areas
do need to put that down and instead pick up
a willingness to fumble your way through life, to practice,
to play, to experiment, to learn in real time by
the feedback that those experiments give to you. What would
(28:59):
it feel like for you to experiment with your life?
What might you try to do that you have avoided
trying to do if you were going to live your
life as an experiment, what might you allow for that
you have never allowed for? If you were going to
live your life as an experiment, an experiment of curiosity.
(29:21):
You know, I think about the kind of learning environment
that I want for my kids in that space by
my house, and I want an environment where they can
follow their curiosity, where they can see something that's interesting
to them and go, huh. I wonder what happens with
these blocks when I built them this way. I wonder
if I could turn, you know, these building materials into
(29:42):
a boat. I wonder if I dump this cup of
water upside down, what's going to happen to the water.
And they learn in real time through the feedback of
their experiments what happens when each of these things happen.
And one of the things that they learn and may
learn I hope my kids don't learn this from me
at least, but they may learn that the real time
feedback that they get is from adults who scold them
(30:05):
or shame them for spilling a cup of water or
something like that. And over time, yeah, that child would learn,
you know, making a mistake aka spilling water is not
an acceptable thing to do, and so I'm never going
to do it again. And if I spill a cup
of water, I'm going to freak out and panic, even
if there's no one else there. Then I'm a bad
person because I spilled a cup of water. But I
hope my kids don't learn that in that learning space
(30:27):
or in my home. I hope my kids learn that
they are allowed to experiment, that they're allowed to make messes,
that they're allowed to take up space, they're allowed to
just be who they are and sometimes be loud. You
may have even heard them in the background of this episode,
although probably not because Houston does such an amazing job of
editing that out. But they are in their rest time
right now, and you may have heard a bang or
(30:48):
a clang or two in the background. And if you did,
just know that we're just living in our messy existence
over here, our beautiful mess That's what we're doing over here.
We're fumbling our way through in face, figuring it out
as we go. So I invite you to give yourself
permission to fumble your way through something this week. See
how that feels, see what it brings up for you.
(31:11):
And I would love to hear from you. Come find
me on Instagram at Alifallon or send me an email
at my story at ritourstory dot com and I will
see you back here on the Write Your Story podcast
next week
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write. All the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You've got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cold it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about fumbling your way through things. This is something that
has come up for me so many times in the
past couple of days and weeks and even months, and
(00:45):
it's something I wanted to extrapolate from my own story
and my own life and also just offer up to
you as an invitation if it feels like it fits
for you. And so I wanted to share a little
bit about why I've been thinking about this and what
it's meant for me to see my life through this
new kind of lens. And if you're someone who is
very type A, or you're someone who has been perfectionist
(01:08):
in the past or still is a perfectionist, or if
you're someone who has notoriously just been very hard on yourself,
which I think is so many of us. Then I
think this message is really going to speak to you,
and it might actually seem kind of basic at its core.
But what I want to do is invite you into
this same process that I'm in, of learning the discipline
(01:29):
of fumbling our way through things, of being willing to
try something when you really aren't yet that good at it,
when you don't know exactly what you're doing, when you
aren't sure what the next right step is to take,
and yet you have to take a step, and so
you just take a step that may or may not
be the quote unquote right step, and taking the pressure
(01:49):
away from needing to know the next right step, just
being willing to exist and try and put your neck
out there and put your heart out there and take
a chance on something. So after you listen to the
episode of this is something that resonates with you, that
speaks to you. Come find me on Instagram. Tell me
your story. I'm at Ali Fallon on Instagram. Tell me
(02:10):
your story, tell me what you're going through, tell me
how you've applied this to your life, because, as you'll
see after listening to today's episode, this applies in a
big big way to my life right now, and I
would just love to connect with you on that front. Okay,
So the big announcement that I need to make that
I've already made on Instagram, so maybe you've seen it there.
But the announcement is that, after months and months of privately, secretly,
(02:35):
somewhat secretly training to become a yoga teacher, I am
officially starting to teach classes at a studio called Hot
Yoga of East Nashville, which, serendipitously, or maybe not so serendipitously,
I don't know, is the studio where I started my
yoga journey many many years ago. In twenty fifteen, I
stumbled down the street in my neighborhood to the first
(02:56):
location of Hot Yoga East Nashville and took my very
first Hot Yoga class, probably my very first yoga class.
I had taken yoga before, not even taken yoga. I
had practiced yoga before. Do you remember the P ninety
X yoga that was like ninety minutes long. I had
done that P ninety X yoga before, and I had,
you know, like learned some yoga pastures and some yoga moves,
(03:18):
as I would have said, at the time, but I
had never gone to a studio and taken an actual
class from an actual teacher, and I knew I really
wanted to get in shape. This studio was right down
the street from my house. It was low hanging fruit,
it was extremely easy. But what I didn't know when
I walked into the studio that first day and just
basically fumbled my way struggled my way through that very
(03:39):
first hot class. The instructor this is a side note,
but when I sign up for the class and you know,
checked in at the front desk, the instructor was like,
just so you know, your goal in this first class
is just to stay in the room because the room
is heated to one hundred and two three four degrees
somewhere in that range, and you're doing all these yoga
pastures while in that heat, and especially if your body's
(03:59):
not used to it, it can feel really disorienting and
sometimes you can get dizzy or lightheaded. And so your
goal in that first class is just to stay in
the room, like, don't leave the room. If you get
overwhelmed by the heat, then sit down on your mat
or lay down flat on your back and find a
minute to reconnect with your breath and then rejoin the
postures when you're able. And so, as I'm fumbling my
(04:20):
way through that first class at Hot Yoga East Nashville,
I had no idea that my world, my life as
I knew it, was about to completely crumble. And to me,
it's no coincidence at all that I started going to
yoga at the same time in my life that my
life was about to explode and fall apart. I don't
think of the synchronicity as being just that these two
(04:42):
things happened at the same time, and so I had
the support of yoga to carry me through that difficult time.
I actually think of it as even more synchronous than that,
in that the yoga itself is what put me in
touch with what was already going on in my life
that I couldn't see before. And once I began to
do yoga and connect with my breath and connect with
my body and be embodied, you know, be inside of
(05:03):
my own skin and feel what I was feeling, I
could no longer ignore the situation that I was in,
and it opened my eyes and opened my awareness in
a way where you know, yes, a few weeks later
did I discover information that changed the way that I
saw my marriage. Sure, but I don't think I would
have been able to discover that information. I don't think
I was ready for that information until I had this
(05:27):
practice in place of yoga. And so this is twenty fifteen.
I stumble into this yoga studio in September. November nineteenth
is the day that my life imploded on itself. And
you know, of course, you know the story now if
you've been here a while, which is that my life
on the other side of that explosion or implosion is stronger, better,
richer in all the measurable ways that you could imagine.
(05:49):
And I'm more connected to myself, and you know, I
have just deeper, a deeper partnership, a deeper connection to self.
I have these two beautiful kids who have come out
of this. I have this wonderful relationship with Matt. So
many good things have come out of that, you know,
fall apart, and I was able, thanks to yoga and
thanks to staying connected to myself and remaining embodied, I
(06:09):
was able to really rebuild my life from the ground
up on a very very sturdy foundation. So I owe
a great debt of gratitude to yoga and to my
practice of yoga. And I have since then been able
to practice at a lot of different studios around the world,
actually because I did a ton of travel for work
and would practice, you know, all over the place wherever
I would go. And then I moved to California for
(06:31):
a short bit, so I practiced there. Actually, Funnily enough,
I practiced in California with Dylan and Nicki, who originally
I met at Hot Yoga East. We each moved to
California at very similar times, and they opened a studio
in California with another couple, Patrick and I'm forgetting right
now Patrick's wife's name, but the two couples opened to
(06:53):
the studio together, and Patrick and his wife had come
from Seattle area, and so I got to train with
them a little bit too, and then came back to
Nashville and started taking classes at Ola Yoga. And so
I've gotten to practice with lots of different instructors and
in lots of different places, and also taken some time
to develop my own personal practice. But then when the
pandemic happened, when the world shut down in la and
(07:17):
life changed so drastically, and I was also, you know,
four or five months pregnant in March when the shutdown happened.
Nella was born in July, so I guess that would
have been five or six months pregnant in March when
the world shut down. I did keep walking, but I
didn't keep practicing yoga for very long. At one point,
I think I registered for the Gaya subscription and started
(07:39):
taking classes via the Gaya platform, and I would put
the you know instructor on my TV in my living
room and practice by myself. But there was something missing
in that for me. The doing the practice at home,
which can be an amazing supplement and it also can
you know, drive your practice at a studio, but for me,
at least practicing alone in my own home was not
something that was really all that interesting to me. I
(08:01):
just lost interests. I was like, for me, it was
about the community and coming together and practicing with other
people and with an instructor, and having that shared energy
in the space, and having the face to face interaction
and communication with a teacher and getting that real time feedback.
All of that was so important to my practice that
I just fell off the map. In about mid twenty
(08:23):
twenty before Nella was born, I just stopped practicing yoga
altogether and then didn't really come back to yoga. I
did when I moved to Nashville at the end of
twenty twenty started practicing some at Ola yoga. I got
pregnant with Charlie shortly after that, and you know, through
that pregnancy, I didn't practice much yoga either. I was
out of shape. I was just kind of, you know,
(08:44):
in survival mode. I was just trying to fumble my
way through life, speaking of the theme of this podcast episode.
And so I was fumbling my way in that season
of life and didn't really pick back up on my
yoga practice full time until very recently, when I was
researching some studios in the area that might be offering
a teacher training because I was really interested in getting
(09:05):
my teacher certification. And I thought, Okay, I'm stepping back
from my coaching practice. I'm clearing a little bit of
space to do something that might be nurturing for me.
What could that look like? And I knew teacher training
was on the list, but even as I was researching
the teacher trainings, I was a little bit like, I
am not sure if there's going to be enough space
for this. I'm not sure if I'm going to be
able to find something that works or that fits my
(09:26):
schedule or you know whatever. I'm a very busy person.
I've got two little kids who need a lot from me.
The whole point in stepping back from coaching was to
spend more time with them, and so I can't really
afford to be trapesing off to Costa Rica for a
month at a time or anything like that. So some
of the trainings that I looked at were just an
automatic no. Because of that, I had started looking at
(09:47):
trainings in Ashville and it was like, oh, I can't really,
I don't have the resources right now to just pick
up my family and go to Ashville for six weeks
and train there. Although wouldn't that be lovely? But again,
it's no surprise to me that the stars aligned apps
stely perfectly, and the synchronousy worked for me. Again when
I stumbled across the teacher training at Hot Yoga of
East Nashville, and the first thing I noticed is that
(10:09):
the dates for the training were like the perfect dates
for what I needed. In fact, there were a few
weekends in January and February where I knew that there
was no way that I could be in teacher training
because I had prior commitments. And the way that the
weekend trainings were laid out in January and February literally
matched perfectly with the weekends that I was open and
(10:30):
the weekends that I was unavailable, and so that really
caught my attention. Also, you know, it was my home studio,
and over time practicing at the studio, I became friends
with Brook who's the one who started the studio, and
she's not only a good friend of mine, but also
I'm just so inspired by her and her story and
how she started the studio. And she's also from the
West Coast like I am, so there's a lot of
(10:51):
camaraderie there. I think it's incredible the way that she's
built the studio environment to have such a beautiful diversity
to it. I think a lot of times yoga, particularly
in the United States, can skew kind of like white
female and one of the things that Brooke has done
beautifully is that she has created an environment where lots
(11:12):
of different types of people feel welcome to come and practice.
And so because of that, her studio is full of
men and women it's full of lots of different body types,
it's full of lots of different skin colors, full of
lots of different faith backgrounds and religious beliefs. It's not
you know, some yoga studios, especially in California, when I
would go into yoga studios there, it was much more like,
you know, Buddhism and Hinduism are historically attached to the
(11:37):
practice of yoga, and so it's not surprising that those
two things would be attached when you walk into a
studio in certain places. And I found that to be
true oftentimes in California. But at Brooks Studio at Hot
Yoga of East Nashville, it's not really like that. It's like,
you know, come as you are, Come whoever you are,
bring yourself exactly as you are, and just come practice
(11:58):
yoga with us, and you know, get your sweat on
and detox and do what you can and lay down
when you need to lay down. And I just really
appreciate that approach. And so when I saw that, thought
the schedule for the teacher training at how Yoga East
was going to work with my schedule. Immediately texted brook
and was like, Hey, I'm thinking of doing the teacher training,
and this is just a fun story. This part of
(12:29):
the story is not necessarily connected to the message that
I want to share today, but I'll just share this
for fun. That when I texted Brooke and said, Hey, Brook,
I'm interested in doing the teacher training, she was like, oh, great,
are you going to come to Mexico or Montana? And
I was like, Mexico or Montana. I did a double
take for a second, and then I responded and said,
I don't think I'll be able to come to either
(12:50):
because of the kids. Obviously, you know, I'm pretty tied up.
I don't think I can leave for a week and
go go on a trip. And then she texted back
and was like, well, go basically read the requirements of
the training because we're going to do some training in Nashville,
but then the second half of your training will either
be in Mexico or Montana and you can pick your location.
So sure enough, I was like, oh, I didn't read
(13:12):
enough about you know what this training was going to
require of me, And I started going down the path
of like this isn't going to work. There's just no
way I could make it work. Well, then the next
morning I woke up with this still on my mind,
so I went to go look at the dates for Montana,
and I just put the dates on my calendar. In June,
Ali goes to Montana and rode in the calendar. Where
(13:33):
there's a will, there's a way. Ali goes to Montana
for teacher training. And then invited my husband to the
calendar invite and put it on our calendar and blocked
those dates, thinking like, Okay, we're just gonna see if
we can make this work. And sure enough I was
able to make it work. And Matt, being the amazingly
supportive husband that he is, is more than willing to
jump in and cover from me while I'm gone, which
(13:54):
is no, that's no small deal. It's different if you
know a spouse one of us is going away on
a work to where we're gonna make money for the family,
You know, to contribute to have the other person cover
for seven whole days while your spouse is gone. We
have done that before in our relationship. I don't think
either of us have ever left for seven days. Actually
that's a really long time, but for something that's just
(14:14):
for fun or for your own kind of nourishment or edification,
our kids are just at an age where it's really
challenging to do that. I'm not saying you can't, and
plenty of couples do, but I knew that it was
a big ask. Let's just say it that way. I
knew I was asking a lot of him to say, Hey,
can I go out of town for seven days and
can you cover the kids while I'm gone and also work,
by the way, you know, and hold on your regular job.
(14:36):
I say that not because I'm the mom, but just
because we're two parents who have two really young kids.
So all that to say, everything came together. I've been
able to take the teacher training. I still go to
Montana in June, but I've completed enough hours that I
can actually teach, and so I start teaching at Hot
Yoga at East Nashville. By the time you hear this episode,
(14:57):
I will have already started teaching. So I'm teaching today
for the very first time as I record this, and
by the time you hear this, I will have already
taught that class. And I will be teaching every Friday
at four point thirty a community class, which means that
it's by donation only, so you don't need a membership
at the studio. You don't need to pay. It's by
donation only. So if you like to donate to Thistle Farms,
(15:18):
that's the organization that the donations will go to. But
you could also come take class for free and join
me in the studio if you are in the Nashville area.
I would love to see you there. I would love
to be in class with you. I'd love to practice
with you. I would love to share my love of
yoga with you. And yet here's the reason why I
share this long, long backstory, which is that I'm having
(15:40):
to learn to be willing to fumble my way through
this yoga instruction. Being a yoga teacher is brand new
for me. And anytime you start something that's brand new,
whether it's something like teaching yoga or something like writing
or something you know that's creative like that, or you
start a new job, or you start a new relationship,
or you start a new habit, or you start to
(16:02):
break an old pattern or break an addiction or something
like that, anytime we do something brand new in our lives.
Of course, the first couple of times that we do it,
it's not going to be clean. It's not going to
be perfect. There's not going to be an exact process
to follow, or maybe there is an exact process to follow,
but we don't really know what it is. And by
(16:23):
the way, one of the amazing things that yoga has
taught me over the years is this concept, this idea
of being an embodied person who is messy, who makes mistakes,
who not even makes mistakes is kind of a weird
way to even say it. Who tries things, who is
curious and experiments with things to see if they work.
(16:44):
That's a better way to say it than even makes mistakes,
because it's like, makes mistakes assumes that there's one right
way to do it and one wrong way to do it.
And yoga is all about experimentation. It's like, yes, there
is a posture, and we're going to teach you the
structure of the posture, and we're going to offer cues
to you to help your body move its way into
that posture. And yet every day that you show up
(17:04):
to your practice is a day where you get to
experiment and see if your body wants to move into
that shape today, and maybe today the body's like Nope,
we're not doing that today. And maybe today the body
offers you some allowances that it didn't have to offer
you yesterday. And that's why we keep showing up to
the practice, is so that we can keep experimenting and
keep trying, and keep putting one foot in front of
(17:26):
the other. And I think one of the things that
is being unraveled for me during this time is this
idea that there's one right way to do things, and
I have to figure out the right way to do them,
and then I have to execute it perfectly. So I
don't know if that is something that I was taught
I don't necessarily have a memory of being taught that,
or if that's just a way that I've learned to
(17:47):
survive in the world, if it's like a pattern that
I created in my body that was out of survival.
It's like I can come into a room, read the room.
I can tell you exactly how I'm supposed to act,
how I'm supposed to address, who I'm supposed to be,
who I'm supposed to talk to, who I'm not supposed
to talk to. Top to bottom. I can tell you
exactly how I'm supposed to be and to present myself
(18:08):
in the world. And I have worked exceedingly hard in
my life at meeting those unspoken expectations. And I guess
in certain ways, meeting those expectations has worked out for me,
And I could put that on air quotes like worked
out for me in that meeting those expectations has gotten
me a lot of external validation, a lot of praise,
(18:29):
a lot of accolades, a lot of success, a lot
of monetary success, a lot of you know, other types
of success, sort of prestige. In my small communities, I
think I have relished in the past being praised for
things like being a hard worker, being responsible, being committed,
always showing up for things, always doing my best, always,
you know, being the one that other people could count on.
(18:52):
And one of the things that I'm learning via the
teacher training, via yoga in my life and also just
in this career transition that I'm in or whatever is
happening there too, is showing me that there's so much
more to life than getting it right. There's so much
more to life than being perfect. There's so much more
to life than surveying the scene to see what other
(19:14):
people want from me and then performing to execute that
to their satisfaction. That whole song and dance is extremely
empty at the end of it, and I needed it
for a period of time, and it worked for me
for as long as it worked for me, and I
reached the end point very recently where it stopped working
(19:34):
for me, and it started to become a massive burden,
and I realized I couldn't live like that anymore, and
I needed a reset. I needed to turn over a
new leaf and to be in the world in a
different kind of way. And so this yoga teaching for me,
which I'm recording this episode, and in a couple hours,
I'll go and teach my first yoga class, and this
(19:55):
represents for me a new way of being in the world.
I've had several people reaching out and say, like, how
are you feeling about class tonight? You know, are you excited?
Are you nervous? How are you feeling? And I'm extremely nervous.
I'm actually like, I feel like a high level of
nervousness about teaching this class. And I think the reason
that I feel such a high level of nervousness is
that it's not just that this is a new thing
(20:17):
for me. Teaching yoga is, yes, but the real new
thing for me is not just teaching yoga. The real
new thing for me is being willing to go into
a space where everything is new, where I don't know
exactly what to do next, and to let it be
okay that I just feel my way through this thing.
I just fumble my way through it, and not everything
(20:38):
is going to be perfect, and I'm not always going
to get it quote unquote right, mostly because there is
no such thing as a right you know. Again, there's
postures that have certain alignments that we queue for participants
or that are cued for us in order to keep
our bodies safe in the postures that we're doing. And
(21:00):
yet it's all about experimentation. It's all about seeing, like,
what is your body going to offer you today? And
every day it might look a little different. Every day
it's going to look a little bit different. So can
you stay with your body, tune into your body, experiment, practice, play,
get curious and figure out what your body wants to
show you and what it wants to teach you in
(21:21):
this exact moment. This is such a new way of
being and of acting and of moving through the world.
It's extremely uncomfortable for me. I also recorded an episode
for the podcast earlier this morning while my kids were
still sleeping. And I want to share this because you'll
never hear what I'm about to talk about from that
podcast episode, because I have a producer named Houston, who's amazing,
(21:44):
Hi Houston, who makes me sound like it's effortless for
me to just fly through forty minutes of a podcast
episode start to finish, and like I don't fumble over
my words, and like I don't forget what I was
going to say, and like I don't have no idea
what I'm gonna say next. So thanks to Houston, you
don't have to sit there and listen to me ham
and ha. And Yet this morning's episode, partly because it
(22:07):
was five thirty in the morning when I recorded it,
and partly because there's just days like this, this morning's
episode was extremely hard for me to record, and I
had to fumble my way through the entire thing. And
I was it was a topic that I was excited
to talk about. It was something I had a lot
to say about, and yet, for reasons that are unknown
to me, I couldn't seem to get the words out.
(22:28):
And I was trying and trying and trying, and I
just couldn't get it exactly quote unquote right the way
that I wanted it to be. But at that point,
I was fifteen or twenty minutes into the episode, and
I just thought, like, am I really? Am I really
that attached to getting it perfect that I'm not even
willing to let my producer Houston, who's here to literally
help me, that's what he's here for. Am I really
(22:49):
that embarrassed to let even Houston hear me fumble with
my words or stumble over my words or struggle to
get the message out. And I keep having these moments
in my life where the mirror is being held up
for me and I'm being shown how difficult it really
is for me, and how vulnerable it feels to be
willing to try something that I don't feel one hundred
(23:11):
percent comfortable with or I don't know exactly where I'm
headed with it, and to be willing to just let
myself fumble my way through it. And yet, and yet
this is life. In fact, one of the things that
I've been spending the past couple of weeks of my
time on is getting the proper zoning and the proper
licensure to turn the addition in my mother in law's
(23:32):
house into a little homeschool space for my kids. So
my plan is to do a trial here this upcoming
fall homeschooling my two kids who are three and four,
and hopefully to invite some of their friends into the
(23:54):
mix and to homeschool the kids together in a little
like co op style homeschool. And one of the things
that I have heard myself say so often, and that
is pertinent to this conversation, is that the reason that
I want to create this education space for them is
to just give them permission to practice in play, to
give them permission to follow their own curiosity, to give
(24:16):
them permission to try stuff. And if we're going to
call it making mistakes, then yeah, to make mistakes, but
not really that, to more experiment and see what takes place.
Because learning happens when we experiment and we see what happens,
we get real time feedback on our experimentation. That's how
learning happens. And so if we see learning as that,
(24:41):
and yet we expect ourselves as adults to be people
who have it all figured out, who know what to
do next, to have the perfect strategy, who know the
perfect plan, who have read all the books, and we've
got those spreadsheets and you know, we've got everything on lockdown.
It's like, so, then are we saying that learning is
complete and that I've learned everything I need to know
and I I don't need to know anything else because
(25:01):
I've already learned. It Is that what I'm saying? Or
does it make more sense to say that even though
I'm almost forty two years old, that I'm still a
work in progress. I'm still learning, which means that it's
about experimentation. It's about trying things and getting real time
feedback and being willing to put that real time feedback
into practice to keep on coming back to myself. And
(25:24):
so this is something that I'm learning in my yoga practice.
It's something that I'm learning in my business, in my
career practice. It's something that I'm learning as a mother
as I discipline my children. It's something that I'm learning
in literally every aspect of my life. To let go
of the perfectionism, to let go of the need of
need to control everything. That's really what perfectionism is, right,
(25:45):
I Mean, that's a tangent I could go on for
a long time, but perfectionism is a need to control
your environment, to control the situation, to control even others
around you by performing for them in order to get
a reaction from them. That is how you need them
to react. That's a little complicated, but let me say
that again. Perfectionism is in some ways, or what I
(26:05):
described even a few minutes ago, that people pleasing is
almost like a way to manipulate the situation so that
you can get the reaction that you need from others
so that you can feel okay. So if I walk
into a room and I scan the room and go,
what do these people need from me? Who do they
need me to be? And then I perform to live
up to that standard that I think they're expecting of me.
The reason I'm doing that is to keep the peace
(26:28):
in the room, to keep everyone happy, to keep everyone
thinking I'm good and thinking I'm a good person, so
that I can feel good about myself. Meaning if I
believe that to be true, that I need them to
think I'm good so that I can feel good, it
means I don't actually feel good in my own body.
And so when I learn to fumble my way through life,
not only do I stop having to expend all the
(26:50):
energy and the effort of people pleasing and perfectionism and
all of that, you know, kind of garbage. But also
I come face to face with my own shame, my
own feeling of I'm not good enough unless other people
think I'm good. And so, no wonder we put this off,
and no wonder, we don't want to do it, and
no wonder we avoid this at all costs, because yeah,
(27:11):
it's super uncomfortable. To come face to face with your
own shame is what that's really called, you know, that's
what I would call. That feeling of not good enough
is shame, and to come face to face with your
own shame is an extremely uncomfortable feeling. And so no
wonder we tiptoe around it and we avoid it, and
we would rather not do that. And yet this is
(27:31):
our doorway to freedom, coming face to face with our
own shame, coming back to the body, coming back to
the self, tuning in to what's really going on, and
instead of perfecting our actions to live up to some
invisible standard that no one has even asked of us, really,
instead of doing that, giving ourselves permission to experiment, to practice,
(27:54):
to play, to fumble our way through this thing called life.
Because really, what can anyone else do but fumble their
way through life? Anybody else who thinks they have all
the answers, who thinks they've got all the hacks, who
thinks they have it figured out. Anyone else who says that,
who acts like they've got it all together and they
know what to do, is not telling the truth. They're
(28:14):
not being honest with themselves first and foremost, and they're
not being honest with you. So my invitation for you
in all of this is this, which is, what area
of your life, or maybe more than one area, do
you need to put down your perfectionism, put down your
people pleasing, put down the need to control how others
see of you, how you look, how you appear, what
(28:37):
others might think of you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
doing it perfectly, getting it right, being good? What areas
do need to put that down and instead pick up
a willingness to fumble your way through life, to practice,
to play, to experiment, to learn in real time by
the feedback that those experiments give to you. What would
(28:59):
it feel like for you to experiment with your life?
What might you try to do that you have avoided
trying to do if you were going to live your
life as an experiment, what might you allow for that
you have never allowed for? If you were going to
live your life as an experiment, an experiment of curiosity.
(29:21):
You know, I think about the kind of learning environment
that I want for my kids in that space by
my house, and I want an environment where they can
follow their curiosity, where they can see something that's interesting
to them and go, huh. I wonder what happens with
these blocks when I built them this way. I wonder
if I could turn, you know, these building materials into
(29:42):
a boat. I wonder if I dump this cup of
water upside down, what's going to happen to the water.
And they learn in real time through the feedback of
their experiments what happens when each of these things happen.
And one of the things that they learn and may
learn I hope my kids don't learn this from me
at least, but they may learn that the real time
feedback that they get is from adults who scold them
(30:05):
or shame them for spilling a cup of water or
something like that. And over time, yeah, that child would learn,
you know, making a mistake aka spilling water is not
an acceptable thing to do, and so I'm never going
to do it again. And if I spill a cup
of water, I'm going to freak out and panic, even
if there's no one else there. Then I'm a bad
person because I spilled a cup of water. But I
hope my kids don't learn that in that learning space
(30:27):
or in my home. I hope my kids learn that
they are allowed to experiment, that they're allowed to make messes,
that they're allowed to take up space, they're allowed to
just be who they are and sometimes be loud. You
may have even heard them in the background of this episode,
although probably not because Houston does such an amazing job of
editing that out. But they are in their rest time
right now, and you may have heard a bang or
(30:48):
a clang or two in the background. And if you did,
just know that we're just living in our messy existence
over here, our beautiful mess That's what we're doing over here.
We're fumbling our way through in face, figuring it out
as we go. So I invite you to give yourself
permission to fumble your way through something this week. See
how that feels, see what it brings up for you.
(31:11):
And I would love to hear from you. Come find
me on Instagram at Alifallon or send me an email
at my story at ritourstory dot com and I will
see you back here on the Write Your Story podcast
next week
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