January | 2015 | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

Your Turn Challenge prompt: “Tell us about a time when you surprised yourself.”

I was terrified when I first started teaching. My very first experience — getting up in front of a classroom full of students, leading a session based on a lesson plan I’d drafted — was during my Senior year as an English major doing my undergraduate degree at Oregon State University. I was completing an internship at a local high school, working with a class of Junior and Senior honors students. I believed the myth that as an English major, your only career options were to teach or to write, and even though what I really wanted was to write, I thought the smart, practical thing would be to get a teaching degree.

I took the internship at the high school to see if that was the grade level I wanted to work with. I wasn’t actually supposed to be teaching, was supposed to be doing things to help, like making copies and grading spelling quizzes and helping students with their homework, but the teacher really liked me, told me I could teach whenever I wanted.

After giving my first lesson, a short session about writing short stories, she told me “You are a natural.” I really wanted to believe her. I couldn’t judge for myself because every time I got up in front of the class, I freaked out. It took all of my self control to keep from running out of the room.

I didn’t end up teaching high school, but went on to get an M.A. in English instead. I taught writing at Colorado State University, first as a graduate student while completing my degree, then as an adjunct, and then as non-tenure track faculty. I was so freaked out by my first semester teaching, I took a year off and worked in the Writing Center as a tutor instead before I could get the confidence to try again. For the first five years or so, I would make myself physically sick before each class session. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I had panic attacks. I felt like I couldn’t breath and I was sure my students thought I was the worst teacher ever, or at least one of the weirdest.

I heard someone recently say that for an introvert, teaching is an extreme sport. I’d have to agree with that. But I’ve surprised myself. Once I started teaching a Writing for the Web composition course, a topic I felt like I knew something about, a subject I was interested in, something shifted. I was able to connect with my students from a place of real engagement. I started to enjoy facilitating their learning, discovering their specific interests and skills. I still got anxious at the beginning of each semester — it’s nerve wracking meeting 24 new people all at once, not being able to just sit in the back corner of the room and observe — but I started to enjoy the experience.

Even so, I worried that when I started teaching yoga, I’d revert to freaking out. It was an entirely different subject, style of teaching. I was a complete beginner. Being the body at the front of a class so focused on what it means to be a body, move a body, and my relationship with my body was so complicated, I expected the panic to return.

But it didn’t. Rather than being an indicator of what would go wrong, my past teaching experience helped me. I knew what to expect. I understood that if I showed up, just as I was, whatever happened would be okay. That if I stayed present, in touch with my innate wisdom and compassion, I could adapt to whatever might arise. It was totally okay to fail, to make mistakes, to screw up sometimes. As my friend Aramati says, “teaching is part preparation and part letting go.” I can trust myself.

Your Turn Challenge prompt: “What advice would you give for getting unstuck?”

I know something about getting unstuck. I was stuck, on and off, from the age of about 11 until I was around 43. Move, get stuck, move a little, get stuck a little, break free only to get stuck again. I couldn’t seem to figure out how to free myself — until I did.

The most basic advice I can give anyone about getting unstuck is this: take one small step. That’s it. That’s all it takes. One tiny step, some kind of movement, anything, even just half a step — the half step that will change your life. It really is that simple, even though it isn’t easy.

We get hung up because we are able to imagine that far off distant place where we want to be, or the end result of a huge transformation, or the full scope of the big project we want to accomplish, and we get overwhelmed by the space, the vast distance between there and here. Somehow we think we have to get there in one giant leap, a lone action, a single grand gesture. All or nothing.

This leads to thinking we can’t get there at all, can’t do it because it’s too hard, too far, too much. Impossible. We forget the only way there is one step at a time, which starts with asking ourselves, “What is the one small step I can take in that direction? What can I do right in this moment to move?”

Part two is that as you are taking that small step, you focus on only that. You give what you are doing your full attention. You can’t allow yourself to be distracted by what you think an experience or project should become, where it should land. You can’t be worried about the details of how your effort is going to turn into a healthy body or whole book or successful business. You instead focus on just this moment, just this breath.

Part three is show up without an agenda. Sure you could have some sense of the bigger picture, but for now drop the plan. Allow whatever arises. Let yourself be surprised by the magic of something deeper, something else. If you stay out of the way, give up control, you might find your thing, or rather it might find you — something you never expected and even better than you could have planned.

As you take these tiny steps, as you focus wholly on each one as it happens and drop your agenda, you develop a practice that honors your desires, accumulates benefit, and allows you to make progress.

TL;DR: How you get unstuck — Take one small step. Focus completely on it. Show up without an agenda. This grows into an ongoing practice of movement.