Why this advice:

Setting up my own yoga and wellbeing business has not been without its challenges.  I’ve wondered many times if I’ve made the right decision to leave a stable job with a stable paycheck and 9-5 hours with weekends off.  Truth be told, I’m still not sure, but I do know that when I’m really in the flow, I absolutely love it and want to keep doing more…as long as there is more work to be had. 

One of my biggest challenges in getting myself out there as a yoga teacher has been in marketing myself and getting my message out.  It’s not ever been something I’ve ever done before, I’m not really a social media junkie, and truthfully, I find using a range of social media tedious and frustrating.  Why does there have to be so many…Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat and then YouTube videos as well.  Can’t we just have one?  It would save so much time!

So, in an effort to learn how to use social media more effectively and get myself out there, I joined a 40 Day Social Media Challenge run by Namastream, to help me get a little more savvy and post more than just inspiring quotes, yoga pose pics, and green smoothies.

So, as part of this challenge I need to get a bit vulnerable, and write a letter to my younger self.  In preparation for this blog, I had a read of quite a few other similar letters and one thing that really struck me in each and every one of these letters, is this…

Schools are missing a trick.

In each letter, one piece of advice the writer consistently gives to his or her younger self is to value and love yourself.  This really struck me.  That we grow up with this thought that we are just not enough and it’s only in our later adult years, quite often through some sort of adversity, that some of us eventually learn to love and value ourselves. 

As an educator, I could write a whole blog on how our school systems are failing most of us and missing a trick if this is how many of us grow up.  However, let’s get back to the point of this article…opening up…being vulnerable…

Advice to my teenage self:

• You know how you used to be really good at gymnastics…better than the other girls on your team…and quite a fast learner.  Don’t stop now, just because you’ve got to secondary school and you want more of a social life and all of a sudden you like boys.  In fact, don’t ever, ever, ever put anything in your life on hold or aside for the opposite sex!

• Keep active and don’t use food to stuff down negative emotions about yourself.  It will only result in disliking yourself even more as you look in the mirror and don’t even recognise your former active and athletic self.

• Be more ambitious and savvy in terms of managing money, saving money and having financial awareness.  It will make a huge difference to how much personal freedom you have in the future.

• You were lucky, you were smart and did relatively well with little effort.  Imagine what you could have done if you had amped up your effort and self-belief!

• And above all:  LOVE YOURSELF.  You are enough, you are capable, you are smart and you deserve happiness, success and fulfilment.  Stop all that nonsense in your head that believes otherwise.