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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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