When I was a senior in college, I had a clear plan. Instead of applying to medical school, which had been my intention since sophomore year, I was moving to New York City to pursue a career in the glitzy, glamorous world of fashion. Though I enjoyed and excelled in math and science (and was a declared biology major), I nearly fainted at the sight of blood, and I cringed in imagined pain when anyone told me a story of how they injured themselves. Though I wanted to help people in some way, medicine was not the path for me. Following my passion for fashion, and with no fear, upon graduation I moved to the Big Apple to start my new life.
I began my adventure in NYC by enrolling as a full-time student at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) to learn about design, merchandising, and product development, and by working part-time for a small interior design company to pay the bills. I loved every moment of this new life of mine, absorbing as much knowledge as I could about the process of bringing garments to the marketplace - from design idea conception to the final product showing up on retail floors of my favorite stores.
One evening, I had a fateful conversation with a professor who suggested I pursue an MBA. He felt I wasn’t being challenged enough and that an MBA would open more doors in the industry than the program at FIT. After digesting the professor’s advice, my sights were set on attending a top 10 business school and then entering the fashion industry with an MBA degree backing me up. But all of the top 10 business school programs required a minimum of 2 years full-time work experience; and in my view, I needed to get work experience under my belt that was impressive. What work experience would be most impressive to business schools? The answer that came to me could be summed up in two words: Wall Street. So, with my intended future clearly in sight, I decided to get a job on Wall Street and that’s exactly what I did. First stop, fixed income trading and sales at J. P. Morgan. Next stop, Assistant Vice President at TradeWeb, an electronic bond trading platform. My years on Wall Street gave me great work experience and were quite lucrative. The money enticed me to stay there more than double the time I had intended. My creative side, however, felt like it was dying a slow, painful, quiet death. All the while, friends of mine who were enrolled in MBA programs gave me earfuls of the ups and downs of business school, going to great pains to explain to me why I shouldn’t bother with it and how it would hasten the death of my creative, unconventional spirit.
Decision made: no business school for me. I would enter the world of fashion armed with my Wall Street experience, and then navigate, somehow, to where I wanted to be in the industry. For the next several years, I worked high stress jobs at some of the top names in fashion – Jil Sander, Calvin Klein, Polo Jeans-Ralph Lauren, The Natori Company, and DKNY Girls. Very high stress. I found my calm and peace in yoga.
Ah, yoga…. I loved the practice from the bottom of my heart and came to need and rely on it. It kept me from losing my mind to the insane, non-stop, make-it-happen, “city never sleeps” New York fashion world. My love and passion for yoga led me to immerse myself in a teacher training, with the intention of not only learning more about the practice for my own enlightenment and growth, but also so that I could share the practice with family and friends who might find in it aid, comfort, and rejuvenation.
With my sights still focused on my fashion career, I began teaching yoga on the side. Just 1 class a week, then 2 classes…then 3…then 5. Yes, 5 classes a week while working a stressful, high pressure, now-unfulfilling job in fashion (at a supremely dysfunctional, diabolical company that had revolving-door turnover and regular layoffs every 3 or 4 months).
A snapshot of my life once I started teaching yoga: working a pressure-cooker job at a cut-throat company Monday through Friday, teaching 5 yoga classes every week, taking 4 or 5 classes a week to decompress and keep my sanity, and doing all of this to maintain my expensive life as a singleton in “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” New York City. This was not how I had envisioned my life. How did I get here?
After maintaining this pace and lifestyle for more time than I should have, I received a swift kick in the rear and a clear message from the Universe: I got laid off. I was simultaneously relieved, excited, and nervous. Thank goodness I was done with that company and that job. What next? Bye-bye fashion industry. I’d had enough of the melodramas, grand standing divas and divos, deadlines inevitably obliterated by ego maniacs, and the intense, daily grind and hustle behind the appearance of glamour. I was done. Freedom! What next? I had no idea. A big, blank canvas covered in unknown came along with my new found freedom.
After taking time to get still, be quiet, and listen to that calm, assured voice within, I realized it was time to leave New York City and blaze a new path for myself. My entire adulthood up to this point had been lived in NYC and now I was returning to my hometown, Philadelphia, the city I hadn’t lived in since I was a teenager. NYC was home for me. I knew the city, it was a part of me. For 16 years, it molded and shaped me. It made me into a woman. And now, the time had come to leave it. Whoa. With this change, came a new career path for me. That voice within told me it was time to focus my attention on yoga, to make teaching yoga my career.
My path up to this point had been pretty circuitous, zig-zagging here and there, very divergent. But I always had a plan. And with each step I had a fair amount of fearlessness. Now, I was left with no plan and immeasurable fear. All I had was the internal guidance telling me to leave New York City, return to Philadelphia, and then teach yoga full-time. As much as I knew it was time to leave NYC, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was like saying goodbye to a trusted best friend whom I had known well and loved deeply. A trusted best friend who had been there for me and supported me through countless joys and sorrows, highs and lows, triumphs and pains, over many years, but whose life path was winding in a different direction than my life path was taking me.
But this new part of my life’s journey was not well lit. I didn’t have a plan, couldn’t see the road ahead. I was leaving a more traditional and secure career path for one that was unknown and foreign. My new trajectory offered great freedom but also the insecurity of self-determination - real self-determination. How would I financially support myself as a yoga teacher? What about health benefits? No paid vacation and sick days? Who would hire me to teach? Who wants to learn from me? How do I get my name out there? How do I get into the yoga scene in a city that is at once very familiar, and oddly unfamiliar, to me? These questions and so many more loomed in my head…and I had zero answers.
Courage isn’t about being fearless in the face of challenges or adversity. Courage is about feeling your fear and overcoming it to do what you need to do, to do what you are called to do. Courage is about moving forward, onward, and upward in the face of your fear, in spite of your fear. For the first time in my life, I was truly being courageous and truly being gutsy.
I’ve learned that courage takes a whole lot of trust and a whole lot of surrender. Surrendering to the process. Trusting that when you take that great leap of faith, there will be a safety net to catch you when – not if – you fall. Knowing that you will make mistakes, there will be hard times, but you won’t die. And isn’t that what being afraid so often feels like? It feels like you will die, that there’s no way you will survive the thing you fear. And if I am to be honest and accurate, a part of you does start to die in the process of learning to live courageously – your ego. Or perhaps it’s more fitting to say that the ego gets tamed, and as a result the higher part of you can begin to step forward and take charge.
Being a yoga teacher requires me to open up and put myself out into the world in ways that are very foreign to me. It requires me to have a voice and serve whomever shows up to class on any given day, and whoever asks me to work with them and help them one-on-one. It is a very giving line of work. On some days it is easier to draw from my internal wellspring of service than on other days. However, as challenging as it can be for me to be up and on-point day in and day out, it pales in comparison to the challenge of letting the world know that I’m here and what I’m doing. Though I’m not a shy person, I am deeply and stubbornly self-conscious. It’s all too easy for me to give in to fears and insecurities about my own worth and abilities, and in turn to avoid doing anything that might draw too much attention or attract scrutiny. It’s something I work on all of the time these days, with varying degrees of success. Writing this essay is a huge step for me. A gutsy step.
Every day on this journey, I grow and evolve and I learn a bit more about myself, and I learn exponentially more about Life. Life isn’t linear. It may take you on paths that you can never foresee ahead of time. I’ve learned to stay open and to be true to myself. I’m still learning to trust and surrender. It is a constant process, a moment to moment choice and act. Though self-doubt and insecurity rear their heads more times than I’d like them to, and more times than I care to admit, I receive constant confirmation that I am on the right path each and every time a student tells me that class, or a private session, or some specific aspect, really resonated with them. I’ve learned that reward and fulfillment consist of more than financial gain. Touching people’s lives, speaking to their hearts, and helping them heal physically, mentally, and emotionally are my reward. The joy that I experience from teaching fills my heart. And I am perpetually thankful for that inner voice that guided me to where I am today. I pray expectedly for the courage that will carry me into the tomorrow my heart desires. I am grateful for having learned the importance of being gutsy.
Getting gutsy is all about stepping outside your comfort zone to reach your goals and live a life that makes you truly happy. This post is my entry for Jessica Lawlor’s Get Gutsy Essay Contest. To get involved and share your own gutsy story, check out this post for contest details and download a free copy of the inspiring Get Gutsy ebook.
I began my adventure in NYC by enrolling as a full-time student at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) to learn about design, merchandising, and product development, and by working part-time for a small interior design company to pay the bills. I loved every moment of this new life of mine, absorbing as much knowledge as I could about the process of bringing garments to the marketplace - from design idea conception to the final product showing up on retail floors of my favorite stores.
One evening, I had a fateful conversation with a professor who suggested I pursue an MBA. He felt I wasn’t being challenged enough and that an MBA would open more doors in the industry than the program at FIT. After digesting the professor’s advice, my sights were set on attending a top 10 business school and then entering the fashion industry with an MBA degree backing me up. But all of the top 10 business school programs required a minimum of 2 years full-time work experience; and in my view, I needed to get work experience under my belt that was impressive. What work experience would be most impressive to business schools? The answer that came to me could be summed up in two words: Wall Street. So, with my intended future clearly in sight, I decided to get a job on Wall Street and that’s exactly what I did. First stop, fixed income trading and sales at J. P. Morgan. Next stop, Assistant Vice President at TradeWeb, an electronic bond trading platform. My years on Wall Street gave me great work experience and were quite lucrative. The money enticed me to stay there more than double the time I had intended. My creative side, however, felt like it was dying a slow, painful, quiet death. All the while, friends of mine who were enrolled in MBA programs gave me earfuls of the ups and downs of business school, going to great pains to explain to me why I shouldn’t bother with it and how it would hasten the death of my creative, unconventional spirit.
Decision made: no business school for me. I would enter the world of fashion armed with my Wall Street experience, and then navigate, somehow, to where I wanted to be in the industry. For the next several years, I worked high stress jobs at some of the top names in fashion – Jil Sander, Calvin Klein, Polo Jeans-Ralph Lauren, The Natori Company, and DKNY Girls. Very high stress. I found my calm and peace in yoga.
Ah, yoga…. I loved the practice from the bottom of my heart and came to need and rely on it. It kept me from losing my mind to the insane, non-stop, make-it-happen, “city never sleeps” New York fashion world. My love and passion for yoga led me to immerse myself in a teacher training, with the intention of not only learning more about the practice for my own enlightenment and growth, but also so that I could share the practice with family and friends who might find in it aid, comfort, and rejuvenation.
With my sights still focused on my fashion career, I began teaching yoga on the side. Just 1 class a week, then 2 classes…then 3…then 5. Yes, 5 classes a week while working a stressful, high pressure, now-unfulfilling job in fashion (at a supremely dysfunctional, diabolical company that had revolving-door turnover and regular layoffs every 3 or 4 months).
A snapshot of my life once I started teaching yoga: working a pressure-cooker job at a cut-throat company Monday through Friday, teaching 5 yoga classes every week, taking 4 or 5 classes a week to decompress and keep my sanity, and doing all of this to maintain my expensive life as a singleton in “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” New York City. This was not how I had envisioned my life. How did I get here?
After maintaining this pace and lifestyle for more time than I should have, I received a swift kick in the rear and a clear message from the Universe: I got laid off. I was simultaneously relieved, excited, and nervous. Thank goodness I was done with that company and that job. What next? Bye-bye fashion industry. I’d had enough of the melodramas, grand standing divas and divos, deadlines inevitably obliterated by ego maniacs, and the intense, daily grind and hustle behind the appearance of glamour. I was done. Freedom! What next? I had no idea. A big, blank canvas covered in unknown came along with my new found freedom.
After taking time to get still, be quiet, and listen to that calm, assured voice within, I realized it was time to leave New York City and blaze a new path for myself. My entire adulthood up to this point had been lived in NYC and now I was returning to my hometown, Philadelphia, the city I hadn’t lived in since I was a teenager. NYC was home for me. I knew the city, it was a part of me. For 16 years, it molded and shaped me. It made me into a woman. And now, the time had come to leave it. Whoa. With this change, came a new career path for me. That voice within told me it was time to focus my attention on yoga, to make teaching yoga my career.
My path up to this point had been pretty circuitous, zig-zagging here and there, very divergent. But I always had a plan. And with each step I had a fair amount of fearlessness. Now, I was left with no plan and immeasurable fear. All I had was the internal guidance telling me to leave New York City, return to Philadelphia, and then teach yoga full-time. As much as I knew it was time to leave NYC, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was like saying goodbye to a trusted best friend whom I had known well and loved deeply. A trusted best friend who had been there for me and supported me through countless joys and sorrows, highs and lows, triumphs and pains, over many years, but whose life path was winding in a different direction than my life path was taking me.
But this new part of my life’s journey was not well lit. I didn’t have a plan, couldn’t see the road ahead. I was leaving a more traditional and secure career path for one that was unknown and foreign. My new trajectory offered great freedom but also the insecurity of self-determination - real self-determination. How would I financially support myself as a yoga teacher? What about health benefits? No paid vacation and sick days? Who would hire me to teach? Who wants to learn from me? How do I get my name out there? How do I get into the yoga scene in a city that is at once very familiar, and oddly unfamiliar, to me? These questions and so many more loomed in my head…and I had zero answers.
Courage isn’t about being fearless in the face of challenges or adversity. Courage is about feeling your fear and overcoming it to do what you need to do, to do what you are called to do. Courage is about moving forward, onward, and upward in the face of your fear, in spite of your fear. For the first time in my life, I was truly being courageous and truly being gutsy.
I’ve learned that courage takes a whole lot of trust and a whole lot of surrender. Surrendering to the process. Trusting that when you take that great leap of faith, there will be a safety net to catch you when – not if – you fall. Knowing that you will make mistakes, there will be hard times, but you won’t die. And isn’t that what being afraid so often feels like? It feels like you will die, that there’s no way you will survive the thing you fear. And if I am to be honest and accurate, a part of you does start to die in the process of learning to live courageously – your ego. Or perhaps it’s more fitting to say that the ego gets tamed, and as a result the higher part of you can begin to step forward and take charge.
Being a yoga teacher requires me to open up and put myself out into the world in ways that are very foreign to me. It requires me to have a voice and serve whomever shows up to class on any given day, and whoever asks me to work with them and help them one-on-one. It is a very giving line of work. On some days it is easier to draw from my internal wellspring of service than on other days. However, as challenging as it can be for me to be up and on-point day in and day out, it pales in comparison to the challenge of letting the world know that I’m here and what I’m doing. Though I’m not a shy person, I am deeply and stubbornly self-conscious. It’s all too easy for me to give in to fears and insecurities about my own worth and abilities, and in turn to avoid doing anything that might draw too much attention or attract scrutiny. It’s something I work on all of the time these days, with varying degrees of success. Writing this essay is a huge step for me. A gutsy step.
Every day on this journey, I grow and evolve and I learn a bit more about myself, and I learn exponentially more about Life. Life isn’t linear. It may take you on paths that you can never foresee ahead of time. I’ve learned to stay open and to be true to myself. I’m still learning to trust and surrender. It is a constant process, a moment to moment choice and act. Though self-doubt and insecurity rear their heads more times than I’d like them to, and more times than I care to admit, I receive constant confirmation that I am on the right path each and every time a student tells me that class, or a private session, or some specific aspect, really resonated with them. I’ve learned that reward and fulfillment consist of more than financial gain. Touching people’s lives, speaking to their hearts, and helping them heal physically, mentally, and emotionally are my reward. The joy that I experience from teaching fills my heart. And I am perpetually thankful for that inner voice that guided me to where I am today. I pray expectedly for the courage that will carry me into the tomorrow my heart desires. I am grateful for having learned the importance of being gutsy.
Getting gutsy is all about stepping outside your comfort zone to reach your goals and live a life that makes you truly happy. This post is my entry for Jessica Lawlor’s Get Gutsy Essay Contest. To get involved and share your own gutsy story, check out this post for contest details and download a free copy of the inspiring Get Gutsy ebook.