Apprentice Forever
For a Secret Project (shhhh!) that Martin and I are working on, I’ve been getting really into AI, machine learning, and entrepreneurship. I’ve also been learning to roller skate and building the perfect fantasy football team. I can feel my brain and body stretching to hold the new! And I’ve found myself hearing a familiar whisper from within: “Why aren’t you the world’s foremost expert on this thing already? Like, you’ve been researching it for two weeks now?”
Well!
I’ve been a trained yoga teacher for six years, but practicing yoga for almost twenty. I used to think that if I practiced enough, someday I’d “win” yoga. I saw a future where I’d know all the philosophy and be able to do every pose perfectly.
But the more I practised, the further away I seemed to get from this ideal. Poses I thought I had mastered opened up new dimensions as I became stronger and more flexible. Concepts that I once considered only on an intellectual level began to shift and alter as I felt them in my emotions and my body.
I now know all the way down in my bones that there’s no moment when I’ll fully “get it”. There’s no ultimate moment to aspire to in which I’ll know everything and be able to do everything perfectly. In fact, the longer I practice the less I’ll claim to know, and the more room to improve I can feel in every single pose: even simply when I’m standing still!
Far from discouraging, this is now actually profoundly comforting to me. It twists my perspective from seeing the practice of yoga as a static have-it-or-don’t-have-it object to attain… into a dynamic, always-learning-until-the-day-we-die process to live.
And sometimes (like now) I need to remember to keep a good hold of that perspective when I clamber off the mat! Because it’s true of everything.
It’s all practice, all the way down, forever.
And even knowing that fact is a practice that keeps needing to be re-learnt all the way down, forever!
Even when I completed my yoga teacher training, I thought people would only want to learn yoga from a paragon of discipline and perfection and I am not that. But last year when lockdowns kicked into effect around the world, I felt like I needed to do “something” for people. So I began to run a free weekly yoga class over Zoom called One Calm Hour.
After a year of running this class for folks all over the world, I’m learning the lesson even deeper - the imperfectability is a comfort not only when you are a student, but also when you are a teacher! I am not teaching from a high place - I’m teaching eye-to-eye, just a fellow traveller on the same path. I’m not trying to sell my authority or my expertise - just sharing stuff that works for me in my life. I’m learning more than ever.
And I can tell you that attempting to teach balance poses as a person with a terrible sense of balance is humbling, liberating, vulnerable, hilarious, and powerful!
I keep learning the same lesson. I found this shift in my university lecturing also. When I started teaching writing for games, I was very insecure. I bolstered everything I said with references to other people and pointed at my accomplishments as “proof” that people should listen to what I say. But a true sea change happened when I abandoned all of that and just started telling the truth. Leading classes with breathing meditation and writing exercises. Being vulnerable and honest. Being willing to withstand sneers and folded arms from a few back-row-sitters, and their “more of a comment than a question” interruptions.
I cannot overstate what an enormous change the re-frame of myself from “expert” to “fellow traveller holding the space” made to the quality of my teaching, my confidence, my happiness, and my rapport with students.
So, what was stopping me from teaching eye-to-eye from day one? Shame and fear. I was afraid of being laughed at. Or dismissed. I was waiting for permission from someone. I thought I needed to be perfect before anyone would give me the time of day.
And I can see that same pattern trying to weave itself through the new things I’m stretching into. Afraid that the “real” AI people will laugh at me. Afraid that the “people who are good at business” will dismiss me. Waiting for some mysterious permission from someone (who exactly?!) who will pat me on the head and admit me into the inner sanctum.
But looking back on my experiences in life so far, I can pretty reliably infer that there’s no permission coming! And I can also see that every single time I chose authenticity, vulnerability, and an eye-to-eye gaze - even though it was very scary at the time - I vastly improved my life.
So, it’s Friday afternoon. I told the Perfectionist Whisper to get lost. I’ve been training GPT-2 models and working on a pitch deck for our aforementioned Secret Project. I’m smiling and looking with curiosity towards the every-moment-until-death practice and learning I have ahead, on and off the mat.
Here now, eyes open, beginner mind, apprentice forever.