You don’t have to fix yourself…

One of the patterns I still catch myself in is comparing who I am now to some idealized version of myself. The me from twenty years ago. The me who weighs less. The me who never misses a workout and always skips dessert.

But the truth is: I love ice cream—and these comparisons only make me miserable.

Sometimes I even compare my current yoga practice to what I could do in my twenties.

The gift of yoga isn’t that these thoughts disappear. It’s that I notice them more quickly now.

Instead of getting completely swept away, I catch myself thinking, “If only I could fit into those jeans I wore before Sam was born.” And in that moment of awareness, I see how unhelpful it is—how it steals my peace rather than bringing me closer to it and takes me further away from presence.

That’s the real practice: noticing when old habits of mind hijack the moment, and gently guiding ourselves back.

It doesn’t mean the thoughts stop arising—they probably never will—but we don’t have to feed them or follow them all the way into suffering.

If you’ve come to yoga to fix yourself—to become thinner, stronger, or more like your younger self—that’s natural, but it misses the deeper gift.

Yoga isn’t about changing who we are; it’s about remembering that, underneath it all, we’re already whole, already perfect. And learning to come back to that truth, again and again.