The Most Impactful Thing Yoga taught me about Getting Ahead at Work
I think this happens to many of us. We take a path, and then some years later realize that the path didn’t lead to where we thought it would. This happened to me in my first career of Advertising. My response? I chose to hate everything at work. Not my finest reaction, and it got a little toxic. When things get toxic enough, many of us will start looking around for solutions, and that’s the silver lining, because it never feels good to be in a bad mood everyday. So, maybe you are in a job you love, and want to progress in. There’s still many ways we might resist the way the work, our colleagues or circumstance is each day in each moment.
Yoga became the way that I coped with work. At first, it was just keeping me at baseline “even.” One hour of yoga on most days helped me slough off all the negativity I had accumulated at work that day. In one class, my teacher talked about “resistance” and “softening,” and I came to learn that these are key tenants of a sustainable yoga practice and a sustainable life. I decided I would give it a whirl at work, too, because I was ready to try anything.
This meant that when I got put on a new business pitch that would wreck my personal life for the next three weeks, I would do my best not to complain. When the client insisted that we complete a huge task in zero time, I would neutrally accept. When my day was packed with meetings and tasks, and my team would waste an hour not making any decisions in a meeting, I would accept it, not check-out and gently continue breathing. I’ll admit, at first, I had to fake it. At first, it was more like me constantly asking myself, “What might someone do in this situation if they didn’t resist it?”
And so, through this focus on less resistance, I became more and more observant of my habits and reactions. And I came to realize that previously when I thought I was “caring a lot about great outcomes, doing a good job and being seen as doing a good job,” it was actually manifesting as worrying and controlling and stressing. Oddly (or not) enough, this is pretty much how my parents always spoke about “work” when I was a child. There was always too much to do, and work was always described as stressful. My parents consistently got home late. Because hard work was/is a key tenant of my family’s values, I had unconsciously associated hard work and caring a lot with worrying and stressing and spending a lot of hours doing tasks. Advertising is a particularly tough industry to set boundaries, but I do believe this would’ve manifested anywhere. And if it didn’t I would’ve seen the job as “boring” and “below my capabilities” and would’ve sought out working at a company where working more hours would make me feel more valued and important. (a lil bit of yikes, right?)
By practicing less resistance, I proved to myself that controlling and worrying were not the things that got my job done. With all of this freed up mental energy, I started doing my job without control and worry, and I got more creative, ended up doing less, set healthy boundaries between work and life, and let other people be responsible for outcomes alongside me (rather than putting all responsibility only on my shoulders). Most importantly, I started trusting myself that everything would get done how it was supposed to. I went home on time, and rested, which continually fueled my ability to show up whole and non-reactive the next day.
Here’s what happened:
When my boss gave me challenges at work, and I didn’t complain, he trusted me more, and I taught him that I could handle it. That meant he had to worry about me less. For managers, that usually translates to giving that employee more autonomy and leadership opportunities.
When we had a lot of work to do in less time, I asked for more help, gave my younger colleagues opportunities and began to stand as a beacon for a “we can do this together” mentality which always attracts people to want to work with you. So, even when tasks sucked, people still wanted to be on my team. When people want to work with you, you can delegate, share the load and all go home earlier. When you delegate, you free up more to to take on higher level work and are seen as a team leader.
When my team was inefficient, instead of blowing up, getting annoyed, or shutting down ideas, I looked for solutions, and how things could work. People always want to be in supportive company. When everyone at work is saying they want to work with you, your superiors take notice.
When all these things add up - autonomy, leadership opportunities, time to learn new things, taking on higher level work, team building and leading skills, notice from your superiors - they lead to promotions. At least, that’s what happened to me. I got promoted three times in four years actually, from a Account Exec level to Director with a team of six.
Even more importantly, my whole attitude about work had changed. By the time I left this job, when my boss would drop crazy news on me on Friday at 6pm, I would just laugh.