Tap Into Your Inner Wisdom While You Workout

In developing our careers, we often focus on the need to be seen and valued by others, to be viewed as better than our competition. And in doing so, we can ignore our inner personal wisdom. 

Sometimes the best place to get that connection to ourselves is during a good workout.

I was teaching a stretch class recently and I noticed that many of the students were paying way too much attention to the other students. I could see that the competition was getting aggressive: who could go deeper into a split, who could twist further, stuff like that. I took the time to remind the class that their workouts are personal, that their only meaningful competition was with themselves. "You come to class," I said, "to work on what you need to change, manage, illuminate, transcend, or correct. You come to class to grow and become better. Not to compete with each other." I added, "If you're already at a competition level, you don't need this class."

We often rely on people outside ourselves to guide, to instruct and to help us get where we want to go, and we often disregard our inner intelligence, our own ability to mentor ourselves. We spend energy focused on the benchmarks that competing with others sets for us, sometimes to our detriment. Of course we need mentors and others to serve as guideposts, but we also need to rely on our own voice to set the pace. 

It's not always easy to get away from our competitive nature, (I admit I’m guilty of this) even in the gym or during a workout. But if we can ignore that, tune in to our inner wisdom, we can get mental clarity during a workout that allows us to solve problems for ourselves and others.

One way to shift the focus is to begin your workout by considering a question or challenge that you're focused on at work. Then set it aside and go about your business with your workout. Push yourself, without dwelling on the question. Let your own inner wisdom work on it.

I actually solved a challenge of how to get 50,000 views of a dance video overnight (for the recent celebration of  NYC Dance Week) while I was in a ballet class. The answer came to me, but only after I stopped struggling and trying to consciously solve the problem. I was working hard at the barre, focused on staying grounded and lifted at the same time, and inner wisdom came up with the solution. It was when I let go and focused on what was right in front of me that the answer came to me.

The Lesson:

This post isn't about getting page views. It's about letting go of challenges that we can't solve and allowing our inner wisdom to come up with solutions. I'm all about delegation, and I'm learning to delegate situations to a part of my inner self that loves to solve problems.

During your workout, is there a solution, or a new question? Both? Keep going. Let your mind and heart do their job while you push your body. Then go back to work with renewed clarity and perhaps some new answers.

This article is part of a series called 'Career advice from the barre' a collection of lessons I learned as a dancer, athlete, and instructor that helped me in my career.