The Junky’s Wife had a great post yesterday, where she passed along Eckhart Tolle’s advice on acceptance: if you can’t enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do, stop.

Already today I had the opportunity to put this advice to work in my life, and it really served me well.

I went to yoga class this evening, in the hope that I could loosen up enough to get into the right state of mind to work on a paper for school. Tuesday evening yoga at my gym has been my favorite class for a while, but I haven’t been for a few weeks. In the time since I last attended, my instructor started her maternity leave, so we had a substitute teacher tonight.

The teacher happened to be one who I don’t particularly click with. I thought about putting my mat away and taking off, but I really needed the class and I was already there anyway - so I decided I would give it a try. If it sucked, I could always leave, right?

The teacher announced that we’d be focusing on hips for this class. Nooooooo! I whined internally, I wanna work on shoulders, not hips! And why is he just telling us what we’re doing, instead of asking if any of us have areas we want to work on, like Aubrey does? Wahhhhh!

So the class was off to a great start, with my inner five-year-old having a silent meltdown. Then we started in with some stretches, and it seemed like all of them involved some component that was just physically impossible for me. And the teacher wasn’t giving any modifications or any help, and I suddenly developed a really bad attitude about asking for any. I just sat there on my mat, my stomach churning, feeling like I wanted to throw up or cry or both, unwilling or unable to figure out how to make this situation work - or to get up and leave.

Then, in a flash of clarity the words I read here last night came back to me: If you can’t enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do, stop.

And just like that I realized that I wasn’t trapped on that yoga mat. I didn’t have to stay, but if I chose to stay, I needed to accept that this was the class I was taking, with this teacher, working on my hips and needing to figure out my own modifications.

I decided to stay. I wanted my yoga tonight, and I got it. As soon as I made my the decision to accept the situation, all my emotional turmoil went away. I was able to get my head into the class and get something out of it. It wasn’t awesome and I didn’t leave there feeling all relaxed and centered like I do when Aubrey teaches, but I felt a lot better than when I arrived.

So thanks, JW, for sharing that quote with us yesterday. Acceptance is such a powerful tool, and you gave me a new way to think about it.