I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes,
then you are making new things, trying new things,
learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.
You’re doing things you’ve never done before,
and more importantly, you’re doing something.
Neil Gaiman

Are you afraid to try new things?  There are two excuses that I hear the most when it comes to trying new things.
Being afraid to make a mistake. If you don’t make mistakes, how will you ever learn? As adults, we place too much pressure on ourselves to be perfect at everything we do, even if we’ve never tried it before. In yoga, you can easily feel intimidated by all those experienced yogis.  But there is a saying in yoga, “it’s called yoga practice, not yoga perfect.”  We all come to practice our poses, and maybe use a yoga bolster as a crash pad in case we fall. Don’t compare yourself on day one or even month one to a yogi whose been practicing for a year or more.

I remember going to a workshop on headstands and the teacher, who was a fantastic yogi was showing us how to do a tripod handstand.  During his demo of the pose, he fell out of it.  I was shocked and then I was elated.  Once I saw an experienced teacher fall out of this pose it just freed me to be more willing to fail.  If it could happen to him, then it should happen to me and I was ok with that.

Saying you’re too old to try something new. Now, I’m sure there are some age limits for things. You probably shouldn’t jump out of a plane for the first time when you’re 90, but I do know someone who did it in her 60’s. I taught yoga to Seniors, women in their 80’s and 90’s, who never did yoga before.  They weren’t perfect at it, but they loved it and kept coming back.

Once, a 100-year-old woman came to my Seniors class and tried it, she didn’t like it, but at least she tried it and could make a knowledgeable decision as to whether she liked it or not.  I picked up cross country skiing in my late 30’s and loved it.  I tried downhill skiing in my 40’s and hated it.  And I was free to hate it after 3 weeks of lessons.  I put in the time to try it, I didn’t give up after the first lesson.  I went through all of them thinking that after I knew more about skiing, I would like it better.  Nope.  It just wasn’t for me.

There really are no excuses.  So what’s stopping you from getting out there and trying something new?