Before I left Tucson last spring, I had a clear vision of where I was going and why. It was my primary AIM to establish a home for yogahour in NYC, to train new yogahour teachers and to use that community to launch a studio called The Anchor. That studio would be the flagship for a network of affiliate studios and the seed of a new yoga empire.
This big vision was propelled by my close relationship to yogahour and my experience building successful yoga brands in NYC. I believed, wholeheartedly, that I would radically change the entire landscape of yoga in the most accelerated city in the United States by making yoga more affordable and accessible without diluting quality or tradition. Never for a moment did I give equal weight or consideration to the way that I felt about living in NYC. That was a small price to pay for the prize of building an empire.
People think it’s a privilege to make it in NYC. For me, it’s a trap...
I believe that real success is finding balance between my personal and professional ambitions... and not to make the mistake of feeding one at the expense of the other. Too many people make that mistake, and they play catch up later in their life... sometimes, too late.
I have come to acknowledge the importance of building community in a place where I feel at home. It is more important that I feel grounded, centered and nourished by my immediate surroundings as the foundation for carving out my high vision. And thus, it is my priority to create that sense of home and to allow my career to fall into place around that.
Real progress, whether personal or professional, takes patience. It’s a weighty, slow moving train. Slow to start, but once it gets going, it becomes unstoppable. And I’m in this game for the long-haul.