‘I love my job it’s the greatest job in the world for one very simple reason the fact that I don’t have a boss… picture that if you will. And then envy me’
Bill Hicks (RIP)
I do love Bill – if you’ve never heard his comedy I urge you to go and check him out on da you tube – where else. The above quote is from the opening line of some of his gigs and it make me laugh every time as I myself also don’t have a boss and it really is wonderful. But actually my reason for what I do is that I absolutely love teaching yoga , really. Actually I love putting a smile on people’s faces – to see people leaving my shala by the sea with a smile on their face – there’s nothing quite like it.
The flip side of not having a boss is that working for yourself is no picnic. Anyone who is self employed knows that you don’t really get a break – it’s like you have to be switched on 24/7 with regards to emails and promotion etc.
Teaching for the past 25 years really has been wonderful but sometimes when the class numbers go low I do think to myself ‘well that’s it Matty boy , your numbers up – the people have voted with their feet , they hate you – it’s time to go get a job driving for Amazon’. And of course fortunately this has never happened – actually during covid when I had to teach on zoom and flog all my best sneakers on eBay to make things meet I very nearly did. And thank the lord that moment has passed.
So Ashtanga Yoga Deal has been a really amazing journey for me – teaching yoga by the sea , well I have to pinch myself every day as I really feel I lucked out big time init. Actually I don’t pinch myself – does anyone actually pinch themselves on purpose ?
Ok where was I .. just last week class numbers fell and the dark clouds of doubt came down heavy. Time’s Up Ryan I thought. When the tough gets going and all that and my PR skillz took over. I decided I* would write a little text to all students who haven’t been for a while and offer them a free class in a ‘ not seen you for a while hope you’re ok – come and have a freebie on me’ type stylee.And texted about 400 folk on me list.
So I didn’t get any replies from about 85% of the texts – which its cool and to be expected. Then another maybe 10 % of lovely replies saying they no longer lived in Deal but thanks anyway – a few more taking me up on my offer and then one very angry message – that got sent through twice ( they must have really disliked the class!) This one text message said something along the lines of
No thank you. The class was singularly the worst yoga class I have ever been to. Please delete my number.
Wow -the worst huh! Now I know I can’t please all the people all the time and some folk aint gonna jive with the way I teach and if I’m honest – the message didn’t even touch the sides – just made me chuckle. But then I stopped and did think a little longer about it.
Now I have no idea what was happening to this person on the day they got the message and maybe they were having the day from hell and I got their wrath. But what made me sad more than anything was the fact this person’s instant ‘go to’ in their reply was to be mean and nasty. Not constructive criticism but to want to say something that could purposely hurt.
And I think this is now the society we have made for ourselves with social media normalising this kind of behaviour – how mean can I be – what nasty thing can I say without any fear of a come back or retribution – people getting lost in their own echo chamber of hate!
So what’s the moral of the story – (yes yes I can hear you all saying get on with it Ryan I’ve got better things to do with my time). Well I wonder if this happens to ourselves can we take a moment , take a breath actually take a few (in fact please don’t stop breathing!) Come to my yoga class (please!). Before we respond – and if you can’t say nothing nice don’t say anything at all etc.
And as I like to say in me newsletter please be excellent to each other – a little does go a long way. It’s nice to be nice. One nice message to a person might be all they need to hear that day , to have a good day.
* Ok ok I got chatgpt to write it but I still had to use mattgpt to enter the info so it could write something more eloquent- because my writing is junior school drivel – read above for case in point.