Yasmen is a CrossFit trainer and Mobility Specialist at San Francisco CrossFit. She also teaches Pilates.
Find Yasmen at:
yasmen@sanfranciscocrossfit.com
Yasmen’S LESSONS:
1) You're the only one in charge of your actions and thoughts.
2) Thank God for your failures, how we should thank God for ours.
NOTABLE QUOTES FROM THE EPISODE:
At age eight I was sent away to boarding school in India by my parents, and you were on your own, you don't have any mother and father to run to. If you made a mistake, or somebody, was bullying you or if you were homesick, you had to deal with all that at age eight. And my boarding school was pretty far away. It was three nights and two days on the train away...
At that early age, I learned not to rely on anybody else. If you failed, you failed and you had to get up, pull up your bootstraps and just do it again until you got it right. Whether it was academics or sports or relationships with your friends, all that took its toll on me.
Stop getting your knickers in a twist when something goes wrong… But what's the big deal? I mean, you're a human being after, all right? So you're not perfect. Nobody's perfect. Nobody expects you to be perfect. Most people want to be successful. Most people want to be loved and appreciated by everybody. But at some point, everybody makes mistakes. Everybody says things, not what they're supposed to say. Everybody can be mean at times.
I hear a lot of people don't want to take responsibility for when they make a mistake or they say it's not my fault--someone else did it, but then there's two problems. First of all, they're not taking responsibility. Second of all, they can't correct it next time.
The funny thing is if you're not afraid to fail, you're a happier person.
There's always somebody who's going to be better than you at something and the good news is you're almost better than somebody else as well.
My daughter was fast asleep in bed and I would just sit next to her and all that stress would just go away--there was a sort of a sense of happiness and a sense of wonder and a sense of peace and a sense of love that would come from just sitting and watching her sleep.
Sometimes you don't have access to the credit card or there's no money in the bank and if that's where you get your happiness for that instant gratification then you'll be devastated. So find it, find it within yourself, find that depth and happiness within yourself, excluding all outside factors.
