Setting Goals for Practicing Yoga
If you’ve tried to make yoga a routine part of your life, but keep having trouble sticking with it, this post might be for you.
The first step to starting any new routine is figuring out why you want to do it in the first place. What do you expect to get out of it? How is it going to help your life? What’s your motivation? Why do you want to practice yoga?
After you’ve clearly articulated your “whys,” it’s time to think about what might get in the way. What’s going to stop you from getting to class? Why would you give up? When is it hard to get to yoga? What obstacles could sabotage your success?
Making a Contract
Signing up for a yoga class is a contract in itself. You contact the teacher. Pay the money. Show up to class on the agreed upon days and times. So, what’s difficult about that?
Well, isn’t it funny how life creeps in?
When you signed up for yoga classes, you had every intention of making every single class. Then, at the end of the six-week session, you look back and realize you only made it to half!
What happened?
Perhaps, you never made a contract with yourself. Sure, you paid the teacher and signed that “contract” with your instructor. But what about you? How come you didn’t keep your promise to yourself?
Following Through
Creating a new routine and following it through are tough things. First off, we have to ask ourselves, do we REALLY want to do this? Do we really want to take yoga? Or, have we been told, encouraged, or guilted into it?
Once we’re sure that we absolutely feel yoga is important to us, then we have to reflect on those obstacles again. Some of the obstacles to our keeping to routine are hidden. Meaning, they might be trapped in our subconscious. We may not even be aware of them!
So, we have to list out the obstacles. Write them down. Look at the list we have and write more. Be honest. Go deep. Think about excuses, reasons, competing priorities, family needs, mental blocks, etc. Don’t skimp on this. Really be clear about what might get in your way.
Now that you have that information in front of you, you can go one by one down the list and see if you can come up with ways to mitigate the obstacles. Think of how you might pre-plan or prepare so that you absolutely get to yoga class. Nothing is getting in your way anymore!
Or is it?
How are you going to follow through? What is going to hold you accountable to your commitment?
Setting a Realistic Goal
We need to think of a realistic goal as it relates to our practice. Let’s work through a specific example as a way to clarify these concepts.
You’re in a yoga program. You do a really good job at making it to class. In fact, during the last six-week program, you didn’t miss one! Even on the day that you had a dinner party… you still trekked out to yoga and hit up the evening with your friends afterwards. Great job, you!
Now you’ve decided you want to add a home practice to your in-person yoga classes. But… and here’s the big BUT… but, every time you try to do yoga at home it just never works out. For the life of you, you’ve tried and tried and tried again. Nada. So, what’s going on??
Well, do you have a realistic goal? Is it clear? Have you committed to that goal? Did you put any supports into place? Were you committed? Let’s break these down, using our example above again.
Commit to Yourself
It’s one thing to sign up for a yoga session and make it to the classes. You paid money, and unless you’re the kind that likes to waste their hard-earned pay, I doubt you’ll be avoiding class. (Unless, after a few you’ve realized you don’t really like yoga at all…)
But what about our home-practice example above? What happened to that goal? Why didn’t it work out?
Well, were you clear? Did you actually sit down and map out a plan? Or, are you vague, saying things like, “Yeah… I really should do some stretching at home once in a while…” What does that actually mean???!??? “… some stretching at home…” “… once in a while…” Huh?
Just like you would make a commitment when you sign a contract to an outside party, you should hold yourself to your personal commitment.
Put supports into place. Tell your family about your goal. Tell your friends or neighbors. Write it down on your calendar. Put it into your phone calendar. Add it to your work calendar, even. This way, people know that at a specific day/time, you’re practicing yoga.
That’s right. You also need to pick a specific day/time. If you keep failing at adding a home practice to your routine, you need to treat it like a class. Pick a day and time of the week and stick to it.
And be realistic. Yoga classes tend to run for 60 to 75 minutes. At home, will you have the attention span to last that long? Likely not at first. Maybe you’ll grow into it, but my advice is to start small.
Pick one or two specific things you really like to do and hold yourself accountable to doing those at home on a specific day and time. See, that’s much more manageable. More likely to get done. A way to feel good about yourself.
Keeping Your Contract
So, we used a specific example above, but you can apply these concepts to whatever goal you’ve set for yourself.
- Why do you want to do the new thing? What do you hope to get out of it?
- What might get in your way? Put things in place to make sure these excuses don’t win.
- Think about how committed you are to this. Is it realistic?
- Be specific about your goal. Name time, place, duration, etc.
- Put supports into place. Tell others. Write it down. Block the time.
- Start small. Don’t expect to do a lot at first. Grow into it.
We’d love to hear your experiences! Share a comment below how you’ve added new healthy habits to your life. What supported you in making growth happen?
And, of course, we’d love to see you in a future class! Check out our yoga schedule and sign up for a future program.
About the Author: Elizabeth Scala MSN/MBA, RN, RYT (200) is a holistic nurse, registered yoga instructor, and reiki master.
Elizabeth received her dual master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. She is a certified coach, nature lover, and avid meditator.
Elizabeth lives in Maryland with her supportive husband and playful pups. She enjoys gardening, jigsaw puzzles, baking, music, and hiking.
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