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As humans, we love to set goals. To have something to work towards. To create benchmarks for ourselves.
Whether it’s a birthday, a new year, a Monday, or even just the beginning of a yoga class, we approach that activity or time frame with a goal in mind. This year I’m going to lose 10 pounds. This month I’m going to read every day. Today in yoga I’m going to do a headstand.
I’m one of the biggest goal setters you’ll ever meet. I live for creating goals for myself, writing them down, breaking them into smaller portions, and chronicling my way towards achieving them. So please don’t mistake this blog for being one about how goal setting is a bad thing. I don’t believe it is at all.
But the other half of setting goals is how you approach reaching them. What changes do you make in your hourly, daily, or weekly life? This is where many of us falter. We don’t fail at achieving goals, we fail at making the small decisions each and every moment to propel us towards success with those goals.
How are you going to lose 10 pounds if you continue to hit snooze every morning and miss your workout? How are you going to read every day if you instead pick your phone up out of habit and scroll Instagram during your free time? How are you going to do a headstand if you choose not do focus on your breath and bandhas?
And that’s not to say that if you made all of those decisions correctly, day in and day out, that you would 100% achieve every goal you set. There are some things out of your control. Shit happens. Life happens.
Which is why I’ve been focusing on the idea of being flexible in your goals but rigid in your approach. Conditioning yourself to make those small decisions that move you in the right direction each and every moment of each and every day. But removing the attachment to the outcome.
In a month you might wake up and decide you don’t actually want to lose 10 pounds this year. That as you’ve been waking up every morning and skipping the snooze to do the workout instead you’ve learned that you are more concerned with doing 10 pull-ups by the end of the year rather than focusing on what the scale says. Your approach hasn’t changed, but your goal has.
Halfway through yoga class today you might find that by focusing on your breath and bandhas you feel stronger and more confident. And when you try to do a headstand, you may still fall over – but instead of feeling like a failure, you feel calm and grounded in your breath and body connection, you realize you’ve learned something and that you’ve grown as a yogi and a human.
I’ll always be a goal setter. But now I’m also a routine builder, a decision maker, and more mindful of how I approach each day. Because the consistent approach breeds results, whatever those may end up being.
This week, try being flexible in your goals and rigid in your approach.