When Goals are Counter-Productive – How to Start Doing Yoga

I have started and stopped running more times than I can count. The pattern is always the same. I feel a bit sluggish or unfit, so I go for a run. I come back from the first run exhausted and elated, feeling invincible. The next time I go for a run it is a little bit easier, and again I feel fantastic. By the third run I try to push myself, trying to run a little further, a little faster, or without stopping because I’m totally out of breath. At this point my imagination runs wild and I plot out all the ways I’m going to work towards being a ‘proper runner’, one of those people who runs 20k without batting an eyelid, and gets up before work to get in a run. Runs 4, 5 and 6 are always a very mixed bag. I see-saw from triumphing in my progress and despairing in the set-backs as I inevitably try to push myself too far too fast. There have been times when I’ve made it to runs 7 and 8, but typically by this point I’ve given up. A few months later I’ll start the process all over again, somehow expecting a different result (isn’t that supposed to be the definition of insanity?!).

Is this what I’m aiming for?

On 4th January this year I went for a run. This wasn’t a new years resolution, or planned at all, I just felt sluggish and needed to move and get fresh air. A week later I felt like going again, so I did. I really enjoyed these runs. I think the main reason was that I had attached no expectations to what I was doing. This was not about ‘becoming a runner’, it was just about going for a run. Each weekend since 4th January I’ve been for a run, every run has been the same length (3 miles) and every run has taken the same amount of time (30 minutes, give or take). If I look at this through the lens of ‘progress’ there has been none. According to my old mindset I’m stuck on run #1 and unable to improve on it. Yet I’ve never been more consistently motivated to go for a run, and so I keep going. Running the same distance at the same speed every week has to be better than not running at all because I tried to push myself too hard. Of course it’s only been 2 months, the wheels could definitely still come off the trolley, but I feel more certain than I ever have that this is a new habit, and it’s all thanks to a change in my mindset, and not setting a goal.

I think there is something important we can all learn from this. Our society is obsessed with self-improvement, with success, with achievement, with progress. Goal-setting is the new black. In many ways this is a good thing, setting ourselves goals and visualising our success can spur us on to achieve great things. I genuinely believe in self-improvement and our ability to change our situation if we’d like to. Yet my recent experience with running has revealed a more problematic side to it all, how many times do we end up giving up on our goal altogether because we tried to push too hard too fast? I think we need to get better at setting goals. We need to think more carefully about what we’re trying to achieve, is it the right thing for us, and can we allow some wiggle room for slow progress so that we don’t give up altogether after run #6?

When I think about how this might apply to a yoga practice, or a meditation practice, it is easy to see how our perception of the ‘good yogi’ might be putting people off developing these practices. 

Let’s take meditation for a start. The most important thing that we need to remind people over and over again is that meditation is really difficult, in fact it is arguably valuable precisely because it is so difficult. Ask a buddhist monk who is thirty years into their meditation practice, and they will tell you that meditation is still very difficult. 

Meditation is also simple, and I think that’s part of the problem (ironically). We (in the West) seem to have mistaken this simplicity for ease. Just because anyone can sit down and meditate, we feel a failure if we find it challenging. One of the big contributors to this problem is the parade of entrepreneurs, CEOs and celebrities who casually throw into an interview that their morning routine includes several hours of meditation every day. Not meditation practice, meditation. This might be inspiring for all of about 5 minutes, until really it just feels inaccessible, and difficult. We give meditation a try and feel uniquely useless for not managing longer than 3 seconds of mindfulness, let alone 3 hours. The perception that meditation is easy, or that a ‘good’ meditation practice consists of several hours, is inevitably going to be more off-putting to would-be meditators than the suggestion that 2 minutes per day of practice can make a huge impact. This is the message we need to be spreading.

As with meditation and running, so with yoga practice. I’ve already talked about my frustrations with #yogaeveryday here, but it’s not just the pressure to practice yoga every day that’s causing trouble. When we set ourselves goals for our yoga practice there is absolutely nothing wrong with aiming to practice every day, or every week, or striving to achieve a headstand, or working towards a certain level of flexibility. There is nothing inherently bad in these goals, and we can learn a huge amount about ourselves from our efforts to achieve them. The important thing is that we set goals which are appropriate for us, based on self-awareness, and that we don’t attach our self-worth to our achievements (or failures). The day when we finally manage a strong, light, well-balanced headstand is the day we stop learning from it. The challenging poses in yoga are not there for trophies, they’re there to build our strength, challenge us mentally and encourage us to keep working hard. Yoga that is effortless is not nearly so beneficial as yoga that challenges us. 

These are perhaps two cliches of yoga and meditation, but they’re really important to keep in mind while we set ourselves goals for beginning or maintaining our own practices. It is a wonderful luxury to be able to spend several hours practicing meditation each day, but that example is never going to motivate people to start meditating. It is a great thing to be able to do a headstand, it’s a challenging pose, the achievement feels good, and we’ll have learned a lot in the process, but doing a headstand does not make a ‘good yogi’ and if that’s our only aim we’d be better of trying gymnastics (you’ll probably get there faster). With running I’ve learned that the value is in consistently getting outside and out of breath once a week, the minutiae of speed and distance are immaterial if they stop me from going at all. 

If you are thinking of giving yoga and/or meditation a try. My number 1 piece of advice to you is to let go of goals and progress. If you want to meditate, try 2 minutes of meditation every day. If you want to do some yoga, go to a class, any class, and do some yoga. Don’t judge yourself in comparison to anyone else, don’t worry about how long it will take you to do a headstand (it’s been 10 years and I’m still not there yet). Don’t over-complicate your motivation with goals. If you want to become a yogi, you just need to do some yoga. Any style, any amount of time, any frequency. Once you are in the habit, you might like to think about some personal goals for your yoga practice, but avoid these as long as possible and stick to one simple thing, just do some yoga.