Reasons why people don’t reach their goals:

They have no goals or too many.
They forget their goals. Or do you still remember the New Year Goals? Who does remember a goal on a daily basis. Who writes down the most important goal daily? Not so many, I guess.
The goals are not realistic, not precise enough. A time frame is missing. The steps to achieve this goal are not planned. There is no control system.

There are surely more reasons.

And of course there are people who are successful and reach their goals easily because they have an effective method to get where they want to be.

It felt like a shock, when I checked the frequency of my yoga practice on my habit app. My goals are often ambitious. Learning the 4 Ashtanga yoga series, focus on kapotasana and coming up from urdhva dhanurasana is one goal. I want to take perfect pictures of each asana. And I want to practice 6 days a week.

My insight: It’s distracting, too much and the path to get there is missing.

Mentally and also in my apps I deleted these dreams that shall become true one day. I pick me where I am.

All asanas improve when I practice daily.

It feels modest, but it isn’t when I focus on one goal only. I want to increase the frequency of my practice from 26% to at least 50% till the end of August. This would be a huge success. The conditions are perfect. I can practice at home. I’m not staying at someone else’s home. I’m not traveling and living in hotel rooms. My home is the best place for my Ashtanga yoga practice.

Saturday is my day off. Yesterday was Saturday.

After a break it’s usually a tiny bit more challenging to start. Focusing on only one goal concentrates all the available energy. I practiced. It felt good. The feeling to have reached a tiny step is uplifting That’s how it shall be.

Picture:

I integrate soft and challenging back bending positions into my practice.

I’m a modern yogi. That means I use a habit tracker app. My goal is to practice Ashtanga yoga six times a week. It’s almost impossible to reach this goal. The app doesn’t allow you to subtract moon days. Serious students of Ashtanga yoga take a day off on moon days. These are 2 days less every month.

When I practice yoga I usually start the timer of this App. Yesterday I checked the result. It was disappointing. I only reached 26% of the 100%.

Why so less?

For about 2 months in 2022 I haven’t been at home. Is this a reason not to practice? Or is it an excuse? Perhaps a bit of both. I think more is possible. It’s a challenge to practice yoga when I’m not at home, but it’s not impossible.

At home again it usually takes some time to get back to my routines. It’s more or less sloppiness.

The frequency of any practice is a crucial ingredient if one is successful or not. This is a general rule. Daily practice is the key of accelerated learning whatever it is: It can be learning a language, becoming a better chef of mastering challenging asanas.

Before aiming for additional strength training or stretching sessions, I’ll aim for a more frequent yoga practice. It might be unrealistic to aim for 100%, yet I’ll aim for 50% in August. I can scale up the percentage, when this goal is reached.

All the special asanas goals are on hold. My focus is a disciplined daily practice. A few sun salutation don’t count as a practice. Yet to be on the mat for 30 minutes counts on challenging days. Better a few sun salutations or stretching for.5 minutes than doing nothing, but I won’t call this a practice.

Picture:

It’s an additional exercise before I perform shalabhasana. I start with being on my elbows. Then I stretch my arms. The next step is to walk the hands closer to the body to intensify the back bending. The shoulders move away from the ears. I relax, especially the back shall relax. It’s an easy exercise. First the easy exercises come, the more challenging ones follow.

Mantra for the goal Nr 1 in the morning:

I practice yoga now.

At the end of August I’ll check the statistics of my habit tracker again. I’m curious.

Ashtanga yoga - goals

Having realistic goals

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