How to be more disciplined – my 365 days of Yoga

In May 2019 I knew I had to get back to some kind of exercise. My dog had died, and I felt completely overwhelmed by the thought of returning to my usual walk without him. I had spent almost two months with very little exercise and the occasions I did go out for a walk resulted in me retuning home with tear streaked cheeks and a strong desire to ‘never do that again’. Obviously being a coach and a Positive Psychology Practitioner, you would think I would have enough tools in my toolkit to figure out what to do. And so, my challenge was set, how would I create something that would be sustainable, that I would want to do and that I would return to if I got off track. Little did I think that 365 days later I would have engaged in a yoga practice every day without a single break.

Now before I begin, I have to admit as a rule I am very disciplined. I have to be because I am very reactive, and I can get side-tracked very easily. I also have issues with hypervigilance, the remnants of CPTSD, and what helps me feel safe is to plan so that I know what I am doing. I have learned that knowing what I am going to do and how, prevents me from being triggered into toxic shame and emotional flashbacks. If you want to know more about CPTSD I would recommend you check out Pete Walker. Knowing these are my pitfalls and how to manage them makes life very easy and helps me to stay balanced and happy, at least most of the time. I digress, back to the yoga. When creating a goal and following through on it is very important that it is a well-formed outcome (WFO), this is fundamental to any coaching but especially Neuro Linguistic Programming and Mind Coaching. A WFO needs to be specific and doable and also identify what the challenges are, and more importantly how you will overcome them if they arise. My WFO started with what type of exercise I wanted to do, where, and for how long.

The most important thing for me was that I could do my exercise at home, that I could do it alone, that I could do it in 30 minutes or less, that I would enjoy it and that it wouldn’t need equipment that I didn’t already have. I thought back through my life to the types of exercise I loved doing; running (knees won’t allow that anymore), walking (no dog, nope), dancing (ooh yes, always loved that), weights (yes, love that and I still have my weights and kettle bells), yoga (haven’t done it for 15 years but I do have a mat and I always loved how I felt after a session). Ok, so I am down to 3 options.

I decided to alternate days between yoga, dancing (in the kitchen to Ministry of Sound 90s hits) and weights in the living room at the back of the couch whilst I chatted with my husband and watched some telly. As the first two weeks progressed, I found I was doing the weights less and less and the other two more. The dancing was proving a little disruptive and it was now getting warmer outside and so it wasn’t really possible to do it in the middle of the day or evening without getting really sweaty. The yoga, however, was easier as I would get up in the morning, meditate for an hour and then roll out my mat. I soon realised that this was the one I wanted to do and the one to which I was most likely to commit.

I started searching YouTube and I found Yoga with Adriene, I am sure some of you have heard of her but of you haven’t you should check her out. I did some of her sessions and then found one of her 30-day programmes and decided I would give it a go. Sure enough 30 days later I had finished and had loved every minute. I wondered if I could stick with this and I thought about trying 100 days. I knew if I wanted to stick with it for 70 more days my WFO needed some tweaking.

I used the best, worst, most likely questions from Cognitive Behavioural Coaching and thought about what would happen if it all worked out, was a disaster or was doable with some challenges. The best would be that I would love it, do it every day, feel great and there would be no hiccups. The worst would be that I would hate it, get injured, get lazy and give up after a few days or weeks. The most likely was that I would stick to it most days, hate it some, love it others and have the odd day where a curve ball knocked me off course and I would perhaps miss a day. If I didn’t want that to happen then how would I stick it out and get to 100 days?

Back to the WFO. I thought about what I would do if I couldn’t do yoga in the morning, say I had an earlier start or slept it in (both of those things happened). I planned for how to deal with pain, soreness, laziness, sickness and boredom. I looked at every possible scenario I could imagine that would stop me from doing it every day and I planned for how I would handle that. I mentally rehearsed my mornings, my days, when these unexpected things could happen. Mental rehearsal is shown to help you commit to things because your brain thinks you have done it already. I used all the tools I teach in my classes and that I use with clients and what do you know, 100 days passed without a hitch. I say without a hitch, there were many, but I had already planned for them, so I wasn’t knocked off course. That’s when 365 days became an idea and soon a ‘I’ll do this if it kills me goal’, and here I am.

For the past 365 days I have done yoga, anything from 15 minutes to 45 minutes depending on how much time I have and how energetic I feel. I have done on tired, days, sore days, sick days and days when I just couldn’t be bothered. The more days I did the more I wanted to do and now that I have got here, I am ready to start my next 365 days. I know I could write about what doing yoga has taught me but that’s a post for another day. This one is about setting a goal and achieving it and the tools you need to do that.

If you want to find out how to get motivated and follow through on a goal, or how to figure out what you want and how to get it, either personally or professionally, then get in touch and we can set up a coaching session.

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions or want to book a session, email [email protected], phone 00353868373582 or PM.

I hope our paths cross again in the future,

Elfreda