Introduction
You wouldn’t have thought that yoga would actually bring important lessons that you can utilise in your life, would you? Well, like many other lifelong endeavours, yoga is an art that teaches us how to live better in spite of ourselves. Here are some of the life lessons that I’ve picked up along my journey from practicing yoga.
Success Comes from Practice
Without further elaboration, I’m pretty sure most people would tend to agree with this lesson. Yoga postures can prove to be one of the most challenging feats that your body can attempt and requires time and energy when practicing. Remember your first time doing a handstand and almost inevitably falling? Well, it probably wasn’t the case after your 50th attempt at it. The same goes for life. If you want to succeed at something, you’ve got to practice! Hard work beats talent after all.
Focus Comes Before Practice
Of course, to have an efficient practice session, you’ve got to focus. Remember the last time you’ve gotten into a yoga session with your mind somewhere at work? Bet it didn’t go too smoothly for your session. Likewise, when doing ANYTHING in our lives, focus has got to come second nature to us. The world has been focussing so much on multitasking and it’s benefits that it simply overlooks the sacrifice in quality of our work. Focus on your activity and you will not be disappointed.
Failure Is Necessary Before Success
Needless to say, failure is necessary on our journey to success. Sure, we will have that rare occasion where we aced our assignments at the first try, but more often than not, we find ourselves failing in some aspects and being disappointed. Failure teaches us humility, something that is found in successful people around the world. So don’t be too disappointed the next time you find yourself encountering failure, it could very well be your stepping stone to success.
Having A Mentor and A Community Is Great for Learning
You’ll find that having a mentor and an encouraging community can do wonders for speeding up your journey to achieving your goals. The last time I had problems with mastering the “Crow Pose”, I remember how my yoga mentor taught me about the different problems I was encountering and how I could rectify it with simple changes to my stance. Similarly, having supportive co-workers and a mentor in the real world would increase your efficiency in learning especially since you are able to tap into their prior experience and circumvent your obstacles.
Ego Is Best Left at Home
Ever had the feeling of showing off something new you’ve picked up to your class, only to realise that everyone else could already do it? Well, that’s your ego doing the talking and you should best keep it in check. Nobody likes a show-off especially in the work place so try to tone it down a little. Of course, don’t mistake confidence as ego and if anyone tells you otherwise, feel free to put them in their rightful place. Without the ego of course.