How to create sustainable success

Success and failure

👣 I am a huge yoga fan, and have been practicing for some time, yet I only recently mastered the headstand

👣Yoga feels natural to me, yet a headstand was so outside my comfort zone - all those years of treating people with neck injuries and 'protecting the cervical spine at all cost' meant I had a huge mental block 😳

👣Finally achieving it was such a buzz - and via many failed attempts...

👣It's been shown in behaviour studies, that success to anything in life involves a few key factors (not necessarily in this order):

👣Self compassion: you aren't a failure if you can't instantly master something.

This applies to new skills, dietary changes, exercise, habits etc.

Being compassionate and being able to say its OK, i can't do it yet, and move forward, is so important. Don't give up!

👣Having a goal. This doesn't have to be exact, even a vague idea of where you want to end up is fine. Just have something to aim for and fix your vision on

👣Starting with small steps.

You don't have to get it right first time - taking baby steps and gradually building on this is what leads to lasting change.

For headstands there are multiple small steps involved to finally doing one safely and holding the pose - skip these and you won't get it right in the end

👣Visualising yourself doing it.

In yoga we are taught to mentally visualise going through the steps of getting into a headstand before even attempting.

This actually teaches your brain the actions needed and creates a muscle memory (I've posted on this yesterday if you want more info). It really works!

👣Persistence. Each time you fail, don't give up and tell yourself you won't do it. Doing something over and over again is how you learn things that are challenging - just keep trying, forgive yourself if you fail, and try again - you'll get there in the end 💙