Why Resolutions Fail—and What Yoga Teaches Us Instead

I used to make the same resolution every year: This year will be the year I lose 15 lbs!

I never succeeded—except for the years I had my children. Honestly, I lost a good 20 lbs just in the process of giving birth! At least that’s one way to meet a goal, right?

Luckily, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to accept myself and even love myself as I am. But that’s not the only point here.

The point is that so often, we attach our sense of contentment and happiness to achieving a specific outcome. Most of the time, we don’t even realize we’re doing it. Underlying much of our day-to-day thoughts are things like:

I’ll be happy when...

If only I had ____, then I’d feel fulfilled...

Yoga teaches us something different. It reminds us to do our work for the sake of doing our work. We can’t take care of our physical bodies—exercise, eat well, get enough sleep—just for the purpose of losing 15 lbs. We need to care for our bodies simply to care for our bodies. To be engaged in the process.

When we’re focused on the outcome, we suffer when we don’t achieve it. And if we do achieve it the joy it brings is fleeting. Most often, we quit before we’ve even given ourselves the chance to see change happen.

Here we are, still at the beginning of January, and I imagine many of us may have already given up on our resolutions. How many of us have thought, After two gym visits and a week of eating healthy, I didn’t lose a pound. I give up! Can you relate?

Every day, we need to choose to be engaged in the process. Instead of linking our identities to outcomes, we can link them to our efforts. Instead of saying, I’m someone who ran a marathon, we can say, I’m someone who runs.

Yoga practice isn’t about achieving specific poses. It’s about learning something about ourselves through the process of practice, whatever form it takes on any given day.