Goal Setting for Yoga Teachers and Trainees:
From Self-Knowledge to Success
In this group coaching session, we talk about goal setting for yoga teachers-in-training, new teachers, and yoga business owners.
Watch the video, or scroll down for the transcript notes and all the tools and strategies.
Goal Setting for Yoga Teachers, Teacher Trainees, and Yoga Business Owners
Whether you have goals to complete your yoga teacher training, or to begin your teaching practice, or to build your yoga business, I hope that today’s session gives you some ideas, tools, and inspiration to start making some confident steps in the direction of your goals.
Before we get to setting goals, though, I want to first take some time to explore a few questions for reflection, so you might like to have your journal or laptop handy to take some notes.
Sometimes, when it comes to goal setting, we go straight to tools and strategies, but I think before we buy a new journal or organization app, it’s a good idea to do some thinking before we do the ‘doing’, so that you are approaching your goal setting from a place of clarity and self-knowledge.
It’s important to know that different tools and strategies work for different people, and this is where we apply our practice of yoga – getting to know ourselves, seeing our strengths, how we address challenges, how we motivate ourselves, and how we overcome obstacles.
Consider this part of your yoga practice, not just completing your studies, but learning about who you are as a student, how you can best support yourself, and how you might support your own students once you become a teacher and guide in yoga.
So, let’s begin with the first question:
1) What motivates you to pursue a goal?
Take some time to think about the intrinsic and extrinsic motivators that drive you to take action.
Extrinsic motivators are external rewards or incentives that drive behavior. This might include good reviews of your work, or beginning to get paid for teaching yoga.
Example in study: You study persistently because you want to complete your certificate and begin teaching as soon as possible.
Intrinsic motivators are internal drives that come from within, such as personal satisfaction, curiosity, or a desire to learn. The motivation comes from the enjoyment or value found in the activity itself.
Example in study: Most of you have at least some intrinsic motivation – you are studying yoga because you are passionate about it and enjoy learning, regardless of external rewards.
- Question for reflection: How can understanding your motivations help you to move forward with your studies?
2) How do you prioritize your goals?
How do you make decisions about the importance and timing of all your different objectives?
As a student choosing study units, making space for practice, recording all of it. In preparation for beginning to teach, getting your first aid completed, getting insurance, professional membership.
As a teacher balancing practice and teaching and admin and marketing.
- Question for reflection: With so much to do, how do you prioritize?
3) How do you keep accountable with yourself?
What strategies do you use to maintain accountability – this might be making lists, scheduling study into your calendar, or setting particular study goals week-to-week or month-to-month.
- Question for reflection: do you have existing strategies to stay accountable to yourself?
4) What success strategies have worked for you before?
Think back to other times in your life where you have been successful in completing a goal – whether that be a project, study, or business goal. Did you have some tricks or tools that helped you reach your goals?
- Question for reflection: What strategies or tools could you employ to help you move towards your goal?
5) When you have faced obstacles in the past, how did you overcome them?
Again, thinking about other times in your life where you have been working towards a goal, what obstacles did you face – do you see similar obstacles now? How did you overcome those challenges? Could you use the same or similar strategies in your yoga goals? Taking some time to identify patterns of challenge and resilience can be really useful not only in your yoga goals, but in all your aims.
- Question for reflection: What strategies help you to overcome obstacles?
6) What do you do when you feel unmotivated or discouraged?
An important success strategy is to get to know yourself – the essence of yoga – and try to understand your emotional responses and coping mechanisms when it comes to challenges that arise in your studies, practice, or teaching.
- Question for reflection: What helps you when you feel unmotivated or discouraged?
7) How do you stay organized when working toward a goal?
Examine personal strategies for managing tasks and time – I’ll suggest a few tools in a moment if you are looking for some ideas. But, first, take some time to think about your existing organization strategies – do they work for you, could they use some tweaks, can you leverage those strategies to move towards your goals?
- Question for reflection: what organization strategies work for you?
Goal Setting Strategies
1) SMART Goals
Probably the most common goal setting tool is the SMART strategy. The SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) helps to break down goals into clear, actionable steps.
Example:
Instead of “I want to grow my business,” make it “I want to build up to 4 new weekly classes in the next three months by connecting with local studios and gyms, subbing classes, and surveying friends and neighbors about a private/semi-private class.”
Using the smart goals framework, and perhaps using your sample study schedules, can help with a few key areas:
- Plan your studies so you don’t feel overwhelmed
- break down big goals into manageable tasks
- celebrate small wins along the way
Sample SMART goals
Completing your studies and graduating your course:
- Study units
- Logging your practice
- Completing assignments and assessments
Teaching: Make a plan to begin teaching professionally, including:
- First Aid/CPR
- Professional membership
- Insurance
2) Vision Boards / Visualize your Goals
If you are a more visual person, you might find it helpful to create a visual representation of goals rather than lists and calendar entries. Having a visual goal board can help stay motivated. This involves pulling together images, words, and symbols that represent your goals, and collecting them together on a cork board or white board, or if you prefer digital tools a Pinterest board, to keep you inspired and accountable.
3) Daily or Weekly Planners
Scheduling study sessions into your calendar can be a useful way to stay on track. As well, breaking down larger goals into smaller, manageable tasks for each day or week can make your path to achievement more tangible. Sometimes you look at your training portal and it’s all so much, a big amorphous blob of study – planning it out can make it a lot more manageable and can help you to move forward.
Tool suggestion: Use planners like Trello, Google Calendar, or paper planners.
4) Bullet Journaling
This customizable system allows students or entrepreneurs to track goals, progress, and tasks in a flexible, creative format. It encourages organization and reflection while providing space to outline key objectives.
Tool suggestion: A simple notebook or apps like Notion can work for bullet journaling.
What might it look like? A page with 3 sections for tasks, goals, and notes.
5) 30-60-90 Day Plan
Especially helpful for new business owners, this approach breaks goals into a 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day plan. This way, you can focus on what needs to be achieved in stages rather than feeling overwhelmed by long-term goals.
6) Action Lists with Prioritization
Making a to-do list is straightforward, but prioritizing tasks using the Eisenhower Matrix (urgent/important matrix) helps in deciding which tasks to tackle first.
Step 1: List your tasks.
Step 2: Assess their urgency and importance.
Step 3: Put tasks in their respective quadrants.
Step 4: Prioritize within each quadrant.
Step 5: Take action.
Step 6: Review and adjust.
7) Sankalpa
The last thing I want to mention comes from our yoga practice, and that is setting intentions.
In yoga we have a practice of Sankalpa, setting an intention or resolve and maintaining a focus on that intention.
A Sankalpa is usually more than a material goal, but a higher intention, something more universal that perhaps speaks to your highest aims for your practice and teaching.
How we use a Sankalpa is in moments of peace or relaxation, like a the end of a practice or within a meditation, we recite our Sankalpa like we are writing it on our subconscious.
So, your homework for today is to think about what your Sankalpa might be for your studies, practice, and teaching. It might be about how you will impact your community; it might be about how your practice will help you in your evolution – there’s no right or wrong, but here are a few guidelines:
Speak your Sankalpa in the positive (I am) rather than the negative (I’m not), as though it’s already happening (‘it is’ rather than ‘I want’), and something you can believe in. For example:
“my yoga teaching is a source of peace to me and my community.”
From Here: Setting Goals as a Yoga Teacher or Teacher Trainee
Consider if any of the tools or strategies we’ve talked about today can support you in moving forward towards your goals, whether that be for your studies, practice, teaching, or yoga business.
Take the time to answer those questions for reflection so that you can come to your goal setting and strategizing with clarity and self-knowledge. Make this part of your yoga practice – getting to know you, how you approach challenges, and how you can plan for progress and success.
I hope you’ve found this useful, and we’d love to hear from you if you have any other tips, strategies, or wisdom to share!
Want to learn more about becoming a yoga teacher, or updating and upgrading your yoga learning? Check out our introductory, graduate, or postgraduate yoga teacher training programs here
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