Making Commitments to Ourselves

A sandcastle snowman

It is 9:00 am on New Years’ Day and I have just returned from yoga practice at the beach. The house is hot and humid, the beach was sunny and breezy. I was pretty sure that no-one was going to come to the yoga class this morning. I had checked with “the regulars” and they were all going to be away or tucked up in bed after a big night of celebration.

BUT, I couldn’t be sure that no-one would turn up, and I had made a commitment to run a yoga class. I had made a commitment to OTHER PEOPLE, and so I went down there. If the commitment had been “JUST” to myself I most likely would have stayed home.

Once there, of course, I was so grateful I had made the effort.  I had a lovely gentle personal practice soaking up the amazing view of the ocean, the sound of the waves and the feeling of the sun and the breeze.

Isn’t it so much easier to take action when you are accountable to someone else? In a perfect world, of course, making a commitment to ourselves is enough to make sure we follow through. I don’t live in a perfect world and, whilst aspiring to become a yogi, I am certainly not there yet when it comes to practicing “tapas”, fire-y discipline.

So, a big THANK YOU to all my students for being there, for potentially turning up, thus giving me that extra  bit of “tapas.”