Jul 21

Jul 21 Does Competing Motivate You?

Hi, I’m Liz Moser, a Mayo Clinic and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and last week I received a distressing email from my sweet little yoga studio. The studio I’ve been zooming into once or twice daily throughout COVID. The two owners are going their separate ways, and the remaining owner of the studio will be closing for the month of July while they “rebrand.”

Oh No! I completely panicked: My daily structure! My physical workout! My beloved yoga Nidra meditation! No chatting with the students and teachers! And no rewards program for one entire month!

Rewards program? What?

Yes, my yoga practice the last few months hasn't merely been about the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of yoga. It was also about accruing rewards points every week. I eagerly watched myself inch up the leader board. Six months ago, I started at about 700th place, and as of the end of June, I was 13th out of 1000 yogis. Oh yes, I was kicking their bu**’s!

I bet you didn’t know that yoga is a competitive sport! Ha!

Although my weight fluctuated over the years (before embracing my current nutritional lifestyle), I never had a lot of weight to lose. I’ve never truly been overweight.

Therefore, currently, doing yoga without the rewards plan, I suppose, is the closest I’ve come to feeling what many of my clients feel when they transition from weight loss to weight maintenance. When they have to let go of the dopamine hit, or that rush of excitement, brought on by the scale dropping down each week, and they start having to shift their focus to the more subtle day to day “non-scale victories.”

Non-scale victories or NSV’s for short, are a way for dieters to measure their weight loss progress without being constrained to a single measure of a scale. For instance, some NSV’s of weight loss are improved sleep, looser clothing, and increased energy to engage in your life goals.

In my case, I had to temporarily let go of the dopamine hit, that rush of excitement, brought on by watching my points tally up until finally, I was neck to neck with the studio's OG yogis. Yep, I turned my yoga practice into a competition!

But hey, if a competition keeps you motivated, is that so bad?

As a wellness coach, my answer to that question is both no and yes! Each of my clients is unique, and my job is to help them discover what’s motivating for them. OK, so nothing wrong with competition if that kind of support works for you. And it defiantly works for me! Right, I moved from 700th to 13th place in 6 months because I took a lot of yoga classes. Competition is a motivator for me, yet it feels like pressure for some people and can ultimately backfire.

Therefore, if competing is motivating for you, then compete. No harm, no foul. Although, I would suggest that while you’re competing, you check in now and again and stay clear about your real reasons for your actions. In my case, why is yoga important to me?

And more crucially, how does yoga serve my larger goals and purpose?

I love yoga because it grounds me while it strengthens my body, mind, and spirit. I love learning challenging new poses while being part of an ancient tradition that’s still relevant today. Furthermore, one of my life goals is to help other people, and anything that grounds me in the present strengthens that goal.

I am quite clear that yoga isn’t about kicking anyone’s b**t or inching up the leader board. Yoga offers multiple non-reward points victories or NRV's and that’s why I practice.

For July, I followed the owner, who left the studio to her new online business. It doesn’t have a rewards program. Otherwise, it's the same teacher, same students, and the same sunroom she taught in during the last several months of zoom calls. I'm not inching up the leaderboard, yet I'm participating in many of the same lovely classes. When the newly rebranded studio opens in August, will I continue with them as well? I don’t know, time will tell.

My goal is to continue embracing the non-reward points victories, NRV’s, of yoga while staying with my practice.

I’m Liz Moser a Mayo Clinic and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, but more significantly a fellow wellness seeker just like you. Thank you for reading this blog about my non-rewards point’s victories in yoga. And for allowing me to acknowledge that while my personality loves a good competition, I also need to check with my deeper why's and overall life purpose.

Let’s never lose sight of the “forest”, our larger goals, and life purpose through the “trees” of our desire to succeed in a competition.