A brick goal survives the attack of the big bad wolf and keeps your yoga practice moving forward.
In the story of The three little pigs each pig builds a different house to protect themselves from the big bad wolf.
One pig built his house of straw. The second pig built his house out of sticks and the final pig built his house out of brick.
The wolf came along and blew in the straw house and the house made of sticks.
When he came to the third pig’s house he was unable to blow the brick house in.
In your yoga practice you need to build your goals like the brick house that the third pig built.
Your goals need to be strong to withstand the attack of the big bad wolf of discouragement.
Do you have a straw goal, a stick goal or a brick goal?
What kind of goals are you setting
Elizabeth started her yoga practice with the same goal as most people. She said “I want to be more flexible.” This is a straw goal.
A Straw goal
A straw goal lacks specifics.
How will you know when you are more flexible? Do you want to be able to touch your toes? Do you want to sit comfortably in lotus position? What do you mean when you say that you want to be more flexible?
This type of goal will not survive the attack of the big bad wolf. As we see in the original story the wolf blows this house / goal away with ease. Once the goal is blown away the yoga practice will soon be blown away as well.
Adding some specifics to your Straw goal moves you on to a Stick goal.
A Stick goal
A BRICK GOAL is specific with a path of smaller goals that take you from where you are now to your final goal.
“I want to be more flexible” needs some specifics to make it a stick goal.
After some discussion Elizabeth says what she wants to be able to do is “Put my hands on the floor beside my feet while my legs are straight”.
Now this is a much better goal than the straw goal. Now we have a specific goal. This is much stronger than the straw goal, but it too will not stand up to the big bad wolf.
The wolf will have a harder time but eventually it will blow the stick goal away as well.
There is a missing element that when added will make this stick goal into a brick goal that will withstand the big bad wolf.
A Brick goal
The missing element in the stick goal is a series of smaller intermediate goals to work towards.
Creating a path of smaller goals will lead you from where you are now towards the front door of your brick goal.
Elizabeth works with her yoga teacher to determine the first movement towards her big goal. Elizabeth touches her knee caps when she bends over now. Her first small goal is to get her fingertips to touch the bottom of her knee caps.
Once she reaches this goal she is ready to move on to the next goal; get the top of her palm to touch the bottom of her knee caps. And so it goes, one goal after the other.
These small intermediate goals are taking Elizabeth down the path towards her big goal of putting her hands on the floor.
Elizabeth follows these intermediate goals and moves towards her big goal. Accomplishing these smaller goals keeps the big bad wolf from blowing her brick goal away.
Summary
Like Elizabeth you need to create a specific description of your goal.
To make this into a brick goal you need to build a path of intermediate goals from where you are now to where you want to be.
These two factors: a specific goal; and a path of intermediate goals creates a Brick Goal.
This Brick goal will survive the attempts of the big bad wolf of emotion and discouragement to blow it away.
Next Step
Talk to your yoga teacher about your big goal (straw). Together work on creating a specific goal (stick). Finally create a path of small intermediate goals from where you are now to this specific goal (Brick).
Your yoga teacher will help you and guide you along the path to your Brick Goal.
Additional Reading
To learn more about building a path to your BRICK goal read How to use Hansel’s inch pebbles to enhance your yoga practice
A Practice Buddy will help you to keep your yoga practice goal on track. How to pick a practice buddy; use this magnetic technique will help you select the most compatible partner.
When chaos interferes with your yoga practice use the techniques in How to keep your daily yoga practice going when the dragons strike to keep moving towards your goal.
You can read the full story about The Three Little Pigs online.
