Aparigraha — Non-grasping

Goal setting is great. It gives you focus. It can help you decide what actions to take when you have a decision to make. It can stop you from languishing in your comfort zone and not living up to what you are truly capable of. But once we have set our goals or direction, we need to let go. We need to learn to trust the process. We need to not grip too hard to the outcomes.

Aparigraha is the fifth Yama, which is the first of eight limbs of Yoga. But most importantly, it’s a great guiding principle to live our lives by. A wise man once said that all human suffering is caused by wanting things to be different from the way they are. Which to me, means grasping on to how we want things to be. We set ourselves a goal – I recently decided to do 30 days of yoga at the beautiful eastwest studio on Ponsonby Road. To me, 30 days means exactly that – one class, every day, for a full thirty days. And then, the second week in I realised that maybe it wasn’t the best thing for me. There’s been a lot going on in my life and I decided that the best thing I could do for everyone in my life was to go home and make a healthy dinner. That yes, it would mean that I didn’t complete my goal of thirty classes in thirty days. But I didn’t beat myself up about not achieving my goal (a younger version of Tania would have).

By setting the goal and softening the grip, I could sit back and watch the process unfold. I could see the signs that maybe it wasn’t the best option for me that day, that there was a better option to practice yoga off my mat, that there were other things going on that I might have missed if I’d been hung up on completing the challenge no matter what.

Softening my grip on outcomes makes it easier to enjoy the process along the way too. That old cliche about it being the journey, not the destination is so true. What if the destination doesn’t feel as good as you thought it was going to? Or if you never reach the destination? If you are busy enjoying the journey then wherever you end up will be part of the fun.

If you asked me five years ago if I’d be working multiple part-time jobs or starting my yoga teacher training journey, I’d have thought you were crazy. Yet here I am, loving the life that is unfolding in front of me. But again, not grasping on to it too tightly. Who knows what the next five years will bring. I have some goals that I want to achieve (avoiding the winter in Auckland is one) but I know that life will unfold just as it’s meant to – with all the challenges, opportunities and changes that I can handle. Maybe my life will change dramatically, maybe it’ll be not that different from what it is now. And I’m okay with that.

Bring on the next phase of the journey to my unknown destination.