Virya
Lighting and tending the fire under your ass and stoking your motivation.
4 Tricks For Success
Sutra 1.20 speaks of how to nurture our spirit and our natural sense of oneness. For those of us not born enlightened, Sutra 1.20 lists 5 qualities that help us along the ways.
These five qualities are:
Sradda Virya Smrti Smadhi Prajnapurvaka Itaresam
Faith, determination, intention, reflection, and perception.
This new year full moon is a good time to remember virya. Virya can be defined as energy, enthusiasm, determination, strength, persistence, diligence, effort, heroism. Virya is the root of the warrior poses…virhabdrasana I, II, and III. We are our own heroes and our own warriors. We our own strength and determination.
We all want to be our best selves because we all want to be happy and peaceful, but we are all human and often fail over and over again. We may be snappy, over indulge, play too much, work too much, complain, be unable to speak up for ourselves, or any matter of behaviors that bring us energetically down, make us self-critical, or make us less capable of bringing peace and joy to our interactions. Without virya, we don’t get up after we fall, we just give up and allow the emotions, ego, and engrained belief patterns to keep us spinning on our own hamster wheel of suffering instead of moving forward and thriving. Virya is the fire under our ass to keep us moving.
Each of us is born with a different innate amount of virya. Some of us need to tone it down, while others need to crank it up a notch, or several.
“You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.” – Richard Bach
Four corners of success.
Decide on an Accomplishable Goal.
Although an end goal may be something large like peace or enlightenment, or something as simple as health or a clean house, we need to break down the idea into an accomplishable, realistic, simple goal. We may want to have more free time in your life for play, creativity, relaxation, and connection with others. Play, creativity, relaxation, and connection with others will surely help us move towards being more peaceful, but it is imperative that we choose a specific and defined goal. Set a goal of 20 minutes a day, an hour a week, one evening, one weekend day, or one retreat a year, whatever seems realistic and doable. Caretakers may need to break it down into even smaller increments of time or activity. As a reasonability check, can you easily think of 2-3 reasons why you know that you can accomplish your goal. If you can think of reasons this goal is doable, the next step is to think about how often will you review your progress. Will you self-check in or have an accountability buddy once a week, once a month, every day before bed? Once free time starts to become normal in our lives and we have cultivated the habits and characteristics for free time to be the norm, we can reevaluate a new goal to get us to the larger outcome of peace, being healthy, or always having a clean home.
Clarify Why you Want the Goal.
If we have a why, it gives our virya much more power. I may want free time because I know it will add joy to my life and allow me to be more present, playful, and open. I know that with more joy I will be able to be a better partner, friend, teacher, and I will like myself better. When coming up against obstacles and responsibilities, it is extremely helpful to have a reason to move past the obstacles. The ‘why’ is a huge part of determination and motivation and it may change over time. I find it best to spend some time jotting down all the reasons why this goal is important so that if I lose motivation or my way, I can pull out that list and it acts as kindling for my fire.
Commit to a Time and Place.
Map out how you can accomplish this goal. Think about where and when you can fulfill your accomplishable goal. There is a lot going on in life and if we don’t put these intentions into the big picture, the intentions will get left behind by chores, family, work, friends, and simply overlooked. Some of us are calendar people and some of us need a daily or weekly routine. I find that for longer term goals with steps along the way it is best for me to put a deadline for each stage on a calendar so that I know when I need to accomplish it by and I can see other commitments coming up that I will need to work around.
Be Flexibile.
Flexibility is a huge factor in determination. Without flexibility, motivation turns into stubborn obstinate behavior that ignores consequences, reality, or our own inner intuition. Without flexibility, we can easily slip into a feeling of failure and simply give up, or worse, beat ourselves up.
A key to flexibility is thinking about an exit strategy before you need one. It’s just like on planes when they tell you what to do in an emergency before you take off and when you go rafting they tell you what will happen if you’re ejected from your boat before you get on the water. They tell you BEFORE there is an emergency so you know what to do in an emergency.
Physical and Logistical Road Blocks
Think about all the road blocks and instances that can get in the way of your goal to have more free time. This may include kids, work, sleep needs, behavior patterns, and belief patterns. Write out all the ways you think you can be thrown off track and then write several solutions to them.
Remember your ‘why’ and realize that you can change your activity to accomplish the same why. For example, if there is a big work project that takes more time than expected then I can take a bath before bed for relaxation time instead of going for a walk in the woods. Another solution might be to think ahead a preplan meals so that there is more free time each evening. Another solution to having more free time is to set a time that work is finished for the day no matter what. We must trust that we’ll be more productive the next time we attempt to work because we’ll be energized, happy, and focused.
Mental Blocks
In addition to road blocks, what mental blockages come up to get in the way? What are the first thoughts of doubt that come into mind when you think about having free time. Do I feel like taking personal time is selfish? Am I afraid of spending time alone with my thoughts? Do I not know how to be if I don’t have a specific task? Do I not believe there is enough time for everything? Take some time to think about what beliefs and attitudes could get in the way of accomplishing the goal and develop a bhavana to counter it. Our belief systems are deeply ingrained and effect our actions and our thoughts on an almost imperceptible level. It’s helpful to have an emergency exit strategy for when our own habits, patterns, and beliefs that can stand in our way.
Compassion is part of flexibility!
While we don’t want to think about failing or put any thoughts towards the direction we don’t want to go, the truth is that our determination to be our best selves won’t work every moment. With determination, we will accomplish our goals overall. There will most likely be set backs, failures, or stagnant periods. This is NORMAL and OKAY. Life happens. Determination is steady effort in the direction you want to go…it doesn’t always mean that the effort is immediately fruitful.
Focus on the why you have the goal when we hit a tough spot to help give you motivation. Note all the progress you have made (I created free time for myself for three weeks in a row) and let failures be a lesson. Did I learn a new road block or mental block that I need to prepare for? Did I realize that my goal wasn’t realistic or specific enough? What are two nice things I can say to myself even though I have some disappointment in myself? For every disappointing thought or self-criticism that arises, give yourself two compliments. The compliments may be hard to drum up, but they can be as simple as, “I am taking the time to reflect on this and improve things.”
Virya comes easier for some than others. All of us can cultivate the virya necessary on the path of yoga to keep moving in the direction you want to go. At some moments, we may feel like we are at a standstill, or going in reverse, but we can still face the destination.
We can still set defined and specific goals, focus on why they are valuable to us, decide when and where to work on them, and have a backup plan. When we get turned all around and inside out, we go back to the beginning and gather kindling (why) for our fires (goals) and start tending again. Before we know it, we are surrounded by the light and warmth of our own progress.
Cultivating virya is training to be your own hero and our own salvation warrior.