- A decent class can still land as failure when a private, inherited rule for success is running underneath. Usually one that wants a full room and a faultless hour.
- Locus-of-control research splits what you influence from what’s set elsewhere. Attendance sits elsewhere, with the weather and other people’s diaries.
- Confidence builds mostly from mastery experiences (Bandura’s self-efficacy work), and those only count when the goal was yours to meet.
- Rewrite success as two or three conditions you control on the night and can actually see, like arriving settled and greeting every student by name.
- Judge the night as you would a respected colleague’s (Neff’s self-compassion research). Seven through the rain, a stuck shoulder easing: that’s an evening well taught.
You’ll know by the conditions you actually control, not by how many mats were down: whether you arrived settled, and taught the class you planned. Attendance and a flawless hour get settled mostly elsewhere, so they make an unfair mark. Move the bar onto what you can do and see. It’s the reframe YogaPros keeps with its members.
By YogaPros — the professional body for yoga teachers since 2006, with more than 10,000 members across 100+ countries.
Why does a decent class still leave me feeling I failed?
Two different things happen on a night like that, and you only ever trained for one of them. There’s the class. And then there’s the quiet scoring of it afterwards, running in the background, usually rigged so you can’t quite win.
Say seven came on a wet Thursday, when March had twelve. The class was decent. The pacing worked, and the student with the frozen shoulder found something like ease for the first time since Christmas. And still, somewhere between locking up and reaching the car, the verdict lands. Not good enough.
That verdict came from a rule, not from the floor. Somewhere early on, usually without noticing, you wrote yourself a definition of a good class. If that definition wants a full room and a faultless hour, a wet Thursday with seven people is a failure before anyone unrolls a mat.
The inherited version tends to have fingerprints on it. A course that prized flawless sequencing. A feed full of packed workshops. None of it chosen, and most of it never true of the teachers you actually admire. You trained for years to teach the class. The marking of it you picked up for free.
What should I measure instead of how many people came?
Measure what you control and can see. Psychologists who study locus of control draw a clean line between the outcomes you influence directly and the ones set mostly elsewhere. Attendance is mostly elsewhere, sitting with the weather and other people’s diaries. Whether the room felt held for an hour sits with you. Build your definition of success out of the first column and you have guaranteed regular failure that has nothing to do with your teaching.
And the misses don’t just pass through. Work on self-efficacy, the working belief in your own capability that the psychologist Albert Bandura spent a career mapping, finds confidence is built mostly from mastery experiences: clear, repeated evidence of doing what you set out to do. That evidence only counts when the goal was yours to meet. Mark yourself on attendance and you can teach beautifully for a decade and still starve the confidence that decade owed you.
How do I write conditions that are mine to meet?
Start with the rule you’ve already got. Write it down honestly, ugly clauses and all: finish ’a class counts as good when…’ and keep the parts you would rather not admit to. Those are usually the ones doing the quiet damage, so they need to be on the page before you can cross them out.
Then move the bar onto ground you own. The height can stay exactly where it is. If anything it is the stricter deal, because conditions you control are harder to hide from. The weather makes a generous excuse, and you’re handing it back.
A workable condition passes two tests. You control it on the night. And it shows up in something done, not something felt. ’I arrived settled and taught the class I planned’ passes both. So does ’every student was greeted by name and seen at least once in the hour.’ ’The room loved it’ fails the second. ’Twelve people came’ fails the first.
Keep it to two or three. Longer and it turns into admin. Write them as things done, because on the nights your mood lies to you, and there will be those nights, the record of what you did stays readable when the feeling doesn’t.
What if a quiet class still feels like a failure?
Then judge it the way you’d judge a colleague’s. Self-compassion research, a lot of it led by the psychologist Kristin Neff, finds that people who weigh their own work the way they’d weigh a respected colleague’s stay steadier, and get thrown less by a bad night, than people who turn on themselves. So borrow the test. A teacher tells you seven came through the rain, and the shoulder that had been stuck since Christmas finally let go. You would not call that a failure. You’d call it an evening well taught.
How do I put the new definition into practice?
Put your two or three conditions at the top of the class plan, where they’ll catch your eye every week. Read them before you teach, for a fortnight, without scoring yourself against them. The definition does its work by being in the room, well before anyone marks anything. End of term, review it like you’d review a sequence: keep what served you, rewrite what didn’t.
The profession counts a teaching life in years taught and hours logged, never in how full the room was on one thin evening in February. That’s a fairer mirror than the head-count, and the one worth keeping.
Members go deeper. YogaPros members can read the fuller version of this piece in the Learning Hub, with a one-page worksheet for rewriting what counts as a good class on terms you set. It’s part of the Wellbeing & Mindset collection: practical support for the working life of a yoga teacher, not the performance of calm.