Abhyāsa: The Power of Small Shifts Repeated Over Time

We all hear that consistency is key, but how do we actually get to that consistency?

Reflecting on my home yoga studio’s focus this month, abhyāsa, I keep coming back to that question. In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, abhyāsa refers to steady, devoted practice ~ the willingness to return again and again. Not perfection. Not instant transformation. Just the continued effort to show up.

And honestly, I think that’s the part we struggle with most.

Sometimes we want to go to sleep and wake up a completely new and improved version of ourselves. More disciplined. More healed. More confident. More productive. More perfect. But more often than not, that isn’t how growth actually works.

Real change usually happens in much smaller ways. One better decision. One moment of awareness. One day of trying again. Then another.

That’s how consistency is built. Not through becoming a different person overnight, but through returning to yourself repeatedly, even after you fall off track.

And an important part of consistency is actually failing! It SO important to fail, this is how we learn best. I think we forget that.

Failure is often what teaches us what not to do. It gives us information. It sharpens awareness. It helps us refine our approach. Without failure, there’s often no real understanding.

Many years ago, I had a Human Design (its a bit woo woo, but highly I reccomend) reading because I wanted to understand myself more deeply. During the reading, I was told, “You’re the type of person who will touch a hot stove just to make sure it’s hot.” I laughed immediately because honestly… that has been true my entire life. You can still see the tiny burn scars on the tips of my fingers from moments exactly like that. Why do I do this?

Because I often need to experience things for myself in order to fully understand them. I have to test, fail, reflect, and recalibrate before something truly clicks. Outside of my occasional “I know the coffee is hot but I’m checking anyway” moments, I’ve failed many times in life. I've failed classes, failed relationships, failed goals, failed hobbies (I have an entire room devoted to these dead hobbies in my house), you name it, I probably failed it. And at this point, I share that openly.

Not because failure is glamorous, but because honesty about it feels freeing. There’s something powerful about no longer pretending you have everything figured out. It creates space for growth instead of perfectionism.

That honesty is what keeps me coming back to my practice. Coming back to growth. Showing up in small, incremental ways for both my personal and professional goals.

As a professor, I see this constantly in students and professionals alike. People think confidence, leadership, communication skills, or success happen all at once. But in business, just like in yoga, sustainable growth is built through repetition, reflection, and resilience.

The best leaders are rarely the people who never failed. They’re the people who kept learning. They tried again. And again. And again. Until eventually, something stuck.

That’s the real lesson of abhyāsa to me.

Consistency is not about getting it perfect every day. It’s about developing the willingness to return, to your goals, your values, your practice, and yourself, even after setbacks. Small shifts, repeated over time, reshape us far more deeply than dramatic change ever could.

And maybe that’s the point.

Not becoming someone entirely new overnight, not being perfect, but slowly becoming more aligned with who you were capable of being all along.

Namaste.

Izzy