- A decent class can still feel like failure because a private, inherited definition of success is running in the background, usually one that needs a full room and a faultless hour.
- Locus-of-control research separates outcomes you influence from ones set elsewhere; attendance sits elsewhere, with the weather and other people’s diaries.
- Confidence is built mostly from mastery experiences (Bandura’s self-efficacy work), which only land when the goal was yours to meet.
- Rewrite success as two or three conditions you control on the night and can observe, such as arriving settled and greeting every student by name.
- Judge the evening as you’d judge a respected colleague’s (Neff’s self-compassion research): seven through the rain, with a stuck shoulder easing, is an evening well taught.
You’ll know you taught a good class by conditions you actually control, like arriving settled and teaching the class you planned, rather than by how many mats were down. Attendance and a faultless hour are set mostly elsewhere, so they make an unfair mark. Move the bar onto things you can do and observe. 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?
Seven people came on Thursday. In March it was twelve. The class itself 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 landed. Not good enough.
Two things happened that evening. The class, and the marking of the class. A private rule is running in the background, and it was written to be almost impossible to meet. Somewhere early, usually without noticing, every teacher writes a definition of a good class. If that definition needs a full room and a faultless hour, then a wet Thursday with seven people is a failure before anyone unrolls a mat, whatever actually happened on the floor.
The inherited version usually has fingerprints on it. A training course that prized flawless sequencing, a feed full of packed workshops. None of it was chosen, and most of it was never true of the teachers you actually admire. You trained for years to teach the class. You inherited the marking of it 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 useful line between outcomes you influence directly and outcomes set mostly elsewhere. Attendance sits mostly elsewhere, with the weather and with other people’s diaries. Whether the room felt held for an hour sits with you. A definition of success built from the first column guarantees regular failure that has nothing to do with your teaching.
And the misses aren’t harmless. Research on self-efficacy, the working belief in your own capability that the psychologist Albert Bandura spent a career mapping, finds that confidence is built mostly from mastery experiences: clear, repeated evidence of doing what you set out to do. That evidence only lands when the goal was yours to meet. A teacher who marks themselves on attendance can teach beautifully for a decade and still starve the confidence that decade should have built.
How do I write conditions that are mine to meet?
Start by writing your current definition down honestly, unflattering clauses and all: finish the sentence ’a class counts as good when…’ and keep the parts you’re not proud of in. The clauses you’d rather not admit to are usually the ones doing the quiet damage, so they need to be visible before you can cross them out.
Then move the bar onto ground you own. The height can stay exactly where it was; if anything this is the stricter deal, because conditions you control are harder to hide from. The weather makes a generous excuse, and you’re giving it up.
A workable condition passes two tests. You control it on the night. And it shows up in something done rather than 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 test. ’Twelve people came’ fails the first.
Keep the list 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?
Judge the evening the way you’d judge a colleague’s. Self-compassion research, much of it led by the psychologist Kristin Neff, finds that people who assess their own work the way they’d assess a respected colleague’s stay steadier and are less thrown by a poor night than people who self-attack. So borrow the test. If another teacher told 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?
Write your two or three conditions at the top of your class plan, where you’ll see them every week, and read them before you teach for a fortnight without scoring yourself against them. The definition works by being in the room, not by being marked after it. At the end of term, review the rule the way you’d review a sequence: keep what served you, and rewrite what didn’t.
The profession measures 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 it’s 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.