What yoga reminded me about leadership, training and the Compound Effect.

There is something powerful about setting a big goal.

We write it down.

We put it on the vision board.

We tell ourselves, This is the year I’m going to do it!

But after more than 30 years of leading, teaching and growing others, I have learned something: the goal isn't usually the hardest part.

It’s who we have to become along the way.

One of the leadership principles I have lived by for many years comes from Darren Hardy’s The Compound Effect. The principle is simple: small, consistent choices, repeated over time, create extraordinary results.

It isn't usually one BIG decision that changes our lives.

It's the little decisions we make over and over and over again.

Recently, I was reminded of this in a very personal way.

Sometimes Growth Means Becoming the Student Again

For more than 20 years, yoga has been part of my life. I have practiced it. I have taught it. I've incorporated it into my fitness training and understood enough about yoga to feel pretty comfortable with what I was doing.

Maybe a little too comfortable.

Yoga had become something I could do on autopilot.

Yet, I had never completed a Yoga Alliance certification. As I approached a milestone birthday, I put formal yoga training on my bucket list. This past month, that goal took me all the way to Costa Rica, where I completed more than 100 hours of yoga training at Hari-Om.

And I became the student again.

My training deepened in Vinyasa and Aerial Yoga, but it also stretched me into Ayurveda, alignment, philosophy, sequencing and layers of yoga I hadn't explored before.

I quickly realized how much I still had to learn.

That can be humbling when you've been doing something for more than two decades!

But it was also incredibly refreshing.

It reminded me of something Fr. Mike Schmitz has shared:

“We do not rise to our level of expectations; we fall to the level of our training.”

Think about that from a leadership perspective.

We can have huge expectations for ourselves. We can want to be a better leader, communicator, parent, teacher, coach or business owner.

But when pressure comes, we rarely magically rise to become the person we hope to be.

We fall back on what we've practiced.

Our habits.

Our disciplines.

Our training.

That is the Compound Effect at work.

Leadership Is Built Before You Need It

I think sometimes we expect leadership growth to happen in the big moments.

The difficult employee conversation.

The crisis.

The presentation.

The big opportunity.

The moment someone needs us to step up and lead.

But leadership isn't built in those moments. It is revealed in those moments.

It was built during all the ordinary days before them.

Every book you read.

Every podcast you listen to.

Every morning you choose to get up and prepare.

Every time you practice communicating instead of reacting.

Every time you ask for feedback.

Every time you choose discipline when nobody is watching.

None of those choices feel monumental at the time.

But compound them over five, ten, twenty or thirty years?

Now you've built something.

And the opposite is also true. We can become so experienced that we stop intentionally training. We begin operating on what we already know.

That was one of my biggest takeaways from Costa Rica.

Experience doesn't mean we are finished training.

Sometimes the next level of growth requires us to become a beginner again.

Three Ways to Put the Compound Effect to Work

1. Choose one small discipline.

Don't try to overhaul your entire life or leadership this month. Choose ONE thing.

Read ten pages each morning. Spend five minutes preparing before a difficult conversation. Write down one leadership lesson each day. Exercise for 20 minutes. Whatever matters to the person you're trying to become- start small enough that you can repeat it.

Consistency beats intensity.

2. Train before the moment arrives.

Ask yourself: Where am I expecting myself to perform at a level I haven't trained for?

If you want to communicate better, practice communication.

If you want to lead under pressure, build habits that prepare you for pressure.

If you want confidence, put yourself in situations where you have to practice courage.

Don't wait for the big moment to become ready.

3. Stay willing to be the student.

This may be the hardest one, especially as we gain experience.

Put yourself in rooms where you don't know everything.

Ask questions.

Find mentors.

Take the class.

Earn the certification.

Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable again.

Because sometimes discomfort is simply evidence that we're growing.

Your Future Self Will Thank You

The Compound Effect isn't flashy. In fact, most days it can feel pretty boring.

Small choice.

Small choice.

Small choice.

Repeat.

And for a while, you may wonder whether any of it is making a difference.

Keep going.

Because eventually you get to the other side and realize those small choices weren't small at all.

They were building your foundation.

Twenty years from now, you probably won't regret the training you invested in, the books you read, the mentors you learned from, the disciplines you developed or the times you were brave enough to become a beginner again.

You'll be glad you did the work.

So I'll leave you with this question:

What are you expecting yourself to rise to that you need to start training for today?