For me the easiest way is to remember which commonly used move puts you in which stance, I rarely even look at my character. Like: "from 4B I can press 4 for Left Inner or 6 for Right Cross" - in most cases you won't be able to loop more than one stance forward/backward anyway. The order of stances is always the same, so once you know that you can go to Right Outer from Right Cross by pressing 6, then you can easily deduce that by pressing 4 in Right Outer you go into Right Cross.
When it comes to stances themselves, not the transitions it's easier (for me) to associate stance's popular moves with the stance itself. The first stance I've learned was Right Cross with the reasoning behind this being - "this is the shitty stance with two options that work only on stunned opponents and A is pretty good for fishing for damage, I can confirm A to get damage with B afterwards. Most people go into RC by mashing A like apes".
Remember that stances are there to solve your problems, not to create new ones.