Read The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life Online
Authors: Thomas M. Sterner
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The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life (2 page)
We think that our struggles today are known only to us, but they are timeless, and those who lived long before us faced the same internal struggles that we do. There is a story, many centuries old, that describes these struggles. The story is about a chariot rider who steps onto a Roman-style chariot drawn by four horses. In this story, the horses represent the mind. The driver, who has an undisciplined mind, steps onto the chariot but has no hold
on the reins. The four horses run wild all day, exhausting themselves and the driver as they bump along off the chosen path, constantly changing directions. They do not know where they are or where they are going at any given moment. The driver holds on to the railings and is just as helpless as the horses as they all watch the scenery go by. In contrast, a disciplined driver, who has the reins in hand, is in control and directs the horses down the focused, chosen path, wherever it might be. The horses now have no will. Their energy is directed by the refined commands of the disciplined driver. The ride is smooth, and they all reach their desired destination in the least amount of time, with the least amount of effort and fatigue. Which would you rather be?
If you are not in control of your thoughts, then you are not in control of yourself. Without self-control, you have no
real
power, regardless of whatever else you accomplish. If you are not
aware
of the thoughts that you think in each moment, then you are the rider with no reins, with no power over where you are going. You cannot control what you are not aware of. Awareness must come first.
The quest of this book is to examine how we get from here to there. How did we learn to be the chariot driver with no hold on the reins, and what types of cultural habits or teachings reinforce and perpetuate that way of thinking? What can we learn from how kids think? What can we teach them so they will have less to unlearn than we do? How do we do all this without struggling to
accomplish it? These are the questions I asked myself, and they are the ones I will, I hope, answer for you>
When I began this project, I envisioned this to be a book that would simply help readers to eliminate the struggles of learning to play a musical instrument. However, the further into the writing process I got, the more I realized that I was writing about my outlook on processing life, not just my thoughts about playing an instrument or learning a golf swing. I realized that I was using what I had learned in the very process of writing the book. I observed my perspective on how I maintained my steady writing effort day to day. I saw its presence in the effort of trying to understand exactly what it was that I had learned and how to put that into words. I saw how I was able to run a very successful business and to be there for my young daughters.
One day, I noticed that I was feeling frustrated and somewhat irritated while I was taking care of my daughters. I was having all these ideas for this book, but they were going to have to wait to be written down because my children needed my attention. I noticed that I had become the chariot driver who did not have control of the reins. I was allowing my mind to run off the path and work on the book instead of staying on the path and enjoying the time with my kids. When I realized this, I pulled in the reins and let the book go until my next scheduled writing session. The stress disappeared immediately, and I dove into the fun I had missed by not being in the present moment with my daughters.
At its
inception, I would not have been able to write “this” version of
The Practicing Mind
even if someone had sat me down and said, “I will pay your bills and look after your family. You just write.” It took the writing process and observing myself going through my days to learn that.
I now realize that my approach toward moving through life began to change in my early twenties. Maybe this sounds familiar to you. Up until then, I had a long list of interests that I pursued with a lot of enthusiasm at first, and then lost steam and energy relatively quickly. First I would pick a particular activity, say exercising. Then I would really get involved in it by joining a gym, buying the proper clothes, and so forth. Next I would start the activity with a commitment to be steadfast, and I’d persevere in my effort. After a few sessions, my initial enthusiasm would start to taper off, and I would have trouble maintaining my interest and discipline. From that point, it would become harder and harder to continue with the practice of keeping up the exercising routine, and I would begin to make excuses to myself for skipping a session with promises like, “I will make it up in the next session or add one in the morning before work during the week.” This was all folly, though, because I wouldn’t follow through with these commitments either, and I would become more and more comfortable with letting things slide until I had completely gotten away from my original goals. There was also this nagging sense that I had let myself down, plus a feeling that I was not really in control of
my dest
iny because I wasn’t completing something that I had made a decision to do. Eventually, I would get to the point in this cycle where I lost all interest in the particular endeavor, and I would begin the search for the next thing that was going to fill the void in me, starting the whole process over again. My biggest asset was that I was aware of the fact that I followed this cycle when tackling any new endeavor. I noted this tendency, and I would quietly observe myself participating in this routine with one thing after another.
Three things were happening at this point in my life that would prove to be the beginning of a major shift in perspective and awareness for m. First, I had begun taking piano lessons again, from a teacher who not only was one of the best players in the area but was just several years older than me. Taking lessons as an adult yielded a whole new set of advantages and disadvantages over studying as a child. We will go into these in a later chapter. Second, while in college, I had begun independently studying Eastern philosophies. My study at that point was fairly broad, not focusing on any philosophy in particular, and it was part of a self-taught “religions and philosophies of the world” course. It sparked a contemplative process that, over the next twenty years, would forever change my understanding of the relationship between the mechanics of and the reasons for practicing anything.
If you have never considered it, think about how everything we learn and master in life, from walking and tying our shoes to saving money and raising a child, is
accompli
shed through a form of practice, something we repeat over and over again. For the most part, we are not aware of the process as such, but that is how good practice manifests itself when done properly. It carries no stressladen anticipation, no internal question, “When will the goal be reached?” When we practice anything properly, the fact that we are engaging in a difficult learning process disappears, and, more important, the process dissolves into a period of inner calming that gives us a rest from the tension and anxiety that our “get it done yesterday” world pushes on us every day of our lives. For this reason, it is important to recognize and be in control of the process and to learn to enjoy that part of life’s activity.
The third major influence on my shift in perspective toward learning anything new came from a career decision. I had decided to become a concert piano technician and piano rebuilder. This is a very unique vocation, to put it mildly. It takes years to learn the skills necessary to be a high-level concert technician, and even longer to become proficient at the art of fine instrument restoration. My days consisted of anything from preparing a $100,000 concert grand piano for a major world symphony performance to painstakingly restoring a vintage grand piano to better-than-factory-new condition. During my years in business, I worked for and met many of the world’s best conductors, concert pianists, big band leaders, and pop, jazz, and country-western singers, and I restored pianos dating back to the Civil War period.
A grand piano action (which is the entire keyboard
mechanis
m) consists of 8,000 to 10,000 parts. There are 88 notes, with about 34 different adjustments per note. A piano has between 225 and 235 strings, each of which has a corresponding tuning pin that needs to be individually adjusted at least once during a single tuning. My point is obvious. Working on a piano is repetitious, tedious, and monotonous, to say the least. Everything you do to the instrument, you must do at least 88 times. This forces you to let go of everything but the most practical and efficient attitude toward the daily work that faces you in the shop and on the stage. If you do not possess at least a minimal level of discipline and patience, your anxiety and frustration will soar.
My purpose in detailing the repetitive nature and monotony of this work is to give you an appreciation of why, out of sheer survival, I began to develop an ability to get lost in the
process
of doing something. As difficult as the job was, its monotonous nature enabled me to spend my day alone with my thoughts. This afforded me the time to observe and evaluate what worked and what didn’t when coping with the nature of my trade.
Throughout this book, I will relate what I sizder the key events and areas of my life that taught me so much about myself, why I struggled at times, why I let myself down at times, and how I moved beyond those failures simply by observing some of life’s simple truths.
And so, on to the beginning of understanding our
practicing mind
.
A parad
ox of life:
The problem with patience and discipline
is that developing each of them requires
both of them.
D
uring the time I studied golf, I participated in a six-week group golf class. Each week, five of us, all adults, would meet at the driving range for an hour of instruction followed by an hour of practice on our own. At the beginning of the third session, I was sitting on a bench waiting for the class ahead of ours to finish. Next to me was one of my classmates, who had also gotten there early. I had learned, when we had introduced ourselves on the first day, that she was heavily involved in the corporate routine and wanted to learn golf both for relaxation and as a means to further her career. She explained that many times in the course of her job, golf outings were offered as a way to meet new business contacts and discuss company matters in a relaxed setting.
As we chatted about golf and our jobs, I asked her this question: “Well, did you practice what we learned last week?” “No,” she replied. “I had so much to do all
week. I ju
st want to wake up one morning and be able to play well.” I sensed frustration and mild depression in her voice. She seemed frustrated that golf was much harder than it looked and depressed about all the hard work that lay ahead of her if she had any hopes of reaching the level of ability that she felt would make the game more fun.
When our class began, the instructor asked that same question of all of us, even though he would know the truth as soon as we started warming up and hitting balls. The purpose of his question was to make us admit, out loud, whether or not we had found the discipline necessary to practice and habitualize the techniques that he had taught to us the previous week.
That
would allow us to easily move on to the next step. What was revealed was that only two of us had practiced at all during the week between sessions. One classmate had been to the range several evenings to go over what he had been shown. The remaining three not only had failed to practice but had left immediately after the instruction period the week before instead of remaining to practice on their own. My weekly practice included the following:
After class the previous Monday evening, I had stayed and hit balls for an hour to begin learning what had been shown to us during the lesson. Before leaving the range, I sat in the car and spent a few minutes writing down notes in a small journal. I made sure that I wrote a description of everything we had covered in class. These notes were nothing elaborate, just reminders of the key points the
instructor
had discussed. During the week that followed, I would go into my basement to practice after my children had gone to bed and my wife and I had caught up on each other’s day. I made a list of everything I would cover in that particular practice session, and divided up each task so that I could work on only one aspect of the golf swing at a time. In the course of practicing each item, I would make anywhere from one to two hundred swings in front of a mir with a short club I had cut off so it wouldn’t hit the ceiling. I followed this up during the week with three trips to the range to actually hit balls, but again, only working on one part of the swing at a time. When at the range, I put most of my energy into ignoring what the ball flight looked like. I was in the
process
of learning parts of the golf swing. I didn’t expect to be hitting good shots. A beautiful golf shot is the result, or
product
, of all the parts being correct.
To my classmates, this type of practice routine would seem to require way too much time and effort out of their already overburdened days. However, the reality was that, just as in learning a musical instrument as a child, I rarely put in more than an hour of practice time a day. Just turning the TV off would give the average person much more time than was required. More important, I not only looked forward to the practice sessions but
needed
them. They provided me with a diversion.
Just as for everyone else, my life was stressful at times, and I anticipated absorbing myself in something that
wasn’
t
. Besides the normal ups and downs of family life, I had career deadlines to meet: expensive piano restoration work that clients had saved years for and wanted finished on time, regardless of whether some supplier had sent me the wrong parts or I had lost time to emergency service work for a symphony. I also had to deal with nerve-wracking concert situations while preparing pianos for some of the biggest names in the music world. If there was a problem, I was the “go-to” man. I had to provide the solution right now, and no excuses. At more than one symphonic concert, I found myself frantically searching for some perceived nuance of imperfection while the artist looked over my shoulder and a thousand people were kept waiting in the lobby for us to finish and clear the stage. Stress was no stranger to my job experience.
Contrary to what the other classmates were experiencing, I found that, when given my
present-moment
attention, the practice sessions were very calming, not bothersome. I didn’t have to be anywhere but “here,” and I didn’t have to accomplish anything but exactly what I was doing “right now.” I found that immersing myself in the process of practicing shut off all the tensions of the day and all the thoughts of what had to get done tomorrow. It kept my mind in the present, out of the past and the future. I let go of any expectations about how long it would take me to acquire a good golf swing because I was enjoying what I was doing right now: learning a good golf swing.
Why was I fin
ding golf practice to be an invigorating yet calming experience while my classmates were finding it to be the opposite? I believe this was because I was actually practicing and they were not. Compounding the problem was their anxiety, which was created by their awareness that by not practicing, they were not getting any closer to their intended goal.
They would have found the time and discipline, and even wanted to practice, had two things occurred. First, they would have needed to understand the mechanics of good practice. In other words, they would have needed to understand how proper mechanics would make their experience of the learning process efficient and free of stress and impatience. Second, they would have needed to experience a shift in their intended goal. We have a very unhealthy habit of making the
product
— our intended result — the goal, instead of the
process
of reaching that goal. This is evident in many activities in our everyday lives. We become fixated on our intended goal and completely miss out on the joy It k the process of achieving it. We erroneously think that there is a magical point that we will reach and then we will be happy. We look at the
process
of getting there as almost a necessary nuisance we have to go through in order to get to our goal.
Let’s look at both of the points mentioned above. It will become apparent that they are interrelated and that one creates the other. First, we will look at the difference between practicing something and just learning it. To
begin, let’s
define what the word
practice
means in its simplest form.
To me, the words
practice
and
learning
are similar but not the same. The word
practice
implies the presence of awareness and will. The word
learning
does not. When we practice something, we are involved in
the deliberate repetition of a process with the intention of reaching a specific goal
. The words
deliberate
and
intention
are key here because they define the difference between actively practicing something and passively learning it. If you grow up in a household where there is constant bickering and inappropriate behavior, you can
learn
that behavior without your knowledge. If that happens, then in order for you to change similar bickering behavior within yourself, you must first become
aware
of the personality tendencies you possess, and practice a different behavior repeatedly and deliberately with the
intention
of changing.
Practice encompasses learning, but not the other way around. Learning does not take content into consideration. Keeping that in mind, we can also say that good practice mechanics require deliberately and intentionally
staying
in the process of doing something and being aware of whether or not we are actually accomplishing that. This also requires that we let go of our attachment to the “product.”
The title of this chapter is “Process, Not Product.” This simple and yet powerful statement is something I am sure you have heard in one form or another at some time
in your life. Sayin
gs such as “Stay on purpose,” “Don’t be too results-oriented,” and “There is no goal in life; life is the goal” are all stating the same truth. What these are all saying is “focus on the
process
, not the product that the process was meant to achieve.” It’s a paradox. When you focus on the process, the desired product takes care of itself with fluid ease. When you focus on the product, you immediately begin to fight yourself and experience boredom, restlessness, frustration, and impatience with the process. The reason for this is not hard to understand. When you focus your mind on the present moment, on the
process
of what you are doing right now, you are always where you want to be and where you should be. All your energy goes into what you are doing. However, when you focus your mind on where you want to end up, you are never where you are, and you exhaust your energy with unrelated thoughts instead of putting it into what you are doing.
In order to focus on the present, we must give up, at least temporarily, our attachment to our desired goal. If we don’t give up our attachment to the goal, we cannot be in the present because we are thinking about something that hasn’t occurred yet: the goal. This is the goal shift I spoke of earlier. When you shift your goal from the product you are trying to achieve to the process of achieving it, a wonderful phenomenon occurs: all pressure drops away. This happens because, when your goal is to pay attention to only what you are doing right now, as long as
you are doing just
that, you are reaching your goal in each and every moment In one respect, this is a very subtle shift, but in another, it’s a tremendous leap in how you approach anything that requires your effort. When you truly shift into putting your attention on what you are doing right now and remain continually aware that you are doing so, you begin to feel calm, refreshed, and in control. Your mind slows down because you are asking it to think only of one thing at a time. The inner chatter drops away. Focusing in this manner is very contrary to how we handle most of our activities during the day. Our minds try to manage a long list of things that we need to get done (in the future) or forgot to do (in the past). We are everywhere but
where
we are, and we are usually doing too many things at once.
This awareness of being where you are and in the present gives you the constant positive reinforcement of reaching your goal over and over again. However, when your mind is only on the finished product, not only do you feel frustrated in every second that you have not met that goal, but you experience anxiety in every “mistake” you make while practicing. You view each mistake as a barrier, something delaying you from realizing your goal and experiencing the joy that reaching that goal is going to give you.
When, instead, your goal is to focus on the process and stay in the present, then there are no mistakes and no judging. You are just learning and doing. You are
executing the activi
ty, observing the outcome, and adjusting yourself and your practice energy to produce the desired result. There are no bad emotions, because you are not judging anything.
Using music as an example, let’s say you are trying to learn a particular piece of music. If your goal is to play the entire piece of music perfectly, with each note you play you will be making constant judgments about the music and yourself: “I played that part correctly, but I can’t seem to get this part right.” “Here comes the part I always mess up.” “It will never sound the way I want. This is hard work.” All these judgments require your energy, and none of that energy is going into learning the music and getting to a point where it is effortless for you to play it. These thoughts are only keeping you from learning the piece of music. We waste so much of our energy by not being aware of how we are directing it.
This doesn’t mean that you must lose touch with what you are aiming for. You continue to use the final goal as a rudder to steer your practice session, but not as an indicator of how you are doing. The goal creates a dilemma in any activity you choose, because it is usually the reason you undertake an endeavor in the first place, and it is always out there as a point of comparison against which to measure your progress. You can really see this dilemma in sports such as skating, gymnastics, bowling, and golf, which have “perfect” scores, but in more subtle ways it is also present in any area of life where we aspire to accomplish
something. If, while
writing this book, I start to feel that I just want to get this chapter done so I can move on to the next, I am doing the same thing and misusing the goal. If you are trying to improve how you deal with a difficult coworker, and one day you slip a little in your effort and then judge yourself for that, you are doing the same thing and misusing the goal. The problem is everywhere, in everything we do. In the particular case just mentioned, you could just stay in the present, observe your interaction with your colleague, use how you want to deal with the situation (your goal) as a rudder, and then readjust yourself so that you are in the process of sailing toward that goal.