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 (8 page)
There was a sense of freedom in knowing that I would never run out of room to grow. There was peace in knowing the race was over. Where I was right now was just where I should be, given the amount of effort I had expended. I saw the wake behind my boat for the first time, and I realized I was moving ahead, and pretty quickly, as
a matter of fact. But the most important tru
th revealed to me in that moment was this: My real joy was found in my ability to learn and to experience my growth, moment by moment. The process of discovering the ability to create music that had always been within me was the goal, and I achieved that goal in every second I was practicing. There were no mistakes being made, just a process of discovering what worked and what didn’t. I was no longer struggling up a mountain toward some imaginary musical summit that would make my life complete. I realized the infinite nature of music, and I was relieved instead of intimidated or frustrated.
That moment marked the beginning of my shift in awareness about how I approached anything in life that required applied effort over long periods of time. That subtle shift in perception — and that is all it was — generated unlimited patience with myself. I became patient with my progress. Not only did I stop looking
at
my progress, but I stopped looking
for
my progress altogether. Progress is a natural result of staying focused on the process of doing anything. When you stay on purpose, focused in the present moment, the goal comes
toward
you with frictionless ease. However, when you constantly focus on the goal you are aiming for, you push it away instead of pulling it toward you. In every moment that you look at the goal and compare your position to it, you affirm to yourself that you haven’t reached it. In reality, you need to acknowledge the goal to yourself only occasionally,
using it as a rudder to keep you moving in t
he right direction.
It’s like swimming across a lake , yourd a large tree on the other side. You focus on keeping your head down and pulling the water past you with each stroke. You fill your lungs with fresh air and then expel it in a relaxed fashion, glancing at the position of the tree on the distant shore every so often to keep your sense of direction. You do this with total detachment, or at least as much as you can muster. You say to yourself, “Oh, I need to steer a little to the left; that’s better.” If, however, you try to keep your head above the water the whole time, watching the tree and measuring how much closer you are to it after each stroke and kick, you’ll waste enormous amounts of energy. You will become frustrated, exhausted, and impatient. You will become emotional and judgmental about your progress and lose your stamina. All this energy you are wasting could be funneled into reaching the far side of the lake, but instead you are dissipating it through incorrect effort, which produces negative emotions. You are fighting yourself and pushing against the task. It will take you longer to reach the tree, if you reach it at all.
We have seriously missed the boat with this whole concept in our culture. We not only take the opposite path to an extreme but are so infatuated with reaching the goal of our efforts that we miss the point entirely. Here are just two examples that will further illustrate this.
In the early 1970s, you could go to any mall in the
country that had a music store, and you wou
ld find a salesperson demonstrating what I call a self-playing organ. These instruments were designed for people who wanted to learn how to play the organ but also wanted to play it right away. They didn’t want to spend years of practice to do it. The organ manufacturers saw this as an opportunity, and set about exploiting it by designing a keyboard that tapped into that personality.
In case you were never exposed to one of these cheesy keyboards, they worked like this: Usually, you pushed one key with the left hand and one with the right, and the organ played a full arrangement of the particular song you had selected. The organs came with all the popular music of the day, and oldies, too. That music showed you which note, and I do mean
each
note, to push with each finger to play your favorite song. In short, the keyboard knew how to create the accompaniment for the piece based on which keys you pushed down. You played one note with the right hand, and it created the chords needed to make the song sound as if you had practiced it long and hard. Since you needed only two fingers to play, you could have played entire arrangements with a pair of chopsticks.
Did these organs sell? Certainly. People loved the idea of impressing their unknowing friends with how well they could suddenly play. The salespeople who demonstrated them could truly play, though that wasn’t normally discussed, even when they added a few extra notes here and there. Even if customers noticed, they wanted to believe
they could play instantly, so they ignored
it. They would push one note here, another there, and the organ would produce a performance equivalent to, say, that of an intermediate student. The whole time they would exclaim, “I can really play.” “No, you can’t,” I used to think to myself. “You aren’t really playing. The organ is playing, and it’s having much more fun than you can ever imagine.”
The point here is obvious, but many of us don’t see it. Cheating discipline doesn’t work. The people who bought these organs, hoping to experience playing, didn’t understand that pushing buttons is not the same as playing, and they didn’t know that no matter how many buttons they pushed,hey still wouldn’t know how playing music felt. To express a melody on any instrument as it comes from your heart is an experience you have to earn. The universe is not about to give that away for anything but your personal effort. As you work at the process of learning music, you spend time alone with yourself and the energy of music or whatever art form you pursue. It’s a very honorable relationship, really. You need music to express yourself, and music needs you to be expressed. You give your time and energy to music, and it returns the effort a thousandfold. A lot of the joy of expressing yourself musically is in your awareness of how much of your personal energy and stamina it took you to reach your current performance level.
It is fair to assume that we all know this universal law at some level of our being. Whether you are persevering at a diet, exercising regularly, running a marathon, or
achieving another personal goal, if your task
is completed with little or no effort, it means nothing. That is why these keyboards just fell away from the marketplace. In my piano business, I saw these organs gathering dust in people’s living rooms. Not once did I see them being played. That’s because the experience of playing them was shallow and boring. What is sad about this is that the people who purchased the keyboards might actually have come to feel that learning to play a musical instrument wasn’t as magical as they had once thought.
The second example is one we all know: credit cards. Credit cards, though convenient and certainly necessary at times in the modern world, are a form of instant gratification, but perhaps they should be called
insignificant
gratification. Credit cards allow you to jump to an end result without any effort. You can easily purchase anything you want without having to work or wait for the necessary financial resources that ownership of the object calls for. They even allow you the luxury of excusing yourself for not waiting, as you promise yourself you will pay the bill off when the statement comes at the end of the month. Some people do this, of course, but most do not. That is why you see an ever-rising number of people in trouble with credit card debt they have created for themselves.
Like self-playing keyboards, credit cards give you the feeling that you are cheating patience out of making you wait for something. “I want it now, and I will have it.” Handing over the plastic is easy and much more convenient than carrying cash. You may not even be aware that
if you don’t pay off the debt within th
e grace period, what you are purchasing will cost you perhaps 18 percent more than its price tag. Long before the bill arrives, the excitement of acquiring the object has worn off. Why? Because it came with no effort.
We are back to that universal truth that just won’t go away, so we might as well accept it and use it to enhance our lives instead of pushing against it: The real thrill of acquiring anything, whether it is an object or a personal goal, is your anticipation of the moment of receiving it. The real joy lies in creating and sustaining the stamina and patience needed to work for something over a period of time. Like swimming across the lake toward the large tree, we focus on each moment of our effort toward the object, acknowledging the object to ourselves only occasionally to maintain our energy and direction. When the time to actually acquire it comes, we have generated a tremendous amount of energy. We have earned the privilege to acquire the object, and that acquisition is the culmination of our entire process: the discipline, the work, the restraint, the patience. Finally we hold it in our hands. The reward feels so much larger than when we just get it with a phone call or plunk dow a card.
So many people miss this point. They look at the process of working for something as an annoying effort they have to go through to get what they want. They make the thing the goal, instead of the process of getting that thing. Just getting the thing produces a very small return investment of inner joy compared with the dividend
gleaned from the process of getting there and
achieving the goal. The key word here is
achieving
.
Getting
the goal and
achieving
it are worlds apart. Most people spend their lives on an endless treadmill: they get one thing after another, but they get no experience of lasting joy or personal growth.
To change your perspective, you must first realize this truth, and, second, you must become aware of those times that you are in the process of working toward a particular goal. When you make a decision to acquire something whose acquisition will require a long-term commitment, pick the goal and then be aware that you are entering the process of achieving the goal. You cannot do this if you constantly make the end result your point of focus. You have acknowledged the goal; now let go of it and put your energy into the practice and process that will move you toward that goal.
When you let go of your attachment to the object you desire and make your desire the
experience
of staying focused on working toward that object, you fulfill that desire in every minute that you remain patient with your circumstances. There is no reason not to be patient. There is no effort, no “trying to be patient” here. Patience is just a natural outgrowth of your shifted perspective. This shift in perspective is very small and subtle on the one hand, but it has enormous freeing power. No task seems too large to undertake. Your confidence goes way up, as does your patience with yourself. You are always achieving your goal, and there are no mistakes or time limits to create stress.
To use music as an example once again, suppose
you are trying to learn to play a piece of music and you come from this new perspective. Your experience will be totally different than what people usually anticipate when they’re learning to play a musical composition. In the old way, you’d feel sure that you would not be happy or “successful” until you could play the piece of music flawlessly. Every wrong note you hit, every moment you spent struggling with the piece, would be an affirmation that you had not reached your goal. If, however, your goal is
learning
to play the piece of music, then the feeling of struggle dissolves away. In each moment you spend putting effort into learning the piece, you are achieving your goal. An incorrect note is just part of learning to play the correct note; it is not a judgment of your playing ability. In each moment you spend with the instrument, you are learning information and gaining energy that will work for you in other pieces of music. Your comprehension of music and the experience of learning it are expanding. All this is happening with no sense of frustration or impatience. What more could you ask for from just a shift in perspective?
Are there any techniques that can help you integrate this mindset into your everyday life? The answer is yes. The next chapters in this book explain techniques I have learned from many areas of life that can help you shift perspective and gain patience. These techniques can be a challenge to our Western minds, but they are simple to understand, and I have tried to define most of them with
one or two keywords. I have found that with these keywords, it is much easier to recall the techniques whenever you are involved in frustrating situations. You will find that by reviewing these techniques from time to time, you will better deal with the constant “product, not process” orientation so prevalent in our culture. Let’s get to work.
Simplicity in effort will conquer
the m
ost complex of tasks.
T
he four “S” words are
simplify
,
small
,
short
, and
slow
. As you will see, these concepts are deeply interrelated and flow back and forth into one another. As you develop control of your practicing mind, it is important to work in a fashion that makes staying in the process as easy as possible, and these four techniques, each one basic and straightforward on its own, can help you do just that.
Simplify.
When you work at a specific project or activity,
simplify
it by breaking it down into its component sections. Don’t set goals that are too far beyond your reach. Unrealistic goals create frustration and invite failure, which can make you doubt your abilities. The success of attaining each simple goal will generate motivation that propels you along in the process, and you won’t suffer the mental fatigue you experience when you bite off more than you can chew.
Small.
Be aware of your overall goal, a
nd remember to use it as a rudder or distant beacon that keeps you on course. But break down the overall goal into
small
sections that can be achieved with a comfortable amount of concentration. You will find that focusing on small sections is easier than focusing on the entire task and gives you repeatable success.
Smallness, like the other techniques, applies to daily life in general, not just specific endeavors. It applies just as much to a fitness program as it does to cleaning the garage on Saturday afternoon, or developing a perspective change that affords you more patience. Cleaning the garage is an activity that most would consider worthy of full-scale procrastination. But when it has to be done, step back and examine your feelings toward the job. You will find that you tend to see the necessary work-energy in its entirety. You see the whole task ahead of you, and it looks huge. This viewpoint brings about a lot of judgments and negative emotions. You are full of anticipation as you find yourself saying things like, “There are so many things I have to move. Should I keep this or get rid of it? Will I ever need that thing over there again? The whole garage is a mess, and cleaning it means lots of time, lots of energy, and lots of decisions I don’t feel like making after a week of work. I just want to relax.” All this internal dialogue has nothing to do with cleaning the garage, and yet it is exhausting you.
You simplify the task greatly when you break it down into small sections: “I am going to start in this corner over here and clean just to the window. That’s all. I will not
concern myself with the stuff over by the door
or up in the rafters. Just this corner right here is all I will contend with.” Now you’re dealing with a little task that doesn’t have the overwhelming qualities of the whole job.
Short.
Now you can also bring
short
into the equation: “I’m going to work at cleaning the garage for forty-five minutes a day over the next few days until it is completely clean.” You can survive just about anything for forty-five minutes. You have to deal with only one corner of the garage for forty-five minutes, and you’ll be done for the day. You look at your watch and walk away from the task at the end of the forty-five minutes, feeling in control and satisfied that your goal of a clean garage is flowing toward you. No frustration is involved. You have simplified the task by breaking it down into small segments and asking yourself to focus for only a short period of time. You are practicing the art of perfect garage cleaning.
Slow.
Incorporating
slowness
into your process is a paradox. What I mean by
slow
is that you work at a pace that allows you to pay attention to what you are doing. This pace will differ according to your personality and the task in which you are involved. If you are washing the car, you move the sponge in your hand at a pace slow enough to allow you to observe your actions in detail. This will differ from, say, the slow pace at which you learn a new computer program. If you are aware of what you are doing, then you are probably working at the appropriate pace. The paradox of slowness is that you will find you accomplish the task
more quickly and with less effort because you
are not wasting energy. Try it and you will see.
Another interesting aspect of deliberate slowness is the way it changes your perception of time’s passage. Because all your energy goes into what you are doing, you lose your sense of time.
Putting the Four “S”s to Work
In my piano service business, the demand for my personal skills sometimes far exceeded the hours I could work in a day. I worked many seven-day weeks, and some fourteen- to sixteen-hour days, for long stretches of time. Once, when I had a particularly long day of service ahead of me, I decided I would put all my effort into deliberately working slowly. Working this way might sound counterproductive, but I had been putting way too many hours on the career end of my life’s equation, and I was out of balance. I was tired and frustrated. I couldn’t get a day off, so going slowly for at least one day seemed rather appealing to me.
I was to start with a concert preparation on a grand piano for a guest soloist of the local symphony. I was to prepare the soloist’s piano in the morning, along with a second piano that would be used in the orchestra. Afterward I had service work that extended over two states, and then I had to return to the concert hall that evening to speak with the soloist and check the two pianos once again. The workload was about two and a half times the amount that was considered a full day’s schedule in the trade. I use the word
schedule
here because I was on a time
schedule: “Be here at 7:30 am and there
by no later than 10
AM
,” and so forth.
When I started on the first piano, I put all my effort into being slow. I opened my toolbox very slowly. Instead of grabbing a handful of tools and thinking I was thus saving time, I took out each tool one at a time. I placed each tool neatly in position. When I began setting up the piano, I performed each process individually, deliberately trying to work slowly.
Trying to work slowly creates funny feelings. At first, your internal dialogue is howling at you to get going and pick up the pace. It screams at you, “We’ll never get this done! You are wasting time!” It reminds you of the whole day’s worth of work you have to get done to meet everybody’s approval. You can feel anxiety starting to build and emotions floating up to thesurface. That is because working slowly goes against every thought system in today’s world. However, your ego quickly loses ground to the simplicity of doing one thing at a time and doing it slowly, on purpose. Your ego has no space in which to build stress and work up internal chatter. You can work slowly only if you do it deliberately. Being deliberate requires you to stay in the process, to work in the present moment.
After I finished the first instrument, I even went through the process of packing up my tools with meticulous care, just to walk ten feet away and unpack them slowly, one at a time, to start on the second piano. Usually I would grab two handfuls of as much as I could carry and scurry among the orchestra chairs on stage, trying to save time. Not this day, however. I was determined to carry out
my plan to just work slowly. We spend so much t
ime rushing everything we do. Rushing had become so much of a habit that I was amazed at the amount of concentration it took to work slowly on purpose.
I took off my watch so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at the time and let that influence my pace. I told myself, “I am doing this for me and for my health, both physical and mental. I have a cell phone, and, if need be, I can call whomever and tell them I am running late, and that’s the best I can do.”
Into the second piano, I began to realize how wonderful I felt. No nervous stomach, no anticipation of getting through the day, and no tight muscles in my shoulders and neck. Just this relaxed, peaceful, what-a-nice-day-it-is feeling. I would even go so far as to describe it as blissful. Anything you can do in a rushed state is surprisingly easy when you deliberately slow it down. The revelation for me came, however, when I finished the second piano. I very slowly put away my tools one by one, with my attention on every detail. I continued my effort at slowing down as I walked to my truck in a parking garage a block away. I walked very slowly, paying attention to each step. This might sound nuts, but it was an experiment. I was experiencing such an incredible feeling of peacefulness in a situation that usually tensed every muscle in my body that I wanted to see just how far I could push the feeling.
When I got into the truck, its clock radio came on with the turn of my key, and I was dumbfounded. So little time had passed compared to what I had usually spent on the
same job in the past that I was sure the clock
was incorrect. Keep in mind that I had just repeated a job that I had done for many years. I had set up these pianos together perhaps five or six times a week, so I had a very real concept of the time involved in the project. I pulled my watch out of my pocket. It agreed with the clock radio: I had cut over 40 percent off the usual time. I had tried to work as slowly as possible, and I had been sure I was running an hour late. Yet I had either worked faster (which didn’t seem possible, given my attention to slowness) or slowed time down (an interesting thought, but few would buy it). Either way, I was sufficiently motivated to press on with the experiment throughout the remainder of the day. I got so far ahead of schedule that I was afforded the luxury of a civilized meal in a nice restaurant, instead of my usual sandwich in the truck or no lunch at all.
I have repeated these results consistently every time I have worked at being slow and deliberate. I have used this technique in everything from cleaning up the dishes after dinner to monotonous tasks of piano restoration work that I don’t particularly enjoy. The only thing that foils me is those times when I lack stamina and find myself drifting between working with slowness and succumbing to the feeling that I must get a task done quickly.
You can see that these four components are all part of the same process. Each one needs and creates the other. When you work slowly, things become simpler. If you want to simplify something, break it down into small parts and work more slowly at each part. Since all four
components take effort to develop and maintain,
you will have greater success if you break down the time that you apply to working on them into short intervals. You will find it much easier to stay with your effort if you do this.
For example, when I decided to work at slowness during that particularly long day, I didn’t tell myself I would do it for the whole day, even though I knew that was the goal. I would say to myself, “Let’s just see if I can set my toolbox down, open it, and slowly take out my tools to prepare the first piano.” When I had completed that, I would say, “Let’s just see if I can tune the middle section of the piano slowly,” and so forth. I simplified the whole process by breaking it down into small sections that required me to focus for short periods of time. Working in this fashion kept me succeeding at the task and bit by bit brought the goal of maintaining my present-minded effort for the whole day toward me, without my reaching for it.
An exercise I use to start my day in this mindset is brushing my teeth slowly. This sounds like no big deal until you try to do it every time you brush your teeth. We do so many activities on automatic. We don’t realize we are not present in the activity simply because it is so automatic and requires very little thought. Brushing your teeth slowly demands that you pay attention and forces you into the present moment. It is a very practical training exercise for teaching present-moment awareness for several reasons. It doesn’t take very long, so it is not so demanding that you lose interest in the exercise or feel it is just too much to accomplish. It’s something we all do
several times a day out of necessity, which hel
ps to make the slowness mindset into a habit. Finally, when juxtaposed against a stressful, overscheduled day, it gives us the experience of what it feels like to slow ourselves down and be fully present in an activity.
As you work at using these techniques, they will seem difficult at first. That is only because you formed the habit of
not
working this way so long ago, and our culture does not promote this way of going through the day. You are breaking away from everything you have been taught when you start down this path and begin to incorporate this perspective into your way of thinking.
Remember, you can apply these simple rules to any part of your life and to any activity you undertake. As you begin to evolve in this area, the Observer within you will become more and more apparent. You will start to watch yourself going through your daily life; you will become more and more aware of when you are living in the present moment and working in the process, and when you are not. This doesn’t mean you will be able to control yourself all the time, though. That tempting mindset comes from slipping back into the “perfection” mindset that states, “Only when I can do this all the time will I have achieved my goal.” Accepting that this is a lifetime effort, and that in the beginning your progress may seem almost unnoticeable, is part of the lesson to be learned. Keep thinking of the flower. Regardless of the stage of growth and evolution you are in, in every moment you are perfect at being who you are.