Read Online The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life by Thomas M. Sterner - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Thomas M. Sterner
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tried to put my finger on exactly why I felt this way, I realized it was due to the hundreds of decisions I was having to make during the tuning process and the responsibility that went along with them. When the soloist came out to perform that evening, all his years of practicing and preparation would go out the window if I hadn’t set up this instrument correctly. My stress was generated by my concern about making the wrong decision, for which I would be held accountable. When I started to examine why I was lacking in confidence about something in which I had proven my expertise over and over again, I realized it was because I wasn’t working in the present moment. I knew that I wasn’t really giving my full attention to what I was doing. I was thinking about something I was going to do later in the day that I had defined as “not work.” I subconsciously knew that I wasn’t putting all my energy into the process of preparing the piano because, being so adept at it, I had lost that beginner’s mind I mentioned earlier. I had tuned a whole section of the instrument, yet I couldn’t remember doing it because I had been in the future, daydreaming.
Here is another, similar workplace example of thisthat may sound familiar. Oneday, while a close friend and I discussed these ideas, she related a story about a situation in her office. Here is what she shared with me. A payroll processor who had a looming deadline to process hundreds of payrolls plugged away at completing her task. Running under the surface in her mind was palpable anxiety about what she might face if she did not complete her task on time and meet her deadline. She might have needed to call a manager to ask for an exception to push through payroll past her deadline. This might not have been the first time she’d had to do this, so another layer of anxiety was added. If she did not make payroll on time, paychecks might have been delayed, followed by email and phone complaints that she would need to deal with on top of her already overburdened workload. A reprimand could have been likely, which possibly would have impacted her annual review. And on and on it went.
All this thought energy drained her, bothe job and when she was at home in the evening. It also constantly tugged her out of the present moment and into the future as she unconsciously considered all these possible stressful scenarios. Under a different circumstance, the act of doing payroll could have had a totally different feeling to it, and for some people, the task might not even have been something they defined as work because the experience that accompanied it didn’t have all these background “what-if’s” clamoring away.
In this situation, even when she was removed from her“place of work,” she couldn’t relax. She was not present mentally with her family and might even have struggled to be present with something she usually defined as “not work.” What was worse was that none of the vast amounts of energy she expended in running through these possible scenarios went into the process of completing payroll on time and thus removing this task from her workload. Yet she was most likely unaware that any of this was happening. She was merely thinking, “This is work, and I don’t feel like doing it.”
One evening, I happened upon an interview with a well-known actor on TV. I watch very little TV because I feel that most of it offers no return for the time you invest in it. But this particular interview caught my ear because I heard the actor talking about how he had gotten into meditating later in his life. The point of his interview, in the context of this book, is that he said he had become very present moment–oriented. He found it increasingly difficult to plan future events because he was so wrapped up in what he was doing right now , in this moment. He had learned he could completely enjoy anything he was doing, provided he kept his mind in the present and just focused
Here is another, similar workplace example of thisthat may sound familiar. Oneday, while a close friend and I discussed these ideas, she related a story about a situation in her office. Here is what she shared with me. A payroll processor who had a looming deadline to process hundreds of payrolls plugged away at completing her task. Running under the surface in her mind was palpable anxiety about what she might face if she did not complete her task on time and meet her deadline. She might have needed to call a manager to ask for an exception to push through payroll past her deadline. This might not have been the first time she’d had to do this, so another layer of anxiety was added. If she did not make payroll on time, paychecks might have been delayed, followed by email and phone complaints that she would need to deal with on top of her already overburdened workload. A reprimand could have been likely, which possibly would have impacted her annual review. And on and on it went.
All this thought energy drained her, bothe job and when she was at home in the evening. It also constantly tugged her out of the present moment and into the future as she unconsciously considered all these possible stressful scenarios. Under a different circumstance, the act of doing payroll could have had a totally different feeling to it, and for some people, the task might not even have been something they defined as work because the experience that accompanied it didn’t have all these background “what-if’s” clamoring away.
In this situation, even when she was removed from her“place of work,” she couldn’t relax. She was not present mentally with her family and might even have struggled to be present with something she usually defined as “not work.” What was worse was that none of the vast amounts of energy she expended in running through these possible scenarios went into the process of completing payroll on time and thus removing this task from her workload. Yet she was most likely unaware that any of this was happening. She was merely thinking, “This is work, and I don’t feel like doing it.”
One evening, I happened upon an interview with a well-known actor on TV. I watch very little TV because I feel that most of it offers no return for the time you invest in it. But this particular interview caught my ear because I heard the actor talking about how he had gotten into meditating later in his life. The point of his interview, in the context of this book, is that he said he had become very present moment–oriented. He found it increasingly difficult to plan future events because he was so wrapped up in what he was doing right now , in this moment. He had learned he could completely enjoy anything he was doing, provided he kept his mind in the present and just focused
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