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Authors: Thomas M. Sterner
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on the process of what he was doing at that moment. The difference this made in his life and how he felt was very profound to him.
Try this the next time you are faced with doing something you define as unenjoyable or as work. It doesn’t matter if it is mowing the lawn or cleaning up the dinnerdishes. If the activity will take a long time, tell yourself you will work on staying present-moment and process oriented for just the first half hour. After that, you can hate it as much as usual, but in that first half hour you absolutely will not think of anything but what you are doing. You will not go into the past and think of all the judgments you have made that define this activity as work. You will not go into the future, anticipating when it will be completed, allowing you to participate in an activity that you have defined as “not work.” You will just do whatever you are doing right now for half an hour. Don’t try to enjoy it, either, because in that effort you are bringing emotions and struggle into your effort. If you are going to mow the lawn, then accept that all you need to do is cut the grass. You will notice the feeling of the mower as you push it, and how it changes resistance with the undulations of your front yard. You will pay attention and cut as wide a path as possible, not sloppily overlapping the last pass you made as you gawked at the neighbor across the street washing his car. You will smell the cut grass and notice how the grass glows green in the sunlight. Just do this for one half hour of the activity. You will be amazed. Once you experience how an activity as mundane as mowing the grass can be transformed, you will have the motivation to press on, because the potential effect this could have on your life and how you perceive it will become apparent to you.
I am not going to suggest to you that thinking this way is the easiest thing you will ever do, although, as we discussed earlier, you’ve alread done it many times,naturally and effortlessly, when you were learning something for the first time. At those times, though, you were not willfully doing it, and therein lies the difference. When choosing which activity to begin applying this technique to, it is best to begin with something in which you have no strong emotions invested. If you suspect that you owe $5,000 in taxes, choosing taxes as your first activity is probably not a good idea — the emotional content would make the task much harder. However, as you become better at present-minded thinking, you will realize its value when you’re approaching emotionally laden activities and negating their power over you. The practicing mind puts you in control of even the most difficult situations and allows you to work with less effort and negative emotion at any activity. This produces inner peace, and you accomplish more with less effort.
In the next chapter, we will discuss techniques for developing the practicing mind as easily as possible.
Habits are learned.
Choose them wisely.
B y now, you should notice — or, shall we say, you should be aware of — several themes running through this book. One of these themes is awareness itself. You cannot change what you are unaware of. This truth is nowhere more important than in the world of self-improvement. We need to be more aware of what we are doing, what we are thinking, and what we are intending to accomplish in order to gain control of what we experience in life.
But in fact, for most of us, this is a problem because we are so disconnected from our thoughts. We just have them. The horses are running, and we don’t have the reins. We need to become an observer of our thoughts and actions, like an instructor watching a student performing a task. The instructor is not judgmental or emotional. The instructor knows just what he or she wants the student to produce. The teacher observes the student’sactions, and when the student doessomething that is moving in the wrong direction, the
Try this the next time you are faced with doing something you define as unenjoyable or as work. It doesn’t matter if it is mowing the lawn or cleaning up the dinnerdishes. If the activity will take a long time, tell yourself you will work on staying present-moment and process oriented for just the first half hour. After that, you can hate it as much as usual, but in that first half hour you absolutely will not think of anything but what you are doing. You will not go into the past and think of all the judgments you have made that define this activity as work. You will not go into the future, anticipating when it will be completed, allowing you to participate in an activity that you have defined as “not work.” You will just do whatever you are doing right now for half an hour. Don’t try to enjoy it, either, because in that effort you are bringing emotions and struggle into your effort. If you are going to mow the lawn, then accept that all you need to do is cut the grass. You will notice the feeling of the mower as you push it, and how it changes resistance with the undulations of your front yard. You will pay attention and cut as wide a path as possible, not sloppily overlapping the last pass you made as you gawked at the neighbor across the street washing his car. You will smell the cut grass and notice how the grass glows green in the sunlight. Just do this for one half hour of the activity. You will be amazed. Once you experience how an activity as mundane as mowing the grass can be transformed, you will have the motivation to press on, because the potential effect this could have on your life and how you perceive it will become apparent to you.
I am not going to suggest to you that thinking this way is the easiest thing you will ever do, although, as we discussed earlier, you’ve alread done it many times,naturally and effortlessly, when you were learning something for the first time. At those times, though, you were not willfully doing it, and therein lies the difference. When choosing which activity to begin applying this technique to, it is best to begin with something in which you have no strong emotions invested. If you suspect that you owe $5,000 in taxes, choosing taxes as your first activity is probably not a good idea — the emotional content would make the task much harder. However, as you become better at present-minded thinking, you will realize its value when you’re approaching emotionally laden activities and negating their power over you. The practicing mind puts you in control of even the most difficult situations and allows you to work with less effort and negative emotion at any activity. This produces inner peace, and you accomplish more with less effort.
In the next chapter, we will discuss techniques for developing the practicing mind as easily as possible.
Habits are learned.
Choose them wisely.
B y now, you should notice — or, shall we say, you should be aware of — several themes running through this book. One of these themes is awareness itself. You cannot change what you are unaware of. This truth is nowhere more important than in the world of self-improvement. We need to be more aware of what we are doing, what we are thinking, and what we are intending to accomplish in order to gain control of what we experience in life.
But in fact, for most of us, this is a problem because we are so disconnected from our thoughts. We just have them. The horses are running, and we don’t have the reins. We need to become an observer of our thoughts and actions, like an instructor watching a student performing a task. The instructor is not judgmental or emotional. The instructor knows just what he or she wants the student to produce. The teacher observes the student’sactions, and when the student doessomething that is moving in the wrong direction, the
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