The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life - Master Any Skill or Challenge by Learning to Love the Process

Our culture has been focused on instant gratification and immediate rewards for decades. We've forgotten how to go about learning and improving our skills in favour of winning the lottery or letting someone else do the hard work.

We don't learn how to accomplish a skill by careful and long practice or discipline. But we're also becoming increasingly aware of an overall sense of mental exhaustion, a lack of discipline, and an inability to focus. We are realising that the endless struggle to fulfil insatiable appetites is fruitless and even tiresome, making our world ripe for a new path and eager for a new set of instructions.

What we're discovering is that everything in life worth achieving requires practice. In fact, life itself is nothing more than one long practice session, an endless effort of refining our motions. When the proper mechanics of practising are understood, the task of learning something new becomes a stress-free experience of joy and calmness, a process which settles all areas in life and promotes proper perspective on all of life's difficulties. And, if you think of practice as boring and difficult, it's because you're not very good at practising yet.

This book will transform a sense of futility around learning something challenging into one of pleasure and willingness.According to Thomas Sterner, when we practice something, we are involved in the deliberate repetition of a process with the intention of reaching a specific goal. His early experiences with practising, however, were not good.

In fact, that frustration formed the foundation which would help him understand both the mental and spiritual struggles in which he found himself. Those early experiences, of wanting to accomplish something and having to deal with a personality that was not particularly well-disciplined at the time, went a long way in helping him understand how we fail at endeavours that may be very important to us.

From that experience came this book that teaches the principles of good practising and the process of picking a goal, whatever that may be, and applying a steady effort toward achieving it, regardless of pitfalls and frustration. Without an understanding of proper practice mechanics and without an awareness of our own internal workings, we are almost assured of using up the initial inspiration and motivation which propels us into any endeavour, leaving us feeling we cannot reach the goal that had seemed so worth striving for just a short time before.

When the author took golf lessons, for example, he was one of the few golfers who practised what was taught in the free hour of tee time after each lesson. The others were too busy, or too frustrated, to stay and repeat the teacher's suggestions. The lessons weren't enough; practice was required.

Our society sets us up for failure in this endeavour. We are so used to always multi-tasking, for example, that when we decide we want to reel in our minds and focus ourselves on just one activity, we can't. Our minds are so agitated, and that agitation has a tremendous amount of momentum. The practising mind is quiet. It lives in the present and has laser, pinpoint focus and accuracy. It obeys our exact direction and all of our energy moves through it. Because of that, we are calm and completely free of anxiety. We are where we should be at that moment, doing what we should be doing and completely aware of what we are experiencing. There is no wasted motion, physically or mentally.

And yet we've all learned through practice; we've just forgotten how. A child's first steps, for example, or riding a bike, or learning to read or write. As children, we existed in the present moment, so we didn't grow frustrated if we didn't reach our goal on the first try. We got up and tried again.

Everything we learn and master in life, from walking and tying our shoes to saving money and raising a child, is accomplished 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 stress-laden anticipation of when is the goal going to be reached. When we practice anything properly, the fact that we are engaging in a difficult learning process not only disappears, but more importantly it 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 recognise and be in control of the process and to learn to enjoy that part of life's activity. The Practicing Mind will help readers relearn that level of commitment and focus, showing them that when they reside in the present moment, practice becomes effortless and enjoyable, and often the practice becomes the goal, as we take baby steps but relish each of those steps.