The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 timein your life. Sayings 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 asyou are doing justthat, 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