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

we are doing here is objectively observing and analyzing the outcome of each attempt. This observation serves only to direct our next effort. It is amazing how everything changes when we use this way of thinking to approach any new activity. For one thing, we become patient with ourselves. We are not in a hurry to get to some predetermined point. Our goal is to stay in this process and to direct our energy into whatever activity we are choosing at the present. Every second that we achieve this, we fulfill our goal. This process brings us inner peace and a wonderful sense of mastery and self-confidence. We are mastering ourselves by staying in the process and mastering whatever activity we are working on. This is the essence of proper practice.
    Why are we so poor at all of this? How did we learn to process life in such a contrary manner, one that screams that the product is the only concern? This mentality pushes us harder and harder, with no end in sight. By notstaying in the process, our minds dash all over the place all day long, the horses running free with no one at the reins. We think too many thoughts at once, most of them the same thoughts we had yesterday and the day before. We are impatient with life, and anxious.
    We must accept that, to a certain extent, such thinking is human nature. If you read about any of the great world religions and philosophies, you will find that at their core is the subject of our inability to stay in the present moment. They all speak at great length about how overcoming this is everything in realizing and experiencing true inner peace and attaining real self-empowerment. Hence the millennia-old story of the chariot driver.
    In the West, we can blame at least a certain amount of our product orientation on the way our culture operates. This weakness in human nature is repeatedly taught to us and incorporated into our personalities, which makes becoming aware of, let alone overcoming, this crippling perspective all the more difficult.
    In sports, we focus on who won. In an art form such as music, a new student asks, “How long will it take me to play like that person over there?” as if every moment up to that point will be drudgery that must be endured. In education, as we will discuss, what we truly learn is at best a footnote, because in the end ict a school’s output of high grades that determines its future funding. For most of our culture, focusing on the process is almost frowned upon; it’s seen as missing the point.
    The idea that the endproduct is all that really matters starts when we are very young. Even if we do not remember exactly what behaviors we observed in early childhood to instill this idea into our personalities, it is surely there for most of us by the time we get to school age. If any of us are lucky enough to fail to acquire this perspective before that time, you can be sure that our educational systems will work to instill it.
    To expand on the point made above, school is the beginning of what I will refer to as hard, fast markers that define who we are. These markers are, of course, grades. Grades, when functioning properly, should inform the educational system about how well the present method of teaching is working. However, whether they actually accomplish this is up for discussion. Grades in school have been around for a long time, and people still get everything from As to Fs on their report cards. Standardized Achievement Tests are another form of grading our performance in academic matters. They heavily influence which colleges we get into and whether a particular school will even consider us as potential students. During our school years, our grade accomplishments very much define who we are and what we are worth. They can greatly influence not only how far we will go in life but in what direction we will head. They speak much to us about our sense of self-worth. Someone who scores mostly Cs feels that he is “Average.” An F student is a