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

by Thomas M. Sterner

the emotions you experience have nothing to do with executing the decision. Instead, the emotions hinder you from thinking clearly and make you struggle as you work to determine your best choice.

you are at your best when you are not operating under the influence of emotions and unconscious judgment making.

Our concepts of ideal and perfect are always changing. What we consider good or bad for ourselves doesn’t stay the same.

We must work at being more objectively aware of ourselves. We cannot refine any part of our daily thought processes if we are not separate from those processes.

The answer is your true self. The one who is talking is your ego or personality. The one who is quietly aware is who you really are: the Observer. The more closely you become aligned with the quiet Observer, the less you judge. Your internal dialogue begins to shut down, and you become more detached about the various external stimuli that come at you all day long. You begin to actually view your internal dialogue with an unbiased (and sometimes amused) perspective.

When you are aligned with your true self, you are immune to other people’s behaviors.

realize that the emotions you are experiencing have no effect on the problem over which you’re fretting. Release yourself from the emotions as best as you can — that is the correction portion — and try to look at the problem as an Observer.

the stamina necessary for self-control is a process that you work at daily. You start with short sessions and allow yourself rest. If you are aware of when you are trying, then that means you are in the present moment and you have already won, regardless of where you appear to be in relation to your personal goals.

goals will always move away from you. That is the way we keep evolving.

When we understand how we work, and when we stay in harmony with that knowledge, we feel a sense of control, and we can sit back and enjoy the experience of life flowing past us with ease.

We waste each moment’s opportunity to experience what is real by focusing on what is not.

If you look at most of the things that we make our daily priorities, you will notice that in times of personal crisis, they seem insignificant. And in these moments, by contrast, things that we usually pay little attention to become everything to us. Our health and the health of our family and friends, and who or what we feel the Creative Force is, become our sole priorities, and the dent in the car and the tight budget last month become trivial concerns.

You come into this world with only your true self, and you leave in the same way.

Everything that you spiritually acquire expands your true self and becomes part of you forever. We need to get off the self-destructive train that runs on the tracks of instant gratification. All things of lasting and deep value require time and nurturing and come to us only through our own effort.

This is where the fun begins.