If we look at the whole pile, our heart sinks, our energy may fail, and the TV will suddenly seem more attractive than it had before. But we also know that if we are able to focus on the one log we’ve got to move in this moment, and give our full attention to that, and then take on the next one, all of a sudden the chore becomes doable. The point is not simply to fool ourselves into pretending the pile is not large, but to explore the possibility that we can enter a different mode of mind, a mode in which we attend to the quality of the present moment, rather than anticipating how exhausted we
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Carry one log, not the whole wood pile. We get overwhelmed by the wood pile, but if we break it down to one log and repeat that act it isn’t so terrible. We psyche ourselves out of things by looking at the whole instead of facing the parts one at a time.
