Break the devastating habit of doing nothing
Photo by Fork in the Road
"You'll be able to observe a great deal just by observing."To observe is to remove oneself from interpretation. When you ‘simply observe-just watch,’ everything signifies nothing, and nothing is a permanent state of zero. On the other hand, if I watch something and immediately get into my head, and begin pulling in distinctions, all I'll do is discover evidence for what I already think.Transferring to merely observing necessitates that I uncritically watch the situation as it opens before me. As my idea struggles to produce a drama to judge, I discover my mind playing games, then I have to breathe and release that game. In this clearness, I can choose a way to react that's harmonious to the current present moment and situation, without getting tied down in the games and dramas my mind enjoys.
The focused life ("observing by just seeing…") is about acting in some respects that is consistent with your most profoundly held understandings. You can't be passive by yelling… you can't resolve complications by producing chaos. The job of life is to convert to the consistent, persistent, and resistant.
Let me hand you what I hope will become a valuable metaphor. Let's use baseball as an illustration. "Think? How the hell on earth are you going to think and hit the ball at the same time?"
From a pragmatic perspective, when a pitcher throws a baseball at 100 mph, it takes the ball merely four-tenths of a second to stretch to home plate. That affords the batter about two-tenths of a second to make up one's mind to swing or not to swing.
Thus, when hitting a baseball, thinking interferes with the way of acting.
This is dead on target with learning most things. As we learn something, we proceed from complex and slow to easy and fast. (Remember, for example, to how tough riding a bicycle was, till it was not.)
I’m not saying that polishing off a 100 mile an hour fastball is easy to do. I'm alleging that if you're going to acquire this skill, you ought to abandon thinking you can reason your way through it. All you are able to do is swing a bat, over and over. Once your body ‘captures’ the idea, you will be able to then practice graceful hitting, until it turns instinctual. In Zen, we talk of discipline. The key discipline is ‘not-following,’ or not-attaching. You allow each non-helpful thought glide by not adhering to it. Now, naturally, as with many, such thoughts will arise until you die.
I used to possess a poster on my office wall that read,
"If you aim at nothing, you will hit it."
Many people whine about their situations, and their human relationships and my immediate question is this, "Well, what do you want?" Now most may reply, "Here’s what I do not want…" Baloney. Expressing what you don't wish, or where you're not going, or who you're not is fruitless and slothful. "I never want to be in a relationship like this again!" OK, so the next one is worse. You got what you asked for. This happens all the time.
If you consider it, specifying what you don't wish is out of the question, as you cannot address everything.
There's nothing more crucial than discovering the territory (what I want) and securing a map (how to behave and then how do get I there.) It's like utilizing a foreign subway system. If you've a destination, all you've got to figure out is the map, how to reach the proper platform, and which rail car to go into. If you've no destination, you're going to wind up ‘wherever.’
Sure enough, life is hard. There are the bad breaks we make, and bad breaks that simply occur. So what? The only way to really live is to concentrate on what you want, as you cast off your attachment to what you don’t require. Then, begin. Sounds easy, but it requires discipline. Is it worth it? "Uh-huh!"
Remember: your problem is to state, clearly, who you are, what you are about, and wherever you are. From ‘here,’ you decide your next action. Next, insure that you possess integrity. Integrity implies that your actions agree what your mouth is stating. Wandering about all baffled and lost, while bellyaching about how hard you're working at defining what and where you aren’t, is the pinnacle of dumbness.
Listening to others:
"It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much."
A conversation requires full attention, astuteness, and a willingness to be candid and vulnerable. Most people babble to hear their own voices, and to fill up fearsome silence with sound.
Talking (small gossip, accent on small) is the socially accepted way to fill the silence void. We are disciplined to regurgitate small talk, which has zero to do with genuine conversation.
Conversation calls for the willingness to listen carefully, while setting aside judgement. If we don't pay attention, we're nothing more than the total of our pre-judgements-our preconceptions.
Actual conversation is like verbally dancing, because both parties make a sober attempt to communicate, "This is who and where I'm right now." Conversation is sharing who I am through self-reflection, and taking heed to what the other individual has determined of themselves through their self-reflection. Many people discombobulate self-reflection with an incessant whimper about how bad their lives are.
Even when you listen carefully, your ego-based biases have a fashion of perplexing you. Listen once again, with an unclouded heart and mind, and you might discover something different.
Remember: slow down. Utter your truth, from as deep inside at heart as you are able to reach. Give away more and more of you, including the messy, harmful, filthy parts. Then, hush up, watch and take note. As you discover yourself planning a response to what another is articulating (put differently, you've stopped listening,) be quiet and open your ears. A conversation is never an argument, and there's no winner.
"All that you are is what you have thought."
We unceasingly self-describe, and because we believe it, we tend to stop at that place, believing we are what we think ourselves to be. Consequently, to change is, first, to alter your self-description.
Our lives are the testifying ground for our beliefs. Where I'm at in life- right now-is a perfect mirror of who I really am, what I believe, and especially what I do. I can view my surroundings and my mental, emotional, and active state and tell precisely what I believe, and who I am.
We need to search the rules we maneuver under. If we don’t consider what we believe, to see if what we believe adds up for us now, we're condemned to live out some old translation of our life plan, and be completely woeful in the cognitive process.
Remember: ‘a slump’ is an assessment, and makes the thing perceived appear to be something away from your control. If you put the way you are presently into a package tagged "Out of my control," you're well and truly shafted. Alternatively, empty that package. A simple affirmation of, "Here is where I'm at right now" allows for the next clause, "…and here is what I'll do differently.
If you come to a fork in the road, take it.
This is different than just standing there, gazing at the fork, declining to choose, to move, to resolve. Or, you are coming down a road that’s not getting you where you desire to go. You touch on a place for changing directions, yet continue down the stale path. You say, "I may not be becoming what I want, but at least this path is familiar to me."
Others are enclosed thick inertia, declining to reposition anything, including the painful material, until they can be guaranteed that they’ll progress to the ‘right’ destination.
Just standing at a crossroads, incessantly debating the ‘correct course,’ is a losers game regrettably, our existence is filled up with people doing just that-doing zero, while boasting about how much endeavor they're placing into their internal debate.
As they stand there - Doing nothing
Not to choose is to choose. What comes about in our life is about what we acknowledge or give acceptance to. Something different occurs in our situations when we choose to switch our understanding, and then our actions. This path, or that path-no difference, no waiting to discover the ‘right path’-just take the fork in the road.
Remember: life delivers endless forks in the route. Generally, any option we make can be altered at any time. (Life-or-death options come about rarely.) Turning a garden variety alternative into life-or-death ("But… but… what if I make up the wrong choice???") is actually a way to stay baffled. Pick one, and start walking. You don't get the time you consume back at the end of your life.
Like this article?
The focused life ("observing by just seeing…") is about acting in some respects that is consistent with your most profoundly held understandings. You can't be passive by yelling… you can't resolve complications by producing chaos. The job of life is to convert to the consistent, persistent, and resistant.
Let me hand you what I hope will become a valuable metaphor. Let's use baseball as an illustration. "Think? How the hell on earth are you going to think and hit the ball at the same time?"
From a pragmatic perspective, when a pitcher throws a baseball at 100 mph, it takes the ball merely four-tenths of a second to stretch to home plate. That affords the batter about two-tenths of a second to make up one's mind to swing or not to swing.
Thus, when hitting a baseball, thinking interferes with the way of acting.
This is dead on target with learning most things. As we learn something, we proceed from complex and slow to easy and fast. (Remember, for example, to how tough riding a bicycle was, till it was not.)
I’m not saying that polishing off a 100 mile an hour fastball is easy to do. I'm alleging that if you're going to acquire this skill, you ought to abandon thinking you can reason your way through it. All you are able to do is swing a bat, over and over. Once your body ‘captures’ the idea, you will be able to then practice graceful hitting, until it turns instinctual. In Zen, we talk of discipline. The key discipline is ‘not-following,’ or not-attaching. You allow each non-helpful thought glide by not adhering to it. Now, naturally, as with many, such thoughts will arise until you die.
I used to possess a poster on my office wall that read,
"If you aim at nothing, you will hit it."
Many people whine about their situations, and their human relationships and my immediate question is this, "Well, what do you want?" Now most may reply, "Here’s what I do not want…" Baloney. Expressing what you don't wish, or where you're not going, or who you're not is fruitless and slothful. "I never want to be in a relationship like this again!" OK, so the next one is worse. You got what you asked for. This happens all the time.
If you consider it, specifying what you don't wish is out of the question, as you cannot address everything.
There's nothing more crucial than discovering the territory (what I want) and securing a map (how to behave and then how do get I there.) It's like utilizing a foreign subway system. If you've a destination, all you've got to figure out is the map, how to reach the proper platform, and which rail car to go into. If you've no destination, you're going to wind up ‘wherever.’
Sure enough, life is hard. There are the bad breaks we make, and bad breaks that simply occur. So what? The only way to really live is to concentrate on what you want, as you cast off your attachment to what you don’t require. Then, begin. Sounds easy, but it requires discipline. Is it worth it? "Uh-huh!"
Remember: your problem is to state, clearly, who you are, what you are about, and wherever you are. From ‘here,’ you decide your next action. Next, insure that you possess integrity. Integrity implies that your actions agree what your mouth is stating. Wandering about all baffled and lost, while bellyaching about how hard you're working at defining what and where you aren’t, is the pinnacle of dumbness.
Listening to others:
"It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much."
A conversation requires full attention, astuteness, and a willingness to be candid and vulnerable. Most people babble to hear their own voices, and to fill up fearsome silence with sound.
Talking (small gossip, accent on small) is the socially accepted way to fill the silence void. We are disciplined to regurgitate small talk, which has zero to do with genuine conversation.
Conversation calls for the willingness to listen carefully, while setting aside judgement. If we don't pay attention, we're nothing more than the total of our pre-judgements-our preconceptions.
Actual conversation is like verbally dancing, because both parties make a sober attempt to communicate, "This is who and where I'm right now." Conversation is sharing who I am through self-reflection, and taking heed to what the other individual has determined of themselves through their self-reflection. Many people discombobulate self-reflection with an incessant whimper about how bad their lives are.
Even when you listen carefully, your ego-based biases have a fashion of perplexing you. Listen once again, with an unclouded heart and mind, and you might discover something different.
Remember: slow down. Utter your truth, from as deep inside at heart as you are able to reach. Give away more and more of you, including the messy, harmful, filthy parts. Then, hush up, watch and take note. As you discover yourself planning a response to what another is articulating (put differently, you've stopped listening,) be quiet and open your ears. A conversation is never an argument, and there's no winner.
"All that you are is what you have thought."
We unceasingly self-describe, and because we believe it, we tend to stop at that place, believing we are what we think ourselves to be. Consequently, to change is, first, to alter your self-description.
Our lives are the testifying ground for our beliefs. Where I'm at in life- right now-is a perfect mirror of who I really am, what I believe, and especially what I do. I can view my surroundings and my mental, emotional, and active state and tell precisely what I believe, and who I am.
We need to search the rules we maneuver under. If we don’t consider what we believe, to see if what we believe adds up for us now, we're condemned to live out some old translation of our life plan, and be completely woeful in the cognitive process.
Remember: ‘a slump’ is an assessment, and makes the thing perceived appear to be something away from your control. If you put the way you are presently into a package tagged "Out of my control," you're well and truly shafted. Alternatively, empty that package. A simple affirmation of, "Here is where I'm at right now" allows for the next clause, "…and here is what I'll do differently.
If you come to a fork in the road, take it.
This is different than just standing there, gazing at the fork, declining to choose, to move, to resolve. Or, you are coming down a road that’s not getting you where you desire to go. You touch on a place for changing directions, yet continue down the stale path. You say, "I may not be becoming what I want, but at least this path is familiar to me."
Others are enclosed thick inertia, declining to reposition anything, including the painful material, until they can be guaranteed that they’ll progress to the ‘right’ destination.
Just standing at a crossroads, incessantly debating the ‘correct course,’ is a losers game regrettably, our existence is filled up with people doing just that-doing zero, while boasting about how much endeavor they're placing into their internal debate.
As they stand there - Doing nothing
Not to choose is to choose. What comes about in our life is about what we acknowledge or give acceptance to. Something different occurs in our situations when we choose to switch our understanding, and then our actions. This path, or that path-no difference, no waiting to discover the ‘right path’-just take the fork in the road.
Remember: life delivers endless forks in the route. Generally, any option we make can be altered at any time. (Life-or-death options come about rarely.) Turning a garden variety alternative into life-or-death ("But… but… what if I make up the wrong choice???") is actually a way to stay baffled. Pick one, and start walking. You don't get the time you consume back at the end of your life.
Like this article?
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