Fully Engaged
Using the Practicing Mind in Daily Life
Thomas Sterner wrote the great book The Practicing Mind (see Notes). This is a follow-up practical guide to applying the concepts in that book to our daily lives. It’s a great little book packed with wisdom and zero fluff. Having the ability to do be fully (!) engaged in this moment is the ultimate super power. Big Ideas we explore include: how to be fully engaged, the #1 goal of meditation, how to get in total control of your life, goal poison, premeditated procedures, and the powerful question: “And then what?”
Big Ideas
- Want to Be Fully Engaged? Here’s How.Here’s how.
- #1 Goal of MeditationNOTICE!
- How to Get in Total Control of YourselfUse every opportunity to play game.
- Goal Poison (Let’s Avoid It)Let’s avoid it.
- The Power of Premeditated ProceduresAre key to optimizing. If... then...
- “And Then What?”A good question to ask.
“In my first book, The Practicing Mind, I wrote, ‘Everything in life worth achieving requires practice. In fact, life itself is nothing more than one long practice session, an endless effort of refining our motions.’ Here I would like to amend this quote to say that everything in life comes from practice. No matter how small or inconsequential we think it is, everything we do, from brushing our teeth to getting through a scary job interview, comes from practice, the deliberate repetition of an action with an awareness of what we want to achieve.
Learning to center your attention on the process of what you are doing instead of what you are trying to achieve, using the goal as a rudder instead of as a reminder of what is left to be done, learning to work without judging your process: these are all simple shifts in perspective that completely transform the experience of going through your day.
This is the state of being fully engaged, the topic of the book you hold in your hands. We are only here in the now doing just what we are doing. We are absorbed in the process of what we are doing, not contemplating the future or the past and not judging how well or how poorly we are doing. As long as we are working at that, we are successful. This is the type of subtle shift in perspective that I will discuss in Fully Engaged because it spells the difference between feeling successful and inspired and feeling like a failure.”
~ Thomas M. Sterner from Fully Engaged
Thomas Sterner wrote the great book The Practicing Mind (see Notes).
This is a follow-up practical guide to applying the concepts in that book to our daily lives. It’s a great little book packed with wisdom and zero fluff. (Get a copy here.)
Having the ability to do be fully (!) engaged in this moment is the ultimate super power.
I’m excited to share some of my favorite Ideas on how we can go about cultivating that present moment focus so let’s jump straight in!
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Download PDFCall it what you will—peace, productivity, profit, joy from being immersed in the present moment, from being in the process of achieving your goals, from being fully engaged in the experience of expanding your life—a new paradigm is taking us human beings to the next level.
Get the BookWant to Be Fully Engaged? Here’s How.
“To be fully engaged in an activity means to be present in this moment and in what you are doing right now. It also means to be completely content in that experience. There is no anxiousness about or sense of longing for the future, and there is no regret about the past. In our culture, living in this manner has become very foreign to us. Having an overactive mind, a mind that strongly resists being absorbed in this moment, a mind that can sometimes feel out of control, feels normal to us. Because of this we need to train ourselves to be aware of the thoughts our mind is producing at any moment, and we also need to learn what it feels like to experience a quieter mind.”
Those are the first words of Chapter 1: “Thought Awareness Training – The First Step.”
If we want to be fully engaged, we need to cultivate what Thomas calls “Present Moment Focus” or PMF.
To do *that* we need to engage in what he calls “Thought Awareness Training”—we need to become aware of the thoughts we have that are getting in the way of us being focused on this moment.
We need to strengthen what he and other mindfulness teachers call “the observer”—that part of us that can *see* the thoughts bubbling up in our heads.
If we can’t reliably separate ourselves from our thoughts and resulting emotions, we are forever doomed to just act out whatever thoughts happen to be there at any given moment.
Thomas tells us that people often ask him, “How do I become patient?” He tells them that the first thing they need to do is notice when they’re being impatient.
Now, as he says, that might sound *super* obvious but, as I’m sure you know, that’s harder than it sounds. Too often we’re too swept up in the experience to step back and notice we are acting sub-optimally.
Therefore, we need to take thought awareness training seriously if we want to optimize our ability to be fully engaged. Now for some Ideas on how to do that!
Your mind will create thoughts with or without your permission. It can be your master or your servant. Awareness offers you the opportunity to make that choice.
#1 Goal of Meditation
“I am always amused when people interpret the fact that they are chasing their mind all the time as an indication that they are not good at meditation. What they are missing, and this is very significant, is that they wouldn’t be chasing their mind and bringing it back to task if they weren’t noticing that their mind was running off! I have commented many times that what many people interpret as a bad meditation is a really good one, if not a great one, because they are getting many opportunities to pull their mind back. In my opinion, the real juice of meditating is the raising of your thought awareness in that microsecond when you wake up and catch your mind. This is when you are expanding. This is when the observer is growing and your will is strengthening. Your will is your highest intention for yourself, the most desired action you would execute in any circumstance. It allows us to resist everything from anger to that second (or maybe third) slice of pizza. It is the resolve that makes us leave the couch and take a walk, and the simple act of meditating nurtures its strength and its availability when we need it most.”
In Meditation 101, we talked about Rule #1 of meditation: DON’T JUDGE IT!
Just sit. Do your work. Repeat tomorrow.
As Herbert Benson says, you want to approach your meditation the same way you approach brushing your teeth—you just DO IT; you aren’t constantly evaluating whether or not you’re doing it perfectly.
Having said that, if you’re going to judge your meditation, you might as well do it accurately.
What are we trying to achieve in our meditation practice? There are, of course, a number of benefits. But, the primary thing we’re cultivating in our meditation is one of the most important skills we need in life: The ability to NOTICE when we’re drifting off our optimal path. If we can’t do that, there’s no way to get back to our ideal.
Therefore, our “worst” meditation—where we constantly find our minds wandering and we need to bring it back again and again—may actually be our BEST meditation because it gave us the opportunity to practice the very skill we’re committed to developing.
Here’s to celebrating all the moments in which we’re strengthening the power of our will!
P.S. When we look at our meditation as a sort of strength training for our mind, getting upset with all the “reps” we do to bring our attention back to our focal point is kinda like going to the gym to do strength training and getting upset that the weight we’re lifting is heavy. Um, that’s why you went to the gym! To lift heavy stuff and get strong.
Same thing with meditation.
Lift the heavy weights of your wandering mind again and again.
Celebrate the fact that each rep is making you stronger!
As awareness of your thoughts increases, the opportunity to choose how you experience this moment also increases.
How to Get in Total Control of Yourself
“Just as you do in your meditation practice, work at pulling your focus back into what you are doing in this moment. This can be challenging when you feel very distracted. In moments like these it is good to remind yourself that this is an opportunity. When something feels difficult it is because you are up against the threshold of your ability. That means that in this moment you are pushing through a barrier.
The reason for engaging in practices such as meditation, in which we increase our ability to know our thoughts and to control them, is so that we can increase our ability to be in control of what we experience. If I were to ask you if you’d like to be in total control of yourself in every situation, I’m sure you would say that absolutely, you would. Who wouldn’t want to be? You can’t get better at an activity unless you are up against the threshold of your ability. That is when you have the opportunity to move forward, even if it’s a small amount. Changing your interpretation of how you experience whatever difficulty you are facing can help revitalize your focus and keep you inspired.”
How’d you like to have total control of yourself in every situation?
That’d be pretty awesome, eh?
Well, the ONLY way to inch toward that level of mastery is to get in the habit of making every little challenge an opportunity to get a little bit better.
We need to remember that ALL (!!!) growth occurs when we lean into that edge just past our comfort zone. We need to quit getting upset by every little challenge, and instead, whisper “Bring it on!” to ourselves as we rub our hands together and know that we’re about to get a little better.
As Anders Ericsson tells us in Peak, we all have “the gift” of greatness—the adaptability of the human brain and body. The best among us have simply taken advantage of this power more than the rest of us. They did so by willingly leaning into challenges and using every possible moment to get 1% better.
George Leonard’s Mastery is very similar to this book. It’s all about practice and showing up day in and day out.
I love the way he encourages us to not waste a moment when he asks: “Could all of us reclaim lost hours of our lives by making everything—the commonplace along with the extraordinary—a part of our practice?”
What if you approached every moment—particularly the challenging ones—as another opportunity to play the game of optimizing?!
Let’s get practical: What little challenge do you have RIGHT NOW?
How can you shift your perspective on it and see it as an opportunity to play the game of getting a little better and get one step closer to having total control of how you respond to every situation?
Try to look at situations that normally stress you out as an opportunity to play the game.
Goal Poison (Let’s Avoid It)
“Most of us, when we are setting goals, disempower ourselves at the get-go by investing little or no effort into understanding a realistic time frame for accomplishing those goals. Instead we make an unconscious and uninformed assumption about what the time frame should be. We then begin judging our progress based on where we are in relationship to that time frame. This can very quickly erode our confidence in our ability to achieve the goal, even when in reality we may be excelling in the process. It blinds us to the progress we have made and sabotages our ability to remain fully engaged in our effort.”
What’s your #1 goal that’s really firing you up these days?
Take a moment to get clear on it.
Got it?
Good.
Now, let’s add some poison to it and watch it shrivel up and die.
Ready?
Reach for the little black bottle (the one with the “WARNING!” + hazardous materials icon on it) labeled “UNREALISTIC TIME FRAME.”
Take that beautiful goal of yours and add a few drops of that poison on a daily basis and, sure enough, you’ll kill it and your confidence + ambition.
Brian Tracy echoes this wisdom in No Excuses (see Notes) where he tells us: “The rule is ‘There are no unrealistic goals; there are only unrealistic deadlines.’”
Thomas tells us we need to use our goals as “rudders” not as “measuring sticks.”
Too often, when we slap an unrealistic time frame on a wildly important goal, we constantly measure where we are against that unrealistic measuring stick.
Then what happens? Then we constantly think we’re behind and not doing as well as we should be doing—which, of course, destroys our motivation.
Much better to create those exciting goals then step back and take the time to really understand how much time and effort will go into achieving it.
Here’s one way to approach it: Push the ultimate desired outcome off into an unknowable future horizon then break the big goal down into smaller chunks. Identify THE next most important little domino that needs to get knocked over. Set a challenging but realistic target for THAT goal, then figure out the PROCESS you need to engage in on a daily basis to hit that goal and voila!
You’re an instant success as you show up and take the next baby step, remembering to celebrate the small wins as you create a feeling of continuous achievement.
Remember: We want that inspiring, jumbo-huge goal to serve as a RUDDER pointing us in the right direction as we practice staying fully engaged in one moment after the other. That’s much better than using our unrealistic goal as a measuring stick that depletes our energy as we worry about why we’re not already at our goal.
Spotlight on you:
Are you using your goals as rudders or as measuring sticks?
Got any bottles of poison you need to get rid of so you can focus on doing the work?
How can you optimize a bit more?
Your goals should inspire you, not serve as a reminder of what you have left to accomplish. Understanding all that is involved in reaching your goals frees you to experience the joy of achieving them.
The Power of Premeditated Procedures
“Once you identify the particular situation, acknowledge that it will become the trigger that launches the procedure. The next step is to ask yourself this question: ‘If I could handle this situation any way I desired, what would that way be?’ When you are contemplating the answer to this question, consider what will make you feel the most content and perhaps even impressed with yourself after you execute it. How will you feel twenty-four hours after the situation has passed? The clarity you need to see the optimum actions for you to take is much easier to find when you are outside the situation. That is when you have the time to run several scenarios through your mind, which is exactly what you should do. Weigh the pros and cons for each scenario, and decide which one is best. What you are after here is being able to control yourself in the situation, to stay oriented to the observer, aware of the subtleties of the situation as it unfolds. If you do this, you will be successful.”
That’s from a chapter called “Premeditated Procedures.”
Psychologists like Gabriele Oettingen and Timothy Pychyl call it “implementation intentions.”
Basic idea: IF this happens, THEN I will do that.
Of course, it’s *always* best to figure out how you’ll handle a challenging situation before you experience them when you can—whether that’s a challenging chat or a recurring addictive behavior.
So… What are your triggers?
What people or things or events or whatever stress you out? (aka when do you do stupid stuff?)
Got a trigger or ten? (Hah.)
Pick a trigger that you’d like to work on.
Now, imagine that event happening some time in the future. Remember: We don’t want to wait until we’re in the heat of the moment. Decide IN ADVANCE how you will handle the challenging situation.
Ask yourself this powerful question: “If I could handle this situation any way I desired, what would that way be?”
I love the question Eric Maisel poses in Rethinking Depression. He asks, “How can I make myself proud?”
(How can you make yourself proud? <— Now THAT is an amazing rudder for life, eh?)
Well, how can you make yourself proud?
IF this happens, THEN you will do this.
For the recurring stuff: Make the decision. Use your willpower wisely, install the habit. Let it run on autopilot. Move on to something more interesting. Repeat. (That’s Habits 101 in a nutshell. :)
The most powerful and dependable way of changing your experience of these situations is with a premeditated procedure. Creating a plan for how to deal with stressful situations and people before you’re actually confronted by them can drastically change how you experience those situations.
“And Then What?”
“I’d like to share a very useful tool for bringing your mind back to the present moment when it is trying to cling to something that hasn’t happened yet. It realigns your perspective of whatever is pulling you into the future and reengages you with the now. When you notice that you are not enjoying this moment because you are craving the moment when you reach your goal, ask yourself, ‘And then what?’ The moment you have what you’ve been striving for, will everything be perfect in your life? Will you feel fulfilled for a long time, or will the cycle start over again, as it has thousands of times in your life? Will you hunger for a new goal, something new to accomplish, and find yourself back in the same inner state? Asking yourself ‘And then what?’ is an effective reminder that you are missing the pleasure of accomplishing your goal because you are not present in what you are doing. It’s a trigger of sorts that dissolves the feeling of ‘I just need to get to this next place, and then I will feel satisfied.’
Human beings have built into their DNA the desire to expand. The human spirit constantly wants to grow, to learn, to refine itself. This is truly one of our best attributes. However, we can all too easily misinterpret this pull as a feeling of being incomplete, and when we do, a sense of struggle arises.”
We’re wired to optimize.
—> “The human spirit constantly wants to grow, to learn, to refine itself.”
As Osho says, our being is in our becoming. The trick, of course, is to get fired up about the next mountain peak we want to reach WHILE enjoying the view on the way. (See Notes on Tal Ben-Shahar’s Happier for more on that metaphor and his “Happiness Archetype.”)
One good way to build that ability is to use the question “And then what?” to remind ourselves that we’re never really going to get “there”—that mythical place where we’re exonerated from all future work, ambition, and desire to grow and experience a never-ending flow of sunshine and rainbows and unicorns and eternal bliss. Psychologists refer to this as an hedonic treadmill and learning to REALLY enjoy rockin’ out on that treadmill is a wise thing.
The way to do that? Be FULLY ENGAGED.
Right now. In this moment. Repeat. Forever. Amen. :)
The perfect life is constant change because the opposite of change is stagnation, lack of growth.
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