Name: The Practicing Mind
Rating: 4 (143 reviews)
Author: Thomas M. Sterner

What’s in it for me? Increase your satisfaction with practice and achievable goals!

Most of us have felt performance anxiety at some point in our lives. Whether at school, at work, at the gym or in our leisure activities, this anxiety seems to find ways to enter our minds, often making it hard to get things done at all. Where does it come from? And how can we tackle it?

We often set our goals too high, believing we can achieve them. And here lies part of the problem because, as soon as we reach these higher goals, we set new ones that are even higher. As they become harder and harder to reach, we also deny ourselves the gratification of achievement. So let’s look at a different approach to achieving the things we want in life with a practicing mind that constantly improves without the anxiety of performance.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

how cleaning the garage bit by bit is a successful strategy for getting things done;
what the Do, Observe, Correct technique is; and
why focusing on the process instead of the end result makes us feel like winners.

Because we raise our expectations of ourselves, we never feel satisfied.

Sometimes it seems that, no matter how much you practice something, there’s always going to be someone out there who does it a little bit better than you. It’s frustrating, to be sure. And it can shape our attitude toward several aspects of our lives. But why do we feel frustrated by this in the first place?

If there’s one flaw that all humans have in common, it’s striving for ideals that simply aren’t attainable. We’ve all got a picture in our minds of what we believe is a perfect life, making our real lives seem inadequate by comparison. Some of us want a better job, some of us want more friends, and some of us want to change our appearance.

You probably aren’t surprised to hear that these high expectations are fed by mass media and marketing. Think of all the polished, perfect and wealthy people that are featured in magazines and advertisements. Nearly all products marketed to us today are made desirable by convincing us that our lives just won’t be as good without them.

Of course, high expectations aren’t all bad. We can use images of a better life to inspire us to work hard and achieve more. Unfortunately, we tend to use them as nothing more than objects of comparison. We compare our performance to our colleagues’ performance in the workplace. When we look in the mirror, we’re keen to compare our appearances with those we see on the street.

And there’s yet another problem with the way we engage with our ideals. Rather than working toward one goal and feeling satisfied when we achieve it, we raise our expectations as we achieve more. This means that our ideals move further away from us, and we’re stuck constantly pushing ourselves to reach goals that we don’t value once we achieve them.

In short, the feeling that we’re never good enough is a source of constant anxiety for us all. But what if we don’t want to feel anxious all the time? Well, then it’s time to make some changes. Find out more in the following blinks.

Cut out anxiety by focusing on your progress in the present.

Why is it that, when an important deadline is looming, we seem to get better and better at procrastinating? Feeling your focus waver when you know you’ve got serious work to do can be quite stressful.

This is often because we’re consumed with the thought of our end goal, which seems to be far away no matter how hard we work. This, in turn, makes us feel discouraged and damages our productivity. Rather than fixating on future consequences, we need to focus on the here and now to do our best.

Simplify your tasks and take your time to make your goals achievable.

If high expectations are making us unhappy and unproductive, should we lower them? Actually, we’re free to dream up ambitious goals to our heart’s content, as long as we can break them down into smaller objectives. This makes any large goal achievable.

Anyone that’s ever worked on a large, long-term project knows the sheer frustration of working hard while your goal seems farther away than ever. To avoid this, set yourself smaller goals that lead you on a journey to your overarching goal. Keep these tasks simple and you’ll find yourself flying through them.

Use the Do, Observe, Correct technique when your productivity wavers.

We know why we procrastinate when we’re under pressure. But what can we do to combat it? The author has developed a three-step technique that can help you maintain calm and focus in any situation. It’s called Do, Observe, Correct and it’s all about learning to monitor and respond to your own behavior.

Say you’re studying for a big exam and notice that worrying about your results is making it hard to study: apply the technique! You’ve already covered the do step by noticing that you’re straying from the task at hand.

Kernaussagen in The Practicing Mind

Über den Autor

Thomas M. Sterner studied Eastern and Western philosophy and modern sports psychology. Working as the chief concert technician for a major performing arts center, he prepared and maintained the venue’s concert grand piano for hundreds of world-renowned musicians. He also produced a radio show about the practicing mind and continues to teach his techniques to businesspeople and at sports clinics.