Michael Neill Post - Practicing Your Life

They say it takes 1000 hours of practice before you achieve competence in a new skill.

It took me 72 weeks at 3 hours a day for 5 days a week to become a good touch-typist and about the same time to get to a point I could do shorthand at 100 words per minute (I can't do that now, by the way).

It took me 3 years of daily practice, 7 days a week, to get rid of multiple obsessions; panic attacks; phobias and depression (using the same exposure therapy approach for all of them in order to retrain my unconscious) and that was after spending several years figuring out what didn't work for me as opposed to what might.  I say 'might' because every time I came to deal with the next trapped emotional response I wasn't sure I could succeed at getting rid of it.  Every single response was new - and by the end of the process I'd removed about 43 of them.  That's a lot of practice.  Step by step I would keep taking 'practice risks' and step by step I would find I could do it if I was willing to work on it day after day.  It was boring; it was painful; but unfortunately it was the only thing that worked and I really wanted it to work.

I didn't practice these things for this period of time and then suddenly acquire the skills involved in one sudden burst - I got better in tiny daily increments.  These increments were so small I had to have a long term counsellor point them out to me - which is one reason I recommend keeping a journal to mindmap in when it comes to emotional stuff; it's too easy to think 'I still don't feel right!' when really you need to be remembering how you used to feel and relate to the difference.  You need to pat yourself on the back for every small step.

No matter what we choose to do with our lives this is how it is so we'd better make sure we start by choosing something we really need to do and for the right reasons.  This may sound like common sense but how often do we take a shortcut to something and discover we're in a place we can't cope with because we didn't take a look at the nuts and bolts of a thing before we just went for the goal?  We haven't developed the underlying skills required to keep us where we are and we know it.

Confidence comes from knowing you can have bad times but you have the ability to get back up there - and this comes from being willing to endure the long journey of 'practice'. Hope you enjoy the post from Michael below:

Practicing Your Life

Momma always said, 'Stupid is as stupid does. - Tom Hanks, in Forrest Gump

Nothing hampers our spiritual growth more than the supposition that if we haven't already attained our goals for our hearts, minds, and bodies, we will need a giant leap to reach them. Practice, on the other hand, is very democratic: It works for any of us, no matter where we start. Incremental transformation is the most reliable, lasting, and discrimination-free way we've found of attaining any level of enlightenment.

If 'stupid is as stupid does', then wisdom is as wisdom does. And "practicing your life" is as simple as taking a little bit of time each day to practice. Remaining calm in the most stressful situation may be out of your reach today, but spending five minutes in calm silence before throwing yourself into the fray is not. Loving kindness is an exacting virtue to embody all at once, but like our friend the edible elephant, it's easily integrated one loving thought at a time.

Sages like the Dalai Lama and Krishnamurti seemingly came into this lifetime to be enlightened teachers. Some others, like Eckhart Tolle, have apparently attained self-realization through an instantaneous moment of ego-dissolution. For the rest of us, mere mortals and housholders as we are, daily practice is our best bet for attaining the peace, joy, and higher awareness that are available in every moment.

As it happens, both Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa put themselves in this third category. Gandhi actually said:

"I claim to be no more than an average man with below average capabilities.
I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have
if he or she would put forth the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith."

To put it simply, whatever we do, we get better at. Therefore, the most important actions we can take for our spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being are simple, daily practices, from brushing your teeth to random acts of love and senseless kindness.

Would a month in the Himalayas at the feet of a master or a year serving soup to refugees do you a world of good? We have no doubt it would. But until then, start where you are!

Today's Experiment:

1. Choose a quality or trait you would like to cultivate in your own life.

Examples:
love, peace, patience, focus, balance, faith, hope, etc.

2. What could you do each day (even if it's just for a few minutes a day) to begin real-izing (making real) that quality or trait in your own life?

Examples:
Loving kindness - I could start (and/or end) my day with a heart meditation, perform 5 deliberate acts of random kindness each day, make a point of telling each member of my family I love them at least once a day, etc.

Focus - I could practice counting up in my mind from 1 (2, 3, etc.) and notice how high I get before I get distracted, then return to 1 and begin again

Confidence - I could spend a few minutes each day remembering times I've felt confident and 'stepping back in to them' so I see what I saw, hear what I heard, and feel what I felt. I could take 5 minutes a day to 'act as if' I was a confident person, standing the way I would stand, moving the way I would move, and speaking the way I would speak if I was already confident.

Bonus Tip -
There are two simple tests to check if your practice is going to make a real difference in your life or is going to remain in the category of "just another good idea".

1. At any moment during the day, a friend could ask you if you'd done it yet and you could answer with an unequivocal 'yes' or 'no'.

2. If you get to the end of the day and haven't done it yet, you still could (not that you necessarily always will... :-)

Have fun, learn heaps, and make your life your practice!

Michael

To get more daily tips from Michael please click this link: http://www.supercoach.com/

Regards - Carl

Depression - read this article from Doc Downing

Came across a great site with lots of helpful free stuff - an article I found most interesting was on the relationship between anger and depression.  I've put a link to one of the books Doc Downing mentions below.

Regards - Carl