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1-Page Summary of The Practicing Mind

Overview

Performance anxiety is something that most of us have experienced at some point in our lives. Whether it’s school, work, the gym or leisure activities, this anxiety seems to find ways to enter our minds and make it hard for us to get things done. Where does this anxiety come from? And how can we overcome it?

We often set our goals too high, believing we can achieve them. But then when we reach them, we set even higher goals that are harder to reach. We deny ourselves the gratification of achievement because they’re so hard to attain.

In this passage, you’ll find out how cleaning the garage little by little is a successful strategy for getting things done. You’ll also learn about Do, Observe, Correct technique and why focusing on process instead of results makes us feel like winners.

Big Idea #1: Because we raise our expectations of ourselves, we never feel satisfied.

Sometimes, we feel that there is always someone better than us at something. It’s frustrating. We should realize though, that it doesn’t matter how much you practice something; there will always be people who are better at it than you. This makes us frustrated when we compare our lives to others’ and find ourselves lacking in some way. Everyone has an idealized version of what they think their life should look like or what they want to become, but this can make a person unhappy because those ideals are not attainable by everyone.

It is no surprise that we have these high expectations. Marketing and advertising tell us that our lives won’t be as good if we don’t buy certain products.

High expectations can be motivating. We can use images of a better life to motivate us to work hard and achieve more. However, we tend to compare ourselves with others instead of setting our own goals. When looking in the mirror, we’re keen on comparing how we look with those around us.

Another problem with our ideals is that we raise them as we achieve more. This makes us constantly try to reach higher goals that are further away from us, and therefore don’t feel valuable once we achieve them.

In short, we all feel like we’re not good enough. However, it’s time to change that feeling into something else. We can do this by finding out what the following key points are.

Big Idea #2: Cut out anxiety by focusing on your progress in the present.

It’s common to procrastinate when you have a looming deadline. When that happens, you can feel stressed out because of the pressure to get your work done on time.

It’s common for people to feel discouraged and lose motivation when they’re working toward a goal. That’s because we tend to focus on the end result instead of what we can do right now. However, it turns out that if you stop thinking about your goal and focus only on what you’re doing at present, your anxiety will decrease significantly. If you concentrate on the process rather than the outcome, you’ll see yourself making progress and become much more motivated.

“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 makes us feel discouraged and damages our productivity. Instead of fixating on future consequences, think in terms of present moments so that your anxiety decreases.