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 RELENTLESS
resolve can accomplish what seems impossible. In India people
called fakirs (which doesn’t mean they fake anything) do
something amazing that takes years to master, and they do it
as a spiritual discipline. What they choose to do varies.
For example, some hold a particular pose,
like a certain religiously appropriate position, and they just
keep holding it. This takes intense resolve, because of course,
it becomes uncomfortable after only twenty minutes. So they go
as long as they can, and then they rest. And then they go as
long as they can again, and they keep this up, doing it longer
and longer until they are permanently frozen in that posture!
They eventually can’t move, even if
they wanted to. Their disciples have to force feed them and carry
them to the river like a statue to wash them off.
This shows the amazing power of unremitting
resolution. Personally, I think this particular application of
will power is stupid. There are so many worthwhile things to
accomplish in this world, and these guys have developed their
powers of resolve to an unbelievable degree and all they have
accomplished is to turn themselves into a statue! I’m sure
you can use the power of focused resolve for something better.
Robert B. McCall, Ph.D., of the University
of Pittsburgh and his colleagues have kept track of 6,700 people
for 13 years. Specifically, they were tracking people who were
underachievers in school — people who, according to aptitude
tests, had a lot of potential to get good grades, but who, in
reality, had low grade-point averages. After 13 years, only about
15% of them had achieved a career success equal to their abilities.
What did they lack? Two things, according
to McCall: “persistence in the face of challenge,”
and they were too self-critical. The lack of persistence can
be changed. It is simply a missing thought-habit.
You are persistent in the face of challenge
if you are in the habit of being persistent in the face of challenge,
and you are in the habit of persisting if you are in the habit
of thinking in ways that make you persistent.
Get in the habit of telling yourself at
key moments, “stay on track.” Other good things to
tell yourself are “focus creates power” and “do
what needs doing.”
Persistence is an extremely important habit.
You can’t really develop competence at anything unless
you persist through the rough parts, whether it’s playing
the piano or doing your job. Any task you undertake, if it’s
worth your trouble, will have some challenge in it. Some parts
of it will be tough. No new abilities can be created without
having to persist in the face of challenges, even if the main
challenge is suffering through the boring repetition of playing
scales on the piano.
For some goals, it will take everything
you’ve got to accomplish it. As a matter of fact, it will
take more than you’ve got — you’ll have to become
more than you are now in order to accomplish it. You’ll
need to learn more than you now know. You’ll need to gain
skills you don’t have yet.
Practice staying on purpose no matter what
distracts you. You will be taken off track again and again until
you learn to stick with your purpose. With practice, you can
get to the level of Einstein’s concentration. And when you
can focus like that, you will be a laser beam, cutting through
obstacles and barriers with hardly a pause, flying strait to
your objective with power and speed.
SUMMARY OF SLOTROLOGY
All the stuff about the antivirus for your mind, and all the stuff
about slotrology
can be summed up as forming mental habits. The difference
between someone who is feels bad and doesn’t get much done
and someone who feels good and gets a lot done is simply their
mental habits.
The way you think is a habit just
like any other habit. When you learn to drive a car, you really
have to pay attention to it. But the more you do it, the more
you can do without your conscious attention. Behaviors become
habits. Whole series of even complex behaviors happen on automatic
pilot. When you drive, your body is on automatic pilot. You pay
attention to cars around you, adjust your speed, move the steering
wheel so you stay in the center of the lane, adjust your foot
to keep your speed just right, and you’re doing all this
on automatic pilot – by habit – while you carry on
a lively conversation with your passenger.
The same is true of thought. The first
few times you think a new thought, you may do it deliberately,
but after you’ve thought a certain way about something over
and over several times, it starts to become automatic. Thoughts
influence the way you perceive the world. And thoughts alter
how you feel. And for the most part, the thoughts you normally
think are habit. They aren't deliberate. They're not what you
would choose if you were choosing your thoughts deliberately.
Change your mental habits and you dramatically
change your life.
How? Take a situation where you’re
having trouble or where you’d like to feel or do something
differently. Now figure out what you want to say to yourself
in that situation. What would be helpful to think in that situation?
Avoid any statements you don't believe. Try to boil it down into
a few short sentences, or even down to one.
Now practice saying that to yourself. In
your head, or ideally out loud and with lots of feeling. Say
it again and again. Practice thinking that thought. Make it smooth.
Make it familiar with repetition. Make it come easy. Make the
thought come easily to mind by repeating it.
Practice several times a day for awhile
so the slotra feels grooved in. Keep practicing until that pathway
through your brain seems well-worn. Write the slotra down and
carry the paper with you to remind yourself to practice thinking
it. Then when the right situation comes up, try to remember to
say it to yourself.
It might not work out the first time. But
after awhile, you’ll start to form a new mental habit. Keep
practicing, and it will become automatic and you won’t have
to try to remember.
To speed up the process, close your eyes
and say your slotra with feeling over and over, and as you do,
think about all the different situations in which you would like
to think that thought. Think of the situations, one after the
other, where you want that slotra to come to mind, all the while,
repeating it to yourself. This is a way to future-practice, and
helps the thought come to mind at the right time. It is also
running back and forth on the pathway of your mind, helping to
make the slotra easy to think.
To form mental habits to serve
you for a lifetime:
Create good slotras and practice
thinking them until they come to mind automatically.
This is the final article of a series on
Slotralogy. Read the first article here: Slotralogy
101
This whole series has been published as
a small book. Click
here to check it out on Amazon.
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