The Practice

Practice is a condition for developing mastery. This is the case in any area to which mastery is relevant, including the pursuit of happiness.

The following are mental exercises which should be considered the same way a piano student considers practicing scales or a basketball player considers practicing jump shots. Strangely, by repeating the same thing over and over we somehow get better at it. Actually, the only way to get better at it is to keep doing the same thing over and over — scales, jump-shots, mental exercises (I am compelled to quote the amazing composer/multi-instrumentalist Mike Keneally { http://www.kenelly.com }: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing!)

Arguably, practice is more important than talent. If a child with all the innate musical talent in the world does not practice music (and practice it a lot) that child will not become an accomplished musician. On the other hand, a child with very limited innate musical talent who practices regularly will doubtlessly grow up to be a musician. Perhaps not a great musician, but more accomplished than a person who did not practice music at all, regardless of their innate talent.

Cooking is another example. Consider each of the following mental-exercises as if it was a cooking recipe in a cook-book. The further you steer away from the recipe, the further your product will be from the dish you are trying to cook. With repetition and meticulous adherence to the recipe, the product gradually becomes closer to that which it is advertised to potentially be. Moreover, it becomes easier to reproduce each time moving forward. Eventually the recipe becomes committed to memory at which point the need to refer to the cook-book is eliminated, replaced by confidence in one’s ability to generate the specific product each time.

The same holds true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness. Innate temperament (the equivalent of talent) is, without a doubt, important. But without practice it is not worth much. On the other hand, regular practice pretty much guarantees progress, or acquisition of mastery. A person who regularly practices routines relevant to the pursuit of happiness is going to be more accomplished at it than a person who doesn’t. Innate talent/temperament notwithstanding.

I think that it is easier to develop a strong practice when the reasons for practicing a particular routines are logical and clearly understood. It is easier to commit to a practice when it makes sense. Hence, much of the work here is devoted to the theory of the pursuit of happiness. But understanding alone is not worth much in terms of bringing about positive change. Promoting change requires a strong commitment to practice.

The following practice ‘drills’ fall into two types. The first type of exercise should be part of a regular mental workout. These exercises should be a routine, ideally, a daily routine (but any frequency of practice is better than no practice at all). The center piece of this routine is a meditation practice ( http://wp.me/P7aKBB-2J ).  Another exercise that should be practiced routinely, preferably a number of times a day is the practice of cultivating gratitude ( http://wp.me/P7aKBB-aP ).

The second type of drill is specific to a particular difficult or challenging circumstance. For example, cultivating forgiveness ( http://wp.me/P7aKBB-73 ) and cultivating good choice making skills ( http://wp.me/P7aKBB-6h ). These exercises are likely to be beneficial (or at least, harmless) whenever you go through them; they have a potential to be especially useful in specific situations e.g., when forgiveness or making a choice are particularly challenging.

The situation specific drills can be beneficial regardless of the time that separates the situation from the practice. For example, you will benefit from practicing anger management even if the event that got you angry has happened years earlier. With repetition you will be able to shrink the time period that separates the event from the practice. Gradually, you’ll find yourself employing the practice days after the event, then hours and eventually in real-time. As your practice gets stronger you should be able to turn it on when it is most needed. Once you do that you don’t only practice mindfulness, you live mindfully.

The practice of mindfulness gives the practitioner a unique super-power! When you commit to practicing mindfulness you get the super-power to render any moment, any experience in your life, a practice opportunity. And no moment can resist. Experienced practitioners have a sizable menu of exercises to employ. Novice practitioners will have a shorter menu of options. The shortest menu — a single entry, should be the practice of cultivating compassion. A two item menu should add the practice of refraining from making matters worse ( http://wp.me/P7aKBB-6u ).

My practice recommendations are based my training in Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy (CBT) and Dialectic Behavioral Psychotherapy (DBT). In addition, I rely heavily on what I learned so far by exploring Tibetan Buddhism’s philosophy and psychology. I strongly recommend studying the Buddhist approach and the practice of Mindfulness which, in my opinion, are more germane to the pursuit of happiness than what is offered by any other school of thought.

I recently heard this story about Albert Einstein: According to the story, Einstein, who was a physics professor at Princeton University, was asked by his teaching assistant if he was aware of the fact that the questions on that year’s finals exam were exactly the same questions that he asked in the previous year’s test. Supposedly, this was Einstein’s: “Of course questions are the same, the answers are different!”

To a large extent, the practice of mindfulness comes down to questioning one’s perceived reality with the same, repeating questions. Merely asking the right questions requires a degree of wakefulness that supersedes the level of awareness that functioning habitually, reflexively, or otherwise on automatic-pilot requires (which is synonymous with functioning mindlessly). 

The aspiration is to sustain that level of wakefulness throught one’s wakeful hours. The practices that supports moving in that direction involves asking the right questions usually retroactively (as mentioned above) especially early on in the pratice. The duration between the moment an event took place and the time it is used for mindfulness practice is irrelevant to the practice; it can be a few minutes or many years. With repetition the gap that separates real-time from the time of practice gradually shrinks. Eventually it becomes feasible to ask the right quesitons in real-time. More importantly, it becomes feasible to ask the right questions, i.e., turn mindfulness on, prior to drawing conclusions about one’s real-time reality, and therefore, prior to acting in it. 

Here are a few examples of these mindfulness promoting questions:

• What is (or was) the most loving option?
• Do I (or did I) have clarity about the nature of my intent?
• Do I (or did I) have clarity about the nature of the other person’s intent? 
• Could my influence be (or have been) making anything worse than it has to be?
• What is the best that I can do (or could have done)?

The questions don’t change, the answers do. It is very important to ask precisely the right questions, hence the practice requires exact repetition. Asking the right questions is much more important than to comming up with the right answers. The answers become more accurate, and easier to come by, with repetition — with practice!