13th May 2011
Ninety percent of my game is mental. It's my concentration that has gotten me this far.
For achieving any outcome in life, we have to integrate two subsystems in us. They are the brain and the mind. The brain represents the hardware and the mind represents the software. While the brain is the store house of all the relevant information and gives the intelligence to act in a particular way, the mind gives us the strategy and the will power to act consistently in the direction of our goal. We need enormous will power to stretch all our faculties to succeed. For writing my book `The Gift of Time', I interviewed over five hundred successful people in various fields to understand their formula for success. If I want to summarise the success formula which I understood from them it is: focussed training and hard work.
While I write this I recall a story I heard about the Chinese philosopher called Chuang Tzu. One day he was walking through a forest where he saw a very old man in his nineties catching insects through a long stick. He was bent and fragile, but he was catching the insects very accurately. Chuang Tzu was surprised about the skill with which he was catching the insects despite his age and weakness. He asked the old man how he was able to do it.
The old man replied that it was due to his meticulous training. He explained that for the first six months he was balancing a ball on the top of a stick. Then for the next six months the practiced balancing two balls over the stick. Next he balanced three balls over the stick. Then he balanced four and then five balls. Finally he balanced six balls on the top of the stick for six months. He thought he was able to concentrate, but he was not happy about the quality of his concentration. Finally he practiced standing like a tree motionless for six months. He said that in spite of all these training he was not satisfied. So for the next six months learnt to concentrate his mind on nothing but the insects. He said that then only he was satisfied with his training and now when he is catching the insects, there is nothing in his mind except the insects and hence was able to catch the insects!
Over this weekend why not do a small exercise: take any one important project that you are now handling and evaluate the quality of your concentration taking the old man in the above story as the bench mark!
N C Sridharan
000
Posts
