“..how total are you in what you do?
Is your doing surrendered or non-surrendered?
This is what determines your success in life, not how much effort you make.”
(Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks, 2003)
Another timeless classic from Eckhart. This book came out a year before the world wide best seller, The Power of Now.
This is one of my all-time favourite quotes.
People think that you need a lot of effort to accomplish things well. But there is a big difference between lots of doing doing doing action and quality embodied action. You can put in a lot of effort and strain and sweat and produce little of value. Or you can put in quality measured, embodied effort and achieve high quality great results.
It’s not the amount that counts, but the quality of that doing. And you cannot produce quality without first being present in your body in the here and now. Without body mindfulness meditation it can be hard to be consistently present enough in your body to produce that quality result.
Another way of putting it, the quality comes from being in the ‘zone’. That alpha deeper state in your body, where your brain is not obscured by a multitude of thoughts that are irrelevant to the task at hand. Unnecessary thoughts that make you push through, strain, strive and sweat to produce a quality result.
The habitual interference of thoughts that have nothing to do with the present moment you are working in, is a world-wide phenomenon. Each of those thoughts will link back to something unfinished on your mind, or something habitual that you thought was normal to think right now.
How do you let them go? How do you drop them? By surrendering to this moment. By practicing focusing on your body and the here and now and not giving up or beating yourself up when the thoughts take over.
You can do it. It is inherit in your primary nature to be able to do it. You had it as a child before you were taught to over think through everything.