Not Giving Up

A while ago, I posted about being bad at something before you can be good at it. And a reader commented and I’ve been wanting to comment on the comment, but haven’t yet. And now today, it seems like the day. The getting from not being able to do something to being able to do it, as the insightful reader noted, requires not giving up. I think it is probably impossible to do something over and over again (as long as we are paying attention) and not improve. Which doesn’t mean I am going to be a virtuoso or expert, but it’s going to get easier and more streamlined. That’s just the way the brain works—it’s going to build a neural pathway for what I do repeatedly.

Now, unfortunately, what many of us have repeated and practiced is thinking, “This is never going to work,” “I can’t do this,” or “If I can’t be great at it, what’s the point?” So what we’re good at is thinking we’re not good at things. But we also have loads of evidence to the contrary. And if you are reading this and thinking, “No I don’t,” recall that you once didn’t know how to talk or walk or read or write. It’s incredible how much we are capable of!

So then the question becomes, “How do I stick with something?” Generally, when I am not as good at something, it’s not quite as enjoyable as when I am, but enjoyability is the main thing that motivates me to do something in the present moment. If I can pay attention to the little incremental changes I am making, it starts to be more enjoyable because I am focusing on what I can do instead of what I can’t. If I pay attention to what is happening right now, I am having more fun than when I am focused on some future place I want to be or some idea of what should be happening.

I didn’t have in mind what the yoga concept would be here (it could, of course, be tapas, but we’ve talked about that a lot lately)—now I am thinking of the sutra that says, “vitarka badhane pratipaksha bhavanam” (when disturbed by troubling thoughts, cultivate the opposite). If I have the habit of giving up or focusing on what’s not going well, I can create a new pattern, change my perspective and have a new experience. And, of course, at first that’s going to be hard and I won’t be very good at it.

Pretty much, the whole Samarya Center (click here if you haven’t heard of it) is an example of what can happen when you stick with something. The part that popped into my head earlier today is the kirtan that I have been leading once or twice a month since we opened almost ten years ago. In the beginning, I would often have one or two people and there must have been times that no one came. And now, there are regularly twenty or more people, which is always amazing to me (and someone recently asked if we could Skype the kirtan to her small rural town!). Looking back, I think about how easy it would have been anywhere along the way to think that it wasn’t worth it or it just wasn’t working. I kept doing it because every time I was packing up my guitar, I was thinking that I had a good time.

We don’t know for sure what the final result will be if we keep working at something, but we do know for sure what will happen if we give up.