What You Practice Is What Gets to Grow in Your Life

Practice, practice, practice.

Practice kindness, and you become kinder. Practice meditation, and you meditate more easily and better. Practice writing, and your writing flourishes.

It is through practice that we improve our skills — not only hard skills but also personal qualities and virtues. 

Practice does this not only because we are working on it hands-on, but also because our focus is on it.

Bringing our attention to what matters is critical. Without that, we get dispersed, side-tracked, and daydreaming.

We practice things all the time, given that most of what we do are patterns that we perform day after day. The only thing is, we are mostly unconscious of our practices.

Practice works for everything, even that which we do not wish to pursue. Practice selfishness and fear and scarcity prevail. Practice distraction, and continue misaligned. Practice sitting on the couch watching TV, and your dreams don’t flourish.

Where attention goes, energy flows. Your focus and actions are where your attention is. Your attention is the most precious thing in your life, for wherever it is, that is what you experience and live. Where your attention goes, so goes your energy.

It doesn’t matter if you are walking in the forest, the thing you love the most, if your attention is not there, with your mind somewhere else.

We can’t master and integrate anything in life without practice. We can’t change in the way we desire without intention and practice. 

Anything we practice improves not only because of the practice itself but because of our attention in the practice. In this way, we realize what is going well, and what is not going so well. For the practice to work, we need to observe and study the practice, and improve — adjust how we practice.

Mindless practice has poor fruits. Just doing it for “doing it”’s sake can help us to be disciplined, but it won’t do much for good practice itself. That’s one of the reasons why we at times keep doing the same thing for years without much improvement — whereas others improve so fast. Self-mastery.

Practice giving your full attention, practice wisely.

Attention is caring. We pay attention to what we care about. We care about the things we love, and so we bring our attention to them.

Practice. Attentively. Care. With care, things can be nourished, and everything can grow.

Love is caring. Love is consciousness.

Sometimes, all we need is to allow ourselves to care a bit more. Be more present. Give more of ourselves away. Surrender.

Other times, all we need is to stop doing so many things at once, and simplify life. The intention is to give more of ourselves to what we do, instead of spreading ourselves so thin. We have to choose, for our attention cannot go everywhere at once. 

Highly intentional living allows us to live what we love and live for. Set clear intentions, and return to them, on and on — for if we don’t, we forget.

By losing our attention, we lose ourselves.

This is a practice of its own. The practice of owning your life, and your attention.

Alignment, at all times. Clarity. We are not on this planet to sleepwalk.

When we are doing things absent-mindedly, we are unconscious of what we are doing. We are not present, we are not attentive, and we are not caring. We disconnect, and we lose ourselves.

What you practice is what you are nurturing. This is what will grow in your life.

What do you want more of? What do you want expand in your life?

Remember, this also works the other way around. If something is not good, and not working, then stop bringing so much energy and attention to it. Left without care, it will die.

Release your attention from what is not in your intentions, and bring more attention to your intentions. Make them clear, straightforward, and simple. Don’t let them be fluffy. Well articulated, they have a better chance of being coherent.

Seeds need nurturing to grow. Your practice and your care are the nurturing.

What are you REALLY practicing — what are you doing with your time, and where is your attention going?

Now, how do you want your life to be? What do you want more of?

Attention. Intention. Attitude. That’s the practice of bringing the answers to the questions above into alignment.

A simple practice is to ask yourself before starting any new activity: why am I doing this? What is my intention with this activity? Be it a lunch with friends, a work meeting, a personal project, you resting — why are you doing what you re doing? Then, after done, see if the intention is fulfilled.

Practice intentionality. Practice consciousness. Practice nurturing.