The Power of Thinking LESS

Quieting the Mind to See Life More Clearly.

Just before the Tokyo Olympics, I wrote an article titled, Letting Go of My Beast Self, about how I was exploring a new way to motivate and compete with myself. I found it harder and harder to compete from a place of anger and lack. I instead moved towards a place of gratitude, peace, and abundance. I realized that anger and aggression can only take you so far. In fact, aggression is so exhausting that it will burn you out. A healthy amount of aggression is good, but trying to make that the primary source of energy can be depleting.

That was only just the beginning of this mental journey. In this offseason I’ve had more time to continue cultivating practices of peace within my daily regimen…. things like meditation, Qi Gong (pronounced chi-gong), reading more, becoming a Reiki practitioner, studying herbalism, and adding healing/calming teas to my diet.

All of these further enlightened me to the power that ‘I Am’ and that I have within my body. One of the mental techniques I’m practicing is not judging a single moment of my training.

In trying to do anything well, whether that is your sport, career, trade, parenting, or cooking, we pay attention to what we do right and what we do wrong. In sport we say, “oh that was a bad pass.”

In our career, “I did that presentation horribly,” As a parent, “I could’ve handled that situation way better.”

We have a tendency to label everything we do good or bad, and it takes us out of the moment; it prevents us from seeing the moment as fully as we can, and it makes it difficult to keep negative (or overly positive) emotions out of it. The goal is to see the moment exactly as it is so that we can make changes from a calm, objective place.

When I’m at practice going over a technical drill, I notice that I had a longer stride before coming to the board and that I went too high in the air instead of staying parallel to the ground in my first phase. If I were putting labels on this act, I would say that it was a bad attempt. But if I stay objective to the moment, I can simply see what I did wrong without it affecting my internal monologue about my ability to do it correctly. This allows my mind to stay relaxed, helping my…