The need for Practice
September 9, 2024
**"No one succeeds without effort... Those who succeed owe their success to perseverance."** - Ramana Maharshi
**"It's never been easier to create a business, and it's never been easier to do nothing."** - Alex Hormozi
No one I've met who has done great things has gotten there without practice. Yet, nowadays, we seem to sell the idea of fast access everywhere, to others as well as to ourselves.
Especially in the personal development and spiritual communities and practices I have been a part of, I found this idea has taken hold of people.
The sudden breakthrough, the instant enlightenment, the guy who takes his business to 1 million in under 1 year, and now we're going to be told the secret to their success. The problem with that?
It seldom says: "I started practicing when I was 10 years old and did 5 hours of practice for many years before I reached my today's understanding, where I realized that I no longer needed to keep that practice up."
But it was the practice that led to the understanding.
I believe it often happens in innocence that this idea is sold that no to little practice is needed, out of the fact of how our memory and the brain work.
We are bad at remembering, in fact, if we have recalled an incident more than 5 times there is a 0% chance that it is still accurate. Crazy, isn't it?
Our memory is evolved to be useful, not accurate, and remembering everything is simply not necessary for our survival.
But it leads to false conclusions. One of which is by people who have done tons of practice and are now selling the idea that it's all to be achieved without it, although the practice is exactly what got them to where they are.
True freedom doesn't occur in the relinquishment of effort or practice but in the understanding that in itself, all practice is neutral and my discomfort with it is what I can do without.
It is my view of practice that creates discomfort.
Understanding the function of thought and its role in creating our reality can free us up not to do nothing but to realize that we are free to work, free to practice, and free to create the results practice holds if we are willing to give up our distortions on reality that have misperceived the feeling of discomfort with the action we engage in.
Not the thought-created story we have created about it.
We don’t expect to sit in a car for the first time and be able to drive it perfectly, we don't expect to be able to fly an airplane without practice, we don’t expect to do backflips without practice but somehow people seem to believe that achieving success in business or their personal development is without practice or underestimate the amount of practice it takes.
One of the things I let my clients know when I work with them is that we will practice. My commitment is to them creating results, and results are not created in contemplation, they are created through persistent action.