TOOTHBRUSH

March 11th, 2019

So often we are simply scared to start.  Self-conscious about one’s ability to write, or dance in public, or whatever it be.  The best antidote is to take heed in the fact that doing it everyday will make this dissolve.  One must simply start and focus more on consistency of effort rather than result and have faith in the idea that results will improve.

A good example of this is brushing teeth.  This habit becomes so engrained that we hardly even think about it.  And beyond that, it seems to happen on it’s own as though it’s automatic and hardcoded into the way we operate.  Surely some people aren’t doing it appropriately or optimally.  Surely some people are brushing too hard, or not brushing long enough, but are these people particularly hung up on the short comings of such a simple ability?  Most likely: absolutely not.

Many impressive abilities fall into the same kind of framework.  Someone who sketches every day for years and years isn’t terribly surprised by their ability at any point in time because their familiarity with their own skill is so pervasive through time.

As is often said: anything worth doing isn’t easy.  But often what this means is figuring out how to make one’s self apply some effort consistently over a long time.  If we are thoughtful in such efforts and don’t simply repeat our effort as we do with brushing teeth, then that concentrated effort compounds.  Small realizations gained through experimenting connect and tie to other realizations to further breed new insight. 

This is the power of thought.  We might take a moment to reflection just how powerful this phenomenon is.  Almost all people, especially those who are listening to this or reading it cannot look around themselves and see something that is not resulting from compounding thoughts of many people over many years.  Just think for a moment about every single little ‘ah ha!’ moment that was required for a smart phone to come into existence.  Such an invention requires so many other supporting inventions, that such ‘ah ha!’ moments extend far into the past.

We can apply this compounding interest of realization to our own life.  This is how we learned to speak as an infant and how to walk.    It’s worthwhile to note that we don’t go to school to learn how to walk or speak.  We figure out these immensely complex tasks on our own, by trying to take part in these activities every day, over and over.

This is the key to many goals we’d like to accomplish.  Steady effort everyday.

One of the greatest attributes of this repetitive effort is that all the self-conscious hang-ups that exists before we even start, slowly but steadily evaporate, until it ceases to exist and we simply do.