Consider the following:
You wake up and before your foot touches the floor on the way to the bathroom, you are hit with the list of tasks you need to complete: the report to your manager that you must review and send off, the e-mail from a colleague that has been in your inbox for the last week and needs a reply, the call to the irate customer that you have been avoiding but know you can't much longer, and the social network you have not checked for days and has numerous messages awaiting your reply.
The list weighs on you as you attend to your morning activities. As a result, you shower quickly, down a strong cup of coffee, gobble up a pastry, and head out the door, hoping to start work early so you can get a jump start on this every-increasing list.
I should have done these things last week, you think to yourself as you commute to work. How could i have fallen so behind? As such, you arrive at your destination agitated and scattered, beginning your short walk to your office.
If you are not aware, this pattern can stay with us throughout the day. How, we might ask, do we attend to our to-do list but not carry the weight and stress of it? To answer this, we need to know following teaching by the Zen master, the art of just doing.
A renowned martial artist once went to visit a Zen master. The martial artist had spent years mastering his skills such that he was the toughest samurai in the land. He was an amazing swordsman and legendary for his ability to fight numerous attackers.
When he met the Zen master, the samurai talked about all the powers he had developed in this life how he could defeat a hundred man in battle, jump on buildings, and perform other extraordinary feats. He then looked at the master and said, "I have told you all the powers I have gained. You are well-known as a great master, but what can you do? What powers do you possess?"
The Zen master took a deep breath, and then responded, "I only have one power: When i walk, i just walk. When I eat, I just eat. When I talk, I just talk."
You may think, What kind of power is that? That doesn't sound so hard to me.
Let's pick up when we left it, you were about to go to work and what we have is before arriving to office, we are burdened with all our to-do lists. One way is to carry the weight of your to-do list; the second is to drop it like the Zen master and just do it.
Think about it and here is to fuel your thoughts.
"It's no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you're going to win or lose and focus your full attention on what is happening right this moment."
The power of just doing may not seem like much, but we can compare it to the headlights on a car at night. We could think, They only let you see fifteen yards in front of us. That is not a lot. How much help can they be? However, with only that amount of visibility, we can travel across the entire country. All we really need to see is what's directly in front of us. This may also be true in our larger life: we can do more not by focusing on what is two hundred miles ahead, on what we need to accomplish later today or next week, but on what is in the next fifteen yards, on the task at hand.
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