What If Life Isn’t About Winning, But Practicing? Here’s How That Changes Everything

The mindset that makes it easier to show up, fail, learn, and keep going

What if peace isn’t found in achievement, but in showing up again and again to life’s struggles as a practice? 

Today I want to share a tool that can help you persevere through difficult times, like being cancelled or any time the way ahead is unclear and scary. I picked it up from Buddhism.

One of the things that I like best about Buddhism is that it is not a proselytizing religion. Despite some early success selling pots of cheese door to door to help my high school marching band get new uniforms, direct sales are one of my many personal nightmares. So it’s rare that I talk about Buddhism unless it seems material to the conversation or someone asks.

That said, I must give credit where credit is due. I have learned some things from my practice that have made my life more joyful even when things have been awfully difficult, it seems selfish not to share.

One of the most helpful things I’ve learned from Buddhism is the idea of practice. What I mean by that is thinking of practice as a way to frame everything you do all of the time. It works like so. I wake up, I practice starting my day. I take my dog for a walk, she and I practice staying calm when bicycles whizz by. I practice making lunch, writing, and talking to someone new. Everything is a new opportunity to explore and expand on skills or values I want to improve. While not identical, I think Ben Franklin would be proud.

This style of thinking gets at the idea that how we frame a challenge in our thoughts goes a long way in determining whether or not we will be able to overcome it.

Good psychology often talks about the concept of limiting beliefs. While each individual may have different unhelpful ideas about the world, many limiting beliefs have a flavor of catastrophization about them. Here are a few I’ve noticed in others and occasionally myself along the way:

1. A person can be a failure.

2. I missed my opportunity to be (insert goal).

3. I’m not good enough to (insert goal).

4. I’m no good at (insert skill).

5. Why would anyone want me around? I have nothing to offer.

6. I’ll never recover from my past traumas or mistakes.

7. I always mess things up.

This list could continue, but if you noticed the negative assessment of reality in all these statements you get the idea. 

Poppet has reservations about not chasing bicycles.

Most of the time we don’t even notice we have these hidden beliefs about the world and ourselves unless someone points it out to us, and because of that we can stay trapped in these negative thought loops for a long time.

That’s where the idea of a life of practice comes into play. Reframing our entire life as a continuous state of practice changes our relationship with reality from a series of bitter defeats to a pattern of growth.

This massive change of context undermines limiting beliefs by eliminating the excuses they provide. If you are practicing you have no reason not to try.

Anyone who has tried to learn something new or stretched hard to reach a goal knows that these are paths of constant failure. Routine failure is the expected stepping stone for learning. For those who suffer shame from failing, this should be welcome news, because now it’s a pathway to mastery.

Zen Buddhism has the concept of a beginner’s mind. The idea points out the danger in expertise where you can get caught up thinking that you already know a thing. In comparison, a beginner is open and recognizes that there is much to learn even after many years of practice. The Japanese artist Hokusai, who painted his whole life and believed he was nearing his best work as he turned 90, exemplifies a beginner’s mind. Many business schools have hit on the same idea which they frame as a growth mindset.

Hokusai’s Great Wave was completed when he was 71 after 40 years of practicing waves. Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

Beginner’s mind is easier to arrive at when you think of life as practice because, by the very nature of looking at all your life as practice, you also must let go of the notion that you will ever be perfect. In this way of thinking there is never a point of ‘performance’, rather you reach higher challenge levels as your practice continues. So when you go on stage with your band in front of a huge audience, you are still practicing delivering a great show to a big audience.

Ironically this kind of thinking, and the humility it inspires can lead people to higher levels of achievement because you are eliminating your internal roadblocks to success.

That is not to say living a life of practice will ensure a person will become a great master at everything they try, rather they will be able to reach their full potential whatever that is because the goal becomes continued improvement not a fixed point defined as ‘success’.

And that is a pathway to inner peace. Maybe it can work for you too.

About

Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.

Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.

You can also find my work at Minding the Campus

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