Sterner - The Practicing Mind

About the Author

For most of his life, Thomas M. Sterner has been captivated by the subject and experience of learning self-discipline. Through his lifes activities, he has continuously placed himself in a position to both develop and clarify his understanding of what it means to possess this much-sought-after virtue, and to experience the reward of inner peace that accompanies its mastery.

For over 25 years, Thomas M. Sterner served as the chief concert piano technician for a major performing arts center. Throughout that time, he prepared and maintained the concert grand piano for hundreds of world-renowned musicians and symphony conductors under the most demanding circumstances. A typical workday would require his constant interaction with highly disciplined and focused artists.

As an adjunct, he operated a piano remanufacturing facility, completely rebuilding vintage grand pianos back to factory-new condition. Working on an instrument that has 88 notes is repetitious and tedious by nature, and his days were spent performing delicate procedures often hundreds of times per task with little or no room for costly errors. Being disciplined and focused was both his joy and his key to survival.

Raised in a traditional Western religion and environment, Mr. Sterner has also continued to pursue a passion for studying both Eastern thought and modern sports psychology. In his spare time, he is an accomplished musician, a private pilot, a student of archery and a long time avid golfer. His participation in and joyful experience of all of these pursuits are not only possible through his practice and application of discipline and focus, but also have placed him in a unique position in which to be able to relate to these concepts and communicate them to others.

The ability to quiet ones mind and to be able to focus ones energy at will on any particular task provides timeless, true self-empowerment by anyones standard, but it is also the key to beginning to unlock the experience of inner peace we all find so evasive in our lives today. All of this information and experience has come together in this book, which Mr. Sterner has aptly titled The Practicing Mind.

The

Practicing

Mind

Bringing Discipline and Focus

Into Your Life

Thomas M. Sterner

Mountain Sage Publishing

Wilmington, Delaware

Copyright 2005 by Thomas M. Sterner

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Mountain Sage Publishing

Wilmington, Delaware

www.mountainsagepublishing.com

Please Visit Us At www.thepracticingmind.com

Printed in the United States of America

Cover design by Cynthia A. Webb

ISBN 978-0-9776572-5-4

First Printing: March 2006

Second Printing: March 2008

Kindle Version: October 2010

This book is dedicated to the

gentle spirit of my mother

Margaret Sterner

You taught so many, so much

with so few words

I would like to thank the people who made this book possible.

To my wife Jamie and my two daughters Margie and Melissa, I say thank you for believing in me and being patient with the long process of getting here.

To my father I must say thank you for a lifetime of support and friendship beyond any words.

Finally, to my close friend and editor (perhaps an unusual combination) Lin Bloom McDowell, thank you for helping me to say what I needed and wanted to say. Editors are the invisible heroes that make creating a book possible.

Table of Contents

Of all the riches available to us in life, self-discipline is surely one of , if not the, most valuable. All things worth achieving can be accomplished with the power of self-discipline. With it we are masters of the energy we expend in life. Without it we are victims of our own unfocused and constantly changing efforts, desires and directions.

Self-discipline, focus, patience, and self-awareness are interwoven threads in the fabric of both true inner peace and contentment in life. Together, living in the present moment and being process-oriented is the path that leads us to these all- important virtues. This magical path is there for everyone. It offers its untold riches to us all. The Practicing Mind is about remembering what you already know at some level and bringing that memory into the present, where it will serve to both place you onto the path and empower you to partake in the journey.

Thomas M. Sterner

Everything in life worth achieving requires practice. In fact, life itself is nothing more than one long practice session, an endless effort of refining our motions. When the proper mechanics of practicing are understood, the task of learning something new becomes a stress-free experience of joy and calmness, a process which settles all areas in your life and promotes proper perspective on all of life's difficulties.

When I was a child, I studied the guitar, though I was so young at the time (4 years old) that I don't remember much of it. However, looking back on the music I played, it would be fair to say that I had acquired a fair amount of skill. I quit after two years and did nothing much musically speaking for the next several years. At the age of nine, like so many kids growing up, I began studying the piano. Once again, that lasted briefly, this time only ten months, and the reason for this was that I really didn't enjoy practicing. If asked why , I probably would have said that it was boring and difficult, and I felt as if I wasn't getting any better. Though my perspective at the time may have been accurate, it stemmed from the fact that I wasn't very good at the process of practicing music , or practicing anything else for that matter. Unfortunately for me, I was far from sophisticated enough to realize that. However, because of my love for music, I eventually returned to the piano and did go on to learn to play.

During my late teens and early twenties, when I was still single , I pursued music very seriously and achieved a fair amount of success. I could compose and arrange in just about any style. I played as a professional on many occasions, from the nicest country clubs to the worst taprooms. I put together a rather expensive recording studio and got to know some of the better known songwriters and artists in the musical world of pop, jazz and country. By the time I hit my mid-twenties, by most peoples standards I was a pretty good musician.

My musical development continued, and by the time I had reached my middle thirties, I began to realize that something had really changed in me with regard to my feelings toward practicing. I not only loved to practice and learn anything , but I found the total immersion of myself into an activity to be an escape from the daily pressures of life. I even felt cheated if I were deprived of the opportunity to practice something, such as a particular aspect of my golf swing. Much m ore importantly, what I was beginning to understand was that all of life is practice in one form or another. Until then , like most people, I mistakenly only associated the word practice with art forms such as music, dance or painting. I did not see dealing with a cranky child, an over - burdened work schedule , or a tight monthly budget as actions that required applying the same principles as did learning music. As my comprehension of this relationship between life, mental discipline and practice grew , I began to apply all of my effort into defining the fundamentals of the practicing mind , and into observing when and how often I applied these fundamentals in daily living. I wanted to better understand the changes in my perspective, which had created such a turn-around in my attitudes toward the process of learning something new. Had I just grown up and matured, or was it something more defined, something more tangible running in the background? I knew I processed life differently, but what were the mechanics of the new system? That was what I needed to know.