Vigilance of the Heart: A Visionary Approach to High Performance, Well-Being and Self-Realization

By Roy Horan

Our world is changing rapidly, while social division appears to be increasing. Some of these developments may seem alarming. Often we find ourselves struggling to keep up, get ahead, or simply relax. Life appears both impermanent and imperfect. It doesnt have to be this way. What we may not realize is that all of us, friend and foe alike, are perfect, complete, right here, right now, and always. Vigilance of the Heart traces that state of pure perfection and abiding joy we all seek, without realizing it is actually seeking us! All our experiences from the mundane to the sublime, from hardships to blessings, emerge from three powerful forces of the mind: awareness, attention, and reward. They underlie our sense of opposites ignorance-wisdom, distraction-absorption, bondage-freedom, and everything in between. These same three forces interact to reveal mindfulness, heartfulness, and playfulness the natural wellsprings of who we truly are. Vigilance of the Heart starts out as a journey of the heart and mind. It comes full circle as mindfulness, heartfulness, and playfulness merge into a provocative, yet compelling way for understanding yourself and the world. In short, you realize your innate perfection. Vigilance of the Heart offers an innovative approach to self-realization, achievement, and well-being in all facets of life.

Vigilance of the Heart provides a digital Workbook which covers the fifty-one activities highlighted and described in the book. The Workbook is available for purchase at https://www.roy-horan.com for US$9.99.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jun 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781982204334

Roy Horan

Roy Horan is an Arctic explorer, education reformer, Ted-X speaker, Hong Kong kung fu movie star, multimedia design professor, research scientist, creativity development expert, psychometric tool pioneer, performance and well-being trainer-coach, long-term meditator, and mindfulness teacher. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Book preview

ORIENTATION

Chapter 1

YOU ARE PERFECT

One thing you may have noticed so far in your journey through life is that things have a tendency to change. You probably look different now than you did as a young child. You’ve learned things and been to new and interesting places, and how you feel about yourself has most likely changed—perhaps even in the last five minutes. Some of us get bored easily and thrive on change, while others are quite content with the status quo and become anxious when things change too fast or too much. In either case, we’re looking for deep abiding joy and meaning, otherwise change would have no more value than a mirage in the desert. The real question is how can we experience unchanging truth, beauty, and joy in an ever-changing world? To start on this wonderful journey of exploration, we begin by looking into the nature of change and how we typically respond to it.

Each day, the sun boldly appears over the horizon in the morning and sets amiably at dusk. The leaves on trees change colors with the seasons, waves arise and subside in the sea (a phenomenon well known to surfers and sailors), and the weather can go from sunny and fine to scorching hot or cloudy and chilly with thunderstorms. Some changes are fast. The speed of light, for example, can cover seven and a half times the distance around this planet in a mere second. So, when you look at your face in the mirror in the morning, you’re pretty much seeing yourself in real time! In comparison, Shinkansen bullet trains in Japan shuffle rows of matcha-latte-drinking businesspeople through the countryside at the sluggish pace of two hundred miles per hour. Other changes are really slow, such as a drop of liquid tar pitch that takes sixty-nine years to fall. Imagine watching liquid tar pitch drop out of a canister, without Wi-Fi and a smartphone by your side. That’s called dedication!

Of course, humans are not to be outdone in the slow department. The T. J. Bivins machine is estimated to make one mechanical rotation in 3.8 billion years. Barring that we get our time-travel act together, I’m sure few of us will be around to verify it!

The response to change varies from person to person and is usually dependent on the kind of change. For example, artists and designers thrive on change when they’re developing new projects but might get a bit edgy when they return home to discover that their lover has flown the coop. Bank employees might get frustrated with a barrage of changing compliance regulations but are not averse to coping with their friends’ states of inebriation at the pub.

Change lies at the root of our sense of time and space. For example, if your watch hand changes or it starts to get dark outside, you note that time is ticking away. If you can walk for miles without bumping into anything, you call it the great outdoors (or more likely a desert). When you flatten your nose while strolling into an exceptionally clean windowpane, you call it being spatially challenged.

As Einstein well knew, space and time are related. We all experience a scaled-down version of this phenomenon in daily life. For example, when your mind is spaced out, you suddenly wonder where time went, and if you’re rushed for time in processing a mound of less-than-exciting paperwork, you feel claustrophobic. Change also underlies cause and effect. If you let toast sit in the oven too long, it quickly becomes charcoal. However, if you’re the type who doesn’t like to waste food, the charcoal may be eaten to improve your acid indigestion, which then leads to a better sales presentation that develops into an unexpected job promotion—and perhaps your newfound wealth allows you to afford raising a family. You get the idea.

In short, change is here to stay. In and of itself, change is a harmless phenomenon, unless you notice your body decaying or dying. Then change becomes a matter of some concern. As we humans evolved, we made the brilliant decision to manage change, to make it work in our favor. For example, we try to prolong life and ensure our experiences are as meaningful and pleasurable as possible. To accomplish this feat, we needed some guidelines to compare notes, so we developed measurement and labeling. Thus were born opposing labels, such as up/down, light/dark, good/evil, right/wrong, happy/unhappy, and so forth. We measured these opposites both qualitatively (how we subjectively feel about them) and quantitatively with standard measures such as the yard or meter—and recently through electrical and blood flow patterns in the cells of the brain.

Once we had a language for change, we could start comparing notes. Who is better or eviler than who? Am I happier today than I was yesterday? Am I as attractive as he is? Is she a competent analyst? How’s the weather today? At this point in our development, greater challenges surfaced. Cast out of the Garden of Eden, so to speak, we began to fear that our changing minds were going to get the better of us. Physical concerns like becoming a lion’s midnight snack were soon replaced by a whole menu of new fearful specters. Do I fit into society? Am I overweight? Will I make enough money to survive? Do my heels match my dress? Will the boss appreciate how hard I work?

Most of these fears fall into two categories: loss/gain and praise/blame. The majority of us would probably choose praise/gain over loss/blame (unless there is something to gain in choosing otherwise). Along with these fears come their brothers and sisters: anger, jealousy, greed, lust, pride, and delusion. The entire family of fears thrives on the notions of separation, limitation, and doership. These manifest, respectively, in thoughts such as I differ from other people and things, I’m incomplete, and the results of my actions are mine alone. With these insatiable predators chomping at the bit and agitating the mind, the bar for our expectations of what makes us happy rises, while our sense of self-worth plummets. It’s hard to feel good about ourselves when we’re needy. Suffering runs rampant in our lives because the ego, our limited sense of self, has parked its bum firmly in the driver’s seat, and it doesn’t like backseat drivers very much.

Is all this the fault of change? Not in the least. The root cause of suffering is ignorance stemming from the body-bound mind’s sense of limitation, separation, and doership. But you might say, We are different! We look different, think differently, and act differently. How can something so obvious be ignorance?

If you reflect on your understanding more deeply, what do you really know? Is there anything real outside of what the mind and five senses tell you? If you have trouble imagining this, just think what it’s like to be in a coma; not much happening there. Is change even real when the senses are offline?

Many humans intuitively recognize the limits of their knowledge yet respond to the unknown by leaning on the side of arrogance. We’ve all experienced know-it-alls; though if the person carries a bonified title, it can be harder to spot. Some of us assume we know more about this universe than other species do. Is that true? In terms of the five senses, an eagle can spot a mouse moving through grass about two miles away. I can’t read the text on my computer without glasses. A bat can hear fifteen times better than we can. With today’s noise pollution levels, that may not be such a great thing. The silvertip grizzly bear can smell food eighteen miles away. Of course, we can imagine the smell of French fries cooking a thousand miles away while surfing The 10 Best French Fries on the Internet. A bear probably can’t do that. We have about 10,000 taste buds, while the catfish has a whopping 175,000, which simply means catfish appreciate food better than we do. A seal’s whiskers can feel the presence of fish about two hundred yards away. If you’re not a Reiki master or adept in distance healing, you probably need to lay some skin on to feel things.

In terms of intelligence, we appear to be at the top of the food chain, but that is a matter of opinion. Some pretty altruistic animals are high on the social/emotional intelligence charts. YouTube abounds with videos of one species helping another. There are even scenes of predators and prey joyfully playing together. On one hand, we seem to have more savvy than a snail crossing a busy highway. Yet from the snail’s perspective, it must feel it has its act together; otherwise, why cross the road in the first place? Are we any different in terms of risk management? Do we see clearly what’s on the highway of our lives? Sooner or later, we cross the highway during traffic hour, or it crosses us.

Often, we calculate the odds when making key decisions and then go with our gut. That doesn’t always work out, especially if our gut decisions are needy and lack clarity. Somewhere in this universe, there are bound to be intelligent life forms that would wonder about some of our intelligent behavior. Yet the pride-filled mind likes to collect accolades as we pass judgment on lesser species. Sometimes, the lesser species are our neighbors! At the root of species arrogance is fear. Fear also lies at the root of intellectual arrogance—fear that we might have it all wrong. What lies behind all this? Change and the uncertainty it brings somehow make us feel imperfect. The feeling of being incomplete both gnaws at us and creates immeasurable suffering. The concept of imperfection seems, if nothing else, to be somewhat imperfect.

Immediately, a question arises, If the root cause of our notion of imperfection is ignorance, then isn’t that something that needs to change? The answer to this question is both yes and no: yes in the sense that some special insight is required, and no in the sense that you have already attained the goal of self-realization without lifting a finger. The process leading to insight involves exploration into and discovery of what you, at some level, already know about yourself but perhaps were unsure of. Awakening to your own perfection will take some navigation through the nature of experience. But first, let’s look at an illustration.

In January last year, my wife, Christina, passed away after struggling for two years with multiple forms of cancer. During this period, she went through some amazing changes. She often recalled how, after her initial eleven-hour operation, she was so weak that it took her over an hour to walk a hundred yards to buy some food at a nearby grocery store. During the walk, however, she felt so much gratitude for simply being able to move her body. Her sense of gratitude increased over the period of her illness. It included everyone and everything she encountered. She learned to live fully in the moment, taking everything one step, one breath, at a time. Her attitude toward death was accepting in the sense that, being a devoted Buddhist, she believed that Kwan Yin (the Goddess of Compassion), Buddha, and some favorite Indian saints would take her safely across the divide between here and the hereafter. During the two years, she grew in love for herself and for others, even for those who may not have always treated her well. Yet even with all these blessings, she still had some deep concerns. She feared the pain that the cancer would inevitably bring. She was also worried about the fate of her family because she always served as an emotional anchor for us in turbulent times.

One day, about three months before she passed, she was sitting at the dining room table having lunch. I could see that she was concerned about the family. I gave her the standard response: There’s no need to worry. We’ll all be fine. It didn’t work. I decided to help her explore her concerns. She realized that beneath all her concerns was a good dose of love but also a measure of the need to be in control, which included seeing that everyone was taken care of, and leaving, to some extent, this life on her own terms, pain free. Her desire for control in such circumstances made perfect sense to me. I told her that we all like to feel we’re in control of the changes happening within and around us. But chaos is a part of life, and we’re bound to suffer if we can’t learn to accept it. I suggested it might be better to approach change with a more playful attitude.

To Christina, death was serious business and a major, life-altering transition. She was not pleased by my advice, to say the least. Later, I read for her sections of Graceful Exits, by Sushila Blackman, a compendium of accounts of the deaths of great beings, some of which were quite humorous. Christina found the stories superhuman (not for mere mortals) but understood that some people can find humor in anything. After discounting the playful option, she asked me for a more reasonable solution. I told her I didn’t have one but recalled a verse from the Upanishads (an ancient Indian scripture) that might help. I recited the shanti mantras to her.

Oṃ purnamadaḥ purnamidam

purnat purnamudacyate

purnasya purnamadaya

purnamevavasisyat.

Om shantih, shantih, shantih.³

Then, I translated them for her.

Om. That is perfect. This is perfect.

From the perfect springs the perfect.

If the perfect is taken from the perfect,

the perfect remains.

Om. Peace! Peace! Peace!⁴

The word purna also means full, complete, and infinite. When you look at these words, they seem almost preposterous because they don’t match your daily experience. At best, you’ve experienced fleeting moments where everything felt just right or complete. The words seem to play with your mind. How can evil and suffering be perfect? Does this mean you can do whatever you want and it’s okay? These mantras, however, didn’t manifest in a mind captivated by the labels we put to all the seemingly endless changes around us. They emanate from a state beyond the mind and intellect. Yet, the message is clear: everything and every one of us is absolutely perfect, is complete, and always has been and always will be. If we can accept it, that’s a serious paradigm shift!

Christina listened carefully as I explained that true peace of mind comes from this deeper understanding. Where there is the notion of imperfection, there is suffering. The word shanti (śāntiḥ) roughly translated means peace. But it is more than that. The poet T. S. Eliot, in his notes to the poem The Waste Land, translated shanti as the Peace which passeth understanding.⁵ With such peace, any desire for control dissolves. We surrender completely to life. As I spoke, I noticed a shift in her state of mind, as though a huge burden had been lifted. She said the mantras were beautiful. Though her mind perhaps couldn’t grasp the meaning in the moment, her heart certainly did. She said she would adopt that perspective because it really resonated with her.

About a week later, she surprised us by saying that she wanted to change her name. She didn’t want anyone to refer to her as Christina anymore. She wanted to be called Shanti! In the months that followed, though she still tried to recover from her illness, she was at peace, joyfully providing her wisdom and guidance to whomever sought it. When she passed, her eyes were wide open, her gaze directed inward, and she had a beautiful smile on her face. She had the perfect transition, on a full moon, and on the most auspicious day of the Indian calendar for transitioning.

The experience of perfection in ourselves, in others, in nature, and in all circumstances does not negate change but suggests that all change is full, complete, flawless, and somehow eternal all at once. The most popular metaphor for this is waves on an infinite ocean. Waves, or changes, occur naturally from the movement of deeper currents, but waves are still ocean. Because the ocean seems infinite, all changes are possible (much like the concept of multiple universes, where we simultaneously live in alternate realities). A wave, if it were conscious, could distinguish its movement from another wave. At the same time, from the perspective of being the ocean, it could also celebrate its unique wave form as well as that of all other waves. Though waves appear to change, they’re all perfect manifestations of ocean. Differences and imperfection are illusions of the mind.

The question arises, How can you embody the message that everything is perfect? Imagine a cab driver having worked a full day, exhausted. Suddenly somebody texting while driving slams into his taxi, hurting his last passenger of the day. Do you think if he repeats, That is perfect, the rage boiling within him will abate? Unlikely. There’s a bit more to it than that. I call it vigilance of the heart, and this is what we’ll explore herein. It is intimately associated with your ability to make better choices, perform your duties to the best of your ability, and feel good about yourself—all in the process of self-realization.

Chapter 2

I AM THE WAY AND THE GOAL

The I in Identity

Most of us like to feel competent and appreciated, whether it’s in our relationships, jobs, schooling, or simply for being us. Why’s that? Self-esteem is an interesting phenomenon. What self are we referring to? And why is it important to hold it in such high regard? The self in self-esteem is our identity. Because the unceasing winds of change come at us from any angle, it’s quite natural that we’d seek shelter. Having a self is a good place to start. The story of the three little pigs comes to mind. The stronger the house we construct, the better chance we have of not becoming a meal for the hungry wolf we call suffering. That house is our identity. Can you really build an identity that will protect you from all unwelcome change? Or is there a way to manage change, regardless of whether you’re sleeping under the stars or holed up in a mansion in the Hamptons? To begin to answer that, you need to understand the why, what, and how of your identity.

When you visit or work in a large, global company, the security guard will ask you to wear a security badge to help identify you. The idea behind this protocol is that it determines who should be where, and why. In a similar way, after you enter life’s office at birth, you need to identify yourself, for example, as a temporary visitor, as having a meeting with a stranger, as simply chilling with a group, as finding a suitable mate if you’re seeking a partner, or as an employee working in any one of life’s many departments. In life’s office, there is no security guard to ask for your identity; social pressure does it all. In any case, you need to develop a story that tells you and everyone else who you are, because people will ask. You may or not be a good storyteller, and you may or may not like the story you’re telling, but a story is required if you want people to recognize and support you in some way. Even so, why do we need to hold our story in high esteem? That’s easy. If you feel that your story has value, other people will tend to feel the same way. Many of the most successful people on this planet have valuable stories. A valuable story provides peace of mind, as well. It certainly beats the alternative, feeling that you’re a train wreck about to happen. If others get wind of it, they’ll scurry off the tracks!

So, what makes for a great story? First, the character should be lovable. Being likeable can be challenging because different audiences have different tastes. Even our own tastes change over time. Love, however, is something people easily relate to because it’s fundamental to the human condition. ET was not exactly the most handsome alien Stephen Spielberg could have created, but he was innocent and lovable in his own way. Superman, for example, caters to our fantasies of being powerful. His love for Lois Lane adds momentum to his power. In short, the Superman character is not all about physical power; it’s about the power of altruism and love. Most superheroes exude a powerful yet lovable charisma: Spiderman, Iron Man, Wonder Woman, Hulk…you name it. Characters should also have a goal: save the world, excel in some field, get the girl (or guy), become enlightened, etc. Goals are like a compass. They help us find our bearings if and when we get lost. They also provide meaning. Though goals may change over time, they serve the same purpose. Engaging characters must also face obstacles and overcome them. Even failures are turned into successes. Programs such as (name the country)’s Got Talent, X-Factor, The Voice are rife with individuals who have overcome tremendous challenges in pursuit of their dreams. Life’s antagonists, or what we call bad guys and challenging situations, are the obstacles. They certainly have their role. Without them, people would not value their achievements.

Your identity, like that of characters in novels and films, typically comprises your physical appearance, temperament, behavior, preferences, parents, schooling, family, friends, romantic relationships, and enemies; your history, including exposure to different cultures and environments; and your future goals, beliefs, and values. All of these characteristics, when opposed by some form of obstacle, create drama. Good drama is always engaging, whether it shows up as comedy, tragedy, action, adventure, thriller, or something else. Some of us, however, can bore our audiences if every drama we are involved in plays out like Shakespeare’s tragedies, whether Macbeth or King Lear! Mind you, they were good stories. The real challenge lies in how you engage with your own story. If you cling to your character, drama, and outcomes, then you’re in for a real ride, one that can range from moments of great pleasure to great suffering. These ups and downs I call the life rhythm. Some life beats are hard, others soft; some are of long duration, others short.

Your life rhythm is a simple map of your major life cycle. Within this cycle are subcycles. For example, you may be ecstatic over receiving a major promotion, yet at the same time, your health has been declining over the last three months, and that concerns you. In short, your experience is complex. This type of map can be used to show trends over time in any one life category, as well. If your mind is constantly shifting from one category cycle to another (e.g., simultaneously from career to health), it can be quite agitating. An agitated mind does not perform well, and its sense of well-being is compromised. If you want to discover your life rhythm, you can try the Workbook Activity 1.

So, how can you both enjoy and coexist peacefully with the stories and their plots and subplots that you create? One way to do this is to modify your character’s endgame to include more expansive, uplifting goals. In this way, you don’t feel squeezed by the narrower scope of who you imagine yourself to be. For example, if your goal is to get rich, and you succeed, then so what? Perhaps the next goal is fame, so you create a product that sells like hotcakes, and you are put on the cover of Time Magazine as Businesswoman of the Year. But so what? So, you enter in politics and become the most powerful person on the planet. But so what? You’ll soon discover another unfulfilled dream: perhaps becoming the first obscenely wealthy, famous, and powerful person to visit the planet Uranus! But so what? Its dense hydrogen-helium atmosphere is sure to get you high! After that, there are billions of other planets to visit. But so what?

Though many of us set clear goals, work hard, and manage to succeed in many different ways, our character, or identity, has not actually changed. It is still focused on I, me, and mine. I, me, and mine, however, gets a bit claustrophobic over time. How often do you look in the mirror to see the same face (barring plastic surgery, of course)? It was perfect the first time you gazed at it. Perhaps, it’s time to see what else is reflected in the mirror? Many of us, fortunately, are doing exactly that. We’re looking at context. It’s like taking a selfie but including the Eiffel Tower in the background, not simply as an adornment to our smiling face or a testimony to our well-traveled portfolio, but as a statement that something other than us is awesome. We’re expanding our scope of self. It’s beneficial to understand what your present scope of self is as well as in what areas you can expand it.

Balancing Being and Doing

Expanding your scope of self to better include others and the world about you is an important way to feel at ease with your identity. Associated with scope of self is how you manage both life’s processes as well as your state of mind; that is, your capacity for doing and being. Corporate trainers like to refer to this as performance and well-being. Whether you are a student, businessperson, or engaged in a relationship, how you perform or how you behave will have a significant impact on whether your identity (and its story) is a socially successful one or not. At the same time, most of us like to feel good about ourselves. One of the challenges in society today is how to maintain a sense of well-being when the pressure to perform in jobs and relationships is great. How do you feel good about yourself when the expectations of others or your own expectations get in the way?

You might have noticed that most corporations are intensely focused on employee performance. Because profit is achieved by maximizing revenue and reducing costs, few people are saddled with more work. If you’re in such a work environment, it’s unlikely you will feel stress-free. The demands on performance in businesses can be quite overwhelming. You may begin to question the efficacy of your story. There are companies that believe a tough, competitive environment enhances performance more than sense of well-being. That is, if you want frogs to jump, put them on a hot frying pan. Harvard Business Review⁶ notes that 550 million workdays are lost per annum in the United States due to workplace stress and eighty percent of doctor’s visits and workplace accidents are due to it. This has an impact on profitability. The review’s recommendation was to enhance employee well-being. Seems like a no-brainer. Businesses are not alone in the performance/well-being debate. Educators often drive their students toward higher performance, most notably in the Far East. Yet, a significant relationship between self-esteem and academic performance in adolescents was found,⁷ especially in the United States. The real question is why is there a debate in the first place? Are performance and well-being mutually exclusive? Both peace of mind and competence are cut from the same cloth. You can’t feel peaceful if you judge yourself to be incompetent, nor can you become competent if you are in an agitated state of mind. The deeper truth revolves around the relationship between becoming and being. One needs the other, but not everyone realizes this.

What is the relationship between performance and well-being? One is a process that often has an end result; the other is a state. This is like asking, Which came first, the chicken or the egg? All processes are conducted within some environment or state; even mental processes occur within the environment called the mind. At the same time, a state is often recognized through some internal process, no matter how subtle. The state of water, for instance, depends on the surrounding temperature, which is the movement of air molecules. Water can be in a gas, liquid, or solid state. Our state of mind, which determines much of our experience, is also a process: the flow of energy and information. This flow, or process, has the capacity to reveal unseen states in the sciences. For example, the quantum vacuum (a state) was not even on the particle physics map until researchers tried to explain the appearance and disappearance of elementary particles (a process). They then hypothesized that the energy density of the vacuum is astronomically high. This new state was discovered through mental processes, many of them mathematical. On a more personal level, if you’ve never tasted mango, you won’t get the experience by Googling mango. Once you put it in your mouth, mango energy and information enter your body and brain, then you discover a new state, the mango high.

It’s no wonder that we evaluate our well-being through performance, and vice-versa. If one side of the equation gets too much attention, the other seems to falter. The question is Why is this the case? Why do we experience stress, or loss of well-being, if performance demands are high and we feel we can’t meet them? Stress is fundamentally a force. Some forms of force seem beneficial, others not so much. The force that binds your bone molecules together and provides tension in your muscles allows you to stand up and move. So, some forms of stress are positive. They keep you alert and help you solve problems, help you develop grit, provide pleasure, keep you healthy, etc. This is called eustress. The bad stress is somewhat different.

Science has determined that there are two basic processes in nature: entropy and negative entropy. Entropy is the tendency for things to fall apart or become uniform. For example, if you spill coffee on the floor, that’s a process you can easily recognize (though you may not like the task of cleaning up after yourself). The spilt coffee spreads uniformly in depth across the floor. What you wouldn’t expect is the spilled coffee to pull itself together and fly back up into your cup like a movie played in reverse. That’s because entropy is the tendency for things to fall apart. You also would not expect to turn the heater on in your room and find the heat concentrated only in a far corner in the room. Entropy dictates that it should uniformly heat up the entire room.

Negative entropy is just the opposite. It is the ability of elements in nature to come together and increase in complexity. Your body, for example, has more negative entropy than a bucket of paint thinner because your body is much more complex. Our brains have a significant amount of negative entropy, though entropy is certainly evident there, as well. Did you ever lose your train of thought or feel confused? Birth is an example of negative entropy, while death is a form of entropy. So, what does this have to do with stress, performance, and well-being? Truth be told, most people are not fond of entropy because it showcases itself in old age, sickness, and death. These natural phenomena tend to stress us out, along with chaos; uncertainty; and a host of the less pleasant, more destructive, or entropic, aspects of human nature. Negative entropy is usually our go-to state. It shines in youth, health, and vibrancy, as well as in order, certainty and all the more congenial aspects of human nature that tend to connect us.

Notice, once again, that the forces of nature are simply that: forces. Our minds, in all their cleverness, evaluate the effects of force in terms of what’s beneficial to us, or not. For example, great force applied to coal creates a diamond, and we all know that diamonds are a girl’s best friend because we value these hard, brilliant crystals. The same great force applied to your new Tesla Model S–P85D (a top-end, fast, economic, environmentally friendly car) would result in a small crushed metal cube that looks nothing like a car and can’t even roll. Seeing that would be a real downer! Stress is based on what we do or don’t value.

Now, if performance demands are high and we feel we’re losing control, uncertainty, chaos, and a number of entropic factors enter the equation. Down deep, all of this smacks of death, which we tend to fear most. In these situations, our desires and expectations are on the chopping block. If, however, performing is too easy, we may become complacent, and that will induce stress, as well, especially if we’ve been raised in an environment with strong work ethics. One’s sense of self-worth is on the line.

The psychologist Csikszentmihalyi described an optimal performance state, which he calls flow.⁸ Flow occurs when the challenges you face are balanced by your skill levels. Flow is the state of being both highly alert (i.e., challenged) and in control (i.e., skillful). In short, the forces of entropy, such as chaos (which enhances alertness), and negative entropy, such as order (which enhances control), are in harmony. This suggests that optimal performance and well-being require a balanced state of mind, as well as balance in your actions. To many, this sounds like a formidable task. Imagine juggling five balls in the air while standing on top of a barrel that’s rolling downhill! I’m sure some people could manage it. But on a consistent basis? There has to be another way. There is, and it takes only three balls. It doesn’t matter if life is coming at you from every direction, or at any speed, and is chaotic to boot! This is the direction we’re heading in.

Chapter 3

I DO, THEREFORE, I AM

Ever wonder why life can be so beautiful and meaningful one moment, then challenging and meaningless the next? In one moment, you feel in control, and the next you feel like a load of wash in a high-speed dryer. We all seek peace of mind and joy in one form or another. Why is it that what we cherish most continues to elude our grasp? It’s like losing our best friend. What we seek seems like a simple enough request. Yet, we often don’t spot the real players in our lives. Strangely, other people or circumstances are not necessarily the real players. Of course, they exist, interact with us, and can seem either supportive or challenging. The real players dealing out life’s cards, however, are so close to us we hardly recognize them. They are foundations of the mind. In fact, we need them to even recognize them!

The real players are three qualities of the mind: awareness, attention, and reward. In this chapter, we’ll focus on their relation to performance. Awareness, as described herein, includes your perception, or how you pay attention; your memory, or the capacity to acquire, consolidate, store, and recall information; and your experience. Attention is your mind’s ability to consciously and subconsciously focus continuously on something via the five senses, or through some psychic ability. Attention includes the speed of processing information that is attended to, and the ability to formulate intentions. It is associated with your ability to make choices and take action. Reward provides your motivation to think, act, and feel. It, too, can operate at both conscious and subconscious levels.

All three qualities of the mind are required for any experience to occur. For example,