6 Ideas You Should Know From: Living with the Monks by Jesse Itzler
/The 6 Big Ideas:
Outlook to start your day
Do one thing
How you do anything is how you do everything
Establish discipline somewhere in your life
Need to have daily plan
Benefits of a calm and modest life
My Highlights From the Book:
Outlook to start your day
Written on it was a morning passage from the Dalai Lama I copied down before I left. My plan was to recite it the first thing every morning: “Every day, think as you wake up, ‘Today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive. I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.’”
Do one thing:
Monotasking has become second nature. I enjoy washing dishes and cleaning floors. It’s amazing how much better my production is when I focus solely on one task. There’s no race anymore. I finish when I finish. I finish when the job is done. That’s one thing I’m picking up here at the monastery. The monks have eliminated most of the self-imposed deadlines that we all put on ourselves daily. Rather, they have shifted their focus to emphasize the quality of their work. They finish when the job is thoroughly done, and then and only then are they finished.
During my stay I wondered how the monks have such great ENERGY and EFFORT. They’re so EFFICIENT in EVERYTHING they do. The answer is they monotask, that’s how they do it. And they do it with perfection. The monks do their job(s) with zest, but only one dish at a time. Each dish is done like the world depends on it. Maybe it does? They’re completely, singularly focused. There are no distractions. They don’t increase their effort, they increase their concentration. A task is never a race. And there’s never a finish line. There is only now.
How you do anything is how you do everything:
As I left Kate’s office I thought back on my trip. One of the biggest takeaways from my experience is how much effort the monks put into the small things. Things like making their beds, doing the dishes, and sweeping the floors were given maximum effort. There’s an old adage: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” It’s the small things you do during the day that build your character and grit. It’s the small things you do that are indications of what you’re becoming.
Establish discipline somewhere in your life:
The monks get up early. The day started before sunrise. By the time I greeted them in church for the morning service, most of them had already tended to their dogs, meditated, and reviewed their tasks for the day. When I asked Brother Stavros why they do this, he told me the one race he ALWAYS likes to win is the race against the sun rising. Like so many of the greats in every field, mornings are magical for the monks. When I got home I started getting up around 5:00 a.m. and going for quiet jogs. There was never anybody outside in my neighborhood in the early morning. I’d take pride in what I was doing and say to myself, “There are 7 billion people on earth, and I’m the only one up and on these street.” Beat the sun. Beat your competition.
Need to have daily plan:
The monks have a plan. Every night before they went to sleep they wrote a plan for the next day. They were organized. They prioritized the important things that had to get done first and focused on completing those tasks until they went on to the next. There was no guessing as to what had to get done that day; every day had a plan, and the plan had to be executed. I hear this theme a lot: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
Benefits of a calm and modest life:
Just after he’d won the Nobel Prize, Albert Einstein was staying at a hotel in Japan. When the bellboy brought up his luggage he realized he didn’t have any money. So he found a piece of scrap paper and wrote his theory of how to have a happy life. He handed it to the bellboy as a tip. The note read: “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.”
How did they do it? Well, maybe the most important ingredient to their success was they didn’t waste time thinking they couldn’t succeed. Negativity stops dreams. It’s like the antithesis of a dreamcatcher. Even if you’re not brimming with confidence, try to keep your thoughts positive. I like to have the end of the movie (my goal) in my head and then fill in the script as I go. Even if the script requires rewrites, the goal stays the same. Act as if you’re going to succeed, and chances are you will.
The monks’ daily EFFORT is unrivaled, contagious, and supersuccessful. Every day is about doing the best they can regardless of the task. Do you just want to make your bed? Or do you want to make your bed like a monk? There’s a big difference between the two. Once I started to really understand the monks’ determination, I started to feel a shift in my thinking.