The word “Practice” jumped out at me from a book I was reading last week. It was used to explain that we need to “Practice” being Happy just as we need to practice anything else we want to be good at.
This made sense to me but I had never thought of it in this way before. I started wondering what do we need to practice, that we have not thought about before.
First we have to assume that we practice because we want to improve or get better at something.
Let’s discuss a couple of possibilities here.
Listening – Are we really paying attention or waiting to make our own comments?
Listening is a skill that can be improved if we are interested in doing so.
The “Practice” exercise here could be to practice not thinking about other things while someone is talking to you. Staying present, not thinking about the past or future, is what we need to improve. Focus on their words, and then ask them a question about what they had just said, most people will be trilled. We are not used to being listened to.
Another is Speaking – Do others hear you? Do you articulate clearly without just rambling on and on? Is brushing up on your speaking skills something to do? This can be one on one or to a group –practice what we say.
If we are standing, do we need posture practice and image practice?
There is more, but the idea for me here is to focus on areas that could use improvement and practice imaging and doing it the way I would like to have it be.
I am wondering how many different areas of my life I could use practice to change and how do I become aware of them?
Practice makes perfect or at least improvement.
