Let Your Daily Practice Burn Red Hot

This post is Part 12 of a series of posts on the psychological and practical benefits of daily practice. Learn more in The Power of Daily Practice.

One of the things that distinguishes your daily practice from the other things that you do is its intensity. You likely don’t pour out your breakfast cereal with great intensity, send out routine emails with great intensity, or shop at the market with great intensity. Why would you? Our routine tasks aren’t candidates for intensity and do not call out for intensity. Why bring white heat to peeling a potato?

But our daily practice does cry out for intensity. It is an effort in the service of our life purposes, it requires special attention, and it deserves our whole being. Without it, our daily practice will be a lackluster affair. With it, we also bring all those sister qualities: passion, enthusiasm, concentration, devotion, focus, absorption, immersion, enthrallment, love. Intensity makes all the difference between mechanical and amazing.

You can exercise lackadaisically during your daily health practice or you can exercise with intensity.
You can write your screenplay during your creativity practice in an absent way or with real presence and commitment.
You can immerse yourself in your business during your daily business-building practice or you can remain at arm’s length.
You can care only a little bit about your efforts and your results or you can care a lot about them.
You can bring your full wattage to the encounter or you can bring just a fraction of your passion and your energy.

Your practice demands your intensity: every muscle fiber, every moral conviction, every brain cell, and every ounce of passion. Do not fear exhausting yourself and do not fear plumbing your depths. After all, you’re only bringing this necessary intensity for a limited amount of time: For 20 minutes, for 30 minutes, for an hour. Will you burn out in just 20 minutes? Probably not.

Ah, but you may find yourself harboring all sorts of complicated reasons for not wanting to manifest your intensity or not being able to manifest your intensity. Take Nigel, a coaching client living in Brighton, England. Nigel explained:

“I have a phlegmatic nature. Or maybe that’s the way I’ve wanted to play life, so as not to invest too much and therefore not to lose too much. I like to keep everything at about equal weight, nothing too exciting, nothing too dull. I don’t run marathons, I avoid conflicts, and my girlfriends have always complained about my passivity, which I call ‘keeping an even keel.’

“All well and good. But I could not get my symphony composed. Over the years, I’ve been able to compose short set pieces, maybe two or three minutes in length. Maybe five minutes, tops. But I’ve never gotten close to being able to tackle the symphony whose themes keep reverberating in my head. So, I started a daily composing practice. But I couldn’t pull it off. I’d sit there for a few minutes, get all chaotic inside, and have to leave.

“Finally, in considering the elements of practice, it dawned on me that my very phlegmatic nature, if that’s what it is, may be a bit of a defense against the anxious feelings that come with trying really hard at something. I think I avoid intensity because intensity provokes anxiety. But without that intensity I have nothing. I don’t want to compose a mild-mannered symphony and I can’t compose in a mind-mannered way and expect to move people with my music.”

“So, I’ve committed to intensity. And it’s making my whole system shake. I think I thought that composing was more an intellectual matter than an emotional matter but did I ever get that wrong! It is—or ought to be—a completely intense emotional event. So, I’m trying to live with that intensity moment by moment. Right now, my daily composing practice lasts about five minutes. That’s all I can tolerate. But it is intense. And I am making progress!”

As with many of the other elements of practice, there is a balancing out that modulates this intensity. You are also bringing lightness and playfulness to your practice, which helps keep that necessary intensity from boiling over or becoming combustible. Imagine marrying deep concentration with dreamy reverie. Or full immersion with feathery lightness. Over time, if you learn as you go, you will discern how to maintain the exact measure of intensity that you desire.

Ryan, a sculptor, described his particular balancing act: “When I take a chisel to marble, I’m doing two things. I’m working intensely and I’m also relaxing. You have to relax, because you have to let the marble have its say. You can’t dictate to it. Too much control, too much intensity, too much attachment to an idea, and you will get the idea realized—but in a lifeless way. If you also relax, you get the idea you wanted or maybe you get another idea, but it’s full of life either way.

“It’s taken me a very long time to understand this. I always had the intensity. But I would keep at things until I chiseled them out of existence. It took me years and years to find the lightness. That’s what you want, full absorption and also a thoughtful lightness, as if you were carrying air on a platter. Try carrying air on a platter. You’ll have to concentrate—and shake your head at your silliness. My recipe: an ounce of lightness for every three ounces of intensity!”

Let your daily practice burn white hot. Keep a fire extinguisher nearby, if need be, but make sure to opt for that intensity.

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Previously published on Psychologytoday.com.

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