Concentration Without Effort
Posted on December 15th, 2009
Written by Richard
Posted in: N/A (old archives)
“Look at a tightrope walker. He is evidently and completely concentrated, because if he were not, he would fall to the ground. His life is at stake, and it is only perfect concentration which can save him. Yet do you believe that his thought and his imagination are occupied with what he is doing? Do you think that he reflects and that he imagines, that he calculates and that he makes plans with regard to every step which he makes on the rope?
“If he were to do that, he would fall immediately. He has to eliminate all activity of the intellect and of the imagination in order to avoid a fall. He must have suppressed the ‘oscillations of the mental substance’ in order to be able to exercise his skill.”
(from Meditations on the Tarot, by Anonymous)
Anonymous calls it concentration without effort, and I tend to think of it as unconscious mastery. Either way, the idea is that true mastery of a skill is something beyond conscious reasoning upon the topic. In fact, thinking too much about what you are doing can get in the way of actually doing it. The difference between understanding something and knowing it is more than just semantics. This is why you can’t just read a book or a forum thread and suddenly know how to trade. This is why it’s hard for true masters of a skill to explain exactly what they do. The list goes on and on, and I’m sure everyone can think of examples from all walks of life related to this simple truth.
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© 2010 Richard Todd. I am not a financial advisor, and nothing on the site should be considered investment advice or actionable recommendations. I'm just an individual, saying what I think, and sharing my experiences.