Adjusting Effort, Positive Qualities and Confidence
Adjusting effort, positive qualities and confidence
The meditations on the body and the breath are a perfect opportunity for you to be aware of your tendencies to push too hard and be forced in the way you pay attention. Adjusting your attention helps you to develop specific skills such as your ability to apply just the right amount of effort to what you do. The analogy of the accelerator can help you be aware of and adjust your effort. We often need to change and adapt the amount of effort that we make to pay attention in any given situation. The result of doing this is that your mind calms down, becomes more open and receptive.
After meditation is a good time to do a little writing exercise
There is a little exercise which helps with recognising and coming into your positive qualities. Sit down comfortably with paper and pen by your side. Do a short mindfulness practice on the body and breath and finish with coming into an awareness of your torso and then when you’re ready opening your eyes. Pick up the paper and pen and aim to write continuously without editing. At the top of the page write ‘my positive qualities are’… and then just carry on writing for 3 or 4 minutes.
Read what you’ve written and if there are any surprises underline them. Then ask yourself, ‘is there anything missing from this list?’ and if there is, add it to the list. Then quite slowly read the list again just taking it in and absorbing it. Then sit quietly for a few minutes arriving into a broad sense of yourself absorbing what you have written. It is useful to approach the meditation and writing as one thing.
It is so easy to have picked up negative views of yourself, perhaps picked up from others, but doing an exercise like this helps to put things in perspective and help you own your positive qualities.
Becoming aware and confident in your positive qualities
When you are aware of and in touch with your positive qualities, and as it were let them live through you they progress and grow in your life. It sometimes takes an exercise like this to focus on the positive qualities you actually have and to endorse them. Out of this comes confidence connected to your positive qualities.
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Vajradaka is one of the most experienced meditation teachers in Triratna and is continuously developing fresh approaches to maintaining and developing a vibrant meditation practice. He is known for easy to relate to ways of teaching which come across as clear, practical and relevant. He is a regular guest teacher on Dharma Night.
