NOTE 3: HAMMER DOWN ONLY WHAT YOU NEED TO
You don't have to hammer down every nail. There will always be nails around to be hammered. There will always be many things to do. New things to do. Some exciting things to do. Some interesting things to do. Some spooky things to do.
And a lot of people on your planet keep on
hammering things haphazardly.
This is directly opposite to what we Rishi's do
here at this higher level. Though we are all highly evolved beings,
we never put our serious efforts on everything and anything. we never
do. We hammer only the things that deserve hammering. Things that
deserve light pats are given light pats. And things that deserve mild
touch are dealt with accordingly.
Attack the Goliath's first before you attack other
soldiers. Goliaths are the ones that are going to count. David's
glory started when he defeated Goliath, not an ordinary soldier.
There are a very few things if done can bring you your greatest
progress. Look out for them. Utilize them. Focus on them most of the
time. Give your whole self to them.
The Sutra:
Not everything deserves your serious effort.
Not everything calls for tremendous effort. You put your best efforts
on things that are good investments in your future or you hammer only
those nails that are to be hammered. You don't have to put herculean
efforts in many things.
The saddest scene is when people pound things that
are not at all important and they just leave the few golden nails as
such that are so desperately waiting for their hammering!
A very long time ago while I was flying above the
clouds in spirit with two more Rishis for a mission, I witnessed the
following story,
A man saw a lot of people gathered, full of vigor,
waiting eagerly to witness a race that was about to be started. The
race a grand one of his time. He immediately approached the folks
enthusiastically and asked what was going on. They said that a race
was about to begin which was open to all and which was conducted by
the duke. The race had an enormous prize money announced.
When he asked them if he could participate in the
race, he was immediately given the nod, as the race was open to
anyone.
Being a very fast runner and lured by the money,
this man positioned himself for the sprint knowing deep down that he
could win the race with no or little effort. when the whistle was
blown, the contenders started to move ahead like rockets, but this
man was so far ahead of others that he finished the race well ahead
of the second man who came after.
But soon after when he was just expecting that
they were going to announce his name as the winner, he heard, to his
surprise, the announcer mentioning the name of the man who came
second as the winner. Not able to believe this he asked the announcer
“Why?”
“Why?” the announcer said, “you were not 'on
the track' and that means you were not racing with others. You were
on the wrong track so yours doesn’t count.”
The essence of the story is that a lot is wasted
in doing excellently things that don't count. The man was excellent
but he was not running on the "right track." To do the most
important things is to be on the right track. He was too good at what
he was doing, but he was not doing the "right thing."
“To succeed, it is of utmost importance to do
things that matter, which is to be on the right track. To do a thing
exceptionally well that is trivial in your life is a reason for time
and energy wasted without returns."
People start to get fast results when they focus
most on the important items in their life. And on a more specific
level, on the most important elements in a project or task. You get
super results when you start to hammer down the golden nails.
It's always very tempting to do very many things,
and in the process one forgets to see if all these things are
important in the light of their primary purpose in life, which is
progress and betterment in various forms.
If something hampers your forward march or even
take you backwards, and which you have been pounding so hard,
identify that as a wrong nail. Stop hammering it. It doesn't deserve
your hard effort. This could be even be a bad habit that is so
tempting and has kept you slave for a long time.
Hammering takes energy and why put your resource
of time and energy on it if you are not doing the most important
tasks. Worse yet is when what you hammer is taking you backward!
Even a busiest and most successful person on your
planet who does numerous things in a day cannot hammer all the things
that he/she has on the table. If you take a close look at them,
you'll see they all, without exception, hunt down Goliaths first.
Other less important things are either deputed or done at lesser
degree than what can be called hammering, the real serious effort
approach.
Typically, people who are super success know which
nails are the golden ones. They identify the most important tasks or
steps first and always. They are always good at this.
Average people keep pounding on whatever they can
get their hands on. Some, they never do the “hammering”. They
never put any kind of sincere and life-changing efforts in anything.
They stay at the bottom most.
There is this general belief on your planet that
successful people almost always do umpteen number of things and hence
they are victorious.
When the focal energy is dissipated in hammering
here and hammering there instead of hammering down hard the golden
nails, nothing significant is ever achieved. The bliss is not
experienced.
A feeling of “some more...come on, keep looking
out for new things to do” surrounds you. You feel restless, you
feel you have to cover a lot of stuff and often within a time frame.
you feel like you have to keep running to catch up with all the
lined-up “to-do” things.
Bringing many things unnecessarily on to the table
is the reason for all the feeling of restlessness, chaos, hollowness,
get-more-do-more tendency, and the bad feeling that inevitably would
arise from not being able to "catch up" with the big queue
that never seems to end.
And since you also are pounding a lot of things
lately, soon you become exhausted in every way possible.
If you are in a position such that you have to do
many things, by all means go on to do them. It's not necessarily the
number if the need be, but how many good-returns things get your
pounding and how many things are dealt in a lesser way.
In other words, cutting back on trivial things can
free up a lot of mental space for you. Going for a movie to renew and
refresh your mind is not a trivial thing, since you a good return for
the action in the form a rejuvenated mind.
But the secret is identifying the “golden nails”
and put your hammering skills on them. Let those tasks, activities,
important trips, that crucial email you need to send, that hearty
greeting and hug with your spouse, that little encouragement your
child longingly awaits from you, that refreshment time at the hotel,
all receive your serious attention.
That's why they say life is easy but we make it
complicated. The "effort" part in life will never drain
your energy but the "focus-on-many-things" part will.
Deprive your habits that have been pulling you
down...never again hammer them. They don't deserve it.
Many golden nails are still waiting to be hammered
because of fear.
Let that fear that has kept you a slave die a
lonely death from your courageous step. Let it know that you don't
put your serious thinking on it anymore, which is a form of hammering
down. That fear has managed to live because of your thinking. Not
anymore!
So it is:
- Doing excellently things that don't matter (like that man who participated in that race. He was not on the track that mattered...for his success.)
- Spending a lot of time on trivial things.
- Doing things that do matter in a frivolous way. Important things need serious efforts, they need "hammering."
- Not doing as much as one must the things that produce the best returns. How much time one spends in a day on those few all-important things.
The Sutra:
Hammer only the golden nails!
