Observe your mind. As you observe your mind, observe your thought and emotion reactions to the world. Gain understanding of how and why your mind works, thinks and feels, the way it does. As you see and understand your mental pitfalls you can confront them one by one, knowing that you are on a sacred path. Be confident in that path.
I've read it in books before and tried to apply it but never had to learn to apply it in order to be an effective worker...
This is not managing and transforming emotional distractions just for the sake of it but seeing through the emotional distractions because it is the only way to be rational and rational is a synonym for not letting your emotions control you. Being rational is the most important thing one can do because it immediately gives your entire life meaning. It makes your life intentional and it is the only way you can be truly effective. And why be effective when we are just going to die and head into a black hole you may ask? Well, because as the Gita states or as Jodie Foster's character states at the end of the film "Contact" in front of a congressional committee: Life, existence, and matter are infinitely unique, beautiful, and precious but at the very same time, life, existence, and matter are meaningless, ephemeral, and of no importance whatsoever. So important is the universe, that we must devote our entire lives to serving it faithfully and so unimportant is the universe that we should not for a micro-second be attached or give importance to even the slightest part of it. In the end in attaching or not attaching importance to the universe we are or aren't attaching importance to ourselves as egos. In the end I am saying that our place in the universe is an ever so important one but that we are also so tiny and insignificant that we should not place our egos at the center of that universe by trying to control it and place our labels on importances within it. Being attached, which means letting your emotions control you, is the same as placing your self at the center of the universe. Being rational is seeing your true place in the universe, as a conglomeration of mere molecules so insignificant and unimportant, yet so beautiful and rare. See through your emotions, be rational, be intentional, find meaning. Those are all synonyms.
Quote from Jodie Foster's character in the Film "Contact":"I had an experience I can’t prove, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was part of something wonderful, something that changed me forever; a vision of the Universe that tells us undeniably how tiny, and insignificant, and how rare and precious we all are. A vision that tells us we belong to something that is greater than ourselves. That we are not, that none of us are alone. I wish I could share that. I wish that everyone, if even for one moment, could feel that awe, and humility, and the hope, but... that continues to be my wish." I feel the same way about my Peace Corps service.
