Clean The Slate

To Clean The Slate ultimately means to create space dedicated to the project you are trying to realize.

Space is essential in that you need to create space in order to apply the entirety of your mind and heart to the task. This degree of engagement (focus, concentration, integration with the task) is essential in Peak Performance, and obviously in Success.

The right approach at the beginning, including Mindset, Attitude, Planning and Process is what lays the foundation for success in whatever you choose to do. Taking time at the beginning of a task to create space can make all the difference in the effectiveness and efficiency of your actions.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Apply Your Whole Mind And Heart
3. Clean The Slate, Empty Your Cup
4. Resolve The Past
5. Notes

Introduction

Back in the days before paper was common, long before computers and smartphones, students and professors would take notes on mini chalk-boards made out of a stone called slate, shaped into a flat rectangle and often framed in wood. Each day before beginning work on their next lesson, or start working on the next problem, they would have to erase the work already on the slate, to create space for their next project.

This idea of Cleaning The Slate is an active effort of Preparation. We are mentally preparing ourselves for the task. Getting focused, thinking and planning. Getting in a state where we are also aligning our emotions to the task.

Space in every respect: space in our minds, hearts, habits, schedules, days, goals, homes and work environments that we can dedicate to the achievement of the goal we are trying to reach. If we have something we desire to accomplish, if we never set aside time for it, we will never reach that goal

Apply Your Whole Heart and Mind

We first Clean The Slate so that we can dedicate our whole minds and hearts to a project. A seemingly lost art for the majority of people in the modern world, yet this is the only way to reach our maximum potential and peak performance.

Clean The Slate, Empty Your Cup

Cleaning The Slate also equates to the concept of Beginner’s Mind from Zen Buddhism. To see the truth we often have to empty our cups filled with everything that we already think we know about something, all of our preconceptions. Because if our knowledge and preconceptions towards a thing are wrong, then they cloud our perception of the thing, and prohibit us from seeing the truth.

In this context cleaning the slate can mean going back to the drawing board after many failed attempts. “Insanity is doing the same thing over again, and expecting different results” so on occasion when we are already on the pathway to the achievement of something, maybe we have been on that pathway for years, when things are not working out we need to go back to the drawing board. We need to clean the slate in our minds filled with all of our formulas, theories, and preconceptions that we have accumulated over years relating to our ideas on how to achieve this thing we are trying to achieve, and go back to the beginning. Erase everything. Approach the problem with a clean slate, new eyes, a beginner’s mind, as if we have never seen the problem before, and attempt to…

Resolve The Past

To Clean The Slate means also to leave nothing unfinished, to resolve the past. It implies that we have completed the work that is presently on the slate of our lives. We cannot just erase our past goals, endeavors, and unfinished projects if they haven’t yet been brought to a final conclusion. We have to finish what we start. To start and abandon project after project is a toxin as detrimental to our spirit equal to being frenetic in our approach to a task.

The task of cleaning the slate requires effort and focus in its own right. It doesn’t just take care of itself because our past and our projects rarely resolve themselves. We must put in the work to…

There is a deep element of inner peace arising from the focused, purposeful, intentional action that we realize when we first Clean The Slate. For me personally, one of the most important interpretations in applying the concept of ‘Clean The Slate’ is

Notes

• For me the application of this concept has to do with synthesizing all of my notes and materials.
• I have also found that it

[Nobody cares]

[Do Not Rush]

So many things in life are all about timing. The best athletes are not always the fastest or the strongest. Their skill enables them to move perfect in accordance with the situation and with their opponents, and in so doing be in the right position, at the right time, and move perfectly. Music is not about playing fast or playing slow (in the sense that neither is better than the other inherently

I am speaking of rushing here in the context of finishing our projects and moving towards a goal.

Relax into the flow of yourself, into the flow of the moment, the creative process, and the very action of what you are doing.

Some say that rushing is the result of force. The stress of trying to force something to be in the state that we want it to end up in, before it is ready to be in such a state.

[Intention] Motivation is a force that drives us to action, Hunger is a powerful desire, and emotional quality, that causes motivation towards the goal. Determination is our ability to face adversity, a refusal to give up, be deterred, or let go in the face of extreme challenge. However, intention? Intention doesn’t feel like any of those. It is closer to a feeling of purpose.

[Focus On The Right Things] The greatest barriers to success in any endeavor are: not working hard enough; working too hard; doing too many things; doing the wrong things (or doing in the wrong way); and lastly, focus in that we are not doing enough of the right things. To Clean The Slate we halt all of those processes temporarily, so that we can reanalyze, create a new plan of action founded on some new ideas, and reinclude what works. Take what works, disregard the rest.