An Ego That Is Hard to Awaken: The Mindfulness Practitioner Ego
I. The Phenomenon of 70-Out-of-100 “Mindfulness”
“Mindfulness” and concentration are tricky things. People are often satisfied with, and immersed in, “mindfulness” that scores 70 out of 100. They forget to eat and sleep. Yet forgetting to eat and sleep is itself a sign of a lack of mindfulness and awareness.
When eating, they wolf down their food without being mindful of it, harming their stomachs and easily overeating. They lack real awareness and do not know what they are doing. At night, they stay up scrolling on their phones or working overtime. When studying or working, they become “immersed,” sitting for long stretches until their backs and waists ache.
In reality, they have neither a connection with their studies and careers nor metacognitive awareness of them. Physically and mentally exhausted, they find it hard to achieve truly advanced mindfulness.
In secondary school, many average students spent long hours studying every day and were moved by their own efforts, yet their grades never improved.
II. Psychological Principles
- Exercising “self-control,” straining to be “serious,” and “trying hard.”
- Being moved by one’s own efforts, engaging in performative immersion, and resisting criticism.
- Enduring hardship, obeying without thought or scrutiny, and accumulating moral capital.
- Identifying with elitism, never having connected with one’s own spirituality and gifts, believing oneself to have no gifts, and belittling oneself and others.
- Being rigid, tense, deceiving oneself and others, defending oneself, and appeasing the inner taskmaster.
- Avoiding thought and metacognition (rejecting reality), and refusing to allow shadow aspects, change, or the unexpected.
- Tormenting oneself, punishing oneself (prolonged sitting is actually a form of imprisonment), and destroying oneself.
- Lacking spirituality, awareness, flow, and connection.
- This is also related to the “aware-person ego”: once awareness becomes a routine to be gone through, it becomes easier to become immersed in the “mindful-person ego.”
- Superficial high functioning, with sustained pressure and overexertion.
Previous article: “Why Applying Effort Makes Things Go Wrong: A Perspective on Connection”
III. Management
- The Current Situation
In the workplace, it is easy to find a boss with 70-out-of-100 mindfulness surrounded by employees who are either putting on a performance or caught up in anxiety-driven rat-race competition.
- Success in a career or role hinges on key decisions and choices, which test metacognition, heightened awareness, and a strong sense of connection.
- In the AI era, many companies and teams are symphony orchestras or jazz ensembles made up of highly capable individuals.
Each person needs to be relaxed, flowing, truly aware, and connected, rather than tense and operating at 70-out-of-100 mindfulness.
Liang Wenfeng of DeepSeek: “It is difficult for anyone to do more than 6 to 8 hours of high-quality work a day. Poor judgments made while exhausted from overtime can instead waste precious computing resources, making the costs outweigh the benefits.”
- Choices
Stay away from environments characterized by inefficient rat-race competition.
Stay away from industries where inefficient rat-race competition and 70-out-of-100 mindfulness are enough to drive competitors to tears.