Tinyana 115 · תנינא קט״ו

Rebbe Nachman spoke of the great hitchazkut (encouragement) he had in serving God and how he would not allow himself to get at all confused.

The Rebbe’s way was to choose some upright path to follow in serving God and proceed to conduct himself in those practices and that path he had chosen for himself. He would continue those practices for a period of time. Whenever other thoughts would come up to distract him from that conduct with some other conduct, he would ignore them completely. He would push those thoughts from his mind and not entertain them in any manner. Instead, he was extremely resolute and single-minded, and would carry on for some time with the path he had chosen.

However, subsequently, after many weeks had passed, thoughts of his having to follow a different path would return. And so, since considerable time had already passed, he would settle his mind and choose some other path and schedule, one that seemed appropriate then. But he would not allow himself to become confused all the time, [by switching] from one devotion to another, or from one path to a different path. Rather, he was firm in carrying on with a single path for a long time, as mentioned above.