Pausing (in music AND in life) to actually practice makes a world of difference in how much joy and beauty you experience.
I’ve played piano since I was young, and I was excited when my daughter recently asked me to accompany her on the piano for a vocal performance. The song was really beautiful and had a few tricky sections. We ran through it a few times, but didn’t spend the time to actually practice it.
But, without practicing it, I was stumbling through several sections. It sounded kinda good enough—skipping over sections and maintaining the beat and hitting the most important notes. (I’m good at faking it)
The week of the performance I decided “kinda good enough” wasn’t really good enough. I needed to take time to actually practice.
So I spent time really getting to know the song and carefully choosing and writing in fingering in needed places, choosing which hand will play which notes in complicated runs or scales, and making other decisions.
Once I was well acquainted with the notes, my mistakes dropped drastically. Suddenly it became fun and exciting to play—instead of frustrating and embarrassing. I could play ALL the notes instead of dropping some here and there or leaving them out.
And playing ALL the notes made it sound so much better, and it became even more fun and satisfying to hit all the notes, especially exciting when I’m playing a really fast and tricky section.
Its like this with so many things in life. Sometimes you are just superficially focusing, rushing through, dropping things, and barely keeping up.
Of course there are times when you are in survival mode and it’s genuinely all you can do to just focus on the most important things.
But when is the right time to pause and really review the situation? When do you ask yourself what’s really going on in your thoughts and what in the situation needs to be carefully arranged?
Coaching can help you to figure out when it is time to simply survive or to actually pause and practice.
Survival Mode: When is it time to pause?
Survival mode—we’ve all been there. You’re at your wits end. You’re sleep deprived. Work, family, volunteering, etc. make a million demands on your time and energy, and there just isn’t enough “you” to go around.
But when is it time to get help versus just keep pushing on? Consider getting help when:
You are not happy very often. The demands on your time create anger, resentment, guilt, frustration, and/or irritability
You can’t say no. Guilt or a desire to please make it too painful for you to say “no.”
You feel trapped often. When you become emotionally overwhelmed you can feel trapped and helpless.
Pausing and practicing opens a careful and mindful thought shift. When you carefully and purposefully choose your thoughts, it can become fun and exciting to do challenging things. You may still need to practice the thought until it becomes easier and more natural, but it’s more fun when you’ve chosen it carefully.
With practice, you’ll suddenly find yourself playing a lovely complex song. Your life becomes more beautiful because you became acquainted with yourself. You choose how you want your life to go and practice the thoughts to create it.
Pausing (in music AND in life) to actually practice can make a world of difference in how much joy and beauty you experience.
