Day 258: Life lessons through Music – Specificity

 

 

Lately I have started practicing piano and currently I am working on a classical song that is very difficult for me. The thing about playing piano or any instrument is that to be good at it you need to be very specific in terms on finger placement, finger speed and velocity. If you are not specific in it you are going to make mistakes and play the music wrong.

What I do is learn the song one section at a time – once I am able to play it without mistakes I move on to the next section. Now, there are many sections in this song and what I found was that as I progressed I tended to rush through the sections. There are a few sections where I always make mistakes at the exact same place every time I play the song through.

This got very frustrating, but I finally realized why. When I first learnt and played those sections and when I first made the mistakes – I did not stop to correct them effectively. I kind of just skipped it because it’s such a small point I rather want to get on with the next section so that I can learn the whole song. Now what has happened is that I formed a habit and that mistake is actually now part of how I play the song. All because I did not stop and correct it the moment I made the mistake – I was not specific enough the first time I played it. Now I have to unlearn the mistake by repeatedly playing it correctly over and over until it sinks in.

And this basically related to life as well. We go through life and we make mistakes along the way. We learn how to deal with events in our lives and how to deal with things. For example as a kid somebody said something nasty to me and I took it personally and became angry – From that moment whenever a similar events plays out I do the exact same thing, because when it first happened I did not stop for a moment to realize that taking things personally is not necessary – I am the one who creates the reaction within me.

There are so many examples of how we all made mistakes in life and never really learned from them, but instead created a habit to repeat those mistakes and that has become part of who we are. And to change that behavior requires us to consistently and repeatedly correct it whenever it comes up. For example with me and taking this personally – whenever I took something personally I to stopped and breathed and let go of the anger and reaction. Eventually over time this behavior faded away – I had to unlearn it.

Sure it would have been easier to stop the behavior as soon as it happened, but we are not taught or shown how to respond practically and effectively to situations in life.

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