Practice Baggage: A Tip for Shedding the Burdens

You are a whole person.

I need to pause here for a moment - why do we say 'holistic' and not 'wholistic'? Seriously, I move to have 'holistic' be replaced by 'wholistic'. It makes more sense.

Back to the blog post at hand.

You are not a different person when you sit down to practice. For some of us, me, practicing has all kinds of negative associations that would seek to distract me from loving the music that I am playing.

Here's a tip:

Have note pad close by and when these thoughts invade your space, write them down. Then, when they come up as they do, say to yourself, 'I have written them down and will deal with them later. Right now I am enjoying this process and music.'

Some of those negative associations might be well... if you are a musician you have those crippling self-doubts, negative comments that circle in your head from colleagues and former teachers, painful memories etc.

Let's move forward together in our practicing with purpose and with a positive direction.