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RE: Coping with the blues

Author: Cass
Date: 2001-04-18 13:49

Your saying "tomorrow I will do better" reminds me of something else I do to get motivated. Thinking about tomorrow makes me think I can put everything off. Then tomorrow I will think "tomorrow" again and it is always going to be something to do tomorrow instead of right now, so it never gets done. So I try to think "*today* I will do better" on one particular thing. I don't try to bite off something huge and ambitious, just think "I can do *that measure*" or that trill or whatever not necessarily perfeft but better than yesterday. Sometimes I will pick a key with a lot of sharps or flats and I will work on that scale and arpegio, just to get it down really smooth. It seems like not much but choosing a different little thing to work on everyday or every week adds up after awhile.

Also setting a small goal makes me feel I can really do it, and succeed. For me that is better than to just daydream about some big grand plan and then feel like a failure when it doesn't happen yet. I think about things that seemed impossible and depressing when I was in high school and now I can do them because I worked on them a little bit at a time.

One time at a seat assignment test (junior high) the conductor said "Play me a two octave scale in the key of B". I almost fell over dead, my worst music nightmare come true. I messed up totally and ended up in the third row. Now if somebody asked me that today, then I would just play them a scale in B and no big deal. So I think about that when I feel as if goals are too far away and overwhelming.

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