Dave was looking for guitar lessons.
A successful professional with his own company and three school-age children, he joked in our first phone conversation about having a midlife crisis and said that he wanted to do something to stimulate his mind. He had no musical experience whatsoever, besides a lot of listening and attending shows.
Read MoreYears ago, I was training a new employee. She wanted to improve a particular skill, so I recommended a book on the subject.
Weeks later, she asked a related question. “What about that book I recommended?” I asked.
“I’m reading it,” she said.
In that moment, I learned something important about communicating my expectations. I had thought she would spend an afternoon or two reading the book to quickly learn and implement the material; however, she was actually reading two or three pages a night before bed.
Read MoreWhen I was in tenth grade, I suddenly developed a passion for the guitar.
My dad played, so he lent me a guitar and showed me my first chords. Late at night, I would sit on the edge of my bed and work out songs.
One afternoon, I spent about three hours going through a book of Beatles songs, painstakingly reading the tiny chord grids above the piano part.
The intense effort paid off. I started in March, and by May of that year I was jamming regularly with other musicians, performing onstage, and writing my own songs.
Read MoreAt her first piano lesson, Sophie asked me how many instruments I play.
I thought a moment. “Hmmm…piano, guitar…ukulele…a little bit of drums…so…four?”
“I play seven instruments,” she proclaimed. She breezily counted them off on her chubby six-year-old fingers. “Drums, harmonica, shaker, tambourine, recorder, guitar, and, well, now I play the piano.”
Read MoreTalent is convenient.
It’s undeniably helpful to have early promise or natural aptitude in a particular area. We tend to enjoy things we’re good at. If you are naturally good at something, you will stick with it all the way to mastery.
However, the flip side concerns me more. If you are not naturally good at something that you really want to master, I urge you to stick with it anyway. Sooner or later, with consistent effort over time, some aspect of it will click. When you evaluate things several weeks, months, or years later, you may even find that your results are indistinguishable from the “talented” person.
Read MoreThe stories we tell ourselves can help us our hurt us. The ways in which we measure ourselves can reinforce the awful story or help us to build a new one.
We keep the awful stories out of habit. There’s something comforting about clinging to the story that reinforces what we’ve always believed, even when it makes us feel terrible.
A story like, “I keep thinking I’ll be good at things, but I’m always bad at them.”
Read MoreYou’re practicing some Bach or your tennis serve or a purl stitch…and then you hit a wrong note, whiff the ball, or drop a stitch off of the needle.
At this moment, you have a choice! Do you:
a) Tell yourself, “It’s okay! You got this.” or
b) Tsk yourself?
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