No one has a peak state passion and motivation at all time. And if you don’t feed it, it may crash like a bad stock investment. Read or watch this to make sure you keep your passion and motivation high at all times so that you can maximize your learning curve and have the most fun.
Have you ever had a motivation boost that makes you want to get a lifetime worth of practice and training in a day? Where you think you’re going to crush it!? Then you sit down by the TV and eat your meal, and then all you want to do is to continue watching Netflix. Your excitement is gone!
We have all experienced this, or different variations of this. Why can’t this excitement, passion and motivation just be at a high level at all times? Well, it can. If you feed it! Because the less action you take, and the less you feed it, the more overwhelming it would be to catch up, and the more effort is needed before you reach the same level of passion and motivation you once had.
If things are getting boring, you’ll lose the feeling. When you lose the feeling of excitement and passion, you’ll practice less. When you practice less, you will have less progress. When you have a slower progress, you’ll lose even more excitement, and maybe even take a break from it. Having a break will make you have a negative progress. Then you need to practice just to reach the same level as you were before, taking away even more of your passion and spirit of playing your instrument. It’s a vicious circle.
Create a compelling vision
Write down a compelling vision for the level you want to be, and what you want to use your talent for. Where you want to play, if you want to play in a band, make your own songs, or be able to play from your head with no notes, and just enter your own world and leave the real world for a while. First, write down at LEAST 30 reasons why you want to be awesome at your instrument. Then write down your vision based on the most important ones. It should be so compelling that you are shaking of excitement when you read it! Whenever you feel lost or without motivation, read your vision out loud to regain excitement!
Make continuous progress
Make sure you practice a little bit every day. 30 minutes a day 6 days a week is way better than 4 hours in one day. Because your brain will work on it behind the scene all week if you do some practice each day, especially when you’re asleep. And if you practice only once a week, you’ll lose some of your progress because it’s been such a long time since last time you practiced. With your yesterday’s training fresh in memory, it’s much easier to get right into it for today’s session. If you play once a week, your last practice would be way too far into past, deep down in your memory, and you need much more effort to start the session.
It is also easier to fit 30 minutes into the time schedule for each day than several hours, and you are less likely to lose your practice time because of other plans as you are if you have all your practice time scheduled for just one day. Spread it out to keep your practice fresh in memory, have continuous progress and that way keep your motivation high. It is also easier that way to make the practice to a habit, exactly like eating dinner or brushing your teeth.
Utilize your excitement when you have it
When you have the excitement, go practice right away! Don’t think “I’ll just grab some food first” or “Just walk the dog first” or “Take the dishes” About taking the dishes, you can even use the practicing as a more productive way of procrastination. If you don’t want to take the dishes or clean the house, you are most likely motivated to do ANYTHING else than just that.
So instead of procrastinating in front of the TV or by doing cup stacking, you can think “I’ll take the dishes later, I’ll just practice a bit first”. And you would probably be willing to practice for a long time if you are procrastinating something boring.
Neuro Linguistic Programming
Take a few seconds when you feel awesome and memorize the feeling. When you’re out of motivation, think back on that feeling. What can help maximize the effect is to remember the song or rhythm you were playing when you felt that way, or programming the feeling to a certain gesture, like clenching your hands, snap your fingers or hit your leg with your hand. (Lookup NLP/Neuro Linguistic Programming) If you do that gesture every time you feel extra awesome, you can do that when you need motivation to bring back that feeling and boost your excitement to get started.
Play for others
If you only practice by yourself, never playing for others, you’ll lose your passion, excitement and motivation at some point. Because if you only play by yourself, what are you playing for? To be good some day and to be able to play for others later? Humans need short term satisfaction. We can’t keep our motivation high by long term goals only. You don’t have to be world class to play for others. Start by learning one song properly, and then play it for your girlfriend or boyfriend, and for friends and family.
Let them hear when they visit you, or you visit them. Record yourself and put it on Facebook or YouTube. Play in church, at a party, a bar or a local event. This will add meaning to your hard work and effort. The attention you get is like your payment. You wouldn’t find the motivation to work at your daytime job if you didn’t get any salary until you’ve worked for several years, would you?
Gain accountability
Accountability really counts to keep your passion and motivation high at all times! Maybe you think you want to learn your instrument by yourself because there is so many great courses and free videos online. But what you don’t get from those courses and videos is accountability. If you have a teacher you visit every week or every other week, you feel a level of accountability. You need to have progress before your next session! In addition the teacher will, unlike the online courses, customize the session to fit YOU.
Another way of accountability is to find an accountability partner. Have a friend you set up a phone call with every week, and say what you should do for the next week, like “Practice this song until I can play the whole song at a slow tempo” or “Practice 30 minutes a day every day” or “Learn myself a new technique for…” etc. If you don’t achieve it, you owe him $20. To set goals is a good thing in the first place. Have someone to be accountable to with those goals is even better!
An additional way to gain accountability is to post online. Make it your “Learning an instrument project”. Upload videos to Facebook and/or create a project-channel at YouTube to document your progress. This way you can both play for other people AND gain accountability. Because now your friends, family and maybe even people you don’t know are following your progress. You don’t want to embarrass yourself by not having any progress. Therefore this would be of great motivation!
If you want to, you could also join or start a band. You’ll then have a lot of accountability to each other! Because you all need to be able to perform at the songs you are playing. Pretty obvious, yet important!
In especially hard times
If you struggle more than usual and you really can’t find your motivation. Your passion is gone. You don’t get excited when reading your vision. Then you may need to take a few days break. If that won’t do it, you need to do something fun! Something that would engage you! Maybe you can start a project, find someone to play with and have a small concert for charity. Maybe watch some motivational videos on YouTube. Maybe read through this article again and find suggestions you haven’t taken the advantage of yet. Make sure to play at some event. Maybe talk with a friend that may support you, and from that talk regain your motivation.
If you don’t have a band, you can still visit someone playing the same instrument or a different instrument just to have some fun together. Experiment. Talking about experimenting, do just that! Do something you don’t usually do. If you always are following some course, try to just do some free play, or lookup something completely different at YouTube. Search for fun ways to play your instrument in strange, new ways. Do something crazy, like recording a YouTube video where you are playing guitar and singing while you’re skateboarding. Use your imagination. Make it exciting! Because that’s the key. If it’s not exciting, to it exciting!
Good luck!
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