What YOU said you wanted this New Year

Do you know how many times she has fallen as she’s learned to walk, run, and jump? A Lot. Most of the time, in fact. And how many times has she been singing “haaaa bur daay youuuu” as she is learning how to sing Happy Birthday to You. Well, instead of being reprimanded for her wrong pronunciation, missing words, and complete off key pitches… she is encouraged by an star fleet entourage of family and friends clapping, smiling, and cheering her on to do it again.. And again… and again. So she can sing “haaaa bur daay youuuu”.

So much encouragement that she does try over and over again. And, it’s not going to be long before she’ll be singing the entire song because of this type of inspiration boosting her confidence as she tries new things.

It’s time now to stop and ponder on this little subject for just a second. When is the last time you had a squadron of attendants, cheering your every new move?

Hmmmmm… it hasn’t exactly happened to me lately, and I’m guessing it isn’t the norm for you as well.

So, how can we create this type of support for ourselves as we learn? Because I know that if someone tells me my efforts are amazing and to try again, I probably would.

Well, as adults, or any age really, we get to realize that our inner thoughts and how we treat ourselves is either consciously or unconsciously taken and our next actions reflect how we’ve interpreted it.

Many of the members here at Learn Flute Online are either brand new to the game, or they’re coming back to the instrument after many year hiatus. Is this you?

Either way, it’s time to start looking at the mental game of pursuing your better self, and seeing that YOU and your thoughts have the biggest impact on motivation and self-creation. It’s true.

Channel your inner toddler and start seeing what you’ve done so far. Marvel at it, and imagine yourself progressing and being astounded that you’re watching yourself go through the stages of learning – all by yourself. It’s actually quite amazing!

Recognizing this and forming your own positive affirmations before, during, and after practice can make all the difference in the world to you. The point is to do what it takes to enjoy the process of trying over and over.

We humans are kind of wired this way. Think about the popularity of video games nowadays. Anyone can start a game, be really bad at it at first, yet as they see there are no real physical consequences to making mistakes except maybe their game avatar dying…. They can just start again and improve the next time, right. Trying over and over is the key. And then suddenly…. Voilá! They passed the board… and repeating this process every day over weeks and months and suddenly they’re passing off the levels one by one. It’s actually quite addicting, as we’ve seen. 

Achievement is addicting and super fun if it’s fostered in a positive way. In video games, we are rewarded with points, in our musical education and practice life we are rewarded by… um… Let’s think about this for a minute. We don’t have a little digital angel hovering over our heads dinging us with points every time we do something right. Boy, that’d be great wouldn’t it! So, immediate gratification isn’t quite there the same way. But, the gratification IS there.

We are rewarded with much more profitable benefits and awards such as:

Self satisfaction and

Physical attributes such as better breathing and lung capacity, dexterity and manual control, relaxation and control of the fine muscles in the body and mind.

And we find an endless list of mental rewards as well: such as a sense of well being and positivity, having a known direction we are moving in is very motivating, and a sense of mastery creates positive self esteem which exudes confidence and a bright outlook on life… which spills onto our friends and family every single day.

I could go on and on all day about the effects of learning a musical instrument, but these are just a few that I thought I would mention now- and if I could purchase a video game for myself, my parents, or my children that guaranteed these types of side-effects, I’d be throwing my money at it right now… oh wait, I am, I’m already in this field! Oh… and because you are listening today, so are you.

Is there a certain age or stage we need to have “finished achieving this in”? No way. There’s no deadline here. We are human and we will be able to learn throughout the eternities. It’s so exciting, let’s keep moving.

One of you good listeners once told me that you had been unusually hard on yourself for a while, until you had a realization that the information, education, and content here at Learn Flute Online does not have to ALL be worked on and achieved ALL at the same time. This person said she realized that it’s more like a wonderful restaurant with the most amazing salad bar and buffet. She said she finally figured out that she didn’t need to eat it all in one plate or sitting. Well, yes this is true. We are all on our own journey at our own stages and we need to use some courtesy to not feel like we have to be able to eat it all. I mean, do or play it all or nothing? No, Let’s take the skills and challenges one bite at a time and see where it leads us.

I promise that I have everything laid out here for your success… It’s a lot like following the yellow brick road. Just keep taking one step forward each day and you’ll be able to look back and see an entire emerald city behind you eventually. It’s very cool. You’ve got this.

Showing up is going to equal success. It’s inevitable. I’ve got your back.

So, we humans are pretty awesome, but we are also pretty short sighted. Now I want to talk about this for a second because as I mention the story of being a toddler and thriving on positive reinforcement – for some reason toddlers don’t always need immediate feedback. They can try and try again – relentlessly sometimes to get what they want. They will ask over and over and over for the cookie even if they are told ‘no’. So what happens to us when we get older? 

Why does the skill of happy repetition start to wain in our personalities? I’ve wondered this, and noticed that it is about the age when we start to notice that someone else might already have the skill we are trying to learn ourselves… This makes us shy to the fact that we aren’t there yet. But honestly, who cares – everyone starts at a different stage, has a different background, a different set of already-known life skills,.. And we need to toss this comparison mind-set in the rubbish.

You know what I mean, right?

So what I mean by being short sighted, it’s time we find joy in looking out a bit farther away from ourselves. We don’t always have immediate gratification, but definitely it’s there.

I remember someone telling me that we so often underestimate what we can accomplish in a year’s time because we tend to focus only on daily achievements. I kind of agree with this. I am this way as well sometimes.. I see my to-do list and find that it is never ending, but instead of crumpling it up and throwing it in the garbage, like I really kind of want to sometimes, I know that by taking one thing and moving a step forward as I can over and over these daily actions turn into weekly, monthly, and ultimately huge gains over a year.

I’m in this the same as you – let’s work on this together this year. This progam is wonderful and has grown over many years, we can keep putting one foot in front of the other.. That’s a song from a little movie “keep putting one foot in front of the other”. Anyway, and soon we’ll be walking out the door.

We got this.

I just love the technology we have nowadays to help us journal our progress. In fact, I encourage everyone to start videoing themselves once a month right from the first day of learning how to play the flute here. You’ll enjoy the look back after a year or two for sure.

It’s really great to have goals and expectations – and it’s even better to have very specific goals and expectations. Here’s an example that we can all use this month:

Instead of saying to ourselves, “I have the goal of being able to play super fast, super fluent scales by the end of the year”.

Well, we need to break it down a little bit and give ourselves specifics that are the building block pieces to this final goal that we mentioned about “playing super fast fluent scales” well what we need to do is say: “I am going to repeat the F scale pattern perfectly 20 times per day this month so I build finger fluency and muscle memory.”

This is very do-able. It’s chunked down, and I have specific lessons to help you with this. Twenty perfect repeats takes a long time only the first few times, and then it becomes fun, and actually pretty simple. Repeating this idea and then adding them to the hints, tips, and the challenges that I give here in Learn Flute Online level modules will make success a simple given. It definitely will happen. So we’ll chunk things down and get very specific, and enjoy repeating!

I love that we are all on our own path, yet we are all on the same trail, right? Just moving on up the mountain, and enjoying every minute of it TOGETHER!

Wahooo!

It’s been so much fun today getting this good conversation started at the beginning of this new year.

Am I right?

Does this episode hit home for you?

You know, I’ve kind of blown our cover as flute players and people who are drawn to the flute. We kind of have some perfectionism tendencies in us, so we especially need to work on our mindset as we continue our quest towards beautiful musician skills.

Let’s think this week about what our actual goals are here – is it to be able to play an adoring Happy Birthday for our family members? Is it to climb the ranks of a community band? Well, it doesn’t really matter the reasons, just having ideas is super fun, and it’s even better to be able to ride the waves as we find new options along the trail here.

I love that you are a part of Learn Flute Online – as a listener and as a flute player also as a beautiful human who is striving to be better each day.

You are awesome.

Thanks for being here.

I’ll play you out now – since we talked about scales patterns a minute ago, I think you’ll enjoy hearing a little bit of the fun we have in the lessons here.

Enjoy! See you next time.