Stay In Your Comfort Zone You Idiots
Don’t leave your comfort zone! Do a renovation and add some new wings!
Of course, the title of this blog refers to the idiots who live inside of us all, and I, the biggest idiot in the room, can only speak from a place of love as I grab the world by the lapels! My life, wasted, tensing, and striving! Do not make the mistakes I have made, students! Any fool can have a hard life. It takes a real master to live easily!
When you practice, you must find the part of play that is effortless. Do not focus on what you cannot do. Instead, repeat a single confident chord, riff, or measure over and over until you intimately understand the feeling of skill. Then expand that feeling outwards, measure by measure, chord by chord, until the song is effortless.
This is not the same as making no mistakes. I tell you there is nothing but failure in music and in life. Every path you take will be the wrong one, sooner or later. Your mind will always find something to label a mistake, and greater skill will only make your mistakes subtler without erasing your tendency to self-criticize. Your errors may become imperceptible to others (and sooner than you think), but you will always see them. Real skill is therefore in being resilient to your own judgements. This begins by finding any feeling of confidence and then expanding it through your song.
If you struggle with this exercise, return to the part of the song that is easeful and joyous. Repeat it again, this time listening closely enough to make a mental “recording” of what you have done. Now close your eyes and imagine how the rest of the song would sound if you could play the whole thing with consistent wonderfulness. Once you can hear it all in HD, play! The power of your imagination will amaze you if you use it. The impossible will be revealed to have always been a fraud, an ordinary sized wizard behind a screen casting a large shadow. If anyone else can play it, you can too! All you need is to find ease!
Don’t leave your comfort zone! Do a renovation and add some new wings! And whatever you do-do not reject the idiot inside yourself! Love them unconditionally and give them a safe place to make mistakes.