Finding the Music in You

"I'd love to sing, play the piano, write a novel, paint, dance but it's too late to learn"

There was a time when the average human lifespan was 35, in those days, your late 20s may have been too late to start something so ambitious and be truly great.

but if you are under 40, you still have (on average) about half your life left.

If there are people your age doing amazing things, you have as much time as they've taken to become great to become great yourself.

And if you're older, you have so much more experience and knowledge and resources to bring to bear on what you want to achieve.  An 84 year old man recently climbed Everest, what are you doing lately?

The thing is, technique, the actual physical mechanics of doing whatever it is you want to do, is not that complicated in any field.

Even the most complex fields can be mastered technically in a matter of a few years.

The trick is the art.

The "music" of whatever you do.

Einstein wasn't great because he was better at math and physics than his peers, but because he had a vision for beauty and art in what he did, and while many were searching for complex explanations of natural phenomena, old Al saw that the universe was beautiful, and any explanations must be beautiful as well, he knew that a solution wasn't quite right until it was beautiful in it's simplicity and form.

Find your beauty.

Find in your eye and ear and heart that unique perspective on the world.

Then find the medium to express it in.

We need to see what you see, hear what you hear, share in your beauty and art.

We need your music.

"It's a Numbers Game"

Jobs.

Dating.

Auditions.

Anything you want in life.

Do you want it bad enough to keep playing until you've played enough to win?

We all win the game we play, it's only a matter of time.

The only way to lose is to stop playing the game.

Why Joy Is The Most Important Goal Of a Teacher

Joy?

How frivolous, students don't need 'joy', well, maybe they do, but they need knowledge, skills, expertise!

I agree completely with the second half of the previous statement.  I have long felt students in most fields of study these days show a surprising lack of mastery of the basic fundamental skills and knowledge in their field.  You see music students who can't name notes, history students who can't name nation capitols, math students who can't reliably add and subtract (let alone multiply) two digit numbers in their heads.

How does joy factor in?

The key is to impart these core fundamentals to students, you can't rely on teachers to teach every abstract scenario or application of a topic.  Rather, when teachers focus on fundamental core skills and knowledge within the field, students are given the tools to find the answers to specific situations on their own.

The problem arises with the concept of "teaching" anything.

I don't believe in teaching.

Odd thing for a teacher to say, eh?

Education, and educator, come from the Latin 'educare' meaning 'to guide'

One who educates, such as myself, guides one who wishes to learn to the knowledge and skills they seek.

This may sound like an exercise in semantics but it is so much more.

We do not 'teach', we guide, we show the knowledge and demonstrate the skills, and uncover a path that can be followed to attain them, but the action and the choice is in the hands of the learner.

So the key to education is not the knowledge, or the skills, or the teacher, or the degree, or the method, or the book, or the technology.

The key is the learners desire and dedication to learn whatever is to be learned.

Here is where joy comes in.

Where there is no joy, there is no desire to learn.

exception: fear can substitute in a pinch, one who is afraid of dying if they don't learn to pull the emergency cord on a parachute will likely learn it, regardless of the absence of joy

Our primary job as educators, as guides, is to do all we can to help foster a joy for the subject in the learner.

I teach singing, and if I spend 45 minutes of an hours lesson experiencing laughter, curiosity and joy with the student and imparting NO KNOWLEDGE OR SKILL WHATSOEVER, the 15 minutes I DO spend imparting skill will be more effective than hours of instruction given in an environment of boredom or apathy.

I know, I've been on both side of the desk, as an uninspired student and an uninspiring "teacher"

I'm not saying I spend 75% of my lessons or classes cracking jokes and ignoring material.  On the contrary, my students will often tell you we work on more advanced concepts and that I demand critical thinking and personal responsibility for demonstrating skills and knowledge to a higher level than many AP courses.  However, I am able to do this by building a foundation of joy.  It is the fertile soil from which all learning springs.

And here's the secret: Lean in close.  Even if joy doesn't affect learning, what's the worst that can happen if every learner you encounter remembers their time with you as a time of joy?  Teachers are one of the few professions remaining where we are paid well to do what we love all day long, let's not forget that, and let's let our students in on some of that goodness.  They deserve it.

Do you feel differently?  Have a core of knowledge and skill that came along with no joy whatsoever but you still learned it extremely well?  Or maybe you (gasp) agree with me?  Tell me about it in the comments:

Why You Are Awful Until You're Perfect

"But I'm awful!" "I'll never get it right!" "I'm the worst!" "I Suck!"

How often have we heard and said things like this about something we wish we could just be PERFECT at the first time?

Why doesn't life work like that?  I decide I want to be a football player, or a beat boxer, or a judo master, author, pianist, chef... and I should be able to wake up the next day and be awesome at it, or at least decent, right?

The world doesn't work like that anymoreThere was a time when your only competition was the tribe you lived in.  There were 15 boys and 15 girls, and only certain genders did certain things (hunting vs. foraging, cooking vs. eating, etc.)

On top of that, history went back as far as the aural tradition could hold.

So really, to be the best Mastodon hunter EVER, you really only had to compete with the 14 other guys in your tribe (some of which are old and frail and some of which are infants) and the few dozen ancestors people can remember off the top of their heads.

For centuries, to be the best singer ever you merely had to be the best in your province, then the best in your nation, then the best in your continent.

In the 21st century, your competition is THE ENTIRE WORLD.  And if you don't believe it, you are stuck in a mindset that will hold you back more than you could possibly believe.

Take a peek at youtube for 5 seconds and tell me that each singer/comedian/artist on there isn't competing against every other one in their field in the entire world.

So now that we know the playing field, take a second to let this fact sink in: If you want to be great, you will be awful, until you are perfect.

There is too much competition out there today, there is no more "good enough", it's AMAZING or it's crap.  That's the world we live in today.  If you want to present what you have to the world, accept that a lot of people will think it is crap because it is not absolutely perfect, and it will keep being crap until it is absolutely perfect.

Have you ever heard Pavorotti sing a wrong note in concert?  How about Sinatra messing up the words on a CD?  How about Johnny Depp screwing up a line on screen?

It's not good enough, and it doesn't happen much anymore, at least not in the public eye.

You need to learn to allow yourself to fail strategically, on your own or in a supportive environment with people that are okay with you being terrible for a while.  No great concert pianist played it perfect the first time.  No CEO was a perfect manager the first day on the job.  No amazing parent made it through the first few years without letting loose a few choice words in front of the little ones.

Decide to fail, and to fail brilliantly, and give yourself permission (or even, a goal) to fail, because you will be awful until you are perfect (and that never really happens).

Once you are comfortable failing by yourself, try failing in front of others.  Go out with the INTENTION of messing up and being imperfect.  If you go out hoping to be perfect you'll never achieve it, if you try to be imperfect, you might surprise yourself, and worse case scenario, you are completely successful in what you struck out to do.

Intentional failing is a common theme with me, and you'd be amazed at how much of a big deal failing is in your head, and how little it matters in real life.  Most people avoid failing by avoiding any action at all, and in so doing, avoid success.

Choose to fail...

And you choose to succeed.