Happy November, First name / Friend!
We hope you enjoyed your “extra” hour… of sleep, of play, of whatever you wanted to fill the time with! This time of year is both cozy and exciting, a transition from fall (here in Ohio the fall was extraordinarily pretty and colorful) to the twinkly lights of December.
It's a time of preparing, for ending the year and beginning a new one. As you reflect on what's coming to a close and what's around the corner, we hope you join our discussions this month about “Letting Go of Perfectionism”. We're exploring different aspects of this, in email, on socials, the blog, lives and in our Facebook group (are you in it? Join us here)! In fact, the first class is coming up this Saturday with Seunghee (Sunny) Lee!
Today's thought for you is a universal truth about striving for perfection:
The more you focus is on perfection, the harder it is to do you best.
Pianist Leon Fleisher is known to have said: “you only need as much technique as is required to say what you want to say”. You might chuckle and dismiss the statement as being overly simple, but the real meaning here is in plain sight: it's what you want to say that's the driving force.
With that in mind, here are some tips for perfectionists:
- Define your musical intention. Really hear this clearly. What do you want to say? THEN find the tools to say it. It'll be technique, it'll be color, intensity and articulation.
- Learn the music well. You'll be less nervous, less likely to focus on potential mistakes, and more free to speak through the music!
- Having conscious intention pulls the physical body into aligned action. Your body, with enough training of course, will figure it out!
- Focus on technical perfect “I can't miss a note!” and you'll set yourself up to feel more tense and less expressive - and to give a boring, in-the-box performance.
- Finally, know that perfection is a paradox: the closer you get to it the further away you are from it.
Want to join the conversation, or just listen in? The first event is free: