“Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.”
– Proverbs 22:29 (ESV)

I’ve been a musician since my early teens — ever since I spent an entire summer harvesting tobacco –by hand! — to buy my first bass guitar and my first amp.  And while I was proud of myself for earning the money and owning the equipment, I was immediately confronted with the task of learning to play.  (Note: It is possible to own musical gear and not be able to play it.  These people are called collectors.)

One of the tools of the trade. But it’s only an object unless you learn to use it.

Although I started with lessons, I was prideful and thought all that music theory was boring, so I quit wasting Mom’s money and learned to play by ear.  That worked reasonably well until my mid 20’s, when I became aware that there were entire genres I could not play because I didn’t understand the rules.  Slowly, I began to come around to the belief that learning music theory would make me a better musician.

Not long after I began this process, PBS ran a series hosted by jazz great Wynton Marsalis.  Although I was not a huge fan of jazz at the time, I appreciated the way Marsalis explained music from a musician’s point of view.  My favorite episode was titled “Taming the Monster” and it was about the why and how of practice.  Wynton Marsalis laid out his rules for getting the most from time spent practicing.  He called them “Wynton’s Ways to Practice.”  What appears below is a transcription of my handwritten notes.*   I have found these useful not only for ordering my time in the woodshed, but also for living with greater effectiveness.

WYNTON’S WAYS TO PRACTICE

1. Seek out private instruction – the best you can afford.

2. Write out a practice schedule.  Cover all the fundamentals of your instrument.

3. Set realistic goals to chart your development.

4. Concentrate when practicing.

5. Relax.  Practice slowly.

6. Practice longer on things you can’t play – (the hard parts).

7. Play everything as if it’s important/difficult/interesting/serious – always play with maximum expression.

8. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you make a mistake.

9. Don’t show off.

10. Think for yourself.

11. Be optimistic.

12. Look for connections between your music and other things.

Whether or not you’re a musician, this is excellent advice.  Try to apply Wyntons’ Ways to Practice to your hobbies, your work, your fitness regimen and your spiritual life and let me know how it works for you.

So how about you?  In what area of your life can you use these techniques?  Add your comments below.

*Clearly, the credit belongs to Wynton Marsalis, even though my notes may contain direct quotations and paraphrased sections.

“The starting point of all achievement is desire.” – Napoleon Hill

Happy New Year, my friends and readers — Ontozoans all! From the title of this post, you may have discerned that I have chosen a focus word for this new year — Breakthrough. Over the past five-to-six years, I have been chipping away at some significant obstacles. Mostly diligently, but occasionally giving in to discouragement and having to reacquire the trail.  Now, though, I can see the horizon on the other side of these obstacles. With God’s help, I’m ready for a breakthrough.

But I don’t just want a breakthrough for myself. I’m praying, believing and working to see breakthroughs in the lives of family members, friends, and professional colleagues, too.

What’s the word?

You may have chosen a focus word for yourself for 2018. It does not have to be the same as mine. The main thing is to encapsulate what you’re aiming at and what you’re trusting God for, so that you can keep going when you’re tired. You’ve very likely made some resolutions and/or established some goals for the new year — I’ve been refining my own list under the breakthrough umbrella — and I hope you’re taking to heart some of the things we talked about here and here. Rather than more advice on how to develop goals or to tell you what your goals ought to be, I’d like for us to talk about how to see them come to fruition. The key is desire.

Sure, you’ve got sound goals, but without desire you’re an empty suit.
(Photo by P. Belch – used with permission)

It’s not what you think…

For many of us, the very word desire has come under a cloud. It’s as though we automatically associate desire with something unwholesome, something sinful. But isn’t it possible to long for something noble and good? I would argue that anyone who has been homesick or who has missed his beloved or who has grieved at the death of a loved one knows this appropriate form of desire. This kind of desire is a gift from God, and it is to the soul what magnetic north is to a compass.

Two other thoughts here: If you’d like to research this idea, John Eldredge’s book, The Journey of Desire, does an excellent job of unburdening the word from its unfortunate associations. And second, if I’m in danger of losing you for the balance of this post, please consider substituting the word passion instead. It’s the intensity that one brings to the pursuit that matters.

…Except it IS what you think

I’ve always been skeptical of the “name it & claim it” school of theology, and for a long time I thought it was prideful to want something. That is, I believed that I was pitting my will against that of God by having ambition. So instead of prayerfully setting some goals, I spiritualized my fear of failure and rationalized my procrastination. As Louis Rader said, “As long as you remain in neutral, you can only go where you’re pushed.” That was me — waiting on God to push me — even though he had given me a healthy mind and a healthy body.

Thank God, I got some help finding the godly middle ground between the manifestly incorrect Prosperity Gospel and the equally incorrect sanctified ambivalence. I have learned since that many times God has communicated His will through the desires of my heart and the ways He has equipped me to bring them to life. To clarify, I don’t just go with whatever feeling I have at the moment, and I am very careful to sort out my desires in the light of scripture. Instead, I walk with God so that over time, my heart’s desire comes to resemble His. And the things my heart responds to very often lead me to the center of His will.

The behaviorist’s path

Behavioral psychology has debunked one of my long-held notions. Where previously, I thought that moods and feelings were kind of like the weather — that is, we can’t change them, so we just have to wait for a better set of conditions to come along. Behavioral psych says it isn’t like that at all. Our thoughts influence our feelings. Our feelings influence our behaviors. If you’re a man with goals and ambitions, consider very carefully what thoughts you entertain. The Apostle Paul was writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit when he advised the Philippian church:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Philippians 4:8 (ESV)

This is good counsel for living a moral life, but it is also the way to discipline your mind and your life for maximum impact. Measure your feelings against the thoughts that inspired them, and measure those thoughts against Truth. Build on your strengths and reinforce the best that God has placed in you.

When you fail at a task, talk to yourself the way your best teacher or coach would — or the way you would speak to a student under your instruction.

How bad do you want it?

My pastor teaches that the key to breaking any addiction is love. The addict who wants to be free must love something else (God) more than the substance he’s addicted to. He also likes to say that God is under no obligation to deliver us from our friends. If we love our chains, God will leave us in them.

If one of your resolutions this year is to get out of debt (present!), ask yourself how badly you want to be free of your indebtedness. If you lack down-to-the-bone commitment, you will not succeed.

A certain amount of doubt will creep in along the way, but if you can’t find a passion for the end result from the comfort of your couch, perhaps you have the wrong goal.

Make it automatic

A great deal of success in life boils down to having the right habits. We all know bad habits are too easily acquired and are equally hard to defeat, but good habits can be equally stubborn. If you want to be fit and active throughout your life, you’ll want to cultivate the habits of exercise and sound nutrition. You can research anything (There’s this thing called The Internet, see?), but to make a habit of it, you need to practice the desired behavior consistently for three weeks.

It will feel weird and unpleasant at first — perhaps even for the entire three weeks. This is where desire comes in. You have to have passion to propel you through the uncomfortable first steps until the new behavior becomes habitual.

Review and refocus to return refreshed

Even when you’ve established the habit you want, life will intrude. Work issues will flare up, illness or injury will derail your fitness regimen, or you’ll have to spend your writing time earning extra money to keep your car on the road. Take the long view and recognize this is a temporary setback. It’s important to emphasize the word temporary.

Also, note you’re going to want to review the vision — the desired end state — to remain committed to it. This is true even if none of the dread circumstances above happen to you. At various times in my life, I’ve taped goals or things I wanted to learn to my bathroom mirror. It’s a great way to keep your goals in view while you brush your teeth. And, once again, this is the beauty of a focus word.

Seek help

Most of the people in your life want you to succeed. (Well, OK, some of the people in your life want you to succeed.) Why not tell them what you’re up to? The act of publicizing what you’re trying to accomplish will help you maintain your drive. Do you know anyone else with a similar objective? Can you share resources, critique each other’s work, or recommend each other? Find partners and fellow pilgrims.

And pray. If God is the source of your vision, why not seek His wisdom and ask for perseverance as you run the prescribed course toward your goals?

This doesn’t just apply to goals and resolutions, but I thought now would be a good time to talk about it. Happy 2018!

So how about you? What are you setting your heart on in the new year? Add your focus word as a comment to share how you intend to stay motivated through the entire year.

“Ballroom dancing made a man of me.”
-Paul McCartney

The mission of this blog is to motivate and inspire you to embrace Thriving Authentic Masculinity and to become the best possible version of yourself.  Toward that end, we engage topics that affect your physical, emotional and spiritual health, along with subjects that can help you excel socially — like this and this.  If you want to attract a quality woman — or to maintain attraction with the one you have, let me recommend ballroom dancing for your edification.

This guy’s got it! Now all he needs is his partner.

A generation ago, parents sent their adolescent sons and daughters to Cotillion to learn etiquette and how to dance.  Stripped of its artifice, I see now that it was designed to provide some external reinforcement of social norms and niceties, but also to make introductions between young men and young women, with hopes that eventually some might become husbands and wives.  (I said it was a long time ago.)

Every Friday night for twelve weeks, we would all crowd into our town’s Masonic Temple — boys on one side, girls on the other — and learn the Foxtrot, the waltz, the cha-cha and the shag (a Carolinas variant of the western swing and or the jitterbug).  The instructors, a married couple older than our parents, would cue up the same records each week for each dance, and our respective ranks would imitate our human avatars.  It was mildly interesting, but then they told us to walk to the center of the room and “pair up” with the person in front of us.

Now it was no longer theory.  You had to actually dance with a girl and it had to be good.  The pairs would only last as long as a song.  After that, the instructors commanded us to change partners and each of us moved to our right to dance with the girl next to our former partner.  No picking favorites.  no skipping.  From what I’ve read, speed dating uses a similar model.

After our twelve weeks of instruction, we were invited to a dance at the Country Club where we and our “dates” got to show our parents what we had learned.

It wasn’t long after this that disco became popular and ballroom dancing à la Cotillion was over.  Nearly twenty years later when my brother-in-law got engaged, his fiancée was a professional singer, and they told their invited guests that her big band would perform at the reception.  To get ready, my wife and I enrolled in a ballroom dancing course at the local community college.

Once again, the men lined up on one side of the room (a high school cafeteria this time), women on the other, and we learned the Foxtrot, the waltz, the cha-cha, the western swing and the Rhumba. It meant so much more to take the class with my wife and — here’s the best part — we still have occasion to use those steps from time to time.

Here’s what ballroom dancing can teach you:

• The man must lead. — Only one partner can lead the dance — traditionally it’s the man.  It isn’t just an honorary role, and it isn’t patriarchal.  No, to lead in the dance, a man must guide his partner with his hands, his body, his eyes.  A little pressure on the hip, a little change in the grip — all of it has significance.  Dancing well means leading well, and if the woman you’re dancing with is a good dancer, she’ll follow your lead.
• Learn the steps.  — Confidence is attractive.  Being unsure is not.  Will you dance perfectly?  Probably not, and most assuredly not over the course of an entire evening.  If you’re solid on the five dances above, you can spend a delightful evening with a beautiful woman in your arms.
• Feel the music. — This can be hard to explain, but for dancing, music is not so much about hearing the music with your ears, or counting the rhythm in your mind.  Instead, it’s about feeling it.  If you’re not musical, or if you aren’t particularly good at keeping time, you can count beats while you’re listening to music, or go further and download a metronome app and become familiar with different rhythms and tempos.  Learn to hear with your body.
• Don’t look at your feet. — To lead properly on the dance floor, you must be aware of your partner and where the two of you are relative to other couples on the dance floor. If for no other reason, you need to avoid looking at your feet.  Stand up to your full height and look into your partner’s eyes as you lead her.  Smile even if she steps on your new Johnston and Murphys.  You’ll become more attractive to her. Honest.
• Style doesn’t cost extra. — If you’ve invited your date to a dance, look the part.  You don’t have to wear a suit and tie, but if you do, you don’t have to keep the jacket on all evening.  You’ll likely perspire if you stay on the dance floor.  This means a man should show  up properly groomed. Good grooming is mostly about eliminating excess — excess wrinkles, excess scuff marks, excess sweat, excess hair, excess odor — you get the idea.
• It’s your job to make her look good. — In the same way your leading isn’t chauvinistic, making her look good isn’t putting her on a pedestal.  It is simply the etiquette of the thing.  This is the same reason men wear tuxedos to formal events and women wear ball gowns, and why it’s a big deal if two women show up in the same outfit. To make her look good, review the items above and lead.  Lead her onto the dance floor, take her in your arms as is appropriate for the type of dance, and don’t attempt any spins, turns, dips or flips if she doesn’t know how to execute them.  You can always take a course together. If she’s not your date for the evening, when the song ends escort her off the dance floor and thank her for the dance. That’s rockin’ it Cotillion-style!
• Enjoy the dance. — Dancing is supposed to be fun, so do all the hard work before you show up at the next dance. If you’re at an event unescorted where there are other unescorted women, asking a woman to dance can be a great icebreaker. (That’s how I met my wife.) If you have mastered the basics and can lead with confidence, all you have to do from there is to be able to carry on a conversation. You never know where it can take you, but if you do it right you’ll have a partner.

So how about you? How would learning ballroom dancing help you become the best possible version of yourself? Add your comments below.

One of the tools of the trade. But it’s only an object unless you learn to use it.

I’ve been a musician since my early teens — ever since I spent an entire summer harvesting tobacco –by hand! — to buy my first bass guitar and my first amp.  And while I was proud of myself for earning the money and owning the equipment, I was immediately confronted with the task of learning to play.  (Note: It is possible to own musical gear and not be able to play it.  These people are called collectors.)

Although I started with lessons, I was prideful and thought all that music theory was boring, so I quit wasting Mom’s money and learned to play by ear.  That worked reasonably well until my mid 20’s, when I became aware that there were entire genres I could not play because I didn’t understand the rules.  Slowly, I began to come around to the belief that learning music theory would make me a better musician.

Not long after I began this process, PBS ran a series hosted by jazz great Wynton Marsalis.  Although I was not a huge fan of jazz at the time, I appreciated the way Marsalis explained  music from a musician’s point of view.  My favorite episode was titled “Taming the Monster” and it was about the why and how of practice.  Wynton Marsalis laid out his rules for getting the most from time spent practicing.  He called them “Wynton’s Ways to Practice.”  What appears below is a transcription of my handwritten notes.*   I have found these useful not only for ordering my time in the woodshed, but also for living with greater effectiveness.

WYNTON’S WAYS TO PRACTICE

1. Seek out private instruction – the best you can afford.

2. Write out a practice schedule.  Cover all the fundamentals of your instrument.

3. Set realistic goals to chart your development.

4. Concentrate when practicing.

5. Relax.  Practice slowly.

6. Practice longer on things you can’t play – (the hard parts).

7. Play everything as if it’s important/difficult/interesting/serious – always play with maximum expression.

8. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you make a mistake.

9. Don’t show off.

10. Think for yourself.

11. Be optimistic.

12. Look for connections between your music and other things.

Whether or not you’re a musician, this is excellent advice.  Try to apply Wyntons’ Ways to Practice to your hobbies, your work, your fitness regimen and your spiritual life and let me know how it works for you.

So how about you?  In what area of your life can you use these techniques?  Add your comments below.

*Clearly, the credit belongs to Wynton Marsalis, even though my notes may contain direct quotations and paraphrased sections.

Yes, I quoted a movie from last century, but it’s one of my top five — you really should watch it.  That Thing You Do is about a group of friends in the 1960’s who form a band, make a hit record and follow the adventure that ensues. As a musician, I enjoyed the story’s setting in the context of a band, but more than anything, it’s a story about friendships and how success puts them to the test. Here is the relevance to our mission on this corner of the Internet.

“It is very important that you don’t stink today!”

A man at his best is not a loner.  In previous posts, we’ve covered the difference between isolation and solitude, as well as the importance of mentoring. Men are relational creatures.  Even at creation, God saw that the man He had created needed a suitable human companion. And the command to be fruitful and multiply signified that the two of them weren’t supposed to remain alone.

Ideally, your work will put you in contact with others, but let’s be honest — the companies that fully realize the “We’re like a family here” statements are rare.  You may make lifelong friends among people you have to be be around during business hours, but more likely you’ll find your best friends around a common interest.

In my short life, I’ve participated in various team sports, scouting, several theatrical productions, a series of churches (and the various classes, committees and groups that comprise them) and more than a few bands. Quality varies widely from one company, church, team, troop, troupe or group, but let me tell you why being part of a group (musical or otherwise) is important to your pursuit of a life of significance:

• Learning – I always strive to be the least capable musician in any band I’m in.  Why? Because playing with people who are better musicians than I am makes me work harder and improve faster.  Not only that, everybody brings something different to the band.  In the movie, drummer Guy “Skitch” Patterson, is a jazz player who fills in when the band’s regular drummer breaks his arm. His sensibility changes the future of The Oneders/Wonders. I owe a debt of gratitude to the very talented musicians who were willing to teach me what they knew.
• Accomplishment – Elsewhere we’ve discussed the importance of deciding as a necessary first step toward living a life of consequence. Establishing a common mindset and a common objective with a group of friends creates its own strength and momentum. As you plan and prepare for a performance, the fine details that make a song come to life begin to surface. These are difficult to recognize at first. But the more familiar you are with your bandmates, the sooner you identify them, and the greater the opportunity to polish these subtleties. This is the secret to giving your audience a transcendent experience. There is no better feeling for a performer.
• Internal rewards – The fact of belonging is powerful. Knowing that you have a tribe, a people who get you, will give you confidence. If your group is serious about growing — that is, about increasing its capacity — that knowledge enhances your resolve and your confidence. These attributes will embolden you, and will cause you to shed the fear of failure. Even if fear doesn’t totally leave you, you will find yourself trying more than you did when you were its captive. At one point in That Thing You Do, Lenny asks Guy, “Skitch, how did we get here?” Guy answers, “I led you here, sir, for I am Spartacus.”
• External rewards – You can earn decent money playing gigs if you want to. And that’s just one type of reward. Because you’re part of a group, you’ll go more places and meet more people — that is, if you ever get out of the practice room. In the movie, The Wonders go on tour with the Play-Tone galaxy of stars, go to Hollywood to appear in a movie and end up meeting some of their musical heroes. If fortune favors the bold, being willing to take the next step with your group will create more possibilities. More possibilities increase the impact your life can make.
• Serendipity – Being open and principled will put you in place for unexpected blessings. In Guy Patterson’s case, his discipline in practicing drums made him willing to sit in with The Oneders. His playing a 4/4 rock rhythm to Jimmy Mattingly’s love ballad made the song “That Thing You Do” the hit that made The Oneders into The Wonders — and made them all famous.
• Fame and fortune — Eh, not so much. The Wonders were characters in a movie, so of course, they became famous.  But even in a movie, fame was fleeting. Your group may become well-known locally, regionally or not at all, but that’s not why creative people create. As Steven Pressfield wrote in his book, Turning Pro, artists pursue art because they must, even if no reward, as we think of such things, materializes.

I have found some of the most enjoyable experiences being in bands.  That’s just me, though. For you it can be a softball league, a regular foursome for golf, a bowling team, a fantasy sports league, or a cause. Get out there with some friends and make something real.

The most important aspect is this: We all need someone to encourage us and root for us, and to call us back to our best selves. That’s what the Wonders found in That Thing You Do, and I’ve found in the best groups I’ve been part of. My bet is you’ll find it too.

So how about you? What group do you belong to, and how does it help you be the best possible version of yourself? Add your comments below.

The mission of this blog is to motivate and inspire you to embrace Thriving Authentic Masculinity and to become the best possible version of yourself.  Toward that end, we engage topics that affect your physical, emotional and spiritual health, along with subjects that can help you excel socially — like this and this.  If you want to attract a quality woman — or to maintain attraction with the one you have, let me recommend ballroom dancing for your edification.

This guy’s got it! Now all he needs is his partner.

A generation ago, parents sent their adolescent sons and daughters to Cotillion to learn etiquette and how to dance.  Stripped of its artifice, I see now that it was designed to provide some external reinforcement of social norms and niceties, but also to make introductions between young men and young women, with hopes that eventually some might become husbands and wives.  (I said it was a long time ago.)

Every Friday night for twelve weeks, we would all crowd into our town’s Masonic Temple — boys on one side, girls on the other — and learn the Foxtrot, the waltz, the cha-cha and the shag (a Carolinas variant of the western swing and or the jitterbug).  The instructors, a married couple older than our parents, would cue up the same records each week for each dance, and our respective ranks would imitate our human avatars.  It was mildly interesting, but then they told us to walk to the center of the room and “pair up” with the person in front of us.

Now it was no longer theory.  You had to actually dance with a girl and it had to be good.  The pairs would only last as long as a song.  After that, the instructors commanded us to change partners and each of us moved to our right to dance with the girl next to our former partner.  No picking favorites.  no skipping.  From what I’ve read, speed dating uses a similar model.

After our twelve weeks of instruction, we were invited to a dance at the Country Club where we and our “dates” got to show our parents what we had learned.

It wasn’t long after this that disco became popular and ballroom dancing à la Cotillion was over.  Nearly twenty years later when my brother-in-law got engaged, his fiancée was a professional singer, and they told their invited guests that her big band would perform at the reception.  To get ready, my wife and I enrolled in a ballroom dancing course at the local community college.

Once again, the men lined up on one side of the room (a high school cafeteria this time), women on the other, and we learned the Foxtrot, the waltz, the cha-cha, the western swing and the Rhumba. It meant so much more to take the class with my wife and — here’s the best part — we still have occasion to use those steps from time to time.

Here’s what ballroom dancing can teach you:

• The man must lead. — Only one partner can lead the dance — traditionally it’s the man.  It isn’t just an honorary role, and it isn’t patriarchal.  No, to lead in the dance, a man must guide his partner with his hands, his body, his eyes.  A little pressure on the hip, a little change in the grip — all of it has significance.  Dancing well means leading well, and if the woman you’re dancing with is a good dancer, she’ll follow your lead.
• Learn the steps.  — Confidence is attractive.  Being unsure is not.  Will you dance perfectly?  Probably not, and most assuredly not over the course of an entire evening.  If you’re solid on the five dances above, you can spend a delightful evening with a beautiful woman in your arms.
• Feel the music. — This can be hard to explain, but for dancing, music is not so much about hearing the music with your ears, or counting the rhythm in your mind.  Instead, it’s about feeling it.  If you’re not musical, or if you aren’t particularly good at keeping time, you can count beats while you’re listening to music, or go further and download a metronome app and become familiar with different rhythms and tempos.  Learn to hear with your body.
• Don’t look at your feet. — To lead properly on the dance floor, you must be aware of your partner and where the two of you are relative to other couples on the dance floor. If for no other reason, you need to avoid looking at your feet.  Stand up to your full height and look into your partner’s eyes as you lead her.  Smile even if she steps on your new Johnston and Murphys.  You’ll become more attractive to her. Honest.
• Style doesn’t cost extra. — If you’ve invited your date to a dance, look the part.  You don’t have to wear a suit and tie, but if you do, you don’t have to keep the jacket on all evening.  You’ll likely perspire if you stay on the dance floor.  This means a man should show  up properly groomed. Good grooming is mostly about eliminating excess — excess wrinkles, excess scuff marks, excess sweat, excess hair, excess odor — you get the idea.
• It’s your job to make her look good. — In the same way your leading isn’t chauvinistic, making her look good isn’t putting her on a pedestal.  It is simply the etiquette of the thing.  This is the same reason men wear tuxedos to formal events and women wear ball gowns, and why it’s a big deal if two women show up in the same outfit. To make her look good, review the items above and lead.  Lead her onto the dance floor, take her in your arms as is appropriate for the type of dance, and don’t attempt any spins, turns, dips or flips if she doesn’t know how to execute them.  You can always take a course together. If she’s not your date for the evening, when the song ends escort her off the dance floor and thank her for the dance. That’s rockin’ it Cotillion-style!
• Enjoy the dance. — Dancing is supposed to be fun, so do all the hard work before you show up at the next dance. If you’re at an event unescorted where there are other unescorted women, asking a woman to dance can be a great icebreaker. (That’s how I met my wife.) If you have mastered the basics and can lead with confidence, all you have to do from there is to be able to carry on a conversation. You never know where it can take you, but if you do it right you’ll have a partner.

So how about you? How would learning ballroom dancing help you become the best possible version of yourself? Add your comments below.

One of the tools of the trade. But it’s only an object unless you learn to use it.

I’ve been a musician since my early teens — ever since I spent an entire summer harvesting tobacco –by hand! — to buy my first bass guitar and my first amp.  And while I was proud of myself for earning the money and owning the equipment, I was immediately confronted with the task of learning to play.  (Note: It is possible to own musical gear and not be able to play it.  These people are called collectors.)

Although I started with lessons, I was prideful and thought all that music theory was boring, so I quit wasting Mom’s money and learned to play by ear.  That worked reasonably well until my mid 20’s, when I became aware that there were entire genres I could not play because I didn’t understand the rules.  Slowly, I began to come around to the belief that learning music theory would make me a better musician.

Not long after I began this process, PBS ran a series hosted by jazz great Wynton Marsalis.  Although I was not a huge fan of jazz at the time, I appreciated the way Marsalis explained  music from a musician’s point of view.  My favorite episode was titled “Taming the Monster” and it was about the why and how of practice.  Wynton Marsalis laid out his rules for getting the most from time spent practicing.  He called them “Wynton’s Ways to Practice.”  What appears below is a transcription of my handwritten notes.*   I have found these useful not only for ordering my time in the woodshed, but also for living with greater effectiveness.

WYNTON’S WAYS TO PRACTICE

1. Seek out private instruction – the best you can afford.

2. Write out a practice schedule.  Cover all the fundamentals of your instrument.

3. Set realistic goals to chart your development.

4. Concentrate when practicing.

5. Relax.  Practice slowly.

6. Practice longer on things you can’t play – (the hard parts).

7. Play everything as if it’s important/difficult/interesting/serious – always play with maximum expression.

8. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you make a mistake.

9. Don’t show off.

10. Think for yourself.

11. Be optimistic.

12. Look for connections between your music and other things.

Whether or not you’re a musician, this is excellent advice.  Try to apply Wyntons’ Ways to Practice to your hobbies, your work, your fitness regimen and your spiritual life and let me know how it works for you.

So how about you?  In what area of your life can you use these techniques?  Add your comments below.

*Clearly, the credit belongs to Wynton Marsalis, even though my notes may contain direct quotations and paraphrased sections.