The summer days have arrived, along with it are the pool parties, vacations and many other reasons not to practice. People have asked me through the years, “How do you stay motivated to practice?” My simple answer is, “I don’t.”
If I relied on motivation to practice it would never happen, I would never have become the musician that I am today, I would just sit at the beach all day! No sane person wants to play the same scales and arpeggios 10x a day, the same 8 bars of Beethoven over and over and OVER AND OVER again just to get it perfect. Motivation is the most fickle, unreliable, and fleeting feeling. Your time would be better spent cultivating discipline than relying on motivation. Make yourself sit down at the piano. Make yourself stop binge watching Netflix. Make yourself do the work necessary to achieve what you want.
We live in a fast paced digital world where everything needs to happen NOW, the world needs to be handed to me on my iPhone/iPad NOW. Piano and music is one of the few disciplines in today’s world that doesn’t get handed to you on a silver platter, it’s something you truly have to work at. Even naturally talented pianists or “prodigies” can be surpassed by the students that put in more practice and work on a daily basis.
As the lazy summer days go by don’t ask yourself, “how can I keep myself motivated to practice?” Instead, ask yourself, “how can I discipline myself to practice even when I don’t feel motivated to do so?” You will find this same discipline and mental strength will carry over into the other parts of your life.