A Good Life Takes Practice

“Practice makes perfect”. “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.”

These concepts of practice were drilled into me long ago, beginning when I sat down to my first piano lesson at six years old. The implication was that if I don’t practice regularly, I will not get “perfect” nor will I become a famous or noteworthy person. Perfection and noteworthiness were the intent and purpose of practice.

Yet, with all my practice, I have yet to become perfect at anything, nor am I a person of note in this world. So, why practice anything—especially at my age and stage of life?

I have already written about my latest “obsession” to learn how to play the banjo. What I am learning from learning. Learning to play the banjo has revised my concept of practice in a broader sense, and the implications that “practicing” has on life in general.

The goal of practice is not perfection. It is incremental improvement. This concept of practice is one that works for me, when practicing for perfection and notoriety has not. Whatever the task or skill I am practicing is, my only intent is to be better at it tomorrow than I am today, or last week, last month, or last year. Getting better is not getting me to Carnegie Hall. It is getting me to a place of satisfaction, contentment, and joy.

Each banjo practice session has that in mind. To get a just little bit better at my “Pull-Offs”, my “Hammer-On’s”, “Drop Thumbs”, and “slides” than I was yesterday. I was told twenty minutes of “focused” practice was enough to tell the brain what to work on throughout the rest of the day, and that the brain will continue to work on the skills I practice while I sleep.

This I now know to be true. For when I pick up the banjo the next day, I often find I can play it better than when I put it down the day before. What happened? Between practice sessions, my brain was fixing connection problems between my ear and my hands.

Part of what makes the act of practicing skills effective is the principle of intentional focus. When I run into a path of music that is troubling me, I Loop over the troubling section over and over until I get it.

I was also told that unreal expectations keep people from practicing and cause them to quit. If my expectation is simply steady improvement, then I will not be discouraged or quit trying. You cannot help but make steady improvement if you practice with focus a little each day.

I have also learned that sometimes it seems I have gone backwards in my playing. Some days I feel I have gotten worse rather than better. Again, this reflects the natural process of learning something and getting better. The only lasting mistake in getting better at something is when we stop trying.

So, I have transferred what I have lately learned from playing the banjo to the other aspects of my life.

For instance, there are certain characteristics and aspects in my life that keep popping up, like the same troubling issues in a passage of music. I must loop back over these issues until I, with intent and focus, address it.  I have worked on my tendency to worry over things that have not happened. I have looped over this for years, practicing trust and hope in God, and the result is that today I experience less fear, worry, and anxiety. This is the result of daily practice over a long period of time… and some days I wonder if I have made any progress at all. But if I am committed to daily practice, I always get a new opportunity tomorrow.

Physical training is another example of the power of regular, focused, and intentional practice. Training for a marathon was a process– you break it down to a series of focused training runs over a period of time. Some days I felt great, some days I wondered what the hell I was thinking… but I laced up again the next day anyway. Because of both the good and bad days of practice, I finished the Boston Marathon. I didn’t win–didn’t even place. but I finished.  Boston Strong.

Climbing Mount Rainier was the culmination of a lot of practice—some sessions miserable failures, like when I forgot to bring my hiking boots to a Mountaineer weekend climb and had to cancel and drive back home. Or when I didn’t bring enough water on a trip and had to suck snow constantly to stay hydrated. Or when I got lost at dusk, and on and on. Each of these practice sessions tempted me to quit. Yet, they each had their role to play in helping me reach the top.

I heard some time ago that if you want to get better at something, you need to practice it more days than you don’t. That comes out to a minimum of four times a week. That is doable for anyone who cares to get better at a skill. There are, however,certain things that require my daily attention–practicing my relationship with God, or practicing love, kindness, service, patience, with those in my life on any given day.

I have a small core of things I really want to continue to improve upon, and so that is what I practice. I practice my writing by writing two to three pages every morning. I practice poetry by writing several a week. Most of them are bad–but  occasionally a good one comes out of my practice. I practice playing music each day for 20-30 min at a time. I practice jogging / walking five times/week.

Most important to me, I practice getting closer to my God through 20-30 minutes of prayer, meditation, and journaling. I have no shortage of opportunities to practice each day being better at helping others — as a  husband , father, brother or friend .

If you have been following this blog, you know that for the past twenty years I have been practicing living sober.  Practicing Sobriety? You either are sober or you are not, right? Well, not exactly.  Here are a a few choice nuggets from Alcoholics Anonymous literature on the imperative of practicing a way of life .

• “Step Four is the beginning of a life-time of practice”
• “we see monotony, pain, and even calamity turned to good use by those who keep on trying to practice A.A.’s Twelve Steps.”
• “Many people, nonalcoholics, report that as a result of the practice of A.A.’s Twelve Steps, they have been able to meet other difficulties of life.”
• “Our basic troubles are the same as everyone else’s, but when an honest effort is made “to practice these principles in all our affairs,” well-grounded A.A.’s seem to have the ability, by God’s grace, to take these troubles in stride and turn them into demonstrations of faith.”
• “We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for a lifetime”
• “He (God) asks only that we try as best we know how to make progress in the building of character.”
• “… we will have to be content with patient improvement”

It has been my experience that those in sobriety who continually practice what they initially learn continue to grow into a life of freedom and joy. Conversely, the consequences of not practicing has proven to be disastrous for many. Intentional, focused, and regular practice here is truly a matter of life and death.

So, you see, life is a long series of practice sessions, preparing me not for perfection or fame, but for the next practice session. It is inevitable; Whatever I practice with focused attention and intention, I get better at, regardless of what it is. This is what matters. By practice, I get little closer each day to that person I hope to be.

What about you? What do you want to get better at? What is most important to you? What are you willing to invest regular, focused time on?  The only failure in practice is the failure to practice.

Good luck in your practice, and God bless.

Bob