Breaking Bad Habits
Let's face it, we musicians are creatues of habit. More often than not it's bad habits that catch us out. That could be in all aspects of our personal and professional lives. From a musicians point of view, we're all guilty of possibly not working has hard as we could or not practising as much as we should. As teachers, we can become complacent and phone it in sometimes. As a songwriter, perhaps we get lazy and rehash old ideas constantly when trying to come up with new songs.
It doesn't matter what we do, there is always room for bad habits to creep into our routines. Let's think about some ways we can positively stamp out bad habits before they become too much of a habit.
- Structured Routines - Your bad habits may be linked to your practise routine or your general playing routine. If that is true, think about what the habits are and make a structured plan of how you can get out of it. If the habit is lack of practise in general then set yourself some small milestones such as practising for 10 minutes a day, every day. If your habit is technique based, commit a chunk of your daily practise time to focus strictly on the technique that has become a bad habit and work on ways to turn it around.
- Being Mindful of the Bad Habit - You have to accept the habit in order ot improve on it. Firstly spend some time thinking about what you feel your bad habits are and decide if those habits are holding you back. Chances are, you probably have some, we all do. Make a list of what you feel your biggest points for improvement could be and start actively working on them.
- Learn a New Way to Apply the Skill - Whatever habits we fall into, we can beat. Sometimes it takes repetition and practise but othertimes we can simply reframe the habit. Let's say your habit is a bad way of explaining a certain topic to a student or your application of a scale in a piece of music, we can revisit how we view these. If your bad habit lies in an explanation style scenario, think of ways you could pass that information over in a new way. For playing based habits, is there a fresh new way you can approach that scale on your instrument? Perhaps in a different register or with a different finger arrangement. Reimagine it!
- Seek Help from a Professional - Don't be afraid to ask for help. If you have a habit you can't shake, speak to someone who would help you. When I say professional, I don't mean a doctor. Speak to someone who works as a music teacher in the instrument you are working with. Teachers will always be happy to help you get to the root of your issue and get past it. It's never too late to take lessons even if you are a teacher yourself.