Improve your piano playing technique by making these simple but solid changes to your mindset for practicing piano.
Do you realize how important mindset is to your piano practice routines and being the most successful you can be?
When it comes to good mindset techniques for practicing piano, there are surprisingly quite a few that we could emphasize to our students.
However, for the purpose of this article, we will only get to focus on two specific mindset techniques and their combination. We see these as super important to your piano practice!
We’ll start with a wise quote for each:
1. Have a mindset for only practicing piano with specific goals in mind.
If you’ve never traveled in an area before, you will need a map. If you haven’t learned and mastered your instrument before today, you’ll need a map. It’s a simple concept that applies to most things in life. You need some kind of guidance to be successful. Free-floating never got anyone with a destination in mind anywhere!
A good piano teacher should help you create your roadmaps for success during your piano lessons.
If your piano teacher doesn’t help you break a bigger goal down, you can ask for their help or simply take their deadline and what they state as your goal and reverse plan it. That means work backwards to say, “If my teacher says that by next week I should master this one thing, then I’ll break down that big goal with smaller ones until I accomplish the big goal by the given deadline.”
Those planned out small goals are your roadmap. If you don’t identify big goals and break them down to explicit smaller goals with deadlines, you’ll get lost and overwhelmed and you won’t accomplish as much as you potentially could!
Maximize yourself and your potential by creating a goal map for yourself!
You could even include bigger goals beyond next week! Say, “By this time next year…” or “In six months…”. Let your dreams guide your way but be intentional with them.
Music practice mindset & goals tip:
“A goal is not always meant to be reached; it often serves simply as something to aim at.” –Bruce Lee (American martial artist)
Never be discouraged if you don’t accomplish your goal plan exactly the way you imagined. Give yourself a little grace not to be the superhero you’d hoped to be when you set those goals.
In those moments when you don’t accomplish the piano practicing goals that you had set for yourself, take a moment to reassess and adjust those goals to what you need to accomplish a new version of those goals. Keep your momentum always forward and your ultimate end goal the same, just adjust the strategy!
As just mentioned, we aren’t always the superheroes we want to be today but little by little we can become those super heroes and more.
And remember, as the famous business guru Zig Ziglar says, “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” So don’t be that person!
Ok, let’s move on.
2. Have a mindset technique for practicing piano with grit.
We like to use the word “Grit” when it comes to practicing music. Especially in a day and age that focuses so much on living a lifestyle moment to moment with things that only feel good to us. Our society is moving a little too far away from what it means to “push through” with actions and not just positive feelings and a positive mindset.
When it comes to practicing the piano with a mindset of grit, it has everything to do with what produces results in the longterm and not necessarily just in the short term.
No pain, no gain.
Those scales and that difficult passage of music may burn our brains with how much practice it requires to master it but just as every penny adds to a dollar, every minute put into that scale or difficult passage will add towards its mastery!
Every moment counts for something and don’t forget it!
Side-tip to piano practice:
One thing to keep in mind is that even though you may feel brain burnout, your brain is still taking in the information (including muscle memory) and will sift through it all during your sleep so that you can wake up the next day with the previous practice that you put in, filed and organized in your brain. Now your brain is ready for more!
The Sleep Foundation says, “Sleep and memory share a complex relationship. Getting enough rest helps you process new information once you wake up, and sleeping after learning can consolidate this information into memories, allowing you to store them in your brain.
Angela Duckworth, psychologist and author of the book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, explains it:
“Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day-in, day-out. Not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years. And working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
(We like Angela Duckworth)
Music practice mindset & grit tip:
A lot of us have grandparents who lived with a grit that not only changed their life stories but also the generations that came after them. Let’s use their story as an inspiration for making change for the betterment of ourselves and those around or after us.
Use stories of grit all around you to stay inspired to progress. It’s not a journey we can do alone. We need to be inspired all the time because, as rewarding as grit is, it can get exhausting so don’t be in a grit world alone. Stay connected with peoples’ stories of grit.
Where can you find these grit stories? Not only people in the music world but you can also find podcasts that interview people of grit in whatever field of life you are passionate about.
For example, How I Build This is a great podcast that interviews people who founded huge companies and all the trials they went through to get to where they are. Very inspirational!
Find your sources of grit inspiration and stay connected with the inspiration that it provides you.
Ok, let’s move on!
3. Have a mindset technique for practicing piano with grit AND goals.
Grit and goals are not two separate things. One can’t successfully exist without the other. Think about it:
Can you have grit without a goal? No.
Can you have a goal without grit to accomplish it? No.
The last thing we want to say on the integrated existence of grit and goals is this quote:
“Never quit. It is the easiest cop-out in the world. Set a goal and don’t quit until you attain it. When you do attain it, set another goal, and don’t quit until you reach it. Never quit.” –Bear Bryant
Bonus Side Note: Playing piano is different than practicing piano
Practicing piano is intentional work. Playing piano is the enjoyment of the fruits of your labor. It’s those times set aside for simply enjoying the fluency of what you have worked so hard to build.
Remember, all work and no play is not the purpose of learning to play the piano.
You need those times to turn off your brain and just enjoy playing the piano just as much as you need those times set aside for practicing and working towards advancing your skills.
The greater the skill, the greater the enjoyment. Just as saying, the greater the investment you put in, the greater the benefits.
Looking for a Piano Teacher to Help Guide You on Your Way to Success?
Register for a trial lesson with one of our piano teachers at Martucci Music!
A Trial Lesson Includes:
• A full 30min private session.
• Meet your instructor.
• Ask all of your questions.
• Sample a piano lesson with them.
• Get a professional assessment of your current technical skills.