Why Voice #2 - About Practice

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."- Aristotle

What does it mean to practice? I am asked this question often, or actually most of my students don't ask they just don't do it:-) at least not continuously, but I understand, it's not as easy as it might seem. In my experience (including my own perspective on the word until I somehow changed my mind while becoming an actor) we think practice means to do something over and over again until we somehow mysteriously get it right. What I call the myth of hard work. With that I am not trying to say that there isn't something great to be gained from hard work, but what you are probably mostly gaining is persistence. However, are you actually getting any better? Achieving any of the things you want? Happier, richer and better looking? I bet you the answer is probably, hell no! And you're probably miserable too, 'cause you just don't seem to be getting it right?! When you keep running your head against the same wall over and over do you eventually break the wall or does the wall break you?

Practice is in reality not about trying to perfect something or getting it right by doing the same thing over and over and over and over, just because I have told you some cool vocal exercise ....if you keep repeating an unwanted habit it is not going to change, all that happens is that you eventually give up. So then what do you do? The answer is maybe a little too simple to live with - you don't do the same thing over and over, you keep making mistakes, experiment, take risks, do something different, keep searching....and here is the point - with mindfulness and focus (or as you might say - on purpose), then when something DOES seem to work, you do it over and over until its effortless, and then you find another issue and you do the same again, and so you keep on perfecting your instrument until the day you die. To my own big surprise this unending practice was actually the best discovery of them all - you mean I will never finish or be perfect? Hell no - Thank God!

To practice is to courageously, and with persistence figuring out what is right and then repeating it until it is habit....to go back to Aristotle. We are the things we repeatedly do. So only repeat the things you know are right, if they don't feel right, try something else, until it does.....then start repeating and be happier, richer and better looking:)

Next week: Practicing is hard because...