Practice Tip: You Will Always Be Your Worst Critic - Make Sure You Are Also Your Own Best Friend

It can sometimes appear as though practice sessions are merely mental floggings and attacks on your ability to play and/or improve.  We all have good and bad days, but the bad days tend to stick with us more than the good.  On a bad day, it is easy to just get overly frustrated and decide, "Why do I bother? I am never going to get it anyway." or to pull out a piece we mastered years ago to boost our confidence.  While I am all for a confidence boost, or just reminding yourself that playing flute is fun, neither help you improve on whatever is your current woe.

Basically, although it isn't all that easy,  you have to face your problems directly in order to get better.  Numerous times in my blog posts I have said that "you are your worst critic" and it is so true.  But if you only ever rip yourself you won't improve either.  In my experience, negativity has never actually gotten me anywhere.  You have to balance out your negativity with some positive thoughts.  Be your own best friend.  Think about it, your best friend is open and honest with you, telling it "like it is," but they also are your biggest champions.  They will tell you all the great and wonderful things about you.  They are also your therapist.  You tell them about your problems and they immediately offer you possible solutions.  To improve, and to be able to stand practicing, you need to counter all of your "This went horribly. I sound gross.  I'm just playing notes; I'm not playing the music," with "This measure sounded much better.  I know exactly what I am trying to do here and I am doing it well." and "I can use rhythms to practice this measure and fix my uneven fingers.  I should listen to ::insert favorite flute players' names:: recording of this section to get inspiration for my interpretation."

If you record yourself playing, cough cough, it will be easier to hear all the good things that are happening in your playing.  I know that for me, if I don't record myself, I often get stuck on what is going wrong while I am playing and I don't even hear the good and therefore can't give myself a pat on the back at the end.  Yes, listening to yourself on a recording is painful (at first...maybe always), but recording yourself gives you the opportunity to listen as a pseudo-second party (distance is good when it comes to judgement).   Of course, it is still very much a first-person experience because you know it is you and you really care about your playing, but unless you can magically make a second you, this is the best option.

When you listen to yourself, write your thoughts down.  Try to start with the positive and for each negative write a possible practice solution.  If you only write critical thoughts without offering yourself some fixes, it's just a bunch of negativity.  The other bonus of writing things down is that you can remember what you are trying to work on every time you pull out a piece.  That's efficiency.  It makes it easier for you to be productive.  Furthermore, all the nice things you said about yourself are recorded to give you the confidence boost you need to begin a practice session if you are feeling anxious.

This post was inspired by reading Noa Kageyama's "Practicing Self-Compassion" article in The Flutist Quarterly v. 40.1.