Practice only makes of you what you make of it.
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“Practice makes perfect.” ~Every Mom, Dad, Coach, and Boss you’ve ever had
I remember sitting at the keyboard of the old upright piano my grandmother bought for me. The space between my shoulder blades would be stretched into a line of fire and my short fingers with their badly bitten nails would be spread as far from each other as they could go, and my mother would say, “Five more minutes, Dixie. Practice makes perfect you know.”
Practice never made me perfect, but it made me better. I didn’t mind the line of fire or the tingle in the webbing of between my thumb and first finger because I could do it, I could just make the octave argeggio. It wasn’t perfectly smooth, but it hadn’t even been possible the week before.
But what if I had practiced it the way I first played it? If I had practiced what I was doing, I wouldn’t have ever had the thrill of performing that piece, and the more difficult pieces that followed.
Is your practice perfecting your performance or your problem?
Today my little spinet sits mostly untouched, my old sheet music hidden in the bench. My practice now is in other areas, communication, interpretation, hearing what wasn’t said, saying or writing what needs to be said, unveiling for others the truths they have been longing to say, and giving them the space to say it. My inner ear can hear things now that I would have been deaf to even a year ago. My voice can express things now I could not put in words that even I would understand a year ago. And I can support other voices in ways that I could not have imagined even a few months ago.
Not because I practiced. Because I stretched.
If I had practiced what I was doing, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now.
Practice makes perfect only if your practice is based on continual improvement.
And only if you believe in “perfect.”
Read More Inspiration Unpacked on The Good Men Project
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Photo: Flickr/Torrey Wiley