On Wednesday 1/20/21an International At A Distance Guitar Course began that I am participating in. My commitment to my guitar practice for the duration through 2/28/21 is to practice 2 hours per day. Normally this is not a problem for me.
But today … I practiced an hour in the morning. It was good. Then some important tasks needed to be addressed. Which of course took longer than expected. A wonderful walk with family for a couple hours. A nap. Dinner. Then my regular commitment to practicing with the Washington Mindfulness Community. Suddenly it is 8pm. I’m tired. And I still need to honor the other hour of practice. The resistance began rationalizing. For the first 20 minutes my practice was great. Moving forward on learning the ending of When Am I?, the guitar was sounding great. Pride swelled a bit at my tenacity of putting in my other hour. A short break and then the middle hit. Negative thoughts, poor execution of the notes and on and on.
Experience told me to simply persist. While being gentle with myself I knew the middle would pass and it did. Normally I do not practice when I’m this tired, but the practice of honoring commitments is vital to success.
As the Guitar Craft aphorism states: With commitment all the rules change.
Photo by Tim
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