3 ways to focus on process and not result as a classical musician

James Clear has a great quote: “Unheroic days can make for heroic decades.”

Every day as a musician can feel like such a minimal push to achieving your goals. It feels like you need to do MORE. You need to be heroic, every day. Sometimes, it feels like progress is so freaking slow, it is non existent. It’s up and down. There are highs and lows. It’s frustrating. It can be hard to put in perspective how it is all adding up.

But question for you… how would your relationship to practice and performance change if your goal shifted from the specific to the process itself? What if your reward was just showing up?

Sure, it’s nice to nail the competition, win the thing, get into the school. And it’s imperative to have goals. But developing a healthy relationship with the process is more important.

Let’s explore it in the blog post today! 3 ways to focus on the process and not the result

1. Instead of making your goal something finite like “win the audition”,  make your goal the ACTION that is going to get you there. “Practice consistently for 30 days.” Being much more specific guides us, and focusing on the action instead of the result of a total game changer. We always say, the result isn’t your business right now! Sure, acknowledge the big goal! Hold it close. Then, release it and trust the actions that will get you there.
2. Focus on happiness and health NOW - not when you reach the goal. The happier and healthier you are, the easier it is to reach ANY goal. But, when we put our happiness on the back burner because we think that end goal will miraculously make us happier and healthy again, we’re toast. The process of achieving a goal involves prioritizing our health and sanity….
3. Embrace the fact that the destination may be finite but how you get there may need to remain very flexible. When we say focus on process, something people don’t often leave space for is changing the process as they go! They think if they don’t do XY and Z, they’re doomed, and they give up altogether. But readjusting, recovering, leaving space for unheroic days… waking up every day and having the goal be “try again” - THAT is the tenacity that will get you to where you want to go.

You’re successful if you do the work. Not once every 12 weeks when you get an A on a jury, or win the audition, or get to the finish line. That’s the icing on the cake. The real success, the truly heroic action? Facing the world again each day with consistent actions no matter what happened yesterday, recovering when you fall, and showing up.

Cheering for you always! 

Want more? Check out our 5 Areas of your Musical Life to Work on RIGHT now!