How To Hold Yourself to High Standards While Also Celebrating the Small Steps
At Music House, we hold our students to a high standard, while remaining nurturing and giving them room to grow. We love providing resources to our students and at-home teachers (you!) in order to work up to those standards. Sometimes we forget that by simply signing your child up for a new activity, YOU (the parent) are embarking on a new challenge yourself! This is your reminder to take it one day at a time! Support your child in working toward excellence, but be patient with yourself and don’t forget to celebrate the small victories! Here are some things to remember:
Remember that progress is not linear: We often expect that every day we show up, we’ll move forward, even just a little! What really happens can sometimes be more chaotic. We take a step forward, step back, leap forward, stay the same. Rather than watching the day-to-day trend, look for the overall progress! How can you do this? Record yourself and revisit it a month later. Or make a list of your long-term goals, and see if you’ve accomplished them 1 month, 3 months, even a year down the line! It’s important too to remember that as your skills progress, your ear or attention to detail also progresses. So even if you feel that you haven’t gotten any better, it may just be that you’re hearing or seeing things that you weren’t able to a month ago!
Set realistic goals: It can be tempting to start with massive goals! However, these can become de-motivating if you don’t see results right away, and it becomes much more likely that you eventually abandon them. Instead, make small realistic goals for yourself, and build from there. Rather than giving yourself a huge mountain to climb on day one, give yourself small, achievable steps, which will in the end lead you to the top a lot faster.
Feel what there is to feel: You may feel overwhelmed, tired, anxious, excited, motivated, unmotivated. Whatever it is that you are feeling, embrace it! Pushing feelings away will not make them go away.
Find your community: You are now part of a community of new artists who are going through the same challenges and successes as you! How can you find this community? Try to make a practice playdate with a new friend from class! And see what other opportunities there are at Music House for community-building ensembles in music, dance, and theater!
Work toward balance: You may feel fueled up and ready to hit the ground running right away. While this may feel great at first, over time you begin to lose stamina and eventually find that you are not working efficiently anymore. Starting off with the goal of maintaining balance- including fun, social time, relaxation time, and good sleep- will better equip you to keep your momentum for a more prolonged period of time!
Make room for supplemental fun!: While it is important to focus your practicing efforts on improving technique and skills in your chosen art form, it is also important to supplement that focused practice with some supplemental fun!- maybe you find a skilled musician or dancer on Youtube and watch a video of theirs once a week to gain some inspiration. Maybe you learn a fun dance that you see on Tiktok or learn to play a sing along song. Not only does this strengthen your overall relationship with your chosen art form, but it also gives you ownership of what you wish to explore creatively. As an artist, this is important terrain to explore as you continue to refine your own artistic presence.
