They say that 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail - ouch. But this time it’s different, right? This time you really want it to succeed, and you’re committed to making it happen…
But here’s the problem: Approaching something the same way that you always have will get you exactly the same results you’ve always gotten.
Here we are - looking in the rearview mirror at a year that most people would say that they’re glad to leave behind, and straight ahead is a whole new horizon of potential and possibilities. So, let’s make the most out of it. Let’s actually figure this whole New Year’s resolution thing out and create some meaningful change that’ll benefit your mental health, your physical health, your intellect, and your personal development.
Let’s learn an instrument.
Lucky for you, we’ve helped hundreds of people do just that. Here’s how we’d suggest going about your resolution to learn an instrument in a way that’ll give it the best shot of actually working…
1. Set stretching goals for yourself
Ambitious goals are fuel. They create a tension between where you are and where you want to be, and that tension - when considered regularly - will serve as motivation to take the necessary steps to get to where you want to be.
Pause right now and write down two things:
What do you want to accomplish musically?
What date do you want to accomplish that by?
2. Practice visualizing your goals
Currently, scientists estimate that about 95% of your brain activity is unconscious. That includes habits, automatic body functions, emotions, personality, creativity, beliefs and values, cognitive biases, and long-term memory.
Visualization is when you picture yourself at a specific place and time in the future vividly - specifically at the point of having already accomplished your goals. When you do so, you create a desire for and a belief in creating that reality, and it roots itself at the unconscious level.
Master practitioners of visualization are able to tap into much of their unconscious brain and use it to their advantage.
Look at the goals you wrote down earlier:
Write down the story of that day, using all of your senses. Start from when you woke up, and narrate the entire day - emphasizing your achievement of your goal, and how it felt to do so.
3. Love the process, not the result
In his best-selling book, Atomic Habits, James Clear emphasizes that the key to creating lasting change is not to focus on whether you’ve seen the results yet, but rather to fall in love with the consistent habitual behaviors that will ultimately accomplish those results.
We often expect to see results in proportion to our effort, but they do not usually progress at the same rate. While effort may be linear (30minutes of practice every day, etc.), results are often exponential, meaning you often will see minimal growth for awhile until eventually it compounds on itself and starts to really pay off.
This is what Clear defines as “The Plateau of Latent Potential”, illustrated like this:
Now that you’ve written your visualization of your goal, write down two things:
What are the regular behaviors needed to accomplish your goal?
When, where, and how are you going to incorporate those behaviors into your daily life?
4. Create accountability
Finally, it’s also very helpful to mobilize the innate human desire that you have to “do what you say you’re going to do.” Accountability accelerates your progress, keeps you engaged when you might otherwise become distracted, forces you to account for your actions, and (most importantly) accountability will validate your progress from someone who isn’t you.
So, if you’ve been doing the exercises above, think of someone who you’d like to share your ambition to learn a musical instrument with, tell them what you’ve written down, and ask them to check back in on your progress at a specific day and time in the future.
Private music teachers also provide excellent accountability, as long as they are high qualified and trained to do so. If you live in or around Indianapolis, check out Vibe Music Academy’s program for connecting students to excellent music teachers located all around town.
-John Gotsis, Founder & Owner at Vibe Music Academy
