Success! Overcoming Patience and Focus Issues in Music

[Mépris]

I am definitely blowing this out of proportion but it's a huge deal to me, considering patience and focus have always been problems for me. I get angry very rapidly but today, I stuck with it and kept on playing. It took me a few hours but I'm making some progress and boy does this feel good!

Once, somebody told me that the reason I barely ever feel satisfaction or happy with myself is because I never worked hard for anything. He was referring to school work but I can completely see how right he was then. Granted, all I pulled off today was ~45 *seconds* of an amazing musical piece but it feels awesome. If anyone would like to hear the original, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ9rbJcPyTA".

I am so glad I managed to do this today. It really showed me how to fix one of my biggest flaws. I have similar patience issues when I'm studying and I think that things are going to work out now.

At any rate, I just felt like sharing this with you guys. (:

 

[Monique]

Congrats! That's what it's all about: the rush when you finish/accomplish a task

 

[Dembadon]

I am definitely blowing this out of proportion but it's a huge deal to me, considering patience and focus have always been problems for me. I get angry very rapidly but today, I stuck with it and kept on playing. It took me a few hours but I'm making some progress and boy does this feel good!

Once, somebody told me that the reason I barely ever feel satisfaction or happy with myself is because I never worked hard for anything. He was referring to school work but I can completely see how right he was then. Granted, all I pulled off today was ~45 *seconds* of an amazing musical piece but it feels awesome. If anyone would like to hear the original, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ9rbJcPyTA".

I am so glad I managed to do this today. It really showed me how to fix one of my biggest flaws. I have similar patience issues when I'm studying and I think that things are going to work out now.

At any rate, I just felt like sharing this with you guys. (:

Congratulations!

I was talking to a friend the other day about this very thing. She's extremely artistic but hasn't painted in years. She said somewhere along the way she "lost the patience to see a piece through to the end." She doesn't have the time to finish one in one sitting, so she just doesn't paint. However extreme this might seem to someone who doesn't struggle in the same way, it's a very real issue for her. She mentioned a "fear of failure" as being a huge factor as well. In the end, she said the biggest hinderance to her artistic expression has been her struggle with lacking patience.

I think this is a big thing for you to notice and hope for many future victories.

 

[Mépris]

Thank you guys. :)

I was talking to a friend the other day about this very thing. She's extremely artistic but hasn't painted in years. She said somewhere along the way she "lost the patience to see a piece through to the end." She doesn't have the time to finish one in one sitting, so she just doesn't paint. However extreme this might seem to someone who doesn't struggle in the same way, it's a very real issue for her. She mentioned a "fear of failure" as being a huge factor as well. In the end, she said the biggest hinderance to her artistic expression has been her struggle with lacking patience.

I think this is also partly due to a sense of pride in the person. It's not a "fear" as much as it's a need for perfection, in my opinion. A "I'd rather *not* do it at all than not do it *right*" sentiment.

I was studying vectors a few minutes ago, doing something about planes. I was trying to verify if I had correctly understood the r.(i-hat)=d formula and was trying to derive it. At some point, I was faced with a (i-hat) [dot] (i-hat) and wasn't certain what to do with it. I was going to try work it out but I sneaked into my exercise book and saw that it was a given result and it equated to "one".

I decided to put away my need to work it out, finished the derivation I had started under the assumption that the given result was indeed, a correct one and only then did I start dealing with why the result is the way it is. Then just when I had reached a certain line of thought which would, I hoped then, lead me to a satisfying answer, I lost track of everything. Damn it! Anyway, I will google it and see what comes of it.

The key thing here is that focus is hard. And having some perfectionist tendencies does not make things much easier either! No one ever said it was going to be easy but this is something I didn't know of and I never imagined myself struggling. God, how complacent/arrogant that sounds. In any case, I found it fun and I'm starting to deal better with this problem. :)

Note: I'm not saying that this definitely applies for your friend; I don't even know her.

 

[chiro]

I am definitely blowing this out of proportion but it's a huge deal to me, considering patience and focus have always been problems for me. I get angry very rapidly but today, I stuck with it and kept on playing. It took me a few hours but I'm making some progress and boy does this feel good!

Once, somebody told me that the reason I barely ever feel satisfaction or happy with myself is because I never worked hard for anything. He was referring to school work but I can completely see how right he was then. Granted, all I pulled off today was ~45 *seconds* of an amazing musical piece but it feels awesome. If anyone would like to hear the original, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ9rbJcPyTA".

I am so glad I managed to do this today. It really showed me how to fix one of my biggest flaws. I have similar patience issues when I'm studying and I think that things are going to work out now.

At any rate, I just felt like sharing this with you guys. (:

Congrats Mepris.

Music is definitely something that will teach you patience. I play the guitar and it took ages for me to make sounds that sounded like music. The moment people stopped telling me to turn it down straight away was a good feeling ;)

Keep up the music: it will teach you routine, discipline, but more importantly I think it will make you happy. Also because it is a cumulative thing, you will find that with practice and application, you will do things that you never would have thought you could have done years ago, but things that would have seemed not that impressive months or weeks ago.

Kudos!

 

[Mépris]

Congrats Mepris.

Music is definitely something that will teach you patience. I play the guitar and it took ages for me to make sounds that sounded like music. The moment people stopped telling me to turn it down straight away was a good feeling ;)

Cool! What kind of stuff do you play? Do you play on an electric/acoustic?

It's easier to just drag my classical from under my bed and start playing and therefore, more often than not, I'm with this one, playing random stuff. I do, however, occasionally give the electric a spin. I think it's going to get out of its case more often now!

I have entry level guitars myself. The classical is an old Yamaha C-45 and the other is a GIO series Ibanez. It's nothing fancy but it sounds good enough for me.

Especially when I had just started, I too had people who told me to drop it. Even the day I got my guitar, somebody I know gave me a condescending look and said something along the lines of: "Er, yeah cool. And what do you expect to achieve with that? How is that going to be useful?" My memory could be playing tricks on me and the person might not have been as harsh as I make them out to be.

Keep up the music: it will teach you routine, discipline, but more importantly I think it will make you happy. Also because it is a cumulative thing, you will find that with practice and application, you will do things that you never would have thought you could have done years ago, but things that would have seemed not that impressive months or weeks ago.

Kudos!

:)

Yes, I definitely will continue. Perseverance is important and I really needed a reality check with regards to the "time frames". As you say, it's weeks, months and years. Not minutes!

I saw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHuzjbxDyrI" cover.

---

For the vectors thing, I figured it out. It would have came much easier if I had caved in and written it down. :P

I confused "unit vector" with something else, which is why none of it made any sense!

|i-hat| = (1^.5) = 1 = (i-hat).(i-hat)

YAY!

 

[MrNerd]

What is achievement without the pride to go with it? Reasonable pride, of course, not the pride where you act like an arrogant prick. Good job with your music.