|
Hey — your weekly Rx. No filler, I promise.
Words Worth Keeping
"Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly."
— Unknown
They botched the foundation more than 800 years ago. Now millions of people fly in just to photograph the mistake.
This Week
No LA Phil for me this week — I'm up in Napa mentoring young players at Festival Napa Valley. Some of my favorite work all year. And it reminds me of the same thing I see in nearly every musician I coach, at every level: they're terrified of making a mistake. So they won't fully commit. They tiptoe. Everything comes out careful and tight and half-dead, because playing it safe feels safer than actually playing. But nobody on an audition panel has ever fallen in love with careful. The player who goes for it and misses a note beats the one who's still home polishing to a shine. Every single time. Safe doesn't win. Safe just loses quietly.
The Prescription
Haven't read Bob Rotella's Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect? Read it. Yes, it's about golf. Get over it — the title alone is worth the cover price.
Rotella coaches the best players in the world, and his message is blunt: chasing perfect is what wrecks you. The player who steps up, commits, and misses actually learns something. The one who waits for flawless conditions never steps up at all. Perfect isn't a standard. It's a stall with better PR.
Here's how it hits a musician. Perfectionism feels like discipline. Most of the time it's just fear in a nicer coat — a great excuse to keep your playing safe in the practice room instead of out in the world where somebody might hear it and judge it. But nobody ever got better hiding in the waiting room. You get better by doing the thing badly today, then a little less badly tomorrow. The sloppy rep beats the flawless plan every time.
Do the thing badly. That still beats nothing done perfectly.
Happy practicing,
Chris @ Honesty Pill Coaching
Something land? Something miss? Hit reply. I read them.
| 
