Know Thyself

We've been establishing for the past few weeks that practicing can be a royal pain in the backside. Can you take it?

Practicing can also be pleasurable. But that depends on you. In order to make it that way you basically have to be expecting it to turn out that way.

The famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes frequently stunned his colleagues by finding evidence that they had no idea was even there. When asked, he simply said he found it "because I was looking for it."

On the other hand, many of us experience politics as a team sport. If the other side says something, we've already decided it's a dumb idea and we hate it before we've even bothered to learn about it.

I suppose all of this could just be a fancy way of saying we need an attitude adjustment. For instance, if somebody we like says the same exact "stupid" thing, we are more likely to go looking for a friendly way to interpret the words or even find profound meaning in them. We are "looking" for what we wish to find.

So yes, it helps if you are expecting practice to be enjoyable on some level. But more than that, you are going to be working with yourself, being both teacher and student, for some large period of time. It helps to develop a friendly working relationship! And beyond that, whether you have an experienced teacher who knows how to teach you to practice for all the days they are not there to run you through your paces themselves, how do you approach yourself? How do you deal with that unknown quantity that is your own jumble of psychological responses, desire, drives, avoidances, denials, motivations, pleasures, pains, good and bad memories--you, who ostensibly know yourself better than anybody, how do you get that person from point A to point B. What is it that you want, and how are you going to get yourself to achieve that?

This is where a real working knowledge of yourself could come in handy. I have found, working with students, that depending on my approach, much can be gained or lost. One moment I seem to have a really less-than-stellar student on my hands, and the next they can seem like a genius. What made them "get it" when I approached the subject one way as opposed to when I approached it the other? This requires real flexibility in teaching. And it isn't just limited to "teachers."

You've got six days between lessons (usually). That makes you the teacher. And the student. What are you made of?

We'll try to figure that out next week.