Why You Feel Better Emotionally When You Do This!

​Last week we discussed what type of environment we keep in our practice room/space in terms of putting and storing things in there and on our pianos that just don't belong in there. 

Laundry, unopened boxes, piles of paperwork and mail, are all things that we can end up placing in our practice rooms with the intention of getting to it later. The problem with that is, we can't practice until we get to these other things; at least not very successfully.

It's important not to just remove the clutter but also to look at what it might be saying to us in terms of how we are mentally and emotionally approaching our piano playing. 

There are certain questions that we can think about when we look at the physical condition of our practice room that will help us understand our thoughts about our music.

The main questions that we looked at last time were:

1. Are you avoiding practicing because you feel like you can't accomplish what you're working on? 
2. Are you frustrated with the specific music that you're working on and just don't like it?
3. Are you feeling overwhelmed because you have a piano lesson coming up and you aren't prepared for it?
4. Are you feeling stagnant in your growth and have lost some of your interest and passion?
5. Are you not seeing the results that you'd expected to see and have stopped trying?

All of these have to do with our emotional response to our piano playing journey. This is key.

Consider also, that most of these feelings/reactions that we have with our piano playing, we also have to other things in other areas in our lives. 

Avoidance, feeling overwhelmed, frustration, and having less passion about our piano playing is really the beginning of the "gathering of the clutter." While these feelings are all quite normal and a part of every pianists journey, they are teachers and opportunities for us to learn how to manage our "emotional responses" better and not allow them to take over. 

When any of these feelings start taking over; either one or several of them together, we are starting to just tread water instead of swimming towards our goal(s). 

When you start removing things from your practice area that don't have anything to do with your piano playing, you start to open up the possibility of overcoming, instead of feeling overwhelmed. 

• You might discover a new way of practicing that irritating passage that you still can't get even after weeks of practicing. 
• You might hear something new in that piece that you really don't like working on that makes you want to get back in there and get it finished. 
• You could find that you have extra time to get in some last minute practicing for your piano lesson. 
• You may sit down to a clean piano and start playing some jazz for the first time.
• You could also find a new "spark" towards your piano playing because the area is just so clean, fresh and calm.

All of these and an endless realm of possibilities and solutions are available to you as you start to remove the "dead weight" from your practice space. 

Do you notice how all of these results are connected with feelings of hope, positive self-esteem, doing, and succeeding? We affect our emotional state by changing our physical state. 

As you clean your practice area, take note of some of these feelings you might notice pretty quickly.

• Calm
• Peaceful
• Able to Breathe
• Focused
• Enabled
• Encouraged
• Hopeful
• Excited

So don't just look at the clutter in your practice room...listen to it.

You will always have the choice of how you want to respond to it. Just know, that when you deal with it one bit at a time, you are creating inside of you the room to overcome some of these challenges that we all have and face in all areas of our lives. It's never about self-judgement; it's more about "oh, let me see what's going on inside of me that is manifesting this way."

On top of all of that, you'll see really great strides in your practicing and performing because your practice area as it will be filled with only things that help you overcome, succeed, and achieve your dreams of playing the piano. 

Stay Tuned to PianoLessonsOnTheWeb.com to learn much more to help you in this goal!

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