From the time I can remember, I always loved music. In fact my earliest memory must be from when I was four years old, and I used to go to my maternal grandmother’s house every afternoon. She had a beautiful old piano, with a walnut cabinet and brass candelabra (which had gone by the wayside at some point in its history). No-one knew how old it was. Rumor had it that it was about 90 years old. It had been taken to my Nanna’s house on a bullock dray, and the journey must not have been without mishap, because there were a few scratches on the cabinet and one of the keys had a deep crack in it.
I loved that piano. I remember learning to play “Twinkle Twinkle” while sitting on Nanna’s lap. I learnt to start on the key with the scratch in it, so it was easy. And I would sit for hours, sometimes with my Nanna, and sometimes on my own, picking out songs. Eventually, I had proper lessons with a local lady called Mrs Vanderwolf. She was the best teacher. Always so calm and quiet. Learning to read music opened a whole new world to me, and I loved to sit in her music room with the afternoon sun streaming in, learning new pieces and enjoying the smells of her family dinner cooking wafting underneath the door.
The walnut piano was subjected to another move. My nanna gave it to me, and it became a fixture in my bedroom. When I sat at the piano and played, everything was good in my world. I was no Liberace, but that didn’t matter. I took every moment I could to do what I loved to my marrow. I always felt peaceful and centred after I had played, and I know that being able to retreat to the keyboard played a huge part in getting through my major school exams well.
As I got older, I started lessons with a teacher at my school, who was renowned for her teaching methods. She had been trained herself at Trinity College in London (very prestigeous), and back then, my parents paid an absolute fortune for me to have lessons with her.
She started the process by taking the music away from me (I couldn’t play from memory), because she told me I would never be a proper musician if I could not play from memory. She was probably right, I don’t know. But what I do know is that immediately, music stopped being fun, and started being stressful. I could not remember the music without the manuscript in front of me. So she used her own brand of discipline to “encourage” me to remember. This consisted of sharp raps over the knuckles with the edge of a steel ruler.
I’m no rocket scientist, but I am fairly sure that inflicting pain on someone is not terribly likely to help them relax and concentrate. And she kept saying to me, “you have to focus on your weaknesses as a priority”.
I tried, I really did. But the entire process had completely lost its gloss for me. It was mandatory for her students to perform publically, and to compete in eistedfodds from memory. I have terrible memories of sitting on the stage at one particular competition, paralyzed with fear and unable to even start because I could not remember the first note.
I dreaded my lessons, and even stopped practicing. As it became clear that my memory work had not improved one iota, she eventually told me that I was never going to be a good musician, and that I was wasting her “valuable time”. It was more than my fragile adolescent self esteem could take, and I was such a “pleaser” that I hated the thought of wasting her time.
So after ten years, I quit.
I did come back to it as an adult, and found my love for it again. And when I started my own teaching practice some years later, I had a very strong emphasis on fun in my classes. But that is not what this story is about.
As we grow up, we are constantly told that we have to work on our weaknesses and improve. And I must say, I have to disagree. Now, I don’t mean that if you struggle to understand maths, you should just give up and watch TV instead. Knowing basic maths is an important life skill, but complex algebra is not everyone’s thing, and most people would say that they did not enjoy learning it, because they could not relate it to any other part of their life.
I think it is true to say that our weaknesses are usually embodied in activities that we don’t particularly enjoy. You don’t have to be too smart to figure out that if you love something, you are more inclined to do a lot of it, and therefore with practice, you are more likely to master it at a higher level. When we are good at certain things, it is incredibly rewarding for us to do them. Great for our self esteem that we have mastered them, and for our ego that we can perform at a higher level. And the reverse is true of our weaknesses. We tend to avoid the activities we don’t enjoy, and are not good at.
I believe that when we try and focus on our weaknesses, we dilute our strengths, and rather than excel in one area, we become mediocre at everything.
As this relates to your business, what are the aspects of it you really enjoy, and feel you have a strength for? What are the bits your really don’t enjoy, and in fact avoid? I encourage you to sit down and appraise your business in the context of your own skill set, and when you plan and move forward, play to your strengths.
When you are first getting started, understand that you will need to have a grasp of all aspects of what this business entails before you can make this call. But it will become clear to you fairly quickly, if you really connect yourself to this process.
There are so many outsourcing solutions out there to pick up the slack and handle the aspects of your business you don’t enjoy, and struggle with. Engaging in a war with yourself in the name of “improving your weaknesses” is soul destroying. You will find yourself locked into a mindset that is punitive and counter productive. And all of a sudden, your business becomes a punishment, rather than a joy. This is a lifestyle business, if you choose to operate it that way. It is a place where you can explore your creativity, and put the skills you love and are good at into action every day to move you forward.
Make today a great one.
Cheers,
Tan
