Silencing The Complainer:
How Negative Thoughts Erode our Musical Ability, and How to Use Positive Mind to Build Confidence and Capability
We All Know the Complainer
We’ve all spent time with someone who finds the negative aspect in every situation. You’re in a glorious music jam, packed with great players, playing your favorite tunes. You feel like you’re about to ascend to a higher plane of reality. Then your companion whispers into your ear, “I wish this place had air conditioning!” Suddenly all you’re aware of is the heat, your sweaty fingers, and the fact that your bow is sliding sideways on the strings.
Listening to someone else complain can bring your mood down and even make you play more poorly. The same is true of our own negative thoughts. The tendency to focus on negative thoughts — what I call negative mind — is an extremely debilitating habit. The habit of negative mind will sap your energy and motivation, and will actually affect your creativity and your ability to play.
Negative mind is harmful, it’s subtle, and it’s sneaky. The flip side is: The work to minimize negative mind, and increase positive mind, will actually help us become better musicians.
The Subtlety of Negative Mind
We all experience negative thoughts. The mind has a natural tendency to get hooked on negative things, especially thoughts about ourselves: fears, self-doubt, self-criticism, shame, embarrassment, and more. Some people feel this more strongly than others but we all do it.
For every thought that you articulate, whether out loud or not, many, many others run through your mind. There are half-formed thoughts, things you notice and react to without even realizing it, emotional and physical associations, memories, fears, hopes, dreams and more.
Practicing Mindfulness to Develop Positive Mind
Some meditation teachers describe consciousness as a field, like the bed of the ocean, from which unformed ideas bubble up as words, images, or emotions, becoming more fully formed as they rise until they break the surface as conscious thoughts.
When you articulate a thought, especially out loud, it’s the result of all that putting-together. An important benefit of mindfulness practice is that we become aware of our thoughts at a deeper level of consciousness, often in this less-formed state. Mindfulness practice may be done sitting quietly (as with meditation) or simply by practicing awareness of one’s thoughts during daily life.
This practice can be very enlightening! Perceiving how our thoughts coalesce, and realizing we have some agency in deciding which thoughts gain priority, can really change our attitude to ourselves and our playing.
Put It into Practice: Flipping the Script
When you begin to think negatively about your situation, your thoughts can start to spiral downward. Let’s say I make a mistake in a performance. I focus on the mistake. Before I’m even aware of it, my mind is tumbling, gathering an avalanche of negative mind: fearing I’ll make another mistake, thinking that I didn’t really prepare well, I wore the wrong shoes, this audience doesn’t like this kind of music, everyone knows I’m a fake, I’m not really any good.
My attention has drifted far from the music. Of course this will affect my performance! If, instead, I consciously decide to let go of the mistake, I can work to bring my mind back to the present, and to my playing.
To do this, it’s effective to focus on something physical rather than trying to change your thought pattern. I find my center (by imagining a physical center of my body just below my navel), lengthen my spine, open my chest, breathe, and listen. This approach always brings immediate, positive results.
I am sure you can conjure up examples of “negative mind death spirals,” from your own experience. Don’t wait until you’re in a concert situation, though. Work on building positive mind every day as you practice!
Here are a few chapters in Best Practice where you’ll find more about positive mind:
6 — I Will Sound Good
74 — Discernment vs. Criticism
33 — Subtle Thoughts
66 — M Is for Mindfulness Practice
154 — Personal, Pervasive, Permanent
Appendix D — Four Basic Principles
Judy Minot is a musician, teacher, and the author of the book Best Practice: Inspiration and Ideas for Traditional Musicians.
Judy has played and practiced piano since she could reach the keys, training in classical playing until age 16. She now plays traditional music in various settings on a number of instruments, and gives workshops and classes on Best Practice ideas all over the U.S. and virtually.
Judy spent her working life in broadcast television and digital marketing. She holds a 4th degree black belt in the martial art of Kokikai Aikido and is a certified yoga teacher.
For more information visit: www.judyminot.com/bestpractice
