Thoughts from a recovering perfectionist: don’t forget the good when you critique yourself

When someone asks you to reflect on a performance or playing in a lesson or practice or rehearsal - you go straight to what can be improved, right? It feels so weird, maybe a little boastful to mention anything you liked about whatever the situation was, right?

As musicians, we get so caught up in trying to strive for improvement, and get to the next level, we so often forget to celebrate the little wins or acknowledge what went well - what got us to that next level from even 20 minutes ago. What we see most often is the “needs improvement” collection in our practice, instead of the “oh yeah, I liked that” or “that specific thing went well” - because critiquing and improvement are what’s expected. Then we take the “needs improvement” and we improve them, and then carry on to the next round of “needs improvement” and so on. We often end up not even acknowledging what actually went well.

I make it a habit to also acknowledge the things that have improved, worked, and the things that I personally enjoyed about something I played when I’m doing the self-reflection and critique. And all too often, I ask students to reflect on something they play in a lesson, and finding something that they liked about it is so difficult, but they’re always quick to find what went wrong or something they didn’t like - even if I have a long list of what I thought was good.

A recent conversation led to this revelation:

We don’t get to the next level unless something good happens - acknowledge it.

To elaborate, for ourselves to consider that we’ve improved upon something, there has to be something that we did that was good and that we liked, right? If all there is in our playing is stuff we don’t like - first, why are we doing it? Even if we don’t improve, if all there is is stuff we don’t like - why are we doing it? The good thing can even be “I had fun.” Second, what caused us to improve if nothing went well? If nothing fits into the “I liked this” category - then how are we on level 4 of this game? How did we get here?

Perhaps next time you have a practice session, along with finding your “needs improvement” list, pick out a one or two wins to celebrate. How does that feel?

If you’re looking for a flute teacher, wanting to try music lessons, or looking to add more tools and mindfulness to your practice I have space available in my online studio. I have a lot of options to choose from, so if you’d like to work with me, but would like to chat about your interests and goals, let me know by clicking here and we can see what’s a right fit for you.

And as always, keep going. You’ll get there.

You’re doing great.