Shayne HolzmanDo What You Love On Purpose
The book, In Tune: Music As The Bridge To Mindfulness, definitely strikes a harmonious chord, similar to when a song you like becomes “your” song. The book blends music and mindfulness together quite profoundly. Author Richard Wolf, explains the interconnections between music and mindfulness meditation. He explains that when we make music with an intention of making music for the fun of it without an intention or goal in mind, we become one with music in the moment. When we practice with setting goals and guidelines for us to reach an outcome, our practice can become hindered because we evaluate and attach guidelines in order to achieve what we have in mind. While reading a chapter in the book, I came to a huge realization that I have to stop analyzing how I’m going to practice and practice the action of practicing.
We Are Our Own Purpose
This book helped expand my perspective and helped me realize that maybe being happy is a purpose in itself. In doing so, it helped me discover my own purpose. I realized that if we practice with the intention of enjoying practicing in the moment, we have achieved a far more rewarding goal because we have actually sat down at the piano and begun practicing. All in all, the fact is, practicing a musical instrument is an intention in itself and the greatest intention in life is taking purposeful action. For instance, in order to practice and get good at life we don’t need to have a purpose in mind to guide ourselves, we are our own purpose. We are defined by what we do and when we take action in a positive and purposeful way, we improve. In other words, if we are our purpose we don’t need to analyze why we want to do something we enjoy. The same applies to meditation because if we don’t sit down and meditate we won’t get anything done. If we don’t sit down at the piano and practice we will not progress because we haven’t done anything. Reading this book helped me expand my purpose which is to be happy when practicing music. I learned that maybe if I practiced with the intention of enjoying it, I can have an easier time putting in the hard work. Maybe discovering what makes you happy is the road to realizes your own purpose.
Turning Inspirations Into Aspirations
For me, this book is extremely inspiring to read. My purpose for reading this book is to find a way to bring back the enjoyment in my own piano practice. For me, it would raise questions if I should do music or not because music starts with enjoyment and you only become serious about what you enjoy if you practice.
For instance, when we pick up an instrument and are forced to practice we end up not enjoying the instrument. But if we approach learning a musical instrument with enjoyment we will get much farther. I didn’t grow up being forced to practice piano, although, looking back I wish that when I was as a kid my parents didn’t let me quit because I love piano as an adult and it brings me so much joy. For many years, this has been my outlook when learning a musical instrument in general. Now that I know it’s important for me to first master practicing for the sake of enjoyment, I know that mastering the craft itself can come more effortlessly.
Motivation Happens When We Are In Motion
When you do something you enjoy, do you think about what motivates you to enjoy it? No, right? You just do it because you genuinely enjoy it. This is how we find enjoyment in aspects of life that may not be enjoyable. We attend to what we do with the intention of doing something and not thinking about how we are going to do it, we just simply: do it. This is what being smart about the choices you make in life looks like. You either do it or you don’t. So the next time you feel bogged down by not finding motivation, don’t try to find it, just do it.