Lesson 1: Getting Started (and Starting Over)

One of the hardest things to do in life is to start something new, or to start over after an extended layoff. Whether its a musical instrument, education, fitness, even laundry(!), starting always seems more difficult than the problem itself.

Why is this so hard? Pride. Every person has personal pride that defines to them (and in their mind, to others) who they are. Some people are very prideful, even overly so. Some are nearly prideless. However, all people have a picture of themselves in their mind that they strive to live up to.

As such, each of these people deal with conflict differently. Prideful people (lions) tell themselves and others that they have complete control of the situation. Prideless people (turtles) do everything they can to find a reason to give up (hide in their shell). However, neither of these two are right, and neither is wrong. They are simply two different ways of approaching the same problem.

Now mind you, there are very few people that embody only one of these extremes. Almost everyone has a little lion and turtle in them. Whats important is to understand how to use these traits to your advantage. A lion will take on a problem at the head, whereas a turtle will hide in its shell and hope for the problem to solve itself. While it seems like the lion is the more advantaged of the two, in fact neither is better off than the other. Most likely, the lion will approach the situation without any forethought, and the turtle will not approach the problem at all. Neither has much of a chance of finding a solution to their dilemma.

What the lion and the turtle need to do is combine their best traits. The lion's is fearlessness; the enormity of the problem does not phase the lion. The turles best trait is patience; it will wait as long as it needs to for the situation to get better. When starting anew, you need to be both fearless and patient. Why? Because, at the start, it never goes how you planned. If you are not fearless, the ammount of work you need to put into it will surely scare you away. If you are not patient, you will never make it through the first stages of learning (or re-learning as the case may be) the skill you had originally desired.

This may seem trivial, but it is far from it. I like to use the example of Legos (bear with me!). When you go through the toy section of a store, you see these Lego toys that look just endlessly complex. Castles, rocket ships, space stations, and whatever else they have. Any yet, any 7+ year old kid can build them using legos. Why? Because all that Legos are, are small plastic blocks that lock together. But, when a kid is building his dream castle with these Legos, he can see the castle in his mind. With each addition of another block, he sees it one step closer to completion. And, after some time, the length of which depends on how many TV and snack breaks the kid takes, the castle is complete and the black knight can proceed in trying to conquer over the helpless peasants!

This is an example of the mindset that is required at the beginning of any project, including the fiddle. When taking on a new concept, technique, tune, etc, see it as one of those Lego blocks. Your ability to play music is your castle, and if you wish, you can continue to build higher and higher. Any size castle will do, so long as you're happy with it, but always visualize in your head your completed castle, rather than only see the few blocks you have scattered across the floor.

In conclusion, keep in mind these concepts, when surfing through the content on this site, and really when doing anything. Patience and courage are your tools, go build your castle...bkc