Kotsu Kotsu

At this time of year everyone's thinking about how to "be better" next year. Here's my thought: So many of us want so badly to be better at something (musicians, aikidoka, life partners, parents...) but if we can't look at our mistakes straightforwardly, we can never identify the steps needed to change. If we want to change, the most important step is to admit we made a mistake. I think it's hard for us to admit mistakes because deep down most of us  think we suck . If we admit to a mistake, it just proves the fact. But this doesn't make sense, does it? If I think I'm bad, I should be happy to improve, right? For some reason, though, admitting a particular mistake is much more challenging than carrying the subconscious burden of "not measuring up." It doesn't matter if it's realizing I'm having a hard time with a particular set of chord changes, or admitting that I actually do text while I drive and it's dangerou...

In Aikido practice,  I often see a less experienced student "correct" an experienced student. I'm sure these people genuinely feel they're offering something of value. But it's inappropriate, incorrect and detrimental to your own progress to correct people who've been practicing longer than you. A while ago someone asked  Cecelia Ricciotti  (7th dan), "What do I do if I'm working with someone who has more experience, and they just plain out-and-out are doing it wrong?" "Well," she said, "You have to make a decision: Do you want to take on the role of teacher? Or do you want to continue to be a student?" 7 Reasons Not To Correct Your (More Experienced) Partner In Aikido Respecting each other is one of the most important parts of our practice. You demonstrate respect for someone who has more training than you by listening to what they have to teach you. Especially if you disagree with them, it's a great opportunity...

Weirdly, sometimes when you stop fighting back, It's easier to get what you want In Kokikai Aikido we often say that when practicing, the more you encounter resistance, the more you have to relax. When an attacker feels you resisting, they fight you even harder, hold you even tighter.  Your own resistance acts like brambles clogging a path. They cling and slow you down. To get where you want to go, you have to clear them away.  It takes a big leap of faith to  believe  that we can really defeat an attacker by using  less muscle . We say we believe it, but when the time comes to do it, our brains just seem wired to the idea that tensing our muscles will work. An  aikido technique comes to mind. Called ryote tori kokyunage saio undo, i t starts with the attacker grabbing one arm with both hands. As you can imagine, it's very hard to move your arm when someone is grabbing it with two hands. I'm not tall or particularly athletic. In addition to ...

Joshua Foer , author of Moonwalking with Einstein, gave a  talk on 99u  about the techniques that experts use to become great at what they do. As a martial artist and musician, I'm always looking for ways to improve and to practice more efficiently. The OK Plateau In 1967 a much-cited textbook  was written about how people acquire skills. The authors said that we go through three phases. Think of the way we learn to ride a bicycle, learn to type, or drive: Cognitive Phase - We devote a lot of mental energy to the skill, thinking about the tasks, discovering new ways to do better Associative Phase - We start to feel that we're improving, we make fewer errors Autonomous Phase - This is when we decide we're competent. We "turn on autopilot," doing a lot of the tasks without a lot of cognitive thought.  Foer calls the third phase "The OK Plateau." It's fine to reach a plateau when I'm OK at typing or driving, but not when I'm practi...

As we achieve a certain level of accomplishment, the details that we focus on in practice become more and more subtle. It can be hard to stay motivated to practice, because it's harder and harder to see results. When I was a kid my piano teacher put gold stars on my music in every lesson. Where are my gold stars now??? I asked my piano teacher, Dave Leonhardt , about this. Here's a list of his ideas and mine. Keep a note pad, and write down something you did well.  Record/videotape yourself. Study your recording. After I get over the initial "cringe factor," recordings are some of my most valuable tools. And if you keep them organized, you can compare old and new, to get perfect snapshot of your progress. At the beginning of your practice session, make a point of noticing how you are playing something you set out to practice. Then notice how you do it at the end.  Take notes of what you're working on every week. If you feel you're not making progre...

As an aikido teacher , there's nothing worse than hearing a student say, " Yeah, but ..." or obviously dismiss the idea I'm trying to convey.  Sometimes they say something, sometime they just look at me funny. When they do say something, it's usually something like this: I don't really think that will work.  I've done it differently with another instructor.  I'm not able to do that.  I already know that. Now, it makes sense that the best way to learn new things is to be open to new ideas . So why are we often so resistant when someone makes the effort to help us? It's especially illogical when we actually came to a class to be taught, to then resist the teaching!  I am not immune to this reaction, myself. Both in piano lessons and in aikido seminars I often catch myself on the point of saying (or thinking), "Yeah, but..." Where does it come from? Do I need the teacher to acknowledge that I "know something"? Is it h...

My piano teacher told me to mark the parts of the music that were hardest with a highlighter, and, when I'm practicing, practice those parts first, skipping past the parts that are easy. This of course makes perfect sense. But it's not what I want to do. I want to play the parts that are comfortable, that sound good, that are easy. I play them great, and when I get to the hard part, I fumble through it and then go back to the easy part. My overall impression is "I played that pretty well, except for a little bit here and there." But unless I pay attention, I won't actually work on that "little bit here and there." I attended a music workshop, and one participant asked the leader "How can you possibly do such-and-such?" The workshop leader said, "You are having trouble because your fourth finger is weak. You have to practice playing slowly and evenly to build up strength and get good habits." "It's always like that,...

Recently I received some good advice on practicing the piano. I've started thinking differently about how I work on things that I want to get better at, with the idea that I can accept progress, even if it's not perfection, and move on. This goes somewhat against my nature, which is to be doggedly determined to get things "just so." That's probably been a good thing for me in some respects, but it can also be a burden. No matter how much I've worked, no matter how far I've come, my inner voice always tells me that it's not good enough. Having had a close relative whose life was almost overtaken by her obsessive-compulsive disorders, I've been alerted to the fact that this tendency, left to its own devices, gets worse over time. The little voice that wants things to be better is only trying to help, but I want a balance that allows me to appreciate right here, right now. So, I've taken a new mantra, which I repeat to myself throughout m...