Kotsu Kotsu

My husband teaches computer science, and he says it surprises his students when he teaches them to expect failure . He says students are not used to failing. In high school teachers focus on their successes amd they're given lots of encouragement. But when you're doing something you've never done before, you're going to fail and fail until you do it right, and then you'll move on. If you're doing something no one has done before, you'll fail even more before you succeed. In the end, you'll have lots more failures under your belt than successes. In my husband's opinion, if his students are not failing a lot, they're not trying hard enough. One day I commented to my piano teacher that I was finally starting to enjoy the sound of my own playing. "Don't get too used to that!" he said sardonically.  His explanation described essentially the same idea: if we're working to achieve mastery, we're doing something that most

I'm a pianist and I practice the martial art of  Kokikai Aikido . Lately I've been working on speeding up. Part I - Music Usually I'll practice a tune till it sounds great when I play it slowly. Then I turn up the metronome. As soon as I do that I can feel my shoulders getting tense, I can't hit any of the notes, I forget what I'm doing and everything sounds like h*ll. I've come to realize that what's holding me up is not lack of technical ability, but my own mind. My brain is stuck in "slow mode." I'm used to hearing the music slower in my head. So when I play fast, it feels like I'm always trying to catch up. My brain is a half step behind what my fingers are doing. I realized that instead of just going "faster," I have to think "sooner." I have to think ahead , and then I'll be ready to move my fingers at the right time. I can tell you that takes a lot of attention to do that. My brain constantly wa