vs.
Let’s improve in these specific ways
Be Better is just too much to wake up with everyday. It’s the kind of mantra that when you wake up at eighty years old you’ll believe you haven’t done anything with your life because you haven’t done everything.
While it’s true we can all be better…the idea only truly becomes helpful when we wrap it with specifics.
If you stand perfectly still at the mic and sing the first five songs and then at the beginning of the sixth you take one step to the right…everyone will notice. Something is happening. Why now? What’s next? They might even cheer for that step.
The power of a single step. One step changes the context, changes the mood, changes expectations, changes proximity.
You’re probably going to take more than one step when you get on stage…but if one step is all that is required to make a difference, be sure you’re making a difference if you’re taking more steps.
What would you draw on a blank piece of paper if you knew you were going to throw it away immediately afterwards?
The trick part of the question isn’t about what object you would draw…the trick part is that you would, in fact, draw.
You know it’s going in the garbage. All outside judgement is gone. Draw something and throw it away.
Do that a hundred times and maybe you’ll start forgetting to throw it away…maybe you won’t feel the need to throw it away…maybe you’ll have the desire to show someone…and now you’re off to the races.
We’ve gotten really good at anticipation but have a harder time with the celebration.
The eve is the time just before the thing…and so we get to fill in whatever story we want about how it’s going to go. But for the actual celebration we have to deal with reality, how it is.
We’ll get better at the celebration the more we practice.
One of the best things music can do, whether listening or making, is to make us feel less lonely.
And feeling less lonely is perhaps a synonym for hope. And when there is hope the whole world opens up, the room is lifted, the air is different…and while circumstances might remain the same, our spirit changes.