Piano Lessons, Jealously, and Fighting For Your Goals

I remember sitting in front of my mother’s maroon piano.  Seconds seem like hours and hours seem like days.  “Practice,” yelled my grandmother from the other room.  Thus, I commenced to play Schubert, Chopin and Mozart.  Wishing I was outside at the same time.

 

The experience; to sum it up – I hated it!

 

I didn’t like the piano, I didn’t like practicing the piano, and I had stopped wanting to learn after the first month I got started.  Piano lessons were like quarter machine gum: after a few chews, the sugar was out and I just wanted to throw the shit away.    But week after week I was whisked to my lessons until my grandfather finally gave up.

 

“Yahhhhhhh”  lol

 

But I’ll tell you what I hated the most: I couldn’t play music “by ear.”  By the time I was fifteen, I knew other kids that were musically inclined.  Kids who never had real lessons, could hear a song on the radio and just start playing.  I hated that – I wanted that to be me.

 

However, this proved to be a valuable precursor to many of my life’s experiences.

 

I struggled at math and could not understand how someone could be “naturally” be good at math!  When I got to college, I found myself “naturally” good at writing.  Other classmates in comp class found my knack for being a wordsmith amazing!

 

Let’s fast-forward a little more.  When I worked at Enterprise Rent-A-Car; I had coworkers that could naturally “sell” and those who couldn’t.  When I started my photo biz, I met photographers who obtained the photography skills part easily, but could not get a good grasp on the business part.  I met other photographers who were master business gurus; but struggled to learn the camera.

 

And of course, this leads me to health and fitness.  All of us know people who have to do very little in the gym to maintain a good physique.  We also know people who work their asses off and have to fight for every ounce of muscle gained and fat lost. 

 

And this is the point.  You shouldn’t ever, ever, ever concern yourself with the progress or qualities of someone else. 

 

Yeah, you have to work harder in the gym than the person holding the barbell next to you.  So what?  How is that benefiting or hindering you?

 

How cares if your associate’s parents gave him start-up money for his business and you had to use credit cards to finance yours.  So what?  How is that benefiting or hindering you?

 

All this means is that you’re going to have to work.  Work harder in the classroom, the gym, and everywhere else.

 

Don’t get me wrong – it’s nothing wrong with “paying attention” to what the other person is doing.  However, spending valuable brainpower on hatting on that person’s genetics, or natural gifts in the shared field will keep you mentally and physically trapped in the basement of your mind.

 


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