Get motivated, stay motivated

One of the most important factors in your development as a musician is motivation. What makes you want to keep playing?

Whatever it is, you need to keep making it happen! It doesn't matter too much what motivates you. It might be the cheers of an appreciative audience, the satisfaction you get from learning a difficult piece of music, or the relief from stress that playing an instrument can bring. It doesn't matter.

What does matter is that you get motivated and stay motivated! Here are some tips to do both.

Get motivated

Who are you as a musician? (I wrote a post about that here.) Why do you want to learn music? Figure out what really drives you to learn music. Write it down if you need to, on a piece of paper, on your cell phone. Wherever it will remind you of why you're playing music.

Stay motivated

Sometimes the things we do in music don't seem really fun. A lot of students I teach don't really like practice, at least at first. The important thing to keep in mind is that you can change your mind about how you feel about things like practice.

Whenever the thought of doing something gets me down, whether it's practice, restringing my guitar, or anything else, I stop and ask myself, "Should I really be upset about this?" The answer is always no, and I remind myself that what I'm about to do will bring me closer to the fun part of music. Then I usually do whatever it is I planned on doing.

When I finish, I make sure to feel really good about doing it! I remind myself that I did a great job, and I also make sure that I notice that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be (it almost never is)!

You CAN enjoy practice (and other things that might seem "boring")...

I've found over time that these reminders have actually changed how I feel about things like practice, using the metronome, restringing my instruments, writing music. I genuinely enjoy doing all of these things.

If I get really down and find my motivation isn't what it should be, I sometimes stop and take a break. Sometimes I get back to it right away, sometimes I don't. But my general rule is: "Never completely give up. There's always tomorrow." And eventually I accomplish all of my musical goals.

Get motivated, stay motivated!

If you follow this advice, you should find staying motivated should not be a problem for you. You can learn to become more and more motivated with time and practice. Just keep at it!