The following contains excerpts from the book, Atomic Habits (James Clear).
At our music school in Midland, Texas we believe that music is more than sound, it is relationships. At the foundational level of the subject of Leadership is how relationships work, and the first step to leading others well, through relationships is the ability to lead yourself well through personal discipline.
The author states his purpose for writing this book, “Small habits helped me fulfill my potential…The backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits – cue, craving, response, and reward – and the four laws of behavior change that evolve out of these steps.”
“It’s so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action…You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results…Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits…If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, all you have to do is follow the curve of tiny gains or tiny losses, and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line…It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes are delayed…habits need to persist long enough to break through…what I call the Plateau of Latent Potential…If you find yourself struggling…it is often because you have not yet crossed the Plateau of Latent Potential…Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored…All the action happens at thirty-two degrees…Mastery requires patience…All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision.”
One of the most important things we help students at our music school in Midland, Texas achieve is the ability to form good habits in their practicing. This also applies to the life-skill of learning how to identify and establish patterns of living that are effective.
“Forget about goals, focus on systems instead…Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results…Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress…Goals restrict your happiness. The implicit assumption behind any goal is this: ‘Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy.’ The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone…When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.”
We establish systems for our students to follow at our music school in Midland, Texas. We focus on core methodologies that are centuries old, while still applying them to teach students’ unique strengths and giftings.
“True behavior chance is identity change…your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity. What you do is an indication of the typed of person you believe that you are – either consciously or nonconsciously…The more deeply a thought or action is tied to your identity, the more difficult it is to change it…Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity…More precisely, your habits are how you embody your identity…in fact, the word identity was originally derived from the Latin words essentitas, which means being, and identidem, which means repeatedly. Your identity is literally your ‘repeated beingness…’ Each habit not only gets results but also teaches you something far more important: to trust yourself. You start to believe you can actually accomplish these things.”
It is this exact preceding statement that identifies our mindset at our music school in Midland, Texas. We help students gain ‘wins under their belt,’ when they succeed. They continue to gain more confidence as they apply daily disciplines of personal practice and learn to perform successfully.
According to Psychologist Edward Thorndike, “behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated.” As habits are created, the level of activity in the brain decreases…Habits are mental shortcuts learned from experience…Habit formation is incredibly useful because the conscious mind is the bottleneck of the brain. It can only pay attention to one problem at a time…Whenever possible, the conscious mind likes to pawn off tasks to the nonconscious mind to do automatically…Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks…Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. In fact, the people who don’t have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom…It’s only by making the fundamentals of life easier that you can create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity…Building habits in the present allows you to do more of what you want in the future.
Our goal for students at our music school in Midland, Texas is for them to easily engage in musical performance without having to exert conscious thought. This is possible, once they have established successful habits, formed through careful practice.
“The process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward…Your mind is continuously analyzing your internal and external environment for hints of where rewards are located. Because the cue is the first indication that we’re close to a reward, it naturally leads to a craving. Cravings are the second step, and they are the motivational force behind every habit…What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers…Every craving is linked to a desire to change your internal state…The third step is the response. The response is the actual habit you perform, which can take the form of a thought or an action…Finally, the response delivers a reward. Rewards are the end goal of every habit. The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward. We chase rewards because they serve two purposes: 1) they satisfy us and 2) they teach us…If a behavior is insufficient in any of the four stages, it will not become a habit. Eliminate the cue and your habit will never start. Reduce the craving and you won’t experience enough motivation to act. Make the behavior difficult and you won’t be able to do it. And if the reward fails to satisfy your desire, then you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future…We can split these four steps into two phases: the problem phase and the solution phase. The problem phase includes the cue and the craving, and it is when you realize that something needs to change. The solution phase includes the response and the reward, and it is when you take action and achieve the change you desire…All behavior is driven by the desire to solve a problem.”
Establishing good habits is foundational to successful music-making, and we help student at our music school in Midland, Texas grow skillful in how to establish these habits and to identify bad habits that may try to creep in, from time to time.