Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Replacing Bad Habits With Good Ones

I was reminded recently of something I heard a while ago about habits.  If you're going to break a bad habit, you need to replace it with a good habit or you are doomed to fall back into the bad habit you're trying to break.  Also, you should devote a certain amount of time at the same time every day to your new habit for at least 21 days to make it stick.  I have been trying to replace bad habits with a good one: Daily practice on the piano.  I have found, though, that since I haven't devoted the same amount of time during the same time of day each day to my endeavor, that I have had trouble here and there sticking to my daily routine.  In fact, if you have been following me, you have seen me have departures from my practicing several times already.  What I really need to do is sit down and tell myself that I WILL practice at a specific time EACH day and I WILL practice for AT LEAST one hour.  So, here it goes: The only time of the day that I can have complete isolation for practicing is before 8:00 every morning.  My aim is to practice between 6:30 and 7:30 every day.  If I can accomplish this for at least 21 days, I should have a new and very good habit formed.  I will be sure to tweet about my daily progress and will occasionally make remarks on the blog about how I'm doing with this new, stricter way of approaching practice.  The rough edges will definitely fall off the pieces I have already completed (see Youtube) if I can stick this out!  Clair de lune will undoubtedly be complete in 30 days or less as well if I can just make myself stick to this schedule!

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