My parents were quite frankly, the best parents. Ever.

I know, I know. You think yours were too – and you are probably right. But in the world of Lauren (and my brother and sister), mine were the best.

Bless their hearts, they tried their hardest to get me to like sports: soccer, swimming, synchronized swimming, diving, tennis, golf, skiing.

Their rule was that I had to at least try it out and give it a good shot. If I really didn’t like it, I could stop.

As a child, I was not a fan of any kind of sweating. Or getting dirty. Or anything that didn’t involve my little pony. Or any kind of doll. Except for G-I Jo. Ick. Those were for boys. Duh.

I was a dresses, tea parties and pearls kind of chick pretty much right out of the womb.

On the soccer field, I was the bane of everyone’s existence. The coach thought I would make a good defense, probably because he knew there was no way I was going to run, rendering me a useless forward. He was right: I wouldn’t run. In fact, I downright refused to. But he underestimated me: I wasn’t even willing to play. Period. When the girls would come barreling at me at 40 miles an hour with a dangerous weapon at their feet (otherwise known as a soccer ball), aiming at the net behind me, I inevitably made a calculated choice: it was me or the ball (and arguably, the goalie). I chose me every time, and would step aside and let the girl pass.

I was only 7, so in all likelihood, the girl was probably 3 feet tall and going about 2 miles per hour. Yet as far as I was concerned, she was a freight train and I wasn’t about to put my life at stake trying to stop her.

After 2 seasons of soccer, my parents finally relented and let me quit (I think they were tired of all the parents glaring at them during our games). They also let me quit golf…and swimming….and diving….and tennis….and everything else that made me sweat.

(My 7 year old self would be appalled at this 31 year old version: as I type, my hair is caked with sweat and my workout pants are dusted with the dirt from my morning trail run. Oh, how things have changed.)

But there were 2 things my parents outright refused to let me quit:

Downhill skiing and piano lessons.

Thanks to them, I can rip down a mountain with the best of them (well, almost: I’m still a little too cautious for my own good – or in spite of it), and I’m proud to say I’ve played the piano for over 25 years. I started at the ripe old age of 5, and made my way through all the levels of The Royal Conservatory of Music until I stopped taking lessons at the age of 16.

I stopped playing for a few years, but I’m happy to say that I picked it up again in the last month. Now I’m playing every day, practicing the same way I used to when I was actively taking lessons (only this time my mom isn’t locking me in the piano room with an egg timer and not letting me out until the bell rings).

Not only is it bringing back a flood of memories (my dedicated piano teachers, my yearly piano exams with a mean looking examiner whose main goal in life was surely to frown and intimidate frightened 14 year olds, and, of course, the ultimate bribe: the all-you-can eat Chinese buffet that my father used to take me to every year after my piano exams), but it also made me realize how much playing the piano taught me about life. In so many unconscious ways, it truly set me up for success, helping to set great habits into motion that I have very clearly applied to many areas of my life.

 

Here are some of the things playing the piano have taught me about life:

1. Nothing is impossible: If you set your mind to something, you can really do anything.

My parents used to play classical music CD’s (remember those?) all the time when I was growing up. I would hear it and pretend to be Mozart, hovering and zipping my fingers along the keys. When I got older, my parents bought me the sheet music for those very same pieces. It was intimidating, to be sure. There were a lot of notes on those pages. But after I got over my fear, I practiced and practiced and was eventually able to play them with precision and ease.

The same was true for my piano exams. We were required to learn 6 songs by memory, all of our scales, and have our hearing and sight reading abilities tested in relation to music and tone. It was a terrifying experience and I didn’t sleep for a week leading up to the exams. But I always did them, and I dare say, I typically did them well (the promise of the all-you-can-eat buffet afterward surely had something to do with it).

After successfully doing two things I once thought were impossible, I was set for life. For I knew that if I really wanted something, I really could have it. I just had to practice hard, put in the work, and believe I could do it.

2. Work hard and understand that small sacrifices are needed in the attainment of a greater goal.

Learning to play new pieces on the piano wasn’t an easy task. It involved hours of practice, working through frustrations, and lots of discipline and focus. Sometimes that meant less play time outside with my friends, or less time watching my favorite TV shows (Diagnosis Murder, McGyver, LA Law, Baywatch, you know, the usual). This, in turn, taught me that most of the things you want in life are not easily acquired. But if you work hard and you understand what it is you are working toward, you will get there. And if you keep your eye on the prize, those small sacrifices will be overshadowed by the awesomeness that comes with the attainment of your bigger goal.

3. Critical Thinking: Survey the problem before proceeding.

When you learn a new piece, before you even put your fingers on the keys, you have to analyze it:

What is the time signature? What key is it in? Where are my sharps and flats? What is the tempo? What is the mood of the piece (this is usually stated, in Italian, at the beginning of a piece by the composer)?

Once you gather that information, you can proceed, with caution. Beginning with the right hand, you play the piece through. Then you do the same with the left. And so on and so forth. But step one is always to analyze the piece before you begin.

I do the same thing in my life. I collect the facts, assess what I know, make a plan, and then proceed.

4. Focus on the task at hand.

Playing the piano requires an incredible amount of focus. You cannot be on your phone, watching tv, reading or quite literally doing anything else besides playing the piano. There are so many things going on in each piece that you’re actually forced to be focused without even having to try. In fact, you aren’t really prone to distractions at all. This kind of steadfast focus has played a big role throughout my life. I’ve applied it in school, at work, and also, at play.

5. Discipline.

There is no way around it: playing the piano requires one to be disciplined. Discipline to shut out the outside noise, the distractions, but also, the internal voices that tell you, “I’m bored! Do we have to play this passage again? We’ve already played it 17 times! I’m sick of hearing it!” But discipline only works if you know what the end goal will be, which leads me to the next point:

6. Set goals.

Practicing the piano was my first experience with goal setting. I would be able to say, “Ok Lauren, if you practice these next 5 bars 25 times, you will be able to play it perfectly.” (yes, I talked to myself a lot. Still do. Don’t judge). And in the bigger picture, I knew that weeks worth of practicing would yield a song worthy of and ready for a recital. Achieving a goal you’ve worked hard to get is addictive, and it set the wheels in motion for my goal setting obsession throughout the rest of my life.

7. Be present.

There is nothing like playing the piano to force you to be in the present moment. You are so focused on the notes and the mood of the piece that when you are playing, you can’t do or think about anything else, much less get distracted in any way. You are drawn in by the sounds emanating from the piano with every stroke of a key, and the way the music reverberates against the mechanisms that make up this beautiful instrument. To this day, it’s one of the only times I don’t struggle to be in the present moment. It would be helpful to apply this to other areas of my life!

8. Pay attention. Details matter.

Playing the piano teaches you not only to pay attention to detail, but also, that details matter. Little things can make a big difference. In any given piano piece, the composer guides the player with various markers: crescendo (slowly get louder), decrescendo (slowly get softer), engage the pedal, don’t engage the pedal, accent on this note but not that one, staccato, etc.

And so it is with life. A 15 minute morning meditation can set our entire day on a path of positivity. Paying attention in your car to someone who is trying to get into your lane – and letting them – can restore someone’s faith in humanity. Smiling at someone while you’re walking along the street can do the same. Noticing that an employee has a new haircut and telling them it looks great can go a long way to make their day better. Small details make up the fabric of our lives. I learned that from the minute I first touched a piano key.

9. When in doubt, slow down, and take it one step at a time.

I can play some pretty impressive piano pieces, but I can assure you, it took me a long time to get there. Playing the piano requires you to break down each piece into even smaller pieces, and to go over each part with a fine toothed comb. When I’m having trouble with a specific bar (which is to say, a specific part of the piece), and I keep making the same mistakes over and over, the only way to fix it, in my experience, is to slow it down.

I will often slow things down until they are painfully slow, just so that I can make sure I’m getting the correct notes. When I am sure of the notes, I gradually speed it up in tiny increments, until I finally get back to the pace it’s supposed to be played at. I do the same thing when I’m approaching decisions and/or problems in my life: I break it down, slow it down, and go from there. One step – one note – at a time. At the heart of it, slowing things down is really about building a strong foundation. A house is only as strong as its foundation, after all, and so it is with anything else in your life.

10. Don’t bite off more than you can chew – but don’t be too conservative either.

You’ve heard the expression: Jack of all trades, master of none. I find that when I try to do too many things at once, I don’t do any of them well. But if I pick a select few things to put my attention on, I can do a good job at all of them. After that, I can move onto another set of things to work on. At any given time during my piano playing years, I only ever worked on 4 or 5 pieces at a time. Any more than that and I wouldn’t have been good at any of them. But 4 or 5 was just enough so that I didn’t get bored, but so that I could give them the attention they needed in order to play them properly.

11. Try, try again.

Some days, I just couldn’t get my fingers to do what I could swear my brain was telling them to do. Other days, I was on fire. No matter what, I would always pick myself up (sometimes after smashing my hands down angrily on the keys, which was always met with my mother pounding on the wall adjacent to the piano, threatening punishment if I didn’t stop), dust myself off, and try, try, again.

12. Never stop learning.

The great thing about the piano is that no matter how good you are, when you get a new piece, unless you are one of the greats (Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, your-name-here), you have to start from square one. Break it down. Assess the piece. Play the right hand, then the left, put it together, slowly speed it up, etc. Throughout my piano career – and even as I play today – I never stop learning. It is humbling, but also, exhilarating. You have to work at things to stay good at them. And it’s really fun!

13. Patience, dear heart: There is always enough time to learn something new.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by all of the things I want to learn and the lack of time I have in which to do it. When I get this way, I throw my hands up and declare there to be no time, and so I don’t do anything. Of course, this only lasts a day or so, and then I sink my teeth into something new.

Playing the piano when I was younger led me through 25 years worth of practice. That’s thousands of hours of playing under my belt. All it took was 30-60 minutes a day, 5 days a week.

So if I can dedicate 30 minutes a day to learning some other new skill, though it will take time, in a few years, I will master that skill. Even if I only have 10 minutes a day to dedicate to something, it’s enough. Ten years worth of 10 minutes a day is over 600 hours. I will take that over zero hours, thank you very much!

14. It’s ok if you stumble.

In addition to piano exams, I also participated in a lot of piano recitals and plays. Sometimes my nerves would get the best of me and I would fumble a note. If I was practicing, it was important to go back and play that passage again so I could understand why I made the mistake and correct it. But in a performance, I was always taught to just carry on as if nothing has happened. Most of the time no one noticed the mistake. And even if they did, they would be impressed by my composure under pressure, thought they were likely to forget about the fumble by the time the piece was through.

15. The importance of an emotional outlet.

Playing the piano is a great way to get your emotions out, to take off the mental stresses of your life. It transports you away to another world, and really helps to put things in perspective. It’s also much healthier than a pint of chocolate fudge ice cream (though sometimes that is just plain necessary).

16. Structure and creativity can be mutually inclusive.

Being truly honest, I would say this about myself:

I’m a creative person, but I also like structure.

I’m fairly certain that comes from playing the piano. It taught me that you actually can be creative within a box: although there is a basic structure, the boundaries can always be pushed and bent. Things are open to interpretation, and that is where your creativity can flow freely. When you look at the crescendos, decrescendos, and other suggestions given by a composer, you can interpret them as you see fit. You can speed up or slow down a piece based on your mood. You can add trills. You can make the music your own.

17. Practice your fear away.

Practice, practice, practice, of course. But know this to be true: practice will take your fear away.

When I’m stumbling on a particular passage in a piece, as I’m nearing that particular part, my heart starts to race in anticipation of it: will I make that mistake again? Will I stumble? If I’m thinking that, it’s because I didn’t practice hard enough. When you practice hard enough, playing the passage over and over again, you get to a point where you replace fear with confidence, for you’ve played it over and over again so many times that you could play it in your sleep. The key is to keep practicing a passage over and over again until you’re no longer afraid of the part that you couldn’t get. Then do it again and again… and again until the fear is gone. Then you can move on. So it is with life.

18. Cherish beauty.

Playing the piano taught me about the magic – the beauty – that exists all around me. That you can make such extraordinary noise by pushing keys down on a keyboard is magical! Music is transformative. It can put you in a good mood, it can take transport you to another world. It’s beautiful. And I’m always seeking the music – the beauty – in everything I come across in my life as a result.

 

There are so many more things I have to say about the piano, but I fear I have already taken up too much of your precious time.

I’m also sure there exists a similar experience in your own life. Perhaps your version of my piano lessons are soccer or some other sport, instrument, language, or other skill you learned to do while you were growing up. I challenge you to discover the ways in which the learning process behind them helped you throughout the rest of your life. Give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done, and acknowledge all the ways in which it helped you to become the person you are today.

Our present selves are a sum of all of our past experiences, after all, so I find it’s helpful to reflect on what made us who we are. If nothing else, it helps us to understand what makes us tick, what works for us, what habits we’d like to keep, and what habits we need to let go of in the attainment of our dreams and goals.

Thanks for listening! Wishing you a beautiful week, and a beautiful life. May it be filled with love, light, and of course, lots of music.

Sincerely,

Lauren
xoxo