Lovely morning.Sometimes trying to get results in a hurry doesn’t work. This may be due to the fact that you are in a hurry and try to do a bit of research yourself to find something easy to do, but in fact you haven’t got the basics down yet. The answer to these questions seems to prove to me that the basics are very important: why do athletes never miss a muscle training session or a barefoot swing, why does a ballet dancer never miss a barre lesson, why does a pianist never miss playing scales every day?
When these basics come naturally to you, the ability to apply them really comes into its own. I think it’s also important to think about why this is necessary for your performance, rather than just doing it in a blind way.
When I teach English to students, I sometimes feel that a small word can make a big difference in their mindset. I don’t want to just tell them to memorise 100 words, I want to show them the excitement of what will happen if they memorise those words. And I always want to get to the point where students can actually feel what it’s like to learn them. The basics are easier when they become habits, but the results will be very different if you feel the importance of doing them, rather than just doing them. When you are cooking, a little bit of preparation can make a big difference to the taste and appearance of your food, so basic skills are very important.
And if you want to get results, don’t give up, even if you fail or it doesn’t work out. If something goes wrong, there must be a reason. Of course, you can always ask a professional to check your performance, but you can also find the cause by looking at yourself objectively. Once you have identified the cause, you can then work out what you can do about it. In other words, I think it is good to be able to produce yourself. I think it’s important to keep repeating the basic things every day to improve your own self-image and think “I can do it”. Don’t get carried away by the countless amounts of information that surrounds you, choose your own information and use it to your advantage and motivate yourself.
For those of you who are able to take some time out during the summer holidays to do what you want to do, it might be a good idea to try and do what you want to do to the best of your ability.