Yesterday, on Instagram, I was chatting with a former client and she expressed some doubts about my ability to relate to beginners:

“You have a masters in music. You’re an expert. Somewhere along your road, someone drilled into you ‘do not hesitate’. All the things you say to your students.

But when a novice is playing and learning about this terminology, you do not have to extrapolate their hesitation into a dissertation about their psyche.”

On the contrary, this is entirely about your psyche.

Your hesitation at the piano has nothing to do with your piano skills and everything to do with your fucked-up psychology.

It has to do with a choice you’re scared to make, a choice you’re faced with multiple times a day.

It has nothing to do with piano. Even Harry Potter had to make this choice. He had to choose between being a Muggle and being a wizard.

It wasn’t a one-and-done thing. It was a choice he had to make over and over again:

* Was he going to stay with the family he’d known his whole life, business as usual, or hop on a motorcycle and fly off into God knows where?

* Was he going to stay in the normal, predictable, physical world, where the ground is solid, or smash face-first into platform 9¾? Was he going to take that leap of faith, not knowing what would happen?

* Was he going to stay on the ground or fly on a broomstick?

* Was he going to let himself be bullied and let his friends be bullied, or stand up to the bully?

It’s the same choice, over and over again:

* Was he going to play it safe and let Dumbledore handle it, or confront the most powerful evil wizard of all time?

* Was he going to let himself be seduced by the image of his parents in the mirror, to fall asleep into the daydream, or snap out of it and get to work?

It’s the same choice.

Yes, it has physical ramifications, but it’s a psychological choice: do I hold back or do I go for it?

Wizards don’t hold back.

(Wizards are a little crazy.)

Muggles hold back.

That’s why wizards can fly, fight evil, and save the world.

Wizards don’t hold back.

That’s what magic is.

It’s all the same. A Harry Potter who isn’t an expert at Quidditch isn’t going to stand a chance against Voldemort. It’s the same thing.

Accountants are Muggles. Pianists are wizards.

If you thought your existing personality was good enough to be a wizard, I hate to break it to you but it’s not. There’s a reason you can’t do magic, and it’s not because you haven’t taken the right classes yet.

It’s because you hesitate, because you’re afraid to go for it, because you’re afraid to take off the mask, because you’re afraid to leave the normal world.

This problem won’t solve itself until you’re ready to take a leap of faith.

It’s a hero’s journey and it’s not for everyone.

But, when you’re ready to take that journey, the next step is to find another area of your life where you have this same problem. It isn’t just about piano, so you should admit that ASAP.

—Michael

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