From the Heart, In the Heart—the essence of One Quality Note

A young jazz bass player, a student at Berklee in Boston, posted a facebook status that  a) allowed me to remember again why I do what I do and b) embodied the principle of One Quality Note for me.

Marika was playing background music for a marriage proposal (which in and of itself is a great idea! kudos, young man— and lucky woman!) and she said it put so much in perspective.

What’s Important in Music?

Here’s what she wrote:
Playing my best on my jury or in an audition (or whatever ‘meaningful’ situation) is cool and seems so very important at the time, but it matters most in real life, in moments of the heart… I’ve never played a note more earnestly than when I saw what was going on…

It then occurred to me that I don’t keep at this music thing every day for the sake of being a virtuoso or some musical freak of nature. It’s all so that I can be a part, to the best of my ability, of moments like that.

“Playing My Best Matters Most in Real Life”

Ain’t that the truth!

It doesn’t matter so much, really, in those situations where others are there to judge us. All the accolades and awards in the world mean nothing if, in those real life moments, we detach. Money, awards, accolades, fame—nothing inherently wrong with them. It’s what we value, what is truly important that matters. And at the end of our life, we’ll be more grateful and better for the heart connections we’ve made than for all the hardware we’ve collected. The two are not connected.

The Value of Being Earnest

There can be no faking earnestness. I’ve come to enjoy and appreciate this word a lot lately. I appreciate earnestness. Earnestness has solidness to it and stability. Marika said she’d never played a note more earnestly as when she saw what was going on.

Why? Why would this moment be any more special than another?

When our heart is activated and we can see meaning in a gesture of great love or great significance, we become entrained in that vibration. When we become entrained, the wave, the signature of that vibration, gets bigger. When people in a group are on the ‘same wavelength’ it’s not just a saying; it’s the truth.

If all the musicians in Marika’s group that day also played their earnest best… then imagine the force of that proposal! Magnification times awesome!

Make Every Moment a One Quality Moment

I love that Marika uncovered this stupendous truth: that making one’s best music (or any other ‘thing’) in real life is when it really counts.

My hope, too, is that she and all of us can aspire to live each moment with that same earnestness and attention. It requires attention and presence and understanding the love that is behind whatever is happening.  It requires practice. It requires a willingness to fail, because, well… it’s an aspiration and we have to take small steps towards that idea.

Small Steps

Marika has taken the first step. She recognized a moment when she was fully present to the awesomeness of the moment and was able to act on that presence with full awareness. That, in itself, is brilliant.

Every time we recognize and lean into one of “those” moments. Every time we leave our inner critic and inner chatterer at the curb and bring all of our parts together, we take another small step into that earnestness she spoke of. We can take another step into living our life as One Quality Note.

This Year—Write it Down, Track it, Celebrate, Repeat.

Using the Walk Tracker app for the first time this morning, I discovered that it’s actually more than a full kilometer to the next farm down the road. (My car had registered .9 km several years ago when I measured.) And it’s .5 km to the first treeline and 1.51 km from my front porch around the corner to the third telephone pole past the sumac trees. ( and I must check out the great things sumac is good for!)

With all the news about the dangers of sitting down for hours at a time and here’s me, who has to spend hours at the computer or the piano or the art table, and knowing that walking or, exercise, improves blood flow to the brain (and don’t we all need more of THAT!) and knowing that, unless I actually wrote it down on paper and made myself ACCOUNTABLE, I wouldn’t do it….

(drumroll) One of my goals this year, 2013, is to walk 2000 km. Minimum. That’s a bit of a walk, really, when I think about it. That crosses a big chunk of this country. It’s almost the distance from Saskatoon to Barrie, or from Thunder Bay to Kelowna. (and I could walk from London, Ontario to Sackville, New Brunswick and still have a few hundred kilometers to spare!)

And how do I propose to do it? How does one eat an elephant (goes the old adage)? One bite at a time. It works about to a nearly 5.5 km a day.

• Take a piece of graph paper that already has blocks of 25 squares marked out
• Mark off every 25 km, working DOWN from 2000, not UP TO 2000 (reasons below)
• Use different colours each day and colour in the little squares, one for each km you walk.
• Put a marker or a sticker or something every 25 or 50 km
• Create small rewards every 50 or 100… or less if you need to keep up the motivation.

I started a day or so before New Year’s and today I passed 75. I’m 3.9 km ahead of schedule. (At 100 km I’m going to splurge on a brand new pair of comfy walking socks!) I’ll post a photo of my chart later (once I find my currently, um, hidden little camera)

The actual goal isn’t important. But these things I know to work:

• write a goal down and make it specific. Get it out of your head and onto paper.
• I like START dates better than END dates. It makes the starting of the thing important. End dates make sure it actually ends.
• track it. Use stickers, colours, paper and pencil.. make it visual. Get it out of your head and mark something down. Remember how much you liked it when your teacher put a sticker on your work?!
• make up a game and rules about it.
• reward small wins.
• be kind to yourself— there will be days!
• be true to yourself— on ‘those’ days, do the thing anyway. Tell your complaining mind to shut up. Better to do something than nothing.

Some Thoughts:

I count DOWN… because the numbers get smaller. SO!! YAY! I only have 1923 km left rather than YAY! I’ve gone more than 75. Try it either way. Doesn’t matter to me, but isn’t counting down to something more celebratory than counting up?

Rationalizations will get at you. It’s gonna happen. But then, hey… there’s another goal or project or new habit to form! I did that for a month. No excuses. At all. I made some, but having that in mind made sure I picked things up off the floor, put things away, went to the gym even to do SOMETHING.

Here’s a fun game. I’ve done it with meditation practice and mantra meditation practice.

• Decide on a new habit (it takes from 21-42 days, depending on who you talk to , to create a new habit. With things like mantras, it’s often a 40-day cycle. Just choose.)
• Repeat every day
• TRACK and count the repetitions
• When you miss, start again at one, with the aim of repeating the new habit 40 times in a row.

Think about this. You start today with the aim of walking 1 km a day for 40 days. Everything’s great for about 10 days. You get your little stickers or coloured dots on your calendar and they start to add up. And then you miss a day.

Start again at one. Do this every time you miss a day.

Now, you will be saying, as you miss a day and are wont to start again,  “But, I can’t get to 40 days in a row! Why bother?”

Here’s the thing: you may get to the end of the year and never have hit 40 days in a row. That’s not the point.

You may have missed a day a month or even a couple of days a month. That’s not the point. And YET…

You’ve walked 1 km a day every other day of the year. That could be 300 days that you DID walk! Why focus on the 65 days you missed?

Celebrate the 300 days…. then, start again.

Write it down. Track it. Celebrate. Repeat.

Oh…. and be kind to yourself.

Beyond the “Follow Your Passion” Paradigm

As I was mumbling yesterday about the whole “follow your passion” career illumination theory, I went poking around for other words that might work better. Words are important. We need to use the right ones and I was saying that I didn’t think “passion” was the right one. So.. what did I come up with?

 

ZESTY ENTHUSIASM
“Enthusiasm” came up in several of the quotes that I listed in the post. “Zest” was another one. Both were interesting and have possibilities— and limits.

 

Enthusiasm was originally connected to religious fanaticism, but it’s more common contemporary use is for “strong excitement or feeling.” It can refer to ardour, zeal, fervour, ambition, alacrity, obsession, eagerness, and yes, passion. It can also refer to a short-term enthusiasm or buzz— a one-hit wonder, or cultural blip in popularity.
OK, helpful and needed. One must have SOME modicum of enthusiasm for one’s work, wouldn’t you say?!

 

Zest and other food-related words seem to have more oomph! Other than the lemon zest variety, listen to these wonderful foodie words that have migrated to describe “an enjoyably exciting quality.” Piquant, relish, gusto, zing… and then… keen, invigoration, stimulation and thrill. (thanks, Merriam-Oxford Dictionary)

 

I’ve focused on these words for a bit because, really, the words we use are important. The foodie words above certainly give us bright shiny images in our imagination. While imagination is mucho importante, I’m still not convinced.

 

We toss “passion” around so flippantly. I wonder if it’s become so popular because it immediately grabs us by the gut and pokes at our emotional centre. These words are evocative and who doesn’t like to evoke a provocation?

 

“Passion” has a flame to it. And if people are sitting on their laurels, pining after their dream job, then, maybe lighting a fire underneath them is a good start.

 

But then what? As one reader here pointed out, passion burns out. The reader was commenting on relationships and expecting fireworks all the time, which was not my point at all, but it’s pretty hard to stay full steam ahead merely on a hotly lit match. Something else is required.

 

STEVE MARTIN TO THE RESCUE

 

Steve Martin (Photo credit: lincolnblues)

 

We all need a little Steve Martin in our lives!

 

One reader posed a link to an article on <a href=”an excerpt from Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love.” title=”Steve Martin’s Advice” target=”_blank”>lifehacker in an excerpt from Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love.

 

And there—well, a start. SKILLS! And then ACTION! This SHOULD be a blinding flash of the obvious, but it isn’t. Maybe if we said, “Act on your passion,” it might help. It could also get someone killed (as in “crime of passion). In any case, the big problem with the phrase “follow your passion” is that you can follow it all day, over hill and dale, to the far reaches of the earth and over the rainbow, but unless you grab the darn thing and DO something about building the skills that will make you valuable and useful, it’s a useless, nay wasteful pursuit.

 

Steve Martin’s advice was to “Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You.”

 

And being so good that “they” can’t ignore you requires work. The day-to-day kind of work that we all hate at times. As any successful person will tell you, it’s the daily grind of showing up and doing what you don’t really feel like doing all the time. And doing it over and over and over and…

 

Well, it’s a start. I’ve kind of got the “P-word” problem resolved, at least in my head, but I know there’s more.

 

Still need to focus myself on what I’m to do with the next part of my life, though! More later. In the meantime, I’ve absorbed all the time I’ve allotted for this little passion… have to go act on the list of other things on the list that inspire zeal, fervour, eagerness and zing in me today.

 

Comments welcome! We really need to sort this thing out so more of us can get our butts in gear (and our ‘buts’ out of the way) to make this world work better.