Maintaining discipline isn’t always easy, but it is a vital part of becoming successful in anything you want to do (singing is no exception).
It’s the smallest changes in habits over time that make the biggest differences, and it’s only through discipline that we can create those habits in the first place. So, here are a few ideas on how to help you maintain your discipline.
Create a Plan and Stick to It!
So, you want to get better at singing? You need guidance. Lessons are a great option with the right teacher (shameless plug – Check Out LessonsWithKen.com), as they can help you create a plan and guide you along the way. A proven training product like Singing Success can also provide you great structure. Heck, you can just look at the articles on these pages and learn a TON, but you need more structure than, “I’m bored. I wonder what I can find on the net about singing.”
If you’re going to do lessons, have your coach give you things to do between lessons. If you’re doing something like Singing Success, make sure to do your warm up CDs daily. If you’re going at it alone, read an article a day and make it a point to practice with that idea in mind for no less than 10 minutes a day for the next week.
Habits aren’t created over night, so consistency is key. No matter what route you go, have a plan for how you’re going to move forward and stick to it. Oh, and look back on it every month or two and decide whether you can tweak your plan to make it better.
Action Plan – 10% Education, 90% Application
When we as people are passionate about something, it’s entirely too common for us to jump from one piece of advice to the next, soaking in as much as possible about our area of interest (heck, even I’m sometimes guilty of this).
The thing is, in order for us to get any good at any coordination (and believe me, singing is a fairly complex coordination), we must practice it over and over until it becomes habit. If you’re bouncing from one idea to the next, you’re never going to see the results that you want because you’re never investing enough time in any of them to establish habit.
So, I welcome you to adopt this idea for learning – 10% education, 90% application. You can never learn complex coordinations until you experience them, and you’ll never own those coordinations until you do them so often that they become second nature. So I suggest you spend 10% of your time finding good advice (I’m partial to mine or my mentors – Brett Manning) and spend the rest of your time working those ideas into your voice. I promise you’ll move along SOOOOoooo much faster.
Hold Yourself Accountable
Holding yourself accountable for your progress is crucial for success. If you never look back at what you did, you don’t know how to change things to get better. At first, I’d start off looking back each week. If part of your plan was to practice each day, check off each day you practiced on a calendar. If you didn’t practice, ask yourself why. Was it because there wasn’t enough time? Were you distracted? Did you forget? Once you determine why, you can better plan for the future.
One of the biggest issues I hear from people is, “I just didn’t have any time this week.”
Look… we all have busy lives. But the idea that someone couldn’t carve out 15 minutes of their lives to practice is extremely hard to believe, considering the average person spends over an hour a day on facebook and watches over 4 hours a day of tv. I’m sure you’re not one of these people (I know I’m not), but even at my busiest, I found time to practice my craft… even if it was in the car when driving from one commitment to the next.
That said, it’s not likely that your issue is you don’t have enough time, it’s just that you haven’t planned your practice. If you plan it, you work other things around it. So, plan when you’re going to practice, hold yourself accountable by checking in to make sure you’re sticking to the plan. Then, adjust accordingly 🙂
I hope this article helps and that it didn’t come across too preachy. I just want to help each and every one of you live up to your full potential. You weren’t given your talents or desires for nothing. Use them and develop them, and you never know where you may end up!
Your Coach,
Ken