The Right Questions at the Right Time…
When a student is interested in working with me, I send them an in depth questionnaire. Why do I ask you questions? Am I not the teacher, the one who is supposed to have the answers for you?
Besides the fact that I genuinely want to know the answers so I can best help, I love that questions do on your end: the right questions set your mind in a certain direction. They are powerful. That’s why in my initial student intake questionnaire I ask a whole lot of them; I want to know about your musical background, experiences, gear, goals and heroes; but I also want to know what motivates you and what makes you tick to do something, to stick with it, to put in the work in service of a bigger goal or dream. Why? Because the answers to these questions may be just as revealing to you as they are helpful to me to help you. I believe just thinking about these answers already does powerful things to our mindset, helps us evaluate where we stand and what we aspire to.
- Try a few on for size:
- What is your passion?
- What is stopping you?
- How have you overcome obstacles in the past?
- Why do you play bass?
- What does playing bass do for you?
- What are your immediate and long term goals for playing?
- And how do you know you have achieved them?
- What motivates you?
- What does the most helpful feedback look like?
- Why?
- What are you aware of as you answer these questions?
What happens?
Just thinking about these will likely point your mind toward success. Ask them often. Practice, and dream big!
Ari
PS: I also want to point out that the featured photo in this post is a mash of a bass clef and a question mark made from chocolate almonds. Just to make sure you saw that, because I thought that was pretty sweet (!) how I did that…
PPS: So, if you are interested in learning more about powerful questions and how to use them in your practice routine, check out my Music Theory course. The outro tab has weekly practicing tips. Rewards, for example, are an important habit building practice tool. Which really is a perfect segue from sweet chocolate almonds…
