Overcoming not wanting to practice

I've had several conversations on this topic recently. I'm writing this from the perspective of singing lessons, but you can apply it to many other things as well. More than one student has told me their stories of beating themselves up because they are struggling to find space & time & willingness to practice. They tell me what they are telling themselves. As we've had these conversations... these thoughts have come up...

- make your goal to 'simply start'. Don't set a time limit ('it has to be 30 minutes'), just start, no matter how much you don't want to do anything.

- with 'simply start' - don't insist it has to be scales, just focus on breath & sighs, or even sing a song you like on "boh boh boh"

- one way to support 'starting' is to marry it with an activity... 'every time I plug in the kettle for tea, I'll do something with my voice... while it's cooking'

- one way to support 'practice' to find a daily activity that would work with it... like wearing your walkman and singing while you tidy the house, or doing your tape in the kitchen while you're cooking dinner, some folks do their tape in the car on the way to and from work

- when you practice - put a tick on the calendar - P 'tick' so when the voices in your head start... you have visual confirmation of how many starts you did in a day and in a week, visual evidence to show that judge in your head

- if life gets away from you, and you don't practice... don't cancel your lesson... come to your lesson and let that be your practice

- recognize that reluctance to practice could very well be coming from that thing inside you that has a vested interest in you not changing. Julia Cameron talks about 'blocked creatives'... even as we work to become unblocked, there are still blocks within us. See the reluctance as part of that old programming... and follow the 'simply start' philosophy. That thing within us knows that when we DO the activity, we change. So it actively & strongly resists starting.

Our job is to simply start.