Well I suppose this is the end. I hope you’ll allow me just a few minutes more before we draw this session of The Art of Daily Practice to a close.
In a way, this course isn’t just about practice. By focusing on your practice each day, you do of course become expert at songwriting over time. But you also sharpen your ability to focus on one thing at a time. This ability is endlessly useful—and it can have a ripple effect that spreads and has a positive impact on all the other areas of your life.
In cultures around the world, practicing certain skills has been seen as a form of meditation and self-development. As I hope you’ve discovered, there’s real joy in resisting distractions and focusing your attention on one thing. Even though practice is a struggle, and requires discipline, there’s also something strangely refreshing about it.
How often in a typical day do you get to focus on just one thing at a time? We’re forever tugged this way and that by text messages, TV shows, phone calls, on and on. Often we don’t even realize how stressful it all is, and how scattered we are. Practice, in a way, is soothingly simple. Here’s your practice space, here’s the day’s lesson. And everything else outside your practice space falls away for a little while as you do the work. It’s almost like a vacation.
There’s no area of my life that practice hasn’t touched. I exercise, eat well, and go to bed early, all so that I’ll be fresh and full of energy for each practice session. I read more than ever before. I watch less television. I enjoy music more. I have more humility, and greater respect for the arts. I find myself reading about art, science, dance, you name it. I’ve been shocked, actually, by how much daily practice has changed my life.
Best of all, I wake up every morning excited to learn something new.
I wish you all of these benefits, too.
And please do stay in touch yourself—let me know how you’re doing with your own daily practice routines. Ask me questions. Bounce ideas off me. I remain at your service.
Thanks so much for joining during The Art of Daily Practice, and thank you for seeing it through to the end… Though I think we all know this isn’t really the end. Much work remains.
I’ll be in touch.