“Do you want to study under the great teachers? . . . Well, you can find them anywhere.

They live on the shelves of your library; they live on the walls of museums; they live in recordings made decades ago. Your teachers don’t even need to be alive to educate you masterfully.”

It is easier than ever to learn something new. You could do it right now. Maybe you are learning things from reading my words. I hope so. It’s one of the reasons I maintain this blog. But if you are just surfing the net to be entertained, why not look for an opportunity to learn something?

Do the Work

“No matter how great your teachers may be, and no matter how esteemed your academy’s reputation, eventually you will have to do the work yourself. Eventually, the teachers won’t be there anymore. The walls of the school will fall away, and you’ll be on your own. The hours that you will put into practice, study, auditions, and creation will be entirely up to you.”

I cannot teach anyone how to do anything. As the saying goes, “you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.” You have all the power in the world. So, take control, do the work, and better yourself.

The sooner and more passionate you get married to this idea — that is entirely up to you — the better off you’ll be.”

Everything Sucks

Mark Manson, who said, . . . every single pursuit — no matter how wonderful and exciting and glamorous it may initially seem – comes with . . . its own lousy side effects. As Manson writes, “Everything sucks, some of the time.’ You just have to decide what sort of suckage you are willing to deal with. So the question is not so much ‘What are you passionate about?’ The question is ‘What are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work?’

Find something that excites you. Work towards that and don’t let the negatives distract you. Find something in your work that excites you and focus on that. You have a lot to learn. And it is completely up to you to learn it.

I wrote this one for my students. I hope you will share it with yours. The ideas were inspired by passages in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Teaching Tip Tuesday – inspiration from my classroom to yours