To learn faster, you need to do less of what doesn’t work and more of what does. 🎯 That may seem obvious, but do you really know what’s working, and what isn’t? How do you know what to do more or less of when you practice?

The key to making rapid progress is learning to see your habits with more and more objectivity. 👀

By design, most of our everyday thoughts and actions are habitual, based on neural patterns that we’ve learned and repeated (practiced) enough times that they have become automated. A 2006 study revealed that for the most part, a full 47 percent of our reported actions are running on autopilot while we’re thinking about something else! 🧠

Clearly, such repetitiveness can lead to a lackluster life limited in scope and creativity, yet, on the other hand, thank goodness for habits! Without them, we wouldn’t be able to do much of anything because we’d constantly have to reinvent how we do the most basic activities. Our habits allow us to talk, walk, and relate to the world, and our habits allow us to learn new skills with ever-increasing complexity. 🌱

Habits are simply an arrangement of neurons that have fired and wired together into a neural pattern enough times to become strong enough to be automated, running on its own, below the level of our conscious awareness.

Once an activity is a habit, the neural pattern can be triggered by a simple thought or feeling even without our awareness, much like computer programs initiated by other programs. ⚙️

In this way, most of our lives take place on autopilot, moving mindlessly from one thought or activity to the next. In fact, even though this is a human attribute, it is not specifically human since this is how other animals function, as well. 🐾

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Care to share?

With Love & Light,
Jennifer ❤️

The above is an excerpt from ‘Make Great Music with Ease! The Secret to Smarter Practice, Confident Performance, and Living a Happier Life'

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