6 powerful attitudes to embrace as a flutist

In all my years of teaching, I’ve observed that one of the most important influences on students’ progress is not primarily their skill level or even their effort or commitment. It’s their attitude! While those other factors are critical too, a bad attitude permeates everything. Your attitude is like a compass, determining the direction you will go in. It affects how you approach your practice sessions, how you handle mistakes and setbacks, what you do with guidance and correction, and even how you approach your wins.

Ensuring you regularly approach your practice time with a constructive attitude can go a very long way in sustaining you as a flutist, especially on difficult days. So without further ado, I’d like to hone in on 6 powerful attitudes to embrace as a flutist. Let’s make sure our minds are in the right place! 

1. Progress over perfection

If you’ve been a member of The Flute Practice for a while, you will have heard Tatiana say this often: progress over perfection. I agree wholeheartedly. Celebrating how far you’ve come is much more important than attaining 100 % perfection on a piece of music or scale. And yes, for those among us who tend towards perfectionism, that might be very hard to do. But making that attitude shift is not only a healthier approach, it’s also important when looking at the bigger picture. If you tend to get stuck on things just because they’re not perfect, you might be stuck for a while and not move forward at all. 

Let me illustrate: Say you’re learning a scale and you’ve been practicing it for days, maybe even weeks. It sounds much better than when you first started, but you’re still making the odd mistake. So how should you approach that? You could a.) beat yourself up because it’s still not perfect b.) See and celebrate the progress you have made with it and move on. Now moving on does not mean you don’t still come back to the scale periodically and try to improve on it, but if you’re getting stuck in a place where you’re obsessively trying to be perfect, that can be quite unhealthy. I follow this approach with my writing a lot. Sometimes I write something – and, though it’s not perfect, I leave it be for a while to come back to at a later stage. That also gives me the benefit of approaching it with fresh eyes. 

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2.  Meaningful rest over go, go, go! 

Meaningful breaks are so important. Even just a few minutes of spending time away from your flute can reset you and provide you with renewed vigor for your instrument. Taking the time to rest can really enhance your playing in the long run. (I wrote a blog post on this a while back, check it out here.) Contrary to what one might think, working hard may eventually backfire and cause more harm than good. 

While we do need to consistently improve our playing by practicing regularly, working too much and too hard may eventually do the opposite of what we want. Our brains need those rest times to absorb and integrate what was learned. Instead of going full speed ahead,  think of targeted rest times as an extension of your practice.  

3. Compete with yourself, not against others

My mom always used to tell us growing up that discontentment comes from unnecessarily comparing yourself to others. She has a point. When we compare our abilities to those of other players and feel we fall short, we rob ourselves of joy. 

Instead of always looking at others, focus on the goals you’ve set and compete only with yourself. What do I mean by that? Rather than sneaking constant peeks at what that other person is doing, and thinking things like: Why can’t I sound that amazing? Why are they so much further along than me? focus on the goals you have set. Look at how you have improved. After all, no two people are the same, so comparing yourself to someone completely different is just not that helpful.  

4. Treat yourself with kindness

Take a moment to consider this: How do you talk to yourself? Would you talk to a good friend like you talk to yourself? I see lots of heads shaking vehemently! I know it can be tempting to be hard on ourselves. I think many of us do that. We beat ourselves up over every little mistake and failure, and in fact, don’t cut ourselves any slack whatsoever. But that is actually very unhealthy. 

So, the next time you get into that practice room, remind yourself to be kind. Now I’m not saying you turn a blind eye to areas that need improvement. What I am saying is that you should treat yourself the way you would want to be treated by others – with kindness and respect. Being “on your own team” and rooting for yourself can go a very long way towards keeping your spirits up. 

5. Keep your curiosity alive

As we become adults, our natural curiosity tends to take a bit of a back seat. We start becoming a bit more set in our ways and lose that natural, child-like inquisitiveness. We also tend to be much more results-focused rather than simply enjoying the learning journey and being curious about it. 

Tatiana shared a good example of this with me recently. You could be working on your tone and instead of just thinking “I have to get the right tone” and having a kind of tunnel vision, ask yourself some curious questions instead. For example: “What happens if I try this?” or “Let me see what this sounds like”, so kind of playfully experimenting with different approaches. This type of attitude immediately lowers the pressure to perform, so it also makes you feel less stressed. 

When you approach yourself and your flute practice with playful curiosity, your brain is more relaxed and open to possibilities. In fact, research actually confirms that if you are naturally curious about something, it will actually help you to retain information better. So go on, give it a try!

6. Remain inspired

Lastly, one of the most important attitudes that will carry you through rough patches during your flute practice is simply this – remain inspired. When you keep that cup of inspiration full, it will carry you through those rough practice days when you sometimes just feel like giving up.

So how do you make sure you keep that joyful inspiration alive? Here are a few ideas:

• Listen to your favorite flute music regularly. Enjoy the music! 
• Remind yourself why you love the flute – I am confident you can think of at least three reasons! (If not, watch this video Tatiana recorded on why the flute is number 1 😉)
• Remind yourself of your goals and why you’re playing in the first place. (Need help setting effective goals for yourself? Check out this blogpost). 
• Avoid over-practicing and don’t overdo it. When you push yourself too hard, nobody wins, and you’ll likely lose your love for the music. 

I am sure that we could add to this list, in fact, perhaps you have some of your own ideas. Please do share them with us. 

It may also be helpful for some of you to check out what is holding you back first, before trying to embrace these 6 attitudes I talk about here. If that’s you, head on over to this link to read our related blog post: 5 attitudes that can hold you back on the flute. 

Now all that’s left to say is: Happy practicing!