When all else fails, Use humor!

Life is too short to not have fun. During my 12 years of teaching, lessons can turn into monotony from back to back lessons. Or doing lessons in your sleep. Especially when you’ve been doing something for so long, you can grow to love it or hate it more. Without joy, it’s hard to be motivated to do anything in life. You have to have fun to keep doing what may seem like a challenging activity. Learning an instrument takes perseverance and patience. That’s where the importance of humor comes in. Its common for students to feel frustrated because they are not seeing the progress that they want. One of the ways to approach that is to coach them through practice strategies, and positive affirmations of how they are progressing. However, a simple trick is to lighten your student up with a joke or humor. Try it, it does wonders. It resets the brain, gives it a break and associates the challenging exercise with more positivity than negativity. It helps rewire the brain to think more joyous thoughts and allows the student to be willing to attempt again. You’ll find that when you’re relaxed and calm, you perform much better. So my recommendation to students, parents, and teachers is- crack a joke here and there to keep practicing and learning engaging and enjoyable rather than burdensome, and frustrating. Laughter does wonders! Try it!

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