Serguey Asael Shinder – IT Professional

There was one passage in a piece I loved that I simply could not play. So I did what everyone does. I started from the top, every time, and by the time I reached the hard part my hands were tired and I had an excuse ready.

For a year I “practiced” that piece and never once practiced the part that was actually hard. I was rehearsing the sections I already owned and calling it work. It felt like progress. It was avoidance with good posture.

The day I finally isolated those two bars and looped them, slowly, badly, over and over, everything changed. Not because they were impossible — because I’d never actually faced them. Ten ugly repetitions taught me more than a year of playing from the top.

I think about that a lot now, well beyond music. The easy parts of anything are already yours. Repeating them is comfortable and teaches you nothing. Growth is hiding in the exact spot you keep skipping.

Go straight at the hard bar. That’s the whole lesson. It always was.

– Serguey Asael Shinder