Personally, I play the guitar, and over the years, I have experienced that many people work very hard to perfect playing songs that they love on the radio or ones in their music collection. They strive to perfect every note, every bend, every vibrato, and every bending vibrato (those are freaking hard!). They are not fully satisfied until they have ironed out every imperfection in their performance. Needless to say, a lot of their time and energy gets put into reproducing someone else's creation, someone else's masterpiece.
In a discussion with a colleague, I started thinking about this more. What does a focus on perfecting other people's creations get us?
While I knew that for someone to learn something, following someone else's example is the surest way to get there. But where does that leave someone? The only thought I could come up with is that you would end up as good as your teacher, no better, no worse, just as good as them, and your music would sound just like theirs.
So how do artists become successful and draw a large following? Creating one hit after another? What's the secret ingredient that they are adding to their pursuit of musical excellence?
No doubt, these artists are leveraging creativity that other artists produce, however, I believe they also take their imperfections, their unique abilities, their own style and perfect those instead of perfecting someone else's unique abilities. To me this makes sense as an artist's music typically resembles other music that they have created in the past and they sound distinctly different from other artists out there.
What I'm pointing to here is, what if, instead of putting your energy into perfectly reproducing something that someone else came up with, you accepted your imperfections and put your energy into creating your own unique melodies? Letting your imperfections become the perfections that others would strive to reproduce? What possibility could be there for you? What masterpiece could you create that leaves others in awe wishing they could reproduce?
What if this masterpiece you are neglecting is your future record deal, your world tour, your line up of fans waiting for an autograph? What if your imperfections were what made you unique, your keys to success? What if this masterpiece was your life? What could be in store for you if you were to fully express and master your unique abilities?
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