Sometimes I feel like I am a master of walking into brick walls, at least figuratively speaking. I’ve been doing it for pretty much as long as I can remember. Growing up with an undiagnosed learning disability meant that almost everything resulted in me hitting some kind of brick wall. Learning to read was a nightmare and to this day my spelling still has the ability to confuse spell check. There were and still are many other struggles but struggles aren’t necessarily a bad thing.

While sometimes it is necessary and healthy to accept that some things we simply cannot do. It is also imperative to ascertain when a struggle is worth our perseverance. This process is never something you master but something you continually develop. This is one of the gifts of dyslexia: it has provided me with lots of tips and tricks for getting through brick walls. It has also allowed me to observe a pattern or formula that helps with the challenging task of wall climbing.

Resilient Musicians

The long-term consequences of overcoming numerous brick walls is resilience.  Today as an educator I am saddened and troubled to see how little resilience young people have. I have experienced students who almost burst into tears after they realise they can’t play a piece of music they have never seen before perfectly the first time. This leads me to a new brick wall as a teacher, discovering how to manage a students fragile emotions and self-esteem while still challenging them enough to facilitate progress and growth. 

Resilience Requires Challenge

If you want to develop resilience you have to find a challenge. It also has to be something that you do for yourself. No student has ever benefited from their parent doing their homework. Learning an instrument can provide the perfect playground for developing resilience and  exercising those ‘not giving up’ muscles that perhaps haven’t been to the gym in a while. 

The 7 Steps to
Overcoming Brick Walls
and
Developing Reslience

Step 1 : Identify The Brick Wall

This usually isn’t too challenging. But it does pays to be aware that brick walls can come in any area of life including: career, work, relationships, hobbies, family, spiritual, personal, health, finances etc.

Musically my current brick walls include double tonguing and the inhaled snare beatbox sound. Note that a brick wall is not just something you haven’t learnt how to do yet. It is something that you find extraordinarily challenging that you maybe have left in the too hard basket for a little to long.

Other common brick walls might include intonation, tone and developing an internal pulse. Or on the non-musical side loosing weight, finding a spouse and overcoming depression are all excellent examples of brick walls.

Step 2 : Find Your Motivation/Commitment

Someone else can inspire you but only you are responsible for maintaining your motivation. But, you need a plan! Everybody experiences periods of being both highly unmotivated and incredibly motivated. Your plan includes strategies that will help you maintain your motivation.

For example, my goal is to learn how to beatbox flute. This was going well until I hit a road block: the inhale snare sound. The other beatboxing sounds I seemed to pick up after some dedicated practice but the inhale snare had me stumped, I lost motivation and it stayed in the two hard basket. It wasn’t until I fell in love with several pieces that use this particular sound that I decided I had to master it no matter what. So I made a list of the pieces I want to learn and stuck it up where I practice. I also watch videos of other people playing the pieces. This helps to prove to myself that it can be done.

If your goal is to loose weight or overcome depression your motivation could include

• Your family
• Being able to pursue the career you want
• Having more energy
• Being more healthy
• Ect.

But you have to make it personal and something that genuinely resonates with you.

Step 3 : Make a Plan and Get Help

“Fail to plan, plan to fail”

What action steps do you need to take to achieve your plan? How and when are you going to do them?

For example: I am currently completing the 100 days of practice challenge and I’m logging/tracking my progress using a practice tracker.

I am then completing a minimum of 100 attempts at an inhaled snare sound per practice session. If I don’t do 100 then I can’t colour in the square and the chain is broken.

Research has shown that you have to do something approximately 10,000 times to be an expert at it so by the end of 100 days I should have reached my target. Currently, I’m up to day 56 and I have seen a massive improvement.

If your goal is to loose weight your plan might be to

• See a dietitian and stick to their meal plans
• Go for a walk 3 times a week
• Go swimming once a week
• Set up an accountability partner

If your goal is to overcome depression you might

• Attend a fortnighly support group
• See a psychologist (regularly!!)
• Go for a 15 minuet walk everyday
• Actually take the medication
• Watch inspiring vidoes
• And so forth

But your plan has to be achievable. Think of each day as being like a mini goal. If you mess up one day start again as soon as you can. And you don’t have to wait till the next day to start, you can try the next hour. Procrastination and excuses and only give birth to further procrastination and even more excuses. (See music goals).

Many times when you hit a brick wall you may not even know where to start. This is normal but this is always why step 3 is make a plan and get help. No matter how much you want to you cannot overcome a brick wall by yourself you need help.

So, with the inhale snare sound I watched numerous YouTube Videos, made a helpful webpage full of resources (for myself and others), read the relevant sections from books and websites and spoke to my brother who beatboxes.

Step 4 : Carry out your plan and Get Help

There is a saying that goes “you can lead a horse to water but you cannot force it to drink”. You will never reach your destination if you don’t start and sometimes starting is the hardest part. If you are finding this particularly challenging why don’t you start with someone. Humans were made to do things together.

This could look like any thing but its up to you to make it work for your situation. For example you might invite a friend over and then each go off and practice something meeting back in half an hour to share your progress.

You could sign up for an exercise class with a friend or go for a walk together once a week. If your brick wall is depression join forces with a friend and commit to catching up once a week even if it is on one of your bad days.

Step 5 : Review your plan, make adjustments and Get Help

Its also supper important to review your plan at regular intervals. This allows room for all the imperfections that make up the fabric of our daily life. You may have originally planned to practice your flute after work but then discover you have very little energy at the end of the day. Perhaps experiment with practising before work. Bassically, you will never know what will/won’t work for you unless you give it a fare go.

By reviewing and adjusting your plan you also avoid getting stuck down dead ends. A dead end is not a true end. But you do need the humility to turn around and try a different path. If you don’t know of a different way talk to other people about it and be open minded. You won’t overcome your brick wall by repeating steps that are leading you no where.

Step 6 : Continue to carry out your plan

Step 6 is what develops our perseverance and self-discipline. These are useful qualities that will benefit you in pretty much every area of your life.

Step 7: Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you experience success

And remember if you don’t do the work you won’t get the results.

Why not share some of your brick walls in the comments below and together we can help each other navigate the maze of brick walls that take up the passages ways of our life.