Day 23 - Practice, Practice, Practice.

"Life is like a trumpet. If you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out of it." William Christopher Handy

I remember this incident from my childhood days when during a TV show, a classical singer was asked the key to her successful music career and she beautifully rounded it up to just one word 'practice'. Practice is repeated performance or systematic exercise to acquiring any skill or proficiency in any subject matter. Now haven't we all heard this word 'Practice' too often in our lives. My daughter associates the word 'practice' with 'boredom', and I remember having the same attitude when my parents advised me to practice anything. Perfecting any art form or acquiring any skills needs ample of patience and practice. We are all born with some potential or talent, but the onus rests on us, to develop it further, by honing them through consistent practice. 

Popular singer Lata Mangeshkar once said: "If you ask me, I am a lot very much scared while doing stage shows. I practice for months together. Only then I face the audience. Because I do not like the trend of recording the songs beforehand and just moving your lips in front of the audience.....Nowadays I do not practice as before, riyaz is not possible as before....I have recorded the tanpura on cassettes. I put on the cassettes and sit for practicing. But mind it, every singer needs riyaz. If the throat doesn't get riyaz, it gets spoilt."

Practice is essentially a habit. When we learn any dance form or music or any sport, we repeatedly practice some movements and with consistent practice we slowly become good at it. Nothing is easy in life. We can learn something only by making conscious efforts. The key to playing the trumpet well is not just playing it loud, but to blow air into it with strength, which is technically called wind power. Similarly, in order to achieve our goals and target we need to practice in a correct way. Only hard work will not do. We need to know the wind power - the correct method of practice, to make our efforts go in the right direction. As Bruce Lee said: "I fear not the man who has kicked 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

Follow your dreams, work hard, with practice and perseverance, you can achieve your goals. 

Blow your trumpet to signal a glorious new morning today.