Do you ever feel overwhelmed?
You know, that brain meltdown, almost frozen feeling where you just can’t move forward and end up feeling stuck.
I had a student this week worried she wasn’t going to finish learning her piece in time for our upcoming piano party. It just seemed like too big a task with all her other activities.
First of all it was important to remove the pressure and let her know she can always play something else, that she already knows, if it doesn’t get finished. However, I also knew that if we worked on breaking down the remaining work into smaller, more manageable sections we might just have a chance of finishing, as this is what she had her heart set on.
SO, we counted the number of bars left to learn and the number of days left and divided one into the other. It turned out that even if she only learnt 1 1/2 bars per day she would easily achieve her goal of playing an absolutely gorgeous Debussy piece on a beautiful grand piano.
Between us we managed to turn overwhelm into possibility.
She has also learnt a strategy she can apply to other areas of her life.
What area of your life do you feel overwhelmed?