When Affirmations Work

I haven't been enjoying my singing lessons for a while. I thought perhaps it was due to my short attention span. Or guilt over not practicing quite enough. Or simply not enjoying trying to develop my lower voice. (I'm a soprano. I'm a soprano who can't hit high notes very well lately. Grumble.) It had a lot to do with my inability to match my physical manifestation of the music to my intellectual understanding of what should happen. Plus, I don't love the songs I'm working on right now. (Well, I do love one of them... but I don't care for two that I've been working on for months now.)

Then today, on the way to lessons I told myself, "I can play this game. I AM a Musician today." And since I'm a terrible actor, I couldn't fake my way around it. I simply had to be a real musician. I didn't stress at my lesson. I didn't second-guess my teacher when he said good things about my progress. I was simply a musician.

And I left my lesson happy.