It’s so empowering to learn that the brain learns through mistakes and that frustration(when handled calmly)is actually a vital part of the learning process. I realize now how much time and energy I’ve wasted avoiding failure and frustration when embracing them could have sped up my learning. I have this image in my mind now of a professional basketball player taking free-throw after countless free-throw with no emotional reaction whether the shot goes in or not. Why haven’t I been approaching my practice this way? Thanks so much for sharing these videos Greg!!

That’s fascinating. To be honest, a little harder to watch than other videos. But we learn from failure, if we’re not failing at least part of the time, we’re not learning.

I suppose the trick is coming up with an optimal balance between experimentation of new processes and reinforcing good process that has been proven successful.

Being as objective as possible when experimenting, no emotional attachment to the outcome and literally trying to fail–to find where the limit is, are important.

Thanks for the info!

“It’s such a fine line to positively and usefully experience an “error” or “failure” AND be emotionally detached at the same time…”

Is it accurate to say that results practice and being aware of the point of difference are ways that someone can positively and usefully experience an error? Is this a counter to the thought I have sometimes that I could just be reinforcing poor process in results practice?

Really enjoying learning about all of this, thanks Greg!

Really fascinating stuff! One of my lockdown projects was to learn to cycle “no hands” again, which I hadn’t done since being a youngsters. I wish I’d picked up my instrument straight after. I would have been in exactly the right frame of mind for learning 😉

One thing I take away from this – rightly or wrongly? – is not to try and address too many things in the same session, e.g. breathing in, passive release, tongue position, embouchure…