Music: The Unexpected School of Resilience
Musicians understand a hidden truth about personal growth that most people miss. Our instrument isn't just a tool for creating sound - it's a training ground for life's skills: discipline, persistence, and resilience.
Every practice session confronts us with limits. Missed notes. Imperfect techniques. Complex passages that challenge us. Musicians build up these life skills through regular practice, turning each session into an opportunity to strengthen mental toughness.
As a student, it typically takes years to understand the benefits of breaking down a piece into smaller parts as you practice. You’re eager to be able to immediately play a piece like a pro - see below:
…but once you give yourself permission to focus on the benefits of caring about the small stuff, you’ll make incremental progress toward that goal.
Take Yo-Yo Ma’s words for it:
Musical discipline teaches at least four life skills:
1. Small Steps Matter: It can be hard to accept that success isn't sudden. It's built through thousands of tiny improvements. An experienced musician knows that mastering a skill comes from steady, focused practice. The oversimplified theory that one needs “10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery” comes to mind.
2. Controlling Emotions: When frustration hits during a challenging piece, you learn to manage your feelings. You breathe. You reset. You try again. This emotional control transfers directly into work and personal challenges. For one, the ability to not show the audience that you’re upset you made a mistake or throw your horn on the ground is…very important. As a father, I try to pull from this experience and control my emotions now more than ever if I get frustrated at the small stuff.
3. Handling Pressure: Musicians regularly perform in high-stakes settings. We learn to manage nerves, stay focused, control breathing, and deliver despite inner doubts. This skill is crucial in every professional environment, especially during tough conversations.
4. Listening: Musicians learn a level of listening that goes beyond hearing notes. We listen for subtleties - a breath before a phrase, dynamics between instruments, or the unspoken body language in an ensemble. A musician is constantly tuning into others to fit their part into the larger ensemble, in collaboration. In professional settings, many people hear to respond. Musicians listen to understand, making them more empathetic colleagues with emotional EQ. With this listening skill, your musical colleague is seeking to understand the full conversation, sense when a team member is struggling, or more effectively read between the lines of a client’s request.
Stage fright was a real hurdle for me up through college. Even after performing in hundreds of concerts in larger orchestral or band groups, once you’re standing up performing a solo in front of an audience, pressure finally shows its face. It’s like the first time you’re put in charge to report project results to a client. Being thrown in the deep end is a difficult way to learn, but also the best way in the long run.
So, that’s the thing about musicians. We often excel in fields far beyond music too. We're trained to be disciplined. To be resilient. To turn challenges into chances for growth.
While some people might move through life with little focus on these soft skills, musicians know different. A young musician can’t easily achieve quick wins because slow, painful, and deliberate practice is what makes them better.
Additionally, if a student is fortunate to have a good teacher, they see mistakes as information and feedback for improvement. Non-musicians rarely experience so many challenges and failure in the same hour that it’s easy to get overwhelmed or move on to try something else.
Practice isn't just about the music. It's about building a mindset that can overcome any obstacle.