January 1, 2025
About the Author: Arwen
We all know the saying: new year, new me… Learning the piano is on your New Year’s resolution list, will you complete it?
Did you know that only about 7% of people complete their New Year’s resolutions?
Most resolutions typically involve losing weight, exercising more, quitting bad habits or learning a new skill.
Furthermore, 23% of people quit within the first week and over 80% forget about it by February.
It beckons the question; why make them in the first place?
Well, a new year is always exciting. It feels as though it promises a new beginning or a “do over”.
So many possibilities, but only so little successes.
Why do so many individuals struggle to live up to their goals?
Let us look at a few reasons to help us not make the same mistakes.
Unrealistic Goals
It is effortless to make the mistake of biting off more than one can chew.
People often fall into the trap of overestimating what they can achieve, which results in too many unaccomplished.
A goal without a plan will not go anywhere and will stay unachievable.
Losing Vision
People get so caught up in the sacrifices they have to make that they lose sight of the finish line.
That is why it is always important to remember why you started.
Individuals lose sight of the vision and their minds subconsciously start to turn their goals into chores, blinding themselves to any progress they might be making.
Delayed Gratification
We live in a world where we need to be satisfied immediately.
Sad thing is, most things in life worthwhile will take time.
Yet many are not willing to put in the work each day without seeing instant results. The excitement wears off and before people know it, they forget about their goals and leave it for the next year.
5 Steps To Accomplish Your Goals
1. Envision Your Goals
Without a vision you are basically rowing a rowboat in the middle of the ocean with no compass— going in circles.
It is crucial to have a clear picture of where you want to be. Break up your goals into categories; short-term, medium-term and long-term.
What do you want to accomplish within a few months (short-term), what do you want to achieve within a year(medium-term) and what do you want to achieve in a few years (long-term)?
Having a clear vision will also help you measure your progress.
If you are serious about your success, write your vision down and put it up somewhere where you can see it daily.
It will serve as a reminder to go practise the piano and keep reminding you of your goal.
2. Design a Detailed Plan
With a clear vision and goal in mind, now you can design a plan on how to get there. Your plan needs to be specific and realistic.
Take where you are now and describe how you are going to get to your desired goal.
For instance, you have never played the piano before but by the end of the year you want to be able to play a song.
Your plan must include the amount of hours you are willing to practise everyday, what you will practise and by when you want to be able to do what.
Let’s say you are willing to practise 30 minutes each day, 70% is for scales and arpeggios and the other 30% is for whatever.
You want to be able to play scales and arpeggios fluently by the end of the month.
Looking at this plan we can see it is realistic, precise and has a time constraint.
Of course everyone’s plan will be different, so choose something that works for you.
3. Have Someone Keep You Accountable
Sharing your goals with someone can significantly increase the chance of achieving them.
It does not even have to be someone who plays piano, it can be anyone who will hold you accountable.
Choose someone who will support you and keep motivating you since that person also has an impact on your success.
Having someone to share your goals with increases your chance of success with 65%.
Social support will also increase your motivation to continue learning the piano.
To take it a step further, check in with the person every once in a while and notify them of your progress, successes and so on.
4. Stay Disciplined
If you want to achieve results, you need to be consistent.
If you want to be consistent, you need to be disciplined.
Where most people fall off is that they would rather use motivation other than discipline to keep them going.
The problem with this is that you will not always be motivated.
More often than not you will find yourself giving up on learning the piano if you rely solely on motivation.
Do not let your feelings or emotions control you, instead be disciplined enough to keep your commitment and follow through.
You will never regret practising another hour, but you will regret not doing so since you “did not feel like it”.
Sometimes you have to restrict yourself now to be free later.
5. Celebrate Small Victories
Every step brings you closer to achieving your goal, celebrate it! Acknowledge how far you have come to prevent yourself from falling in the mindset of “I do not see any progress”.
Learning the piano takes time and you probably will not see success right away, but every time you practise you are placing a progress brick down.
Just stay consistent and before you know it, there will be a whole wall full of progress bricks and soon a house!
Thus it is important to celebrate the small victories, since that will help to keep you motivated.
Fall in love with progress instead of success, for then you will always succeed!
Conclusion
Every year we promise ourselves the new year will not be like the last one.
If learning the piano is on your new year’s resolution list, do something about it!
The new year will not look any different from the other years if you do not take action.
Don’t be another statistic.
So make a plan, stick to the plan and deliver!
