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The Unseen Benefits of Music Lessons

Music teaches a lot of things.  It’s sound organized within time, almost like a timing- and pitch-based language.  Music is based on patterns and pattern development, and so it has a mathematical component as well.  It’s challenging, interesting, infinitely variable.

But there is a lesson that is often overlooked:

The #1 benefit of practicing music is learning to fail.

Failure is so important.  Failure is how we learn.  Through failure, we find what doesn’t work.  When you understand what doesn’t work, you’re one step closer to finding the solution.

Children need to learn that failing at a task is not the same as “being a failure.”  In fact, in most cases, lots and lots of failures are a prerequisite for success.  To paraphrase Thomas Edison, “Inventing the light bulb is easy.  All you have do is invent 999 light bulbs that don’t work!”

“We either win, or we learn.  Always better.”

When we understand this, we can gain self-confidence from our failures and subsequent successes.

The process of learning a musical instrument is so challenging that it forces the student to confront challenges through three basic strategies: sheer grit, finding a new approach, or breaking the problem into smaller components.  These are three essential problem-solving skills for the modern world.  And music teaches them all.

We live in an ever-changing world.  And the rate of change is ever-increasing.  We really do not know the exact skills our children will need to be successful in 20, 30, 40 years.

But we do know that the ability to persevere and solve problems with confidence will always be valuable.  That is what you get when you invest in your child’s musical development.

© 2023 by PMR Writes

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