We cannot un-think judgmental thoughts, but we do not have to fuel them.
Take a few moments to call to mind your last practice session. Did you run through a daily routine? What music did you practice? Was it a typical session, or was there something out of the ordinary about it? As you look back, keep track of the thoughts about your practice that pass through your mind. You may find that while some of your thoughts are objective, others may be rooted in value judgement. Did the words “good,” or “bad” cross your mind?
Judgement is a uniquely human reaction. While we cannot avoid it, we can raise our awareness of it. As musicians, we need to be able to evaluate our playing in order to improve. But many of our self-evaluative thoughts mix with judgement. This is particularly difficult to avoid in artistic or musical situations, because we experience art and music subjectively. Musicians often feel the need to use subjective words to describe musical sounds. In the context of music and mindfulness, judgment occurs when subjectivity veers off into qualitative evaluation (good and bad).
Consider this example: You’re having a conversation with someone, and you notice that while you are speaking, the person’s brow furrows, and the corners of their mouth turn down. You think to yourself “What’s wrong? Was it something I said?” After observing the person’s body language, your thoughts assigned a judgement to the situation. The reality is that the person’s expression could have changed for a variety of reasons, only a few of which have anything to do with you. If you let your own behavior be colored by your judgement of the person’s facial expression, what good does that do? This is an example of the tiny judgements that color our perceptions every day.
The practice of mindfulness asks us to observe at a very detailed level, but to do so without judgement. The goal is to accept each moment without evaluating it as good or bad. Acknowledge what you observe as helpful or as harmful, but do not judge it. Acknowledge your own emotional reactions (emotions are not judgements), but do not judge them. And finally—the trickiest task of all—when you catch yourself being judgmental, don’t judge yourself for judging.
In the Practice Room
Eliminating judgement from the practice room is a tall order, so I would suggest starting with a simple exercise that helps to track the mental language you are using in the practice room.
Choose an etude or section of a piece and record yourself playing it. Think of this as a snapshot of where you stand on that music in that moment.
As you hear yourself play, and then as you listen to the recording, keep a running list of the words or phrases that float through your mind in response to what you hear.
Write those words and phrases in your practice journal, computer, phone, etc. Make this list as complete as you possibly can.
Note which words or phrases are objective, and which are subjective. Try to identify terminology that makes a value judgment on your playing. The word “warm” can be a helpful descriptive term in music, but the word “ugly” is a value judgement.
Acknowledge your own emotional response to the listening, and to this exercise.
Make an effort not to judge your playing, your terminology, or your emotional response. Then give yourself a break for being judgmental!
As you sort through your own mental terminology, try to imagine using that language with a student during a lesson. You may find that you are much more harsh and judgmental toward yourself than you would ever be toward a student. Why wouldn’t you use judgmental language in a lesson? Because it would not be productive. The same, of course, could be said about judgment in the practice room. Even positive value judgments don’t particularly aid improvement, though they may bring an accompanying positive emotional response.
The task in the exercise above is to recognize and acknowledge judgmental thoughts and language. But what do we do with judgment when we find it? Even as our awareness grows, judgment will never completely leave us. We cannot un-think judgmental thoughts. But we do not have to fuel them by dwelling upon them, or by following them down a rabbit hole of subjective thought. We can simply let them drift past our mental field of vision like clouds. We can make an effort to balance the judgment by incorporating observation-based language into our mental and verbal vocabularies.