Pay Attention

"People think it's more effortful to do things mindfully... In fact, it's not, and it's more fun. Mindfulness is a way to create passion."

A few months ago a psychologist and conductor collaborated on an unusual psychological experiment - using a full symphony orchestra.

In an article for Miller McCune Online Magazine, Tom Jacobs reports how members of the Arizona State University Orchestra were asked to play the Brahms’ First Symphony twice. The first time, they were given the following instructions:

Think about the finest performance of this piece that you can remember. Play it that way.

The second time, these were the instructions given to the orchestra:

Play this piece in the finest manner you can, offering subtle new nuances to your performance.

Before reading on, stop and think about the likely effect on performance of the two sets of instructions. Do you think there would be any significant difference between the two performances? Would you expect either performance to be better or worse than the other?

To see how this experiment turned out and what this means to you, click here for the full article from LateralAction.

all your life, you were only waiting
for this moment to arise

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