patience & emotions

N was struggling this morning with his piano song of the week. He is really into his piano, but he gets frustrated when he can't get it right. He is a pretty emotional individual, and when frustrated it becomes hard to focus, which frustrates him even more.

Today we spoke about how difficult that are often frustrating to learn often provide the most satisfaction once we master them. They can still remember their frustration learning to swim and ride their bikes, and how mu pleasure they now get from those things. The harder something is to learn, the more pleasure one derives once mastered. Learning to play the piano takes a lot of effort and frustration, but generates inmense pleasure once mastered.

We spoke a bit about emotions. It is ussually impossible to control them. One can't help feeling sad, afraid, frustrated or happy. It is simply how we feel. What we can do is to acknowledge our emotions and not let them control us. If we are frustrated, we shouldn't try not to be frustrated, but to put our frustration aside and address the root cause of our frustration, i.e., our inability to play the song on the piano. Once we learn to play that song, the frustration will go away on its own. But if we let our frustration drive us into a tantrum, then we wont learn the song and will remain frustrated.

BTW, we had a piano tuner come to fix our piano last night. One of the keys was stuck. Not surprisingly, it was a pencil that was stuck inside the piano. Now I know how to open the piano and remove pencils, toys, and other items. The tuner played the piano beautifully and I believe derived great pleasure from it...