Rewarding yourself... when to stop?

[YourSelf]

This is yet another thing I seem to read quite often in self-help material (and that I have probably misinterpreted): Rewarding yourself.

What I'm not clear about is when exactly you should reward yourself, and when not. When is it enough?

And what do we have to use as a point of reference, e.g. a relative scale of performance?

For example, if I'm teaching myself how to play the piano and I normally learn to perform one new piece every week, I would probably reward myself ("Wow, I did it! I'm such a frickin genius!") if I suddenly learned a new piece in a day.
However, if I'm competing against some others and they learn 10 pieces a day, should I avoid rewarding myself and instead work harder... or do I have to continuously reward myself even if I'm lagging behind the others?

To summarize my point: at a certain point it makes no sense to keep rewarding yourself, at a certain point you should take on a higher level...
But my question is: when do you know you must stop rewarding yourself and get to the next level?

[Keith]

Originally Posted by YourSelf

To summarize my point: at a certain point it makes no sense to keep rewarding yourself, at a certain point you should take on a higher level...
But my question is: when do you know you must stop rewarding yourself and get to the next level?

What makes you think that the two are mutually exclusive?

AFAIK, the point in rewarding yourself is so you enjoy the activity and feel increasingly like throwing yourself into it and getting better.

BTW, there's no reason you can't stagger your rewards - a little one for "just showing up" and a bigger one for achieving "the next level".

[YourSelf]

There might be several reasons though I'm not sure.

I know for sure that when I'm too satisfied I usually feel no motivation to go on.
I mean, reward is relax, like a holiday, doing nothing under the sun and taking a tan.

In order to get to the next level, I need to be pushed, provoked - feel challenged ...and not rewarded.

For example...
When I was in my early high school years I was fooling around all the time, getting worse than average grades. I also tried some "methods" to try improving them but nothing was constant.
It was only when some of my friends said that I am an idiot and I will never get good at school that I felt challenged and got the best GPA in the entire school :P

But even after that, after I got what I wanted, I just relaxed again...
(especially because/after everyone was telling me "ooh, you're so smart, you'll get a good career, all the world will be open to you, you will get into a good university, etc. etc. etc.")
back to doing nothing and fooling around.

How do you call that... indulgence?

[PianoManGidley]

It sounds like you're trying to make your personal growth a competition with the personal growth of others. Just push yourself at a level YOU feel is a challenge, and then give yourself a reward once you make an achievement with your own personalized level of intensity.

[YourSelf]

But without others there would be nothing to challenge...

[PianoManGidley]

Originally Posted by YourSelf

But without others there would be nothing to challenge...

That's untrue. You can always challenge yourself to improve upon your last "record." If you've been learning 5 songs a week, try to make it 6 or 7. Set a goal based on your personal level.

[Real Subliminal]

Don't compare yourself to others - there will always be someone who is better than you. However the very best people started at the bottom and got to the top through hard work and excessive learning / practice. I would say they werent comparing themselves to other people, they simply had a goal in mind and worked towards it with passion.

As for how often to reward yourself - ALL THE TIME! You can never do this too much, positivity is a massive psychological tool - continuously reward yourself - even as mentioned above in small steps i.e rewards for initially just showing up etc.

Dan

[YourSelf]

Originally Posted by PianoManGidley

If you've been learning 5 songs a week, try to make it 6 or 7. Set a goal based on your personal level.

The point is I would see no purpose in doing so.

I learn 6 or 7 songs... for what, for whom? What do I gain for myself?

I need to bear in mind that I'm competing or else I don't even have any drive.
I'd be bored.

And boredom doesn't motivate me.

I need a purpose to go to the next stage.

[PianoManGidley]

Originally Posted by YourSelf

The point is I would see no purpose in doing so.

I learn 6 or 7 songs... for what, for whom? What do I gain for myself?

I need to bear in mind that I'm competing or else I don't even have any drive.
I'd be bored.

And boredom doesn't motivate me.

I need a purpose to go to the next stage.

Take it from a composer and fellow musician: If you're not doing music for you, then you shouldn't be doing it at all. If all you care about with playing piano is how much better you can be than someone else, then you're not giving your emotions enough room to connect with the music itself, because you've got that competitive streak running your mind and your heart. To be a true musician, you have to let the music overcome you; you have to be doing all this for the passion for music itself, not some passion to be better than others. Music is a very demanding art, and half-assing it in any way is not playing music at all--music just isn't music if you half-ass it, and the more you are distracted by the idea of "I need to be better than others" the less you can focus on actually interpreting the music's every nuance of tempo and flow, dynamics, timbre, and everything else that makes the piece unique to itself and unique to you and your performance. I adore music beyond almost anything else in this world for its ability to be so intimate to the performer, the composer, and the audience, yet all individually a different experience each and every time, because music isn't a static art like paintings or sculpture--it's dynamic, and every single performance of the same piece, even if by the same person or ensemble, will always be different in some way. It's a gorgeous, intricate, and highly complex thing--it's a universal language, even though I don't know of anyone that has even come close to speaking it completely fluently yet--and for these reasons, it demands of us all to give it the utmost respect and energy and focus we can put into it...nothing less than everything that you have and everything that you are needs to be put into it, because your emotions, competitive or not, will come through in your performance.

Sorry for the long speech, but as you can tell, music is a great passion for me--it always has been, and it always will be. So I think now, you should ask yourself why you feel that competition is your only drive. Why do you need to define yourself by being better than others?

[Jennihul]

To me, this philosophy reduces us to the level of dogs. Roll over Bowser! Good boy! Here's a treat!

Just being alive is my reward. I live in a way that is pleasing and joyous and if I need something, I buy it or make it possible to eventually buy it but it's nothing that is tied to any action/reward practice. I don't feel inside my self that I need a present every time I achieve something small or large.

Jennifer

[YourSelf]

PianoManGidley, I like long posts

Perhaps you overinterpreted what I mean with competition. I'm not saying that I want to become God and make others feel like animals...

What I'm saying is that in order to overcome the difference between amateur and professional - in any field, not just music - the newbie must have an idea of what exactly must be achieved in order to become a professional. Which measure, which standard. That's what I meant with purpose.

Very often, whoever is at top sets a kind of measure for the rest of the professionals. Think of an athletic speed record in running. In order to be the next record-holder, you need to beat the previous record.

Obviously, I also started music with a passion for it. Otherwise I would have never even started. As a matter of fact I have no passion for running, so I don't care about who is the fastest runner in the world (I don't even know his or her name). However, I do care about great composers like Wagner and Rachmaninov.

Imagine that you invented the piano and were the first person who ever played it.
How would you know what it means to be a good piano player?
You are enjoying it, playing on your own for yourself, OK, but probably you're the one setting the first standard.

I also enjoy the music when I perform very basic pieces such as Joplin's Entertainer.
However, how would I know how to make my performance sound better, cleaner and more enjoyable if I didn't hear someone else better than me performing it?
How would I even know what and how to practice?

By competing I actually try to achieve two purposes: enjoying the game (like at any competitive game such as chess or cards) and reaching a standard set by a master (or becoming a master myself).

I also compose, despite having no formal music education. My friends often say how nice it is and try to make me feel important with many compliments (REWARD!). However, I know that if I listen to their compliments and accept them I will stay a newbie...
So I look at professional and historical composers, keep learning about music theory whenever I have time, keep experimenting new things.
But I wouldn't call myself a "composer" since that would also be arrogant towards who really is (e.g. John Williams, Yann Tiersen, Morricone, etc. but even the minor professionals who make a living by composing soundtracks for advertisements and cartoons).

What all this has to do with rewarding myself?
Well, as I said, whenever someone says "Wow, you're really good, you're a great composer!" I start feeling very rewarded and important.
But I know that if I feel like that I won't carry on practising. I will pause, relax, try to show off my skills, etc.
I need someone to remind me that I'm still a rookie and need to get better :P

[Jennihul]

I think it means you are choosing music for the ego gratification it gives you rather than it stemming from a deep passionate need to create.

Hey, whatever works for you!

Jennifer

[YourSelf]

No Jennihul, that's exactly what I want to avoid.
If my ego inflates I cannot become a good composer :P

[Jennihul]

Can one force themselves to be inspired?

Jennifer

[YourSelf]

I'm always inspired
I was talking about training!

[Otenka]

You don't have to compare with others, what you do regarding competing yourself is by visualizing yourself when you are a 10 out of 10 @ music. If you are @ 7 then aim at 10. That is setting the path.

As you WALK the path you'll realize that there are more refine visualizations of 10, i.e. the more you walk the path the 10 get's 10'er than the previous 10, the one you visualize when you were setting the path.

You don't need to compare yourself with others, you just have to beat your dreams and make even more challeging ones.

[ssandra]

I don´t care about music one way or the other, but whatever your motivation is, that is ok. Don´t let anybody tell you what you are doing is less because you are doing it for the wrong reasons...

Anyway... to help you, what you can try is to keep setting the target higher for yourself.

So now you do 1 song a week. Ok give yourself a reward. Your next target is 2 songs a week. Give yourself a reward. Next target 3 songs etc.
These are your little targets where you get to reward yourself a little bit, with like, an extra cookie, 5 minute longer break etc. something like that.

Set middle targets, like when you have reached 10 songs a week (or you know 1 difficult song by heart without any mistakes etc) with a bigger reward. Like a night out to the movies or something like that.

These are your targets that are achievable, and you will not stop working after because you know that your next target is waiting, and you are not there yet.

Then make your big target (the one where you know you are the greatest thing alive, and you can rest and not do anything anymore ever) something almost unachievable.
Like: being asked to play your own composition with the greatest orchestra there is, and being compared to mozart by at least 3 music journalists...

That should keep you going for a while...

I am the same as you, I need to aim for the stars to reach the sky. And how to know where the stars are, if you have no reference point?

[Eric Roosevelt]

Originally Posted by Jennihul

To me, this philosophy reduces us to the level of dogs. Roll over Bowser! Good boy! Here's a treat!

Just being alive is my reward. I live in a way that is pleasing and joyous and if I need something, I buy it or make it possible to eventually buy it but it's nothing that is tied to any action/reward practice. I don't feel inside my self that I need a present every time I achieve something small or large.

Jennifer

This is basically what I think as well. Life dishes out its very own rewards and punishments without the need for much intervention. If you're passionate about music, then the joy of learning a new piece or writing one of your own will be a reward in itself. Of course you can feed yourself cookies on the way. Why not? But at the end of the day the cookies are irrelevant. If you start pursuing worthy goals, goals that you actually care about, then the cookies won't mean very much to you in the first place.

The best way to "reward" yourself and move to the next level is probably to do some basic mental checks. Acknowledge that you've achieved one of your goals. Ask yourself if you're still on the right course, and if you're doing what you want to be doing. If the answer is yes, then you'll probably be wanting to move forward more or less immediately.

Focus on improving the accuracy of your playing - and the amount of fun you have playing them - instead of competing with others. Needless to say, music is not a competitive endeavour.

[Froztwolf]

Originally Posted by YourSelf

It was only when some of my friends said that I am an idiot and I will never get good at school that I felt challenged and got the best GPA in the entire school :P

But even after that, after I got what I wanted, I just relaxed again...
(especially because/after everyone was telling me "ooh, you're so smart, you'll get a good career, all the world will be open to you, you will get into a good university, etc. etc. etc.")
back to doing nothing and fooling around.

Sounds to me that you are taking a fear-based approach to self-development. You don't have an urge to be better than you are, you are just afraid to be bad at something. You are afraid to be worse than someone else and you are afraid that you might not be good enough to cut it.

It is normal that this fear doesn't motivate you when you feel competent.
A fear-based approach isn't a good way of self-development however. It works only very sporadically and it does horrible things to your confidence. I know this by experience.

It's harder than I make it sound but you need to shift polarities. You need to start thinking about all the good things that will happen if you keep developing yourself rather than all the bad things that happen if you don't. This can sustain your development forever.

And if you don't, you will always plateau regularly like this.

[Jross22]

Originally Posted by YourSelf

To summarize my point: at a certain point it makes no sense to keep rewarding yourself, at a certain point you should take on a higher level...
But my question is: when do you know you must stop rewarding yourself and get to the next level?

Rewards don't go away, they just get more subtle as success becomes more ingrained.

Compete with your own norm, that way you always have a fair match. Celebrate (better than reward) successes according to their value. An amazing effort, at a higher level, should get quite a bit of attention. At the other end of the spectrum, a marginal or even negligible success, you should still take a moment to fully appreciate everything you did right.

Early rewards can be tangible, but as you advance you streamline: the student takes a double latte; the master takes a moment to savor what she's done.