We live the life we repeat

As guest Sunday pianist at the local nursing home, I play from the hymnal the facility uses for their services instead of my church hymnal. Recently, I stumbled and fumbled my way through the familiar Christmas carol O Come All Ye Faithful. Though I've played that song for 40 years, in this new hymnal, the song was written in the key of D instead of my familiar key of C. It wasn't that the song was difficult with two sharps, but my brain kept trying to play what I had practiced all those years instead of what was being asked of me today.

We're like that, you and I. We become what we practice.

We echo the attitude we surround ourselves with. We live the life we repeat. We do what we've learned to do. And, we do it over and over and over again.

A practice is a commitment to process over outcome, a commitment to taking small steps forward with the purpose of collecting feedback and learning. It’s an Experiment + persistence.
— Michael Bungay Stanier in How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters

A young states attorney cautioned a group of fifth graders to watch who they hung out with, telling them we become like the people we surround ourselves with the most.

Their bad behavior soon becomes our bad behavior. It becomes normal. It becomes practiced. It becomes a song in the key of C, the song our brain automatically tries to play.
— Judy Mae

Oh, and yes, for the second morning service, I took out my own hymnal and played the song my brain wanted to play because whether in the key of C or the key of D, O Come All Ye Faithful is a song of praise heard best when the right notes are played.

christmas presents

This blog originally appeared October 13, 2002 LikeMyLife by Judy Mae Bingman


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How often do we do that? Stop too soon. Fail to take one more step. Fail to do the one last thing that will put us where we need to be. Fail to plot our course.

view machine looking across to some mountains

I’ve always said my superpower rests in taking the complicated and making it understandable, finding the sliver of extraordinary and elevating it above the noisy clutter. I think every good storyteller needs that perception, that discernment to grasp what is obscure and see what is not evident.


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Spark: How to Lead Yourself and Others to Greater Success
By Morgan, Angie, Lynch, Courtney, Lynch, Sean
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