I will always remember my first public performance.  I was four years old, and I had convinced my mother that I was ready to perform a solo at church.  So my mother arranged for me to sing and on that fateful day, I walked up to the pulpit, and it went something like this:

[Imagine a 4-year-old redhead singing at the top of her lungs, all in one breath.]

ON THE WINGS OF A SNOW WHITE DOVE HE SENDS HIS PURE SWEET LOVE A SIGN FROM ABOVE ON THE WINGS OF A DOVE

I ran back to my seat as the audience applauded and laughed.

When we arrived home, my mother, always the encourager, said:

“Oh, honey. You performed so well today.  Your father and I are so proud of you.  What are you going to sing next week?”

“Nothing.”

“What?  Why?  What’s wrong?”

“They laughed at me.”

“Well, sweetie, that’s because you’re cute and they liked you.”

“They don’t laugh when Aunt Gail sings.”

“Well, now, your Aunt Gail has been singing for a long time and she’s very good.  It might be a while before you’re like her.”

“I don’t care – I want to be like Aunt Gail.  I want them to take me seriously!”

“Well, then you’d better start practicing.”

“What’s does ‘practicing’ mean?”

“It’s when you sing along with the record player, and learn to sing the song exactly as Dolly [yes, as in Parton] does – all three versus, with the chorus in between each verse.  You practice, you get better, and they will take you seriously.”

So, I practiced.  Every day.  2 hours a day.  For three weeks.  I would have practiced longer, but my mother took the needle off the record one day and said, “I think you’re ready.”

My mother arranged again for me to perform.  This time, I did it perfectly.  I sang all three versus, the chorus twice at the end and even gave it a tag.

This time, they didn’t laugh, and they didn’t clap.  My mother had threatened to hang them all if they did!  But, of course, I didn’t know that then.  I did perform much better after practicing and I believed they took me seriously.

Over the course of the next 14 years, I took advantage of every opportunity to speak or perform.  I was in every talent show, 4-H, Drama club, speech club, and even played piano for other talent show participants.  I began piano lessons at the age of 6.  I practiced a lot, and the more I practiced, the better I became at my craft.

I find it interesting that as children, we’re taught to practice lots of things.  We study more and do “exercises” to learn math and get better grades.  Athletes “train.”  Teams practice their games.  Anything we want to get good at, we practice.  We do it over and over and over again until our actual skill becomes what we picture in our mind.

Some people take this on to a professional level – thinking again of athletes and pro sports teams.

What about life?  Can we practice a better life for ourselves?  Yes.  Isn’t that great news?  If you want to change something, anything, about your life, you can do it simply by practicing.

In his 1954 lecture, Neville Goddard explains best what I am talking about:

At the end of my day, I review the day; I don’t judge it, I simply review it. I look over the entire day, all the episodes, all the events, all the conversations, all the meetings, and then as I see it clearly in my mind’s eye, I rewrite it. I rewrite it and make it conform to the ideal day I wish I had experienced. I take scene after scene and rewrite it, revise it, and having revised my day, then in my imagination I relive that day, the revised day, and I do it over and over in my imagination until this seeming imagined state begins to take on to me the tones of reality. It seems that it’s real, that I actually did experience it and I have found from experience that these revised days, if really lived, will change my tomorrows. When I meet people tomorrow that today disappointed me, they will not tomorrow, for in me I have changed the very nature of that being, and having changed him, he bears witness tomorrow of the change that took place within me.

Imagine how your life would change if you used Neville’s method instead of what we usually do, which is to replay the day in our head and continue the argument or bad experience!  Then, when things get worse, we say, “I knew that was going to happen, I just knew it.”  Well you should have – you created it!

I like what Neville suggests, but I also know that if we wait until the end of the day, we might not be able to really control the process as well as he did.  Instead, I’d like for you to catch yourself throughout the day, whenever you are remembering something that didn’t go quite the way you wanted it to, and re-live that moment the way you would have liked for it to go.

If you meditate at the end of the day, use that time to practice your ideal day.  And I’d like to take it a step further:  After you have replayed this day’s events in your mind, envision tomorrow’s.

I’ve written before about creating your ideal day.  You know how you’d like it to go – so practice it.  To me, the difference between visualizing and practicing is that with visualization, you see yourself in various scenarios, whereas with practicing, you feel yourself actually living that moment.  One of the reasons I like role-playing is that instead of just imagining that you will say a certain script at a given time, you actually get to practice saying the words with another human present.  Practice makes perfect.

Of course, where the rubber meets the road is when you actually “perform.”  You have to put yourself out there and do it just like you practiced it – all three verses, with the chorus in between, and give it a little tag at the end.  Take your life seriously, and practice!

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