Mindset: Success Begins Here

Here is one last post of 2020.  It's an important one as you think about your goals for 2021.

One of my revelations over recent years is how important it is to understand the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.  This year, it occurred to me that when it comes to friendships and relationships, I just don't connect to the fixed mindset.  Whether we're talking religion, politics, health, or music... If you don't have a growth mindset, then we're practically on different planets.  And if you want to succeed even a little on a musical instrument, you HAVE to have a growth mindset.

Okay, let me back up.  What is a growth mindset compared to a fixed mindset?

Someone with a growth mindset is always looking for self-improvement.  They are open to new and better ideas.  They are open to criticism and, especially, self-criticism.  This is not to say that accomplishments aren't fully celebrated along the way, but those are pit stops and not an ultimate destination.  When it comes to non-musical things such as personality, world views, and just about anything else...there is an eagerness to explore new ideas,  try new things, and understand that change is possible for anything or anyone.

Someone with a fixed mindset believes that they are the way they are, and it is what it is.  Opinions are absolutely right or absolutely wrong.  They don't try different foods.  They don't try a new routine.  Change is an ugly word.  When it comes to music, it either comes easy or it's not worth it.

How the two types react to practice

Someone with a fixed mindset will either not practice, or not practice with any depth or struggle, or gravitate towards only playing favorites or what comes easily.  The first sign of struggle with a piece will send the player into retreat.  Either the practice session is over, or out comes the easy music.  "It's hard!" is said as if it's a terminal diagnosis.

Someone with a growth mindset WANTS the challenge.  If it's comfortable, it's not giving you growth. The first sign of struggle with a piece will cause the player to pause and rethink what's possible in a sitting, to calmly look at why something is hard and what can be done about it.  "It's hard!" is said as if it's dessert.  This is good!  This is how I get better!

You're not stuck with being one or the other.

It's far more natural to have a fixed mindset than a growth mindset.  But switching to a growth mindset changes everything about your life!  To make the switch, all you have to do is get yourself to agree with this one statement: "I'm a long way from where I want to be, and that's okay."  There's two parts to that statement, and both are important.  "I'm a long way from where I want to be" is simply to say that you are NOT where you want to be now.  So don't keep playing the easy music, and don't keep bringing out the favorite past pieces to avoid the challenge of your current music.  "And that's okay" reminds you that it IS okay to struggle.  It is okay to have a long way to go.  Do you know what successful people do (in any field) when they reach their mountain top?  They find another higher mountain.  Think about it like this.  You're climbing the stairs of a 200-story skyscraper.  Each floor has a window with a view.  You can celebrate each floor, but at some point you have to resist thinking, "This is good enough.  I don't have to keep climbing those stairs."  Keep climbing.

Couple the growth mindset with intrinsic motivation (as I discussed in the previous post) and you WILL succeed in 2021.  It helps you focus on what matters, and that are your HABITS and your MENTAL DRIVE.  It's not about how many pieces you learn, or even what pieces they are.  The side effect is that by focusing on habits and mental drive, the results will be much better than they would be otherwise.

One last thing, and I promise you that you'll need this reminder at some point this year.

Growth mindset is forgiving.  You'll forget to practice, or feel bad about how things are going.  Remember the second part of the growth statement?  It's okay.  Breathe and regroup.  You will get frustrated, but remind yourself...it's okay.

If you want to read more about the growth mindset, I cannot recommend any book more than Mindset by Carol Dweck, which has an updated edition coming out on January 1.

Are you ready to do great work in 2021?

What's Your Motivation?

It's my first post in a while, but I will hopefully make up with it by giving you two new ones this week.  I think it's a safe bet to say that one of the best words to describe 2020 is "unexpected".  Thankfully, not all of it was negative!  Since my last blog post, I've had 4 film scores, 2 shows, and a bunch of other projects including starting a new podcast about musicians who play for theatre (called Life In the Pit).   I've even started a BIG project for hopefully mid-to-late 2021 related to teaching that I can't discuss yet, because it has a LONG way to go!  It may be 2022 before it's going, but all that to say... it's been tough to get around to blogging again.  Anyway, I can't promise to be very regular on here, but I will do my best going forward to not let a month go by without posting at least once.

As I mentioned, I am going to close out the year with 2 posts because I have some ideas I want to share about GOALS.  As we get ready for a new year, I can't think of a better week to think about goals.

Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation

What motivates you?

Something I've become more aware of this year is the powerful difference in Extrinsic motivation vs Intrinsic.  In case those words are unfamiliar, this is what is meant.  EXTRINSIC goals means that you are motivated by something or someone.  If you're practicing because you get a reward such as a dessert, a fun outing, money, or anything else, that is extrinsic.  If you're learning music to impress someone, that is extrinsic.

INTRINSIC means that your motivation is internal.  You want to practice well, and achieve your goal because it's something you take pride in doing.  It's something that matters to you.  You're comparing your present self with your past self, and your future self with your present self.  It doesn't matter what you receive or don't receive from someone else.  It doesn't even matter if you get the approval you're looking for.

Which one is better?

If you're looking for a short-term boost, a quick win - then extrinsic is the way to go.  There's a story I've told for years.  When I was in high school, I was preparing for my annual performance for the National Guild of Piano Teachers.  What this involves is preparing a certain length program (10 pieces for me that year) where you receive a grade from an out-of-town teacher on everything from rhythm to accuracy, expression, use of pedal, technique, tempo, interpretation, and many other factors.  My last piano lesson revealed to my teacher that I was woefully unprepared for one of my pieces.  It was 3 days before my scheduled performance, and my teacher said, "We should drop this piece, and reduce your type of certificate.  There's no way you'll have this ready."

Well, my teacher had been with me for at least 10 years by that point, and knew me well.  By saying "there's no way", she knew how I'd respond - in anger and with a stubborn determination to prove her wrong.  I told her not to take it off the program.  I went home and practiced in a way that I don't think I ever had before, almost exclusively on that piece.  And it WAS ready!  And I DID prove her wrong!

So...Extrinsic is better??

Extrinsic is much easier, and is more powerful in the short term.  However...

Here's the problem.  That was great for 1 piece at 1 point in my life.  It didn't make me a better pianist.  It didn't make me a better musician.  It also wasn't good for me to see my piano teacher as a villain just to prepare a piece of music to a certain standard!

What happens when you're on your own as an adult, and nobody is going to give you that extra cash, or a trip to a theme park, or whatever it is for doing your job?  Who's going to pat you on the back for learning another piece of music to an excellent standard? 

If you must have a reward or appreciation from someone else to be motivated to do well at music, there WILL come a time when it doesn't matter, when you stop progressing, and when you just don't feel like it's worth it.  One of my biggest challenges for years has been to keep learning challenging pieces that I have no intention of performing in concert, but merely want to keep growing as a pianist.

If you haven't figured it out by now, learning music is a LONG game!  It's not about what you're doing next month, but what you're doing in 10 years.  That starts with doing well...today.  Then you do the best you can...tomorrow.  Your motivation?  Look yourself in the mirror and smile knowing that, even if it wasn't perfect, you gave the best you could on that particular day.  You measure yourself against yourself.  You can always go to YouTube and find someone who plays your music faster and maybe with fewer mistakes.  That's extrinsic comparison, and that's NOT your measuring stick.  "You Yesterday" is your comparison with "You Today".  "You Tomorrow" is your comparison with "You Today".

The difference between people who operate on extrinsic or intrinsic motivation boils down to one characteristic for each.

People who practice music for extrinsic reasons are motivated by RESULTS.  You learned the piece or you didn't.

People who practice music for intrinsic reasons are motivated by THE PROCESS.  Never mind the piece itself.  How did you do with practice today?  Were you fully engaged with your concentration, or were you distracted?  Did you practice just the right amount for your time that you got NOTICEABLY better on a few measures rather than sorta-kinda-barely better on a full page or 2?  Are you thinking about what you can improve the next day?  Are you always thinking of where you could be after practicing tomorrow?  After a week of practice?  After a month of practice?

My biggest idol in music is the film composer John Williams (who wrote the music for Star Wars, Harry Potter, Home Alone, and so much more).  He is a master if INTRINSIC motivation.  Even though he's won 5 Academy Awards and a ton of Grammys, and the most recognizable movie music in history, he doesn't even watch the movies when he's done.  He's always moving on to the next project.  He doesn't care what praise or criticism he receives, because he's just trying to do his best on the project he's doing at the moment and doing it maybe a little better than the previous one.  He's not jealous of other composers, because his only comparison is himself.

My challenge for all of you in 2021 is to have big goals, but your first goal is: Fall in love with the process of practice.  Become the best practicer you can each and every day.  And do it for the pride and love of doing it well!  It's not glamorous, and there's nothing for your wallet.  But it will last, and you will get better and better!

Last but not least:  It will make you a better person.  Your relationships and friendships will improve with an intrinsic approach, because it's no longer you just feeding off your environment.  It's you offering your best no matter how it's received.  It's you supporting others in their goals even if they're similar to yours, and maybe appear to be doing better.  Doing things intrinsically is a HARD switch to make, but try to get going that way in 2021, because the long-term results are so much better!

Reach first, then build the staircase

Yesterday, I was walking in an athletic park with a soccer field, when I saw this giant tire along the track.

Well, I'm an on-and-off calisthenics enthusiast.  I was actually here to use the pull-up bars shown in the distance.  I've seen the videos of athletes or crossfit trainers flipping these tires for exercise, and I always wondered, "What's the big deal?", so I tried it.   For the record, I tried 4 times...

I couldn't lift it.

I couldn't even budge it.

I could barely get it to wiggle.

To think something would be easy only to find that it isn't even something I can come close to doing is, well, humiliating.  There are times in the past where I would respond in anger, criticizing my shortcomings and maybe even calling myself a failure.  Another common response might be for me to go pick an exercise that I can do well just to show myself I'm still good at something, and then keep doing it.

However, after years of teaching and making myself be mindful of how practice works, and how progress is made, I've come up with what I think is the healthiest response for anyone aspiring to be better.

"I can't do it now.  I MIGHT not be able to ever do it.  However, I can build a staircase to get from here to there, and see how far I get."

If you are on the ground floor and you look up at even the next floor when it's an open floor-to-ceiling section where you can see all the floors, imagine that there's no stairs, no elevator, no escalator, and you have no rope or anything to help you climb upward.  Trying to get to the next level seems insurmountable.  A staircase makes it possible, even if it's a really long staircase.  Even if you're out of shape, you can still take one step at a time at your own pace, and rest as needed.

What is the staircase? 

The staircase can be a lot of things.  It's a list of the easier tasks that can progress to harder ones.  My step 1 was to go to YouTube and see a tutorial in the technique of how to stand, how to position yourself, how to use your leg during the motion...and I wasn't doing any of that.  My next step might be to find a much smaller tire to get used to the technique.  I might also want to practice more on squatting and dead lifts to improve the two movements involved in lifting a tire.

In music, your destination might be playing your music much faster than you can.  You want to play it with the metronome on 150, but you can barely do 60.  The metronome becomes a staircase.  Step 1 is 60.  Step 2 is 65.  Step 3 is 70.  Step 4 is 75, and so on.  It's not the only way to speed up a piece, but it's a reliable way to make some measured progress.

Another goal might be playing a piece of music that is way too difficult for you.  There's a canyon between Chopin's Prelude No. 4 and his Prelude No. 8.

 

If you can play the first (#4), but are nowhere near the 2nd (#8), then you should try #6, then #20, then #2, then basically all of the others with the possible exception of #16 in some order, and then you're ready for #8,  You might have to start very, very slowly, or hands separately, but either way...you are in the midst of your staircase.

And now for the final point that might be a bit painful...

You might not make it.

I might not flip that tire.  You might get about 7 preludes learned, and then hit a plateau.  You might decide some day...maybe you could learn it a long time from now, but you just don't find the time it takes to succeed worth it.  And that's okay.  It's actually okay to reach for something, and not make it.

The important thing is to REACH.  Your staircase has no purpose until you have a target.  That staircase may be too long for you to get to the end.  But you need to move ahead.  There are certain pieces I have played in my life (Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, Tchaikovsky's 1st Concerto, Liszt's Concert Etude No. 3) that were milestones for me.  They represented, at the time I learned them, something I didn't think I could have done before.  They also represented something I could barely play slowly when I started.  Two of those pieces took me the better part of a year.  My current piece like that is the Piano Sonata from Samuel Barber.

Every piece I've learned like the ones mentioned above have left me better prepared for a whole new level of music.  I'm now accompanying voice lessons on a regular basis for the first time since college, and finding myself well-equipped for every piece I've had to sightread.  I'm thankful for taking the time in the summer of 1996 to play through (not practice, but just sightread) the entire 48 compositions of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier books 1 and 2.  I'm thankful for the time I took since May through late August to play through the entire 19 Sonatas and 3 Fantasias of Mozart.  All of that has made me ready to sightread music for voice lessons.  I'm thankful for every piece I've played that made me question my ability at first.  I'm not ready for the Barber Sonata to sound anything like it's supposed to be, but I'm reaching for it, and building the staircase.

If you at least reach high, but don't make it... you'll still almost certainly be better off than you were before!

What's keeping you from being a GREAT pianist?

For the sake of simplification, we're going to say that there are 4 types of pianists in the world: Bad, Average, Good, and Great.  I understand that there are transitionary levels ("below average", "above average"), which do not need to be mentioned since these imply moving from bad to average or from average to good.  I also won't mention descriptions beyond great (such as elite) which represents a very small percentage of people who play piano, and honestly... If you're old enough to read this blog, and are reading about about how to improve your pianism, then you probably haven't started early and fast enough to become elite.  But don't be depressed.  Being merely a great pianist is not only nothing to cry about, but it is a laudable achievement that is something to strive for.

However, most pianists are not great.   Bad and average pianists probably make up way over half, maybe even 60% of all pianists in the world.  Of the remaining 40-50%, most of these pianists are good, with only a small percentage being great or elite.  Why is this the case?  For reasons you'll see, climbing up the ladder in pianist categories is hard.  This is very important before we go on.  It's crucial that you accept this fact before moving on with this article, because I'm going to make a big deal of it.

Being GREAT at piano is HARD!

Being GREAT at piano is HARD and takes A LOT of time!

Some of you might be thinking: Really? Okay.  I guess I won't be a great pianist if it's going to be really hard and take a lot of time.  I'll go be great at something else that isn't as hard.  So, let me go ahead and tell you this before you go away.

Being GREAT at ANYTHING is HARD and takes A LOT of time!

So if anything requires difficulty and time to be great, why not pursue that on the piano?  Let's proceed.

This article is about becoming GREAT, but we have to quickly talk about how to get from bad to good.

TO BE A BAD PIANIST

Simply play during your lessons, and hardly ever in between.  Practice, if it occurs, is unfocused.  Or...take a few lessons, and stop.  Don't practice at all.

TO BE AN AVERAGE PIANIST

Practice at least a few days per week with some focus.  Practice on new and challenging material doesn't have to be a high percentage of your piano time, but it needs to be something regular.  Do this consistently for at least a year or two, and you will be an average pianist.

TO BE A GOOD PIANIST

Practice needs to become a HABIT.  You need to shoot for daily time at the piano.  You need to be focusing practice on new and challenging skills and pieces.  You also need to be taking lessons, or have someone experienced who can give you feedback.  How much time should you be spending?  Honestly, it doesn't really matter.  Practice 15 minutes a day with focus, and you'll eventually be good, but it may take many years.  Practice several hours a day, and you'll get good faster.  But practice 8 hours a day with just what I said, and you'll never be great.  Sorry, but it's not enough, and that's because time and effort are only parts of what make someone great.

What's keeping you from being a GREAT pianist?

1. You're not GOOD yet.

This is a simple test.  Is practice a habit, a daily habit?  Are you focusing on new and challenging material?  Are you taking lessons, and applying feedback to your practice?  You have to do this to become good.  You don't go from bad to great or average to great without passing by "good".  Check your habits.  This is not requirement 101, but 099...something you must do before you can move on.

2. You place too much value on comfort and satisfaction.

As I said, practice 8 hours a day with the habits of a good pianist, and you won't be great...IF your material and technique doesn't stretch you to your limits.  A runner who isn't huffing and gasping every now and then knows they won't get faster.  A weight lifter who doesn't feel the soreness of muscle burn isn't getting much stronger.  As a musician, you must face the facts: Stretching yourself requires DISCOMFORT.  Practicing in a way to be great will not feed your ego.   If you want to be a good pianist with great self-esteem, then take that piece you learned last year that you already know and play it until it's fast and fulfilling.  Being a great pianist will not feed your ego.  The road to being great is chock-full of potholes.  It is constantly under construction.  There are detours.  You'll have times where you wish you could just go back to the land of good and stay there.  At the same time, the road to great does make progress, and you are getting closer if you persevere.  The next few points are related.

3. You waste time on easy sections, and ignore what is difficult.

Unless you're trying to jump many levels ahead, almost nothing you practice is totally hard.  It has easy measures and hard measures.  In most cases, it should be simple to figure out which is which.  The ego-driven good pianist practices what is easy every chance they can, because it's fun to hear the accomplishment and avoid the brain strain of what great pianists do:  Dive in, struggle, and wrestle with the difficult sections.  Commit a large portion of your practice to the hard places.  Tackle them first, and tackle them often.  If you have pesky measures, there's a huge advantage to doing 5-10 focused minutes of practice on the same spot multiple times a day.  Give yourself a break, but keep coming back.  Don't get mad or discouraged while it's hard.  You WILL win every match eventually if you simply don't give up.

4. Your music is too easy.

Here's an easy guide to the levels: To be average, play music that average pianists play.  To be good, play music that good pianists play.  To be great, play music that great pianists play.  Now this is tricky, because the road from Clementi's Sonatina op. 36, no. 1 to Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata (still regarded as one of the most difficult pieces ever written) has many, many steps in between.  Your music should always challenge you, but never overwhelm you.  You need to be practicing music that will advance you a few more miles down the Road to Greatness.   Practice easier music to stay in the land of good, but with more property. This is where a teacher is invaluable, to help you move forward at the pace that best suits you.

5. You ignore or underemphasize your technique.

 If you didn't already, please click on the link in the above section for Valentina Lisitsa performing the finale of the Hammerklavier Sonata.  To achieve the speed and independence required to play that requires many hundred to thousands of hours on specific scales and arpeggios, not to mention etudes and exercise that mix these together.  Here's a fact: The speed of your scales is the limit of how fast you can play music with those scales.  The same goes with arpeggios.  Learn your skills, then speed them up, then learn them in harder ways, and speed them up again.  This needs to be a regular part of your practice.

6. You neglect your theory.

I've met good musicians who don't know much about theory, but I've never met a great musician who was lacking.  Theory requires study, written study.  The more you know, the better you understand what you're playing. 

7. You haven't mastered the art of Deliberate Practice

This is the most important distinction between a great and good pianist.  A good pianist can work on something hard, but the goal might be: I'm going to start on measure 1 and play to measure 16 as many times as I can within 20 minutes.  The great pianist looks at the really tricky measure 12 (the one with the chromatic scale), and practices ONLY that for 15 minutes.  They practice it super slowly focusing on fingerings and absolute accuracy.  Then they apply long-short and short-long rhythms.  They also approach it from the end, moving progressively backwards from the beginning.  They notice that it's kinda chromatic, so they review a chromatic scale.   They then get out a metronome, and work on the tempo.  They'll also do this tomorrow and the next day and so on until it's mastered.

This blog was inspired by a book that talks about this 7th step, one that I highly recommend to those of all ages: "So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love" by Cal Newport

By the way, there is nothing wrong with being an average or good pianist.  If you enjoy the fun side of piano, but get burned out from the challenge, this is not something to find shameful or embarrassing.  Music should, in the end, give you joy and serve your needs.  This article is only if you're wondering: what's keeping me from being great?  And the answers are: only your time, your resistance to difficulty, and/or your approach to learning.   Master those steps, and you'll too be great!

Why do we practice?

We practice because...

• it's our only hope for progress.

• it's our only hope against regression.

• we don't want to merely like the idea of being a pianist, but we want to be the pianist.

• there is so much to learn!

• nobody else will practice for us.

• somewhere, someone else is not making excuses.  They're getting better and playing the music you want to be playing.

• we recognize that practice isn't punishment or a chore, but the proven secret to success, the formula that thousands of musicians follow every day!

• if it were easy, EVERYONE would do it.  It's not always easy, but it's always worth it!

• we don't think of it as something we have to do.  It's something we get to do!

It's all of the above.

"Practice only on the days you eat." -  sign in a high school band room.

Understanding the Reality of Trade-offs

I had time between lessons yesterday to walk over to the nearby mall and do some quick browsing.  I happened to walk past a gourmet cookie bakery.  I went in with the intention of just getting a simple modest chocolate cookie, but instead I got a giant cookie with lemon icing, a $2 cookie!  This photo isn't the very same cookie, but it's pretty close.

The first bite was GREAT!  Soft, sweet, lemony.  I started eating it the moment I walked out of the cookie store as I headed towards the other end of the mall.  I continued to eat as I walked.  By the time I had passed 5 stores, let's say 200 feet at the most, the thrill was GONE!  I was left with a few tremors and a feeling of guilt for shoving that whole thing in my mouth.  It was a matter of time before I felt a total lack of energy after the sugar crash set in.  Worst of all, the pleasure of the taste (the WHOLE reason I got it in the first place) was over!  With this experience in my memory, I could approach a cookie like that right now, and ask myself one question before buying it.

Is the 2-minutes of joy this cookie brings worth the hour or more of misery that will follow?

Well, that's an easy answer when I phrase it like that.  But when I want the easy craving at the time, I forget to step back and just ask: What's the trade-off here?  And is it worth it?

Wait! Isn't this a PIANO blog?  What does eating a giant cookie have to do with piano?

Bear with me.  I'll get there eventually.

Every decision...not nearly every decision, but EVERY decision in life comes with at least one trade-off.

You keep using that word "trade-off".  What do you mean?

A trade-off is also known as the flip side.  You can't do everything at once.  Making a choice to do something denies you that chance to do something else.  Back in the early days of TV, before streaming, before internet, before DVR, before VCR or other video recording, if you had time at 8pm to sit down to watch a television show, you had to choose which one to watch with the knowledge that you were not watching the other choices (at first, only 2, but later more).  Here are some more examples.

• Staying at home means you can't go to the beach.  Going to the beach means you can't just stay home.
• In NC, going to the mountains means you don't go to the beach (at least at the same time), and vice versa.

But those aren't great examples, because you're not making a hard choice in any case.  What about when there's a harder choice?  You have to address the decision in a way that lets you know the flipside and the consequences if any.  For example:

• I love the taste of sodas, and sometimes I just CRAVE one.  I also happen to know that soda-drinking is one of the biggest triggers for causing me to get canker sores in my mouth.  I almost never get them when I stay away from soda.  So, would I rather have the few minutes of sweet taste, or avoid the not-certain-but-more-likely days of pain that will follow?
• I like eating out.  I also need to save money, and don't particularly like taking time to pack a lunch.  What do I want more, the convenience of eating out or saving some money for something more meaningful?
• This video I'm watching is really interesting, but it's getting very late, and I have to get up early in the morning.  Is the enjoyment of the video worth the price of not getting much sleep?

You see where this is going?  Any decision has at least one trade-off if you take time to think about it.

SO, what are the trade-offs related to your choices regarding practicing your music?

• If you watch a television episode instead of practicing, you're making the decision that the entertainment and escapism is more important than the opportunity to get better at your instrument.  Is that true?
• If you play a video game instead of practicing, you're making the same choice.  Is your goal to be really good at video games, or really good at piano?
• Time at the piano spent just playing old favorites is time that you could be spending working on your more challenging new music.  You're choosing comfort over challenge.  It's a common choice, but the trade-off of comfort is to not make progress.
• If your time is diluted with such a variety of extracurricular activities other than music (martial arts, sports, church, drama, etc), you are accepting that you will most likely be acquainted with many experiences, but be less likely to get really good at any of them.  I'm not attacking this lifestyle.  It's certainly possible that you are okay with this.  For many people, knowing a little of everything is more important than being selectively focused on a very few things.  But have you at least considered this trade-off and decided if it's what you really want?

In summary: You can't do everything you want or even need.  Giving your time to one thing means not giving it to something else.  Striving for comfort denies yourself the struggle that makes you better.  Sometimes, you may want to dial it down and enjoy that video game or TV show because the pleasure is worth missing the chance to improve at piano, at least for that one day every now and then.  Sometimes you need the satisfaction of affirming your favorite pieces you've already learned more than learning something new.  But I challenge you to at least BE aware of it.  You can do just about anything you want, as long as you recognize what it is you're giving up in exchange, and are convinced that you've made the best choice.