Thinking

Thinking about what’s for dinner can lead to a loss of concentration and  potentially ruin a performance. It would have been better not to have thought about that during your solo. But it isn’t what we think about that matters; it's how much we invest in it. 

From Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) comes the concept of cognitive fusion. Simply stated, fusion means that our thoughts dominate our behaviour. We are inseparable from our thoughts. We are fused with what we think. Unfortunately this isn’t always good for musicians. 

We all have thoughts while performing that can subtly or otherwise erode our rhythmic and phrasing values. That’s when we need to try cognitive diffusion while playing — separating, detaching and distancing ourselves from our non-musical thoughts. Cognitive diffusion is like mindfulness of thinking; unhooking us from less useful thoughts and back into the world of direct contact with the instrument and music at hand. It is a state of relating to the thought in a particular way, where you recognize that it may or may not be helpful to continue thinking about whatever it is. You make a instant choice and decide how much attention you want to pay to the thought.

There are many techniques. I rely on mentally counting the beat to drown out unwanted thoughts. It might sound a bit obvious, but it works for me. Search out a technique that works for you while acknowledging that you cannot and do not want to stop all thinking while playing. 

Great mediators tell us that, ultimately, all thoughts should be allowed to come and go on their own, without any need for you to hold onto them, or, push them away. My question is whether such an elevated level of meditation / consciousness would actually be helpful for musicians. I suppose it could lead to interesting and authentic performances (I wonder what the Dalai Lama would be like on lead guitar). I suspect, however, a more likely result would be meandering mush. 

When you are in the midst of creating music, thoughts will happen. Some you need to pursue, however briefly. Others not so much.  It is how you react to thoughts that is important.