For a while, I couldn't stand looking at my piano.
I'd wanted to learn piano since I was a teenager. When I could finally afford one, I bought it, got some books, and started practicing enthusiastically.
For about a month.
Then I'd come home, see the piano, and think, "I should practice, but I just don't feel like it."
I'd walk past it and sit down to watch television instead.
Before long, the piano was covered with potted plants, papers, and dust. A very expensive plant stand.
The trouble was, I really did want to play piano. I'd spent thousands of dollars on something I'd always wanted, yet every day I was talking myself out of practicing.
And every time I did, I felt worse about it.
What started as stress became disappointment in myself. Eventually, I was disgusted with myself for not using the piano.
It got to the point where I moved the piano into another room so I wouldn't have to look at it.
Around that time, I took a continuing education seminar on thinking well. One exercise was about noticing how we talk to ourselves, then asking whether those thoughts line up with our goals and the values we want to live by.
I realized I wasn't being very kind to myself about the piano. And the way I was talking to myself certainly wasn't helping me become a pianist.
The least easy part was sitting down and doing the exercise. And even that was pretty simple.
I took a yellow pad and a pen and wrote down that familiar thought.
"I should practice, but I just don't feel like it."
Then I asked myself, "How do I say that in a loving way?"
What I came up with was this:
"That's funny. I don't know why I'm not practicing piano. I love piano."
No orders. No scolding. Just curiosity and a reminder of something I knew was true.
Whenever I caught myself thinking the old way, I'd stop and say those new words to myself.
I wasn't sitting at the piano practicing. I was practicing a different conversation with myself.
And something interesting happened.
Somewhere along the way, I wasn't feeling bad about the piano anymore. I was just curious why I wasn't playing something I loved.
I wanted the piano back in the living room, so I moved it there.
Then one day, without even thinking about it, I sat down and started playing. I wanted to.
I practiced for the next 15 years. I even got to lead my family in five Christmas concerts, which was what I'd hoped to do when I bought the thing.
I never became a particularly good pianist. But I wonder how often we turn something we love into something stressful just by the way we talk to ourselves about it.
Five Christmas concerts. Not bad for a plant stand.