During a concert season rehearsal in college my band director stopped us from playing, paused, and reminded us “the rest is music too”. We were working on this really great piece that built and built into this massive crescendo, almost to a boiling point, then all of a sudden it just...stopped...for one count, and then picked right back up where it left off. That rest was but one small moment in a piece that had thousands of notes. Yet, it was the most important moment of the entire arrangement. For what felt like an eternity, the lingering, deafening silence grabbed your attention in a way that I truly can’t put into words. Our director was not satisfied with the respect and attention we were paying to that one “note” of rest. He was trying to get us to tap into not only the rest being there, but to appreciate the magnitude it carried in that moment and by doing so showcasing the notes on either end. The entire section of that piece, and entire arrangement for that matter, hung on that rest. The best sound of the entire song, as it turns out, was no sound at all.
I think about that phrase a lot, even so many years later. It’s one of the two most important and powerful moments of rehearsal over my 4 years in that program. (The other was me being unprepared one day, him putting me on the spot, and reminding me that rehearsal is our time, not my time, and I should have come prepared and ready to fit my part in with the rest of the group - another moment full of lessons I reflect on a ton). It’s amazing to me as I look back how much music influenced me and how many opportunities it provided for me which turned me into the coach, educator, leaders, husband, and father I am today. Dare I say I learned more from all my years of music and from my directors than I did from my athletic experience. The importance of organization, teamwork, selflessness, being able to perform your role within the context of something much bigger than yourself are lessons I carry with me daily. The leadership opportunities, reps in following others, reps at continually pushing your skills to higher and higher levels were the moments that truly taught me.
Music is one of those things you never perfect. There is no endpoint. There’s always something else, something new to work on, a new piece to learn. You learn that if you aren’t the solo you’re still dependent on doing your part to aid in setting the featured part, and if you are the featured solo you can’t create the best musical experience and performance on your own for that arrangement, you need the others. One must have the other, the notes on either side of the rest can’t truly live without the rest in between.
Music to me is the ultimate team activity. I trust you. You trust me. Together that trust produces something magical. Music gets to the heart of what real, true competition is, “striving together”. Iron sharpening iron not for the sake of dominating an opponent or putting a number on a scoreboard. We perform to perform to the best of our abilities. If you play your part better than me I stick out, and not in a good way. I must raise my level to match yours and vice versa. When you perform you’re competing, but you’re competing against your last rehearsal or performance. You’re competing against your own worst habits (Part III). It’s the embodiment of TEAM and the essence of competition in its purest and most euphoric form. One performer sets up the other. Just as one note, or rest for that matter, sets up the other.
I believe all of this is true. I believe that each note plays its part and each note must be played correctly, on time, on target, with the right ambeture, the right style, the right feeling, and that includes….the rests. Just as each second in a game holds the same weight, just as a made free throw in the first quarter counts the same as the free throw with no time on the clock to win the game, each note, each rest, carries the same importance towards that end goal. Sometimes the most important note you play is the one you don’t.
We have spent the last three installments of this series on Reframing Winning around redefining what true winning is, who we are actually competing against, and how we can control our experience to eliminate losing. All three of those installments were about what we can do or should do. This one will take the opposite approach by focusing on the things we don’t or shouldn’t do. We live in such a world, especially now, that is 24/7 go go go. It never stops. If you aren’t working someone else is and taking your spot. We hear all the time about “The Grind” and “Unseen Hours” and how it is essentially your duty to put everything aside to achieve a certain goal even if that means sacrificing other things that are important to you or to those around you. But as we’ve been learning, that is essentially a song with no rests. How great can a song be that is just constant notes or sound? Well, what is a life or career that is nonstop, 24/7, all the time? Where are we building in our rests? If the silence of an arrangement can actually make the notes around it more important, then aren’t we actually reducing the importance and impact of the things we do if we don’t surround them with “rests”?
When we plan our seasons, our weeks, our daily practice plans, our scouts, etc we seem to constantly try to add more and more. We have to get this installed, this play put in, this wrinkle, this new press, this new coverage, we must watch more film; if we don’t someone else will and we will fall behind. We must do this to get ahead, but what or who are we really getting ahead of? Is it always about what we are doing? What if it was more about what we weren’t doing? What if we led the league in playing our rests perfectly? What if it became more about playing fewer notes more efficiently and accented those with the rests sprinkled in? What if we instead focused on the segment of practice we eliminate from the plan, the extra formation or out of bounds play we don’t put on our kids to learn, the 6:00 am workout or the yet-again-team-zoom-meeting we don’t schedule? What if instead we simply rested? How much more impactful would the things we do be if it was accentuated by what we don’t? Think about how the rest now impacts winning, or I should say, eliminates losing. We can intentionally create more opportunities to win by simply building in more rests, reducing the complexity, and controlling our experience. When we make our experience about us, and no one else, we then control more of the “games” we play.
In a world that is so fast paced, so filled with things that we can’t even begin to reign in, turning our focus inward, knowing who we are, and redefining what true competition and winning is, we then can get back to striving and improving ourselves faster and more efficiently by simply doing a little less. Becoming this version of yourself as a professional also allows us to become a better version of ourselves at home and outside of work. When we can eliminate losing in our daily lives as coaches, educators, and leaders we can’t help but create more wins in our personal lives. We become more fulfilled, we live in those moments more often, we can stop, relax, and enjoy who we are. We can be proud of what we have done and stop worrying so much about what we haven’t. We can enjoy who we are with. We can enjoy our friends and families more because the work has been left at the office, and as a result we don’t carry home the losses. We have finally begun to make the best music of our lives. When we can make the most important note of our daily song, the one we don’t play, then we can finally lie down at night and, well….rest.
