Notes on practicing.

An excerpt from The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander & Ben Zander:

Ben: I am reminded of a dispiriting moment in a cello lesson with my teacher, Mr. Herbert Withers. He was eighty-three years old, and I was eleven. I had tried to play a passage, but I couldn’t make it work. I tried again, and it didn’t work, and a third time, and I was no more successful. I remember making a frustrated grimace and putting down my bow. The elderly Mr.Withers leaned over me and whispered, “What? You’ve been practicing it for three minutes, and you still can’t play it?”

Which is a practice you are making a frustrated grimace for?

How can you make space for more of it?