Your Magic Wand by Anne Nayer, msw Coach Paradise

I started playing the violin about 6 years ago and have taken lessons on and off ever since.   improvement is always in direct proportion to how much I practice as well as to the guidance of the several wonderful teachers.

The violin program at the Montessori school was preparing for it’s final violin recital last week and I was hemming and hawing about whether I’d participate. The dress rehearsal went badly and I have to thank a parent I saw at Picassa’s the next morning for her encouragement. When I shared my reluctance to play, she said “Ridiculous. Go ahead.”

I left the dress rehearsal, went home, practiced like crazy and showed up for the show along with the other students – ages 3-16, one other adult and me. The audience was padded with fans – mostly parents, grands and a few friends. The show began with Julie Beistline, our teacher, wowing us with a Paganini piece and proceeded to showcase Julie’s students. My rendition of Fritz Kreisler’s Liebslied was a big improvement over the dress rehearsal version and, having no parents present (on this plane anyway) I was proud of myself for pulling it off, sounding OK and simply for having the courage to stand up and perform.

Sitting in the audience before and after playing, my focus was drawn to Julie. The pride and joy that radiated from her as she watched each and every student perform was a delight to behold. Her pure pleasure in the progress and performance of her ‘kids’ was palpable and warmed my heart. Whenever I looked her way she was nodding, listening closely and smiling – as my friend Zora said – like an angel. Her total focus on helping the tiny students position their feet and their instruments and prepare to play was the same as I’d always felt in my lessons – total focus on helping and supporting me to do my best.

The whole experience was wonderfully uplifting and got me thinking about the tremendous power of teachers in our lives and, that whatever we do professionally, we are all teachers and we are all given many opportunities everyday, not only share our expertise, but to encourage and support one another.

My daughter took piano lessons many years ago and her teacher Richard Sabonis was another version of Julie – in a much older, Santa Claus like persona. He was endlessly encouraging, endlessly positive and had her playing pieces that I would have deemed too advanced for a beginner. I would sit, cringing at her cacophonous efforts, marveling when he said, “Good try. Now lets go back to the beginning and see if we can do it like this.” When we moved away I looked for another teacher so she could continue her studies and, at a first lesson with a prospective teacher, she was asked to play something and proudly played Fur Elise.  She turned expectantly  to hear him say– “ Well, that could use some work.” Her 10-year old body deflated and on the way out she said “I don’t like him. I don’t want to go back.” I understood.

When we focus on another person fully with the intention of supporting them in any endeavor – as a teacher, coach, parent, friend, sibling, colleague or random person on line at the post office – focusing on their strengths and helping them shore up and transform their weaknesses we are using our magic wands of affirmation and encouragement.

We relegate magic wands to the world of fairy tales and forget that we all possess one. Imagine what yours looks like and what incantation you might mumble in the tradition of abracadra and the bibitty bobbity boo of the fairy godmothers in Cinderella who sang “you can do magic believe it or not and ‘just a wave of my stick and I’ll finish the trick”.

Go ahead pull it out, dust it off, try it, give it a whirl. We all have within us the words and wands that have the power to transform: help others shed rags for gowns, stand taller, do what they wouldn’t have thought possible, see their Buddha natures, divine selves and empower others to move out into the world sharing their unique gifts, being their best, most joyful selves and showing up at the recital, playing their hearts out and taking a bow to well deserved applause.