Getting to Carnegie Hall for Good

The story goes that in the 1970’s a young man visited New York. He went to see all the sites, from the Empire State Building to Wall Street to Yankee Stadium. Having never been there, he would often ask for directions.

And so it was that on a fine summer day in Central Park he stopped a gentlemen and said, “Excuse me sir, can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?” The wise man — according to folklore he was the famous violinist Jascha Heifetz — looked at the visitor and answered, “Practice!”

Of course he was correct. No one plays Carnegie Hall — designed by William Tuthill and built by Andrew Carnegie — except those who are very, very good. Originally called Music Hall, it opened in April of 1891 and has featured music from classical (Philharmonic Orchestras) to rock (The Beatles, Led Zeppelin). Before they played there, all of them practiced.

Around 105 years after Carnegie Hall opened, I was part of a music conference in California. It was focused on guitarists, one of which I am not, but I was invited to talk about lyric writing. Mostly I just hung around and listened to some amazing musicians do incredible things on their guitars. The featured speaker/guitarist for the entire event was Phil Keaggy. Keaggy has released more than 50 albums on his own or with a band, and has appeared on countless more. He is a (not just my opinion) phenomenal guitarist.

After Keaggy spoke to the audience, he took some questions. The one I remember most was someone who asked, “How much do you practice?”

Phil wanted clarification. “Do you mean when I was learning and coming up or do you mean now?”

The fellow seemed stunned. “You practice now?” And Keaggy laughed.

He said, “When I was learning and playing, I practiced about 8 or 9 hours a day, every day. Now I’m a lot busier, so I only practice about 3 hours a day.”

There was a guilty gasp from the audience. It seemed that everyone in the room knew none of us measured up to that standard. And while there were some great guitarists present, there was only one Phil Keaggy.

Music, Sports, Leadership

A couple of months ago Scottie Scheffler, currently the best golfer in the world, got some air time for his remarks after winning a major championship. Paraphrasing, he said that the joy of the victory was very temporary, perhaps only a few minutes. What he loved every day was the practice.

Ben Hogan, one of the greatest golfers of all time, was the same. I don’t know about the practice habits of Shohei Ohtani, or Tom Brady, or Steph Curry. I have heard that Kobe Bryant once said to an opponent something like: “You can never catch up with the hours I put into practice. I’m up at 4 in the morning and putting in the time while you are sleeping.”

Pilots practice flying in simulators, spelling bee competitors practice spelling on their own and with each other, and even rules officials and referees practice making calls. (You may think some of them could use a little more practice.)

Virtually every skill you can name requires practice if excellence is to be achieved. We all get that. Not that we all pay attention to it, because we are busy people and we can often get by with what we know. Guaranteed that Scheffler could for a while, but he doesn’t.

Here is a skill that we at Do Good U think and talk about a lot: leadership. Are you a leader? If so, good for you. Do you practice leadership?

That sounds like a trick question, perhaps, but it is not. Leadership can be and ought to be practiced. It is one of the differentiators we bring with us when we teach leadership in schools and companies. In fact the same is true for “followership,” something very few companies other than Do Good U even teach! But practice is a difference maker for following better just as it is for leading better.

Is that good, or is it evil?

DGU’s tag line is “Do good. It’s in you.” That is a call for you — and me — to engage in doing good. It also implies that we know the difference between good and evil. Remembering the truth that evil often disguises itself as good, how skilled are you at knowing which is which?

Thursday I received an email from “Support” with a subject line of “Account Security Notice” alerting me to “some unusual activity” on my account. I did not see that email because my email program recognized it as evil and immediately put it in my spam folder. But the email program doesn’t always get it right. One from “SSN” got through, and a legit email from the John Lennon Songwriting Contest didn’t. I still need to look through it because I’m better than a machine.

So are you. But do you have that same skill on the road? How about at the office? What if evil comes to you all cleaned up and wearing a new tee shirt that says “I love good”?

In the Bible there is a letter called Hebrews. It was written to a group of people who were Christians but had not grown in their faith like they should have. The writer says at one point that there is more to say on one topic, but they couldn’t understand it. They were too immature. They needed to drink milk, like babies, and couldn’t yet digest solid food. Ouch! Solid food, the writer says, is for those who have “their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

Instead of Carnegie Hall, we might ask, “How do I live a life of good?” The answer is the same: Practice!

Few of us have the gifts of the great performers, but all of us can improve. All it takes is…

Do good. It’s in you. (Practice.)