lightning fast psychological flexibility

In ACT, psychological flexibility is the overarching goal. It is the 

ability to contact the present moment more fully as a conscious human being, and to change or persist in behavior when doing so serves valued ends. 

In other words, paying attention to what is going on right now, and responding by either persisting with what you are doing as it is aligning with our values, or, alternatively changing direction to move towards what is important.

Noticing that you are stuck in repetitive patterns of thinking or other behaviours and being mentally agile enough to notice and then change to do something different, instead of continuing on with what is not working. 

I've noticed as I am practicing for this audition that I am quite fixed about how I think I should be preparing, and some of that is based on hard facts. On knowledge of how 'polished' excerpts need to be to be successful in an audition, and on my experience of what it is like to work hard and consistently to feel like you are ready to do an audition, and the feeling that the pieces are all technically and musically mastered. Practiced over and over again until they can be played accurately and consistently.

Ideally by this stage I would be playing mock auditions for friends but I am not ready for that. I am also busy writing my first workshop and working in orchestras, so unfortunately I have not spent enough time doing that for this audition. There are so many excerpts, and I have let my run a bit late, and was not really lip fit enough at the beginning.

And as you know, this has been very stressful and I have wanted to pull out many times.

Which finally gets me to the point of the title - lighting fast psychological flexibility - I can either stay rigid with this type of thinking - 'I am not ready for this audition' -or I can try to be more mentally agile, by putting trust in being present in each moment and untangling from rigid ideas of how I haven't done enough preparation.

And I have been thinking about how music is an amazing feedback to whether or not you are present. There is so much one can play on automatic pilot, without even realising one is playing. Some music is very fast and technical, almost impossible for me now to get it memorised and automatic, so I am experimenting with 'lightning fast' psychological flexibility. 

Or maybe it is just effective concentration and I am full of shit.

image from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/young-entrepreneur-council/16-tricks-for-making-ligh_b_6458754.html