I was recently practicing bass guitar in preparation for playing on my church’s worship team. There was a specific part of one song that I kept having trouble with.  For some reason, I couldn’t rhythmically understand how a series of note were to be played.  I could hear it when I listened to the song, but I couldn’t make it happen when I actually tried to play it.  It was time to dig in!

First, I wrote out the notes I was to play. Then I played those notes several times in the order they were to be played.  This helped me become familiar with what I was supposed to be playing.  Next, I listened to this section of the song at a much slower speed over and over as I counted out what beats the notes fell on.  Every time I figured out what beat a note fell on, I’d write it down so I could move on to the next note without forgetting what I had just learned.  Once I had determined what beats all the notes fell on, I was able to begin playing along with the song at normal speed.  From here I continued to practice what I learned until it became familiar.

It can be like that for problems we struggling with. Sometimes what we need to do is do a deep dive on what we’re struggling with and give focused energy into figuring it out.  This may involve slowing down, breaking our problem into pieces, addressing each piece separately, and then reassembling these pieces into what will be a solution to our problem.

Think of some problem you’re struggling with or a concept you’re having a hard time grasping. Perhaps you could benefit from devoting some focused attention toward figuring the problem out.