Learn how to choose between PACT and HARD goals to support your growth as a musician — whether you need steady action or bold emotional commitment.

A few years ago, I had a student — let’s call him James — who was enormously talented but utterly paralysed by performance anxiety. He had a voice that could hush a crowded room and make grown men weep (a critic's words, not mine!). But the moment the stakes felt "real" — auditions, recordings, even posting a short clip online — he would retreat. He’d convince himself he wasn’t ready, or that no one wanted to hear him anyway.

When I first began moving away from teaching SMART goals, I wasn’t entirely sure what would fill the gap. I just knew this: My clients — highly capable, fiercely creative musicians — weren’t failing because they weren’t "measuring" things properly. They were falling apart because their goals sat almost entirely outside their Circle of Control. And for many of them, goal-setting had quietly become another form of self-punishment... A game rigged against them from the start.