What Motivates you!?

Welcome to 2013!! I hope all of you had a fabulous New Year and are ready to take on the new year with vigor!  I wanted to start off with a practice technique that I teach all of my students and even use myself!  The main crux of this technique is repetition with 10 being the magical number.  If you can play through a particular passage 10 times correctly you greatly increase your chances of playing it correctly under the pressure of performance.  The set up is very simple, find what motivates you- everyone one will be different.  For me I have a horrible sweet tooth so I use gummie bears as my motivator. I start with 10 bears on the Left hand side of the stand and play my passage, if I get it correct I slide one bear over to the right.  I play the passage again, if I do it correctly then I slide another bear over to the right etc.  If I make a mistake of any kind all of the bears I've obtained on the right side get pushed back to the left, which can be maddening in and of itself especially if you make it all the way to the 9th repetition and mess up!!  Once I have them all over to the right I eat them!  Maybe gummie bears does not appeal to you and that's ok but it's all about finding what speaks to *you*.  I have one student that uses cut up pieces of grape, another uses a red vine licorice cut into 10 pieces, and an adult harp student takes three olives and cuts them into ten pieces then makes a martini when she's complete! Whatever works is great with me!  That's just one of the many practice techniques that I teach my students I would love to hear some of yours!!