Do you do that?

I've talked about having a critical eye when watching others and while watching yourself on a recording, but what about bridging those two?

When you watch someone else playing and you notice something in their technique - good or bad, try asking yourself, do I do that?

It's really easy to watch someone in order to give them advice or critique, but if it only stops there, you're doing yourself a disservice.  Maybe someone doesn't bring their left arm up as high as their right, but are you then guilty of it as well?  And that's the easy stuff to spot!

If you watch someone with an odd bend in their knee, how sure are you that you don't do it?  If you see someone soloing that doesn't look very confident, are you sure you don't seem the same way?  How do you know?  This is a whole other level of self-awareness and correction that you can only get by being honest with yourself.  It takes a bit of discomfort because you WILL find things that you're doing incorrectly, and it's up to you if you want to pretend you aren't or take the time to work on them.

After a while, you'll find that the discomfort starts to go away AND your critical eye is sharpened both inwards and outwards.  In doing this, you'll find that watching others translates into critiquing your own technique, and how awesome is that?