Have you ever forced yourself to do something you really, really didn’t want to do? Maybe practicing a piece you hated, pushing through a brutal technique exercise, or dragging yourself to a lesson when you just weren’t feeling it?

During my teens, my piano lessons took place at 5 PM on Fridays — with a two-hour commute. While my friends were already celebrating the weekend, I was usually a nervous wreck, wishing I could stay home and forget about whether that Beethoven passage would meet my teacher’s expectations. Looking back, I can see what a privilege it was to have those lessons — but at the time, all I knew was that every fiber of my being wanted to stay home. Little did I realize that pushing through those feelings was building my brain in ways I wouldn’t understand until much later.

Recent research (Touroutoglou et al., 2020) shows that a specific part of the brain — the anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC) — actually grows and strengthens when you do things you don’t want to do. If you only do things you enjoy, the aMCC doesn’t really change much.
But when you push through something uncomfortable, summoning real will power, this brain region physically grows larger and more connected.

Over time, people who regularly choose to do hard things, even when they don’t feel like it, tend to have a bigger and stronger aMCC.A stronger aMCC is linked to:

• Better persistence and emotional resilience
• Higher performance under pressure
• Better decision-making under stress
• Slower cognitive aging

This is something I find especially fascinating because I spent my PhD studying the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) — the larger region that includes the aMCC. My research focused on the brain’s processing of pain, but even years later, I’m amazed by how much this region influences everyday challenges: motivation, grit, and simply not giving up when things get hard.

So what exactly happens in the brain?

The aMCC acts like your brain’s cost–benefit calculator under stress.
When you’re doing something unpleasant, it weighs the immediate discomfort (“this is hard, this is miserable”) against the potential rewards (“I’ll feel proud, I’ll get better, I’ll reach my goal”).

The more you choose to persist — even when everything in you says to quit — the more this circuit strengthens.

And here’s the good news: It actually gets easier over time.
Just like lifting weights builds muscle, pushing through difficulty strengthens your aMCC — making it faster and more efficient at helping you stick with hard things in the future.

So it turns out that persistence isn’t just a personality trait. It’s a trainable brain function.

If you’re a pianist, or you teach music, this research has some powerful takeaways.

It means that the moments when students are frustrated — like when they’re tired, when they’re sick of a piece, when they want to quit — are not just growing their musical skills. Those moments are literally rewiring their brains for greater resilience, focus, and long-term success.

In the piano studio, it’s important to normalize struggle rather than treat it as something to be avoided. Frustration isn’t a sign that something is wrong — it’s a sign that the brain is working hard to adapt and grow.

When students push through a difficult passage or keep practicing after a rough lesson, they’re not failing; they’re strengthening the very circuits that support persistence so it’s equally important to celebrate perseverance itself, not just polished performances.

A finished sonata might be satisfying, but the real victory often lies in the weeks of imperfect practice, the stubborn sessions where students choose not to quit. Recognizing those moments reinforces the idea that the effort (and not just the end result) is what truly matters.

Finally, teaching persistence isn’t about overwhelming students with monumental challenges.It’s about creating opportunities for small but meaningful wins: running a tricky phrase one more time, practicing for just five extra minutes when they want to stop, or polishing one stubborn measure until it clicks. Each small choice to push forward strengthens their brain’s willpower circuits — and slowly reshapes their understanding of what they’re capable of achieving.

Thanks for reading!

Source:

Touroutoglou A, Andreano JM, Cahill L, et al.
“The Tenacious Brain: How the Anterior Mid-Cingulate Contributes to Achieving Goals.” Brain Sciences. 2020;10(8):520. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10080520