What advice has helped you the most?

[mknueven]

In your playing - what advice has transformed your playing the most?

[Bob]

The little voice inside my mind.  I just keeping asking and thinking and eventually the answer pops in there, apparently from nowhere.

Other than that, I would have to say my teachers. 

Transformation through inspiration from pieces of music and other things.

[rc]

To listen carefully was the most useful advice for me.

Often when people describe playing and give advice it comes out very visual, and I found it very frustrating trying to figure out how to make it 'look' right.  Once I shifted the focus on listening I found a lot of my difficulties disappeared, and now I'm starting to think that a lot of my practice is subconsciously linking what I want to hear with the motions needed to make it happen, in a very general way.

One milestone for me was learning how to play arpeggios, when I came across the advice to "just listen and move from one note to the next", it all began to fall together.

[counterpoint]

In your playing - what advice has transformed your playing the most?

The advice, that would have transformed my playing most, would have been:

"Don't hear on what others say, believe in your feelings, let the music itself lead you to how it is played best."

Sadly no one gave me this advice. So I wasted many, many years  trying to play like I was told to play. And I tried very hard. And what I was told was in 95% complete nonsense. Sorry, I have to say that. Even the best teachers told me such nonsense. They played very well themselves, but they told nonsense to their students. They didn't know, how they played. They taught other things - contrary to how they played themselves.

In my next life, I will not take piano lessons again. I will learn playing the piano on my own   

[quantum]

Heres one:

The aim of going to piano lessons is not to learn how to play the piano, rather to learn how to teach yourself to play the piano. 

[thierry13]

White fingertips.

[Bob]

White fingertips?

[mknueven]

Sorry if this posts twice.
Great replys! - Any more?
Bob = I think I know what you mean - but can you be specific about something that the little voice said?
I am not sure what white fingertips mean. 
Listening transformed my playing with a band for sure!

Counterpoint - that's great advice -

White finger tips? we still want to know

[pies]

a

[gerry]

Maybe not the most transformational advice, but effective: A professor who was into the contemporary/progressive music scene during my college years used to hear me practicing lots of Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, etc. finally burst into my practice room and, after briefly complimenting me, asked, "why in the hell are you still playing "Mary Had  a Little Lamb"? That set me on a voyage of discovering and developing a more adventuresome repertoire.