Motivation

Blogs to check out: strong ladies « The fitness industry’s copywriter

June 16, 2011 By Angela 1 Comment

Blogs to check out: strong ladies « The fitness industry’s copywriter.

After writing the blog post yesterday about busting the women’s bulky myth I came across this blog post giving a list of blogs of ladies who aren’t afraid to lift heavy.

Looking for some more inspirational women? Here’s the list, but check out the above blog post for more great information from The Fit Writer

Elsbeth Vaino
Molly Galbraith
Marianne Kane
Rachel Guy
Nia Shanks
Jen Grasso
Neghar Fonooni
Jen Comas Keck
Cassandra Forsythe
Kellie Davis

Filed Under: Fitness, Motivation and Success, Nutrition Tagged With: core strength, courage, fitness, Health, Muscle, strength, strong, Weight training, women

Women: How NOT to Get Bulky

June 15, 2011 By Angela 7 Comments

Bret Contreras » Where My Ladies At?.

Bret recently posted this post and I got amazingly inspired by it – enough to write my own post!

Watching these girls is inspiring and makes me want to go practice my squatting and deadlifting right now!

Notice that NONE of these girls are what you would call bulky. So why are you still waving around the pink dumbbells? Pick up some real weight and you’ll get a body like these! These are my favorite clips:

These clips go a looooooooong way to dispelling the myth that lifting heavy will make women bulky. Would you consider any of these women “bulky”? I thought not. If anything, these videos should inspire you to go see just what YOU can do!

Speaking of the “bulky” myth, it’s been hashed over and over and over again and it sees that no matter how many times those of us in the industry try to dispel it, the marketing gurus are one step ahead.

Ladies, it’s almost impossible for you to get huge. The huge you are afraid of becoming is limited to women who 1) take steroids 2) take steriods and get big muscles and then diet to very low bodyfat making them LOOK bigger. Neither of those things applies to 99% of the female population. Do you take illegal performance enhancing drugs? No? Then don’t worry about getting “bulky”.

I bet most of you, would not mind looking like the very first Ms. Olympia, Rachel McLish

Compare that to the CURRENT Ms. Olympia, Ms. Iris Kyle, and I have the feeling that to most women, THIS is what they fear becoming. To them, this is bulky.

As you can see, there is a huge difference between the two women, yet Rachel embodied what used to be women’s body building. I am not incriminating Ms. Kyle in any way, however, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to get her body without “help”. So, do you want Rachel’s body? Lift like the women in the videos above and read on.

To break things down to their simplest forms here’s what goes on when it comes to training

The amount of volume and amount of weight you use to train can have different effects. You can train for strength, endurance, size, stability or power (not necessarily in that order).
Lifting heavy does not necessarily mean you will get big. See these women up there? If anything, the heavier you lift, the SMALLER you get. You will become more dense, more compact, have less body fat and become smaller because you lift heavier weights. If you want to stick to your elliptical machine, that’s fine, but don’t be surprised when your body doesn’t change the way you think it should.
If you want to lift for size, you have to work HARD.
Unless your diet is spot on and to some degree a bit obsessive, you have very little chance of losing enough body fat to have the detail and definition of a figure competitor or cover model. Could you look like Rachel? Maybe. Iris? No way.

What does it mean to lift hard?

Ask yourself these questions

Did I break a sweat?
Did I feel shaky on the inside because I just couldn’t lift any heavier?
Did I get out of breath?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, you likely aren’t doing yourself any favors in the gym – you’re just kidding yourself. Now, there’s a time and a place for stability training and workouts that don’t make you feel the need to sit down, but those type of workouts are generally short in duration (meaning 2 weeks or so) and are generally implemented during a break from weight training or at the beginning of a weight training program, or after you have cycled through several phases of a workout.

That brings me to my next point.

If you want to see progress, you have to:

Challenge yourself.…never lifted a 20 lb. weight before? Go ahead, try it
Lift heavier than is comfortable for you on a CONSISTANT basis
have a consistant, periodized training program (this means you do the same workouts for a period of time, all the while still challenging yourself by adding weight, time, speed, etc. to the exercises to make it harder, before progressing to harder phase)
Take a break – seriously, take a week off every now and then
EAT!

As women, we DESPERATELY want to change our bodies, but most of us don’t. Why? We’re afraid, mostly of what we don’t know. Afraid we’ll get big and not fit into our clothes, afraid of getting stared at, afraid of doing things that only guys do in the weight room, afraid of ridicule, etc. Sound familar?

Changing your body composition is HARD, I mean really hard! And if you haven’t seen the results you want ask yourself “how much CHALLENGE have I really put into it?” Have you been lifting the same 10 lb. dumbells for the last 10 years? Do you spend an hour on the elliptical every day with no change? To see results, you have to go outside your comfort zone. Is it worth it? Ask yourself this:
Am I happy spending the rest of my life here?
Is anything worth getting, free?

The answer starts with “no”….:)

Hear me. If you want the bodies of the women in these videos you have to

Lift heavier than you are now and consistantly continue to lift heavier. That girl didn’t do a Turkish get-up with that weight from the beginning, she had to work up to it. So do you.
EAT. If you want to gain muscle size, muscle strength and/or lose body fat, you have to eat for it. Meaning, if your diet consists of Lean Cuisine meals and sunflower seeds, stop kidding yourself. Get at least 1g per pound of body weight in protein a day. No idea what that means? That means recording what you put in your mouth and being purposeful about it.
Rest. If you are lifting heavy enough to change your body, your body has to repair itself in order to change. If you lift 5 days a week, really heavy, really hard and you’re training the same muscle groups all the time, you will suffer major burn out – physically, mentally and emotionally. Don’t let this happen to you. You don’t need to train 5 days a week anyway. 3 days a week of TOTAL BODY work is enough.
Understand. This is not the stuff you read about in Self magazine. You might read about it to an extent in Muscle and Fitness Hers or in Oxygen, but honestly,they are magazines, ladies. They are for ENTERTAINMENT purposes. Can you get some good information there? Sure. Everything you need to know? Heck no. Read good blogs and articles from people who KNOW what they’re talking about. Don’t believe everything that comes out of some guru’s mouth just because it worked for a couple of people. Find what works for you and understand the RESEARCH. Here are some people worth checking out for real knowledge:

And of course, the guy who put up the videos – Bret Contreras otherwise known as “The Glute Guy” for his EXTENSIVE research on butt training. Not even kidding.

Of course, these are just a few, but start reading and you’ll soon not only find links to other smart fitness people, you will very quickly be able to tell the marketing nonsense from the truth.

If you are left with more questions than answers after reading this post (aka, ok! Now I know what NOT to do…but I have no idea what TO do!),you need to hire a competent personal trainer. They will set up your program for you to walk you through correct form, periodization, etc. and pretty soon you’ll be well on your way to getting the results you want. I currently have openings for in person and online training clients, so contact me and we’ll get you set up!
So, get lifting, and send me your videos of how heavy YOU lift!!!!

6/14/11 (crossfit22.com)
Booty Move: Deadlifts (fitsugar.com)
5/31/2011 Wk 12 Day 1 OHP/Deadlift (lonewolfstrength.wordpress.com)
Great Fitness Deals (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
I Don’t Want to Get Big and Bulky: Fitness Marketing and Its Effect on Women (JCDFitness.com)
5/17/2011 Wk 14 Day 1 Deadlift/OHP – Today is PR day (lonewolfstrength.wordpress.com)
Cardio Out, Movement In and Hotel Workouts (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
Defining Bulky Once and For All (leighpeele.com)

Filed Under: Fitness, Motivation and Success, Nutrition Tagged With: Body weight, change, core, courage, failure, fitness, Health, healthy musician, Muscle, Personal development, Personal trainer, Physical exercise, strength, strong, Weight loss, Weight training

You need Skills!

April 27, 2011 By Angela 2 Comments

Image via Wikipedia

How many of us musicians have gone to school for 4, 6 or even 10 years to get those advanced degrees only to graduate into the real world and not be prepared? Today’s institutions of higher education for musicians are sadly lacking in preparing students for a life outside either performing or teaching. There’s more to it, folks…

I have gained two degrees, a Bachelor’s and a Master’s, both in music performance. I was told several times to not do this because I “won’t get a job”. I beg to differ…and I agree. I said no way, I will get this degree because this is what I want to do, I want to perform! I was told over and over again “get your Bachelor’s degree in Music Education so you have something to fall back on.”

Get a degree you can fall back on…

How many of you have heard this? I think it’s pathetic. Why offer a degree that the faculty don’t even have faith in it to do the students any good? If I want to go to school to learn how to play my instrument better than others and be the best flutist and performer I can possibly be, why is that not enough? I have ZERO desire to be a band director or choral conductor. If I did, I would have majored in those disciplines and that is EXACTLY what I told the faculty. I have also told my students interested in going into a performance based degree “do not go to school for music performance unless you can see yourself doing nothing else.” No offense to band directors and choral conductors (of which I have many friends), I applaud you and support what you do, but God designed us all with different talents and desires and those were not mine. And I feel it is a HUGE disservice to those who love the teaching profession that others are being told that their profession is a “fall back” which, when they realize they will not be an international solo performing artist, find themselves teaching band to a bunch of kids. They hate their job, hate what they’re doing, but hey,at least they have a job to fall back on now, right?

I think it is incredibly sad that we relegate a performance degree to a piece of paper that says “I CAN PLAY GOOD!” I mean, really? There’s more to it than that, and as I am finding out as an entrepreneur, carving my own path through the career jungle, most of what I learned in school did not teach me how to establish my own career.

What graduate schools teach performance majors today does not prepare you for much outside of performing or professorship

Most of what I learned in graduate school, when it came to preparing me to “get a job” was not how to become an international performing soloist star, it was on how to apply and land a college professorship. I would be THRILLED to have this job *sadly, since I do not have a Dr. in front of my name, I have been passed over for those who do at every job I have thus applied for*, but there are only so many professorships to go around. Most of my fellow musicians who get performing or even professorship/teaching jobs have to have “day jobs” on the side because their musical jobs do not support them.

What musicians are desperately in need of today is entrepreneurship training. Most musicians who go to grad school have a burning desire to play for others, but almost no idea how to market themselves as individuals beyond writing a resume. In fact, there are many graduate students who just “continue to go to school” earning a doctorate because they haven’t landed any gigs, jobs, had any interviews and don’t know what to do once they get out, so really it’s just a way of procrastinating getting into the real world.

Knowing how to build a great resume, c.v., interview well and of course, play your instrument outstandingly are all great qualities, but if you don’t get an interview and you don’t have a regular performing gig and you’re NOT that international superstar performer, they will only take you so far.

You need SKILLS – the things business majors learn.

Skill 1: Present yourself well:

You have to be more than just a pretty face and a shiny instrument, you have to present yourself well. That means smiling, being personable, dressing well, shaking every hand you can and learning names. Treat everyone as your most important prospect, a future friend and a future employer – show them respect and leave your own ego at the door. No one likes to talk to a person with a sour face and an attitude that says “you should pay me because I play well, but don’t expect me to like you”. No. YOU are the one needing the job and therefore, YOU have to be the one they want to hire. In fact, the best advice I got when I was young was “Be someone YOU would want to hire”. Be friendly, look professional, speak professionally and start as many relationships as you can with people. By the way, presenting yourself well applies to social media as well. Don’t post drinking photos all over your Facebook page and swear on twitter and in general, give anyone the opportunity to have a bad impression of you. Having a personal Facebook page is fine, but make sure your professional “fan” page stays just that, professional.

Skill 2: Create a niche

Ok, we know you can play, but what else? There is usually some aspect of your playing or your life about which you are equally fascinated and you hold the key to sharing that with other people. Maybe you have a knack with kids and see a hole in the market for beginning flute books (hint hint…..there is a hole there). Well, your niche might be marketing yourself as a pedagogue who focuses on beginners. My niche is marrying my careers as a personal trainer and a musician into one – training musicians and teaching musicians the benefits of strength training. Whatever it is, you have something else you are interested in and an area in which you can contribute to the musical world at large.

Skill 3: Make friends with those in your niche area

This is HUGELY important. Right now, you are probably a nobody. No one knows your name and you’re just another one of the 10,000 flutists who graduate every year. There’s truth to the saying “It’s who you know”. When you find out what your niche is, go find others who are in a similar pursuit with you and make friends with them. Start conversations, ask questions, pick their brains. These are the people you want to know your name because when they mention your name to someone else, what THEY say carries weight.

Skill 4: Market yourself via social media and the internet

If you don’t have a webpage, get a webpage. This is the first and most basic rule of promoting yourself. How do you ever expect people to hire you if they can’t find you? And don’t just write a bunch of stuff down on a page. Spend the money to get a nice template somewhere and just plug in the information. Better yet, if you can afford it, have someone else design your webpage for you. You want something that catches the eye and makes people want to look around to find out more about you. On that webpage make sure you put down ways people can contact you – make it easy for them to find. Remember, people are lazy. They won’t look for things so don’t make them search for it.

Get a Facebook FAN page and put up RELEVANT content. See below. Also, don’t just put up links you think are interesting. Make comments, socialize, put up pictures, videos, music clips of yourself – look around at people you admire and look at their fan pages. Model yours after theirs.

Get a blog and start writing about the things that interest you and write it in such a way that other people will be interested. The blog puts out good content so that when people want the information you have, they find you first. Remember, you are writing blogs about stuff that interests you – but it shouldn’t necessarily be about you. Go find other blogs about stuff that interests you and make comments down below (again, relevent comments). While on the subject of blogs, I highly recommend you get an RSS reader like Google Reader. Why? Well, you really want to read a lot of content and it’s more difficult to read content from lots of blogs taking all day to surf around and find them. With a reader you just drop the address in the reader (or click on the little orange RSS image on the blog – see mine at the top?) and subscribe. This way, all you have to do is open the reader and you can check out blogs from all over, see what other people are writing about, get ideas, leave comments, etc.

Get a twitter account and learn how to use it. No one wants to read about “it’s been a long day and now I’m watching Scrubs in my PJ’s.” No one cares. Find something relevant to your niche on the web? Tweet about it – link it. TALK to people on Twitter who have the same interests you do. It’s amazing how relationships can spring up that way.

Get a LinkedIN account – not entirely necessary, but why not? There are groups there that you can join and contribute to – these groups are full of other people who share your interests. Contribute to the groups with relevant content – don’t spam them and just throw links to your stuff around. No one likes that person. Link your blog to LinkedIN and everytime you blog, people can see it on your account.

Link EVERYTHING! Seriously. Link your twitter account to Facebook and your blog to Twitter and Facebook and put links to your website everywhere you are. Everything should lead back to your website. You want to make yourself as visible as possible and when you link things, it shows up multiple places at once – this prevents you from having to copy/paste it 100 times.

Skill 5: Market yourself in real life

Presentation I did this year

Again, this goes back to that niche area, but start giving presentations anywhere and everywhere you can. Draw up a presentation about something that interests you and then adapt it to fit different age groups. Give your presentations in every school in the county and then start talking to college professors near you and see if they would let you give it at their school. More often than not, if you offer a free presentation, they will say yes and you will have made an invaluable contact. Give presentations and recitals in your town, county, at conventions, anywhere you can. The more people see your name and recognize you for something, the more they’ll remember you when they need your particular service or product.

Skill 6: Put out a newsletter

This is a great way to get people more information about you and what you do. Every time you go to a presentation, pass around a sign up sheet and have people put down their email address if they would like to receive your newsletter. On your website and/or blog you should have something that allows people to sign up for your newsletter fairly easily. Now – you’ve got subscribers, what to write about? Write about YOU, what you do in the music/business world. Give them information they want. For example, in my newsletter, I put out playing/practicing tips, workout tips, answer questions, give links to where they can find me, put up information about what’s going on in my world – where they can find me performing and what performances are coming up in the area (if you have a local newsletter). Basically, the sky is the limit. If you need ideas, subscribe to other people’s newsletters and see what content they have that you would like and model after them. I suggest MailChimp for an easy, free newsletter service.

Hope! Where to Look! What to Do!

My friends, I am here to give you hope and show you that there are so many other places from where you can gain knowledge on how to carve out your OWN career!

First of all, if you are going to be an entrepreneur (and this is more geared to those of you who are NOT born with that gene) you are going to have to put in a lot of work on your own and be prepared for nothing to happen for awhile. It will take a good bit of trial and error before you figure out what works for you, but be patient. You aren’t just putting your resume out there and hoping for the best. You have to be proactive and go FIND things, go DO things, contribute. It’s hard work, but it’s very much so worth it.

Happily, there ARE some schools hoping on the entrepreneurial bandwagon.

The University of Colorado has an Entrepreneurship Center for Music!

Berklee College of Music has a Music Industury Entrepreneurship class

Other schools also offer degrees in Arts Administration – this could be a really good degree to get while also getting your primary degree.

My friend Jonathan Nation has been a wealth of help to me. His job is to help small businesses and entrepreneurs learn how to navigate the waters of success. You can visit his webpages at http://www.allynation.com and his business site at http://www.startingcube.com which is also a podcast. Some of the sites he’s hooked me onto are:

Smart Passive Income.com

Savvy Musician

Angela Beeching - a career consultant for musicians

- 4 Tips to Jumpstart Your Career

The National Flute Association has put out a great list of sites with their new group: the Career and Artistic Development Committee

Got links to share? Share below! Come tell me what you thought of this on my Facebook page, via twitter or make a comment below!

Spring is Coming, What are you Going to Do? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
Life After the Degree (gogetthejob.wordpress.com)
Social Entrepreneurship+Schools= A Self Sufficient Training/Income Model (dwbdg.wordpress.com)
Developing Body Awareness and Self-Trust (fluteangel.wordpress.com)

Filed Under: Flute, Motivation and Success Tagged With: change, Education, Flute, Graduate school, Music, Music education, musician, Teacher, United States

The Courage to Succeed

April 27, 2011 By Angela 2 Comments

Part 3 ( you can see Part 2 and Part 1 here)

It sounds a little strange, doesn’t it? The courage to SUCCEED? Who would ever be afraid of success? Well, maybe you. I know I have been at times.

Take a weakness and turn it into a strength. If you are dedicated to overcoming failure and achieving lasting success, then you need to be willing to do the same. Work on the weakness that weakens you, and there’s no telling how far you will go. – John C Maxwell

I think it takes real courage (on top of talent) to be able to do this:

How many people put down Project Trio and beat boxing before they made it?

But this post is not just about having the courage to persevere in the face of failure to ultimately succeed, this post is more so about having the courage to ALLOW yourself to succeed. That, can take just as much courage as it takes to fail.

Why would people be afraid to do well? Honestly, for lots of reasons, and it is more common than you think and I am finding that this is the most difficult blog post I have written, to date. I found this post to define it better than I:

Fear of success is the following:

* Fear that you will accomplish all that you set out to accomplish, but that you still won’t be happy, content or satisfied once you reach your goal.

* Belief that you are undeserving of all the good things and recognition that come your way as a result of your accomplishments and successes

* Opposite of fear of failure, in that fear of failure is the fear of making mistakes and losing approval–Fear of success is the fear of accomplishment and being recognized and honored.

* Lack of belief in your own ability to sustain your progress, and the accomplishments you have achieved in your life

* Fear that your accomplishments can self-destruct at anytime

* Belief that no matter how much you are able to achieve or accomplish, it will never be enough to sustain success

* Belief that there are others out there who are better than you, who will replace or displace you if you do not maintain your performance record

* Belief that success is an end in itself; yet that end is not enough to sustain your interest and/or commitment

* Fear that once you have achieved the goals you have worked diligently for, the motivation to continue will fade

* Fear that you will find no happiness in your accomplishments–that you will be perpetually dissatisfied with life.

These fears ring true for me in many areas of life -though they were most brought to life as I was finishing grad school. It had never occured to me that I was afraid of success, I thought I was merely afraid to fail. It was during a time of intense preparation and I was feeling overwhelmed in life and began to have feelings of not being able to live up to other’s expectations. I had actually begun putting my validation into what others said of me instead of what I knew of me. I was becoming a “human doing” instead of a “human being” and it was tearing me apart.

One part of me desperately wanted to succeed, and go into the fear of conquering the unknown, doing well in the future without guidance from a teacher, and one part was deathly terrified.

Please excuse the swear word

What are the negative consequences of the fear of success?

Fear of success can result in:

* A lack of effort to achieve goals you have set for yourself in school, on the job, at home, in relationships, or in your personal growth

* Self-destructive behavior, such as tripping yourself up to make sure that you do not sustain a certain level of success or achievement you once had in school, on the job, at home, in relationships or in your personal growth.

* Problems making decisions, being unable to solve problems

* Losing the motivation or the desire to grow, achieve and succeed

* Chronic underachievement

* Feeling guilt, confusion and anxiety when you do achieve success–this leads you to falter, waver and eventually lose your momentum.

* Sabotaging any gains that you have made in your personal growth and mental health, because once you become healthier, a better problem solver, and more “together,” you fear that no one will pay attention to you. You are habituated to receiving help, sympathy and compassionate support.

* Your choosing to do just the opposite of what you need to do to be happy, healthy and successful

* Reinforcing your chronic negativity, chronic pessimism and chronic lack of achievement since you cannot, visualize yourself in a contented, successful life

* Denouncing your achievements and accomplishments, or seeking ways in which you can denigrate yourself enough to lose what you’ve gained

Do you do any of these things or have any of these beliefs? Do you find yourself being very negative towards yourself and putting yourself down regularly – unable to accept compliments? It could be that truly you are not afraid to fail, you are actually afraid of success and using the mask of considering yourself a failure to prevent yourself from actually succeeding.

What do those who fear success believe?

* I have worked so hard to get this far, yet I need to keep on working hard; I’m not sure the effort is worth it.

* I know people care about me when I am down and out, but will they like me when I am on top and successful?

* I’ve never been happy before, so how can I be sure I’ll be happy once I achieve my goals?

* I am nothing, and I deserve nothing.

* How can people like me if I succeed in reaching my goals in life?

* I can’t sustain the momentum I would need to achieve my goals.

* How can I be sure that my good fortunes won’t go sour and be destroyed?

* There are always more demands and more needs that have to be met in order for me to be successful, no matter what I do it will never be enough.

* They are all better, brighter, smarter, and more talented than I am. I really don’t deserve to be successful.

* It’s hard to be at the top.

* Everyone is out to shoot down the head man.

* No one really likes a winner.

* Everyone goes for the underdog.

* I am happiest when I am under pressure and challenged.

* Hard work, no play and constant effort make me happy. What would I do if it were different?

* I feel so guilty when I realize how much I have been given in my life.

* I’m always afraid I’m going to lose it all.

* Starting over again gives me meaning and a sense of mission and purpose.

* I’m so bored with what I’ve accomplished. What’s left to do?

* Everyone has the right to fail in life, and I have the right to choose to fail if I want to.

I find this happens in a lot of different areas in life: we can be all gung-ho about losing weight, learning our instrument, doing well at our jobs, etc. that when we suddenly realize either how much work it will take and we get discouraged or realize that we are actually good at what we do and if we do allow ourselves to be as good as we can be…

we can end up going a lot further than we’ve ever gone, and not only is that scary, it will grow and change us as a person and you might not be ready for that. The people around you might not be ready for that. THAT can give you a fear of success. If you have a desire to stay in your comfort bubble, be honest with yourself and ask WHY? Are you afraid to fail, afraid to let others down and fear judgement? Or are you afraid to succeed, afraid to really fly and let yourself grow, and let the people around you either grow with you or leave?

What new behavior patterns can help in overcoming your fear of success?

* Learning to reinforce yourself for the hard work, effort and sacrifices you have made to achieve success

* Being able to honestly appraise your level of achievement, success and accomplishment

* Accepting yourself as being healthy, “together,” happy, successful, prosperous and accomplished

* Not giving yourself any excuses for being unsuccessful

* Giving others in your life permission to give you honest, open, candid feedback when they see you self-destructing or backsliding

* Monitoring your level of commitment and motivation to reach your goals

* Visualizing your life when you are successful

* Giving others credit, recognition, and support for their personal achievements, successes and accomplishments

* Honest, open, realistic self-talk that encourages you to work your hardest to achieve the goals that you have set for yourself

* Accepting the compliments and recognition of others with an open heart and mind

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/14659-handling-fear-of-success/#ixzz1KfrAnJwj

There is a wonderful book called “The Success Principles: Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be” by Jack Canfield

If you are struggling with either allowing yourself to succeed OR fail, I highly recommend this book. He breaks it down into manageable sections that you can tackle one at a time and these principles will translate to all areas of your life. If you are struggling with allowing yourself to be the best musician you can be, the best father/mother you can be, the best architect/manager/plumber/writer/etc. you can be, struggling with allowing yourself to believe enough in yourself that you CAN lose weight and it’s really not the impossible obstacle you thought it was, etc. this book will help you learn to accept and achieve success in whatever area of life.

Trust – maybe the reason behind it all

You can see that a lot of these fears of success stem from a fear of trusting yourself. You could lack trust in yourself to make decisions, follow through, know what’s best for you, whatever. We all deal with a lack of trust in ourselves at some point, but in order to live life to the fullest, we must learn not only why we distrust ourselves, but learn to overcome it.

Did you dress yourself this morning? You demonstrated that you know how to take care of yourself.

Did you eat today? You demonstrated taking care of your basic needs – you trusted your hunger signals.

Let me leave you with a quote that I posted on my bathroom door while I was dealing with my own fear of success. I read it every day and let it sink in. I hope it gives you the empowerment you need to empower yourself to allow success into your life!

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Related Articles

Are You Ready to Change? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
Do You Have The Courage To Fail? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
Courage – what is it? (jimf.wordpress.com)
Success: do you have it in you? (successful-blog.com)
11 Inspirational Quotes That Will Supercharge Your Day (businessinsider.com)

Filed Under: Flute, Motivation and Success Tagged With: Alexander Technique, change, courage, failure, Flute, flute health, flute lessons, Happiness, Health, healthy musician, Mental Health, Personal development, Project Trio, Self-Help

Developing Body Awareness and Self-Trust

April 26, 2011 By Angela 11 Comments

Once upon a time…

Like most people who learn an instrument in the USA, I learned to play the flute in 6th grade. I had wanted to start playing much earlier than this as I knew my mother had a flutehidden away under the stairs. Sometimes I would take it down off the shelf, carefully (like it had magic and I didn’t want to disturb it) and I would open the box to reveal the

the shiny buttons...

gleaming, silver tube inside. Seeing that shiny instrument, nestled in dark, navy velvet, I would reach out with wonder and touch the keys, thinking to myself “one day, I am going to get to learn to play this! One day, it will be mine to play and I won’t have to stare at it from a box”. After a few minutes of staring I’d put it away back on the dusty shelf and sigh with longing that I had to wait till 6th grade to learn.

When the day came to sign up for band, I was first in line, waving my arms and proclaiming to everyone who would listen “I have a flute! I already have an instrument! Please, I want to play the flute!” I would rush down the halls every day at 2nd period with a giddy excitement that I, yes I was going to play that beautiful, shiny instrument and because of ME it was going to make sound!!!

I was one of the first in the band room, when it was time to wait for the bus, I would sneak down there to practice (once actually missing the bus and causing my mother to come get me….something she made known was NOT acceptable) and I always made sure that when I put my flute in the storage room with the other flutes that it was upright and protected. It wasn’t just that it was my mother’s instrument and I felt the pull of responsibility to take care of something that I undoubtedly cost a fortune, but I felt it somehow fragile, and extremely special because with it came the ability to express myself and communicate in a new way.

On lesson days I was uber-excited because I knew that I got to stay after school and play to my heart’s content…well, for an hour and a half at least. Some of my friends were taking lessons that day too and we’d play duets which was thrilling, and then when I was last, I’d have the huge empty room all to myself. I’d love to listen to my sound bounce off the walls.

As I grew up through high school and even into college, that same excitement followed me – sneaking down to the band room, getting special permission to not have to sit in study halls so I could go practice, playing every chance I got and going to every honor band I possibly could. I had an in-exhaustible curiosity to learn new things, new music, and lessons were always something I looked forward to because it wasn’t about not being prepared and playing for the teacher it was the thought of “what will she say that’s new to me today? What will I learn today? When I leave here, I’ll be better than when I came in!”

The beginnings of body awareness

In all those years of teaching, very seldom was any emphasis placed on being aware of my body, save hand position being correct and an awful lot of talk about my embouchure. In fact, it was the teacher in 7th grade who taught me my current (more or less) embouchure and thinking back on it, she put a great deal of emphasis on awareness of my lips. She had me play in front of a mirror to see what the embouchure looked like, and then step away, play and see if I could feel it without looking. I would go down the hall to the bathroom and stand on my tippy toes to see in the mirror, enjoying not only the sound of my playing bouncing off the walls of the deserted bathroom and down the hall, but enjoying the thrill of discovery with how my body worked.

Image via Wikipedia

From there, I started to notice that I was becoming increasingly interested in the body, especially mine, with how it worked in regards to playing my special instrument. I heard about Alexander Technique and took classes in it at Interlochen Arts Camp.

Then, I was told that there was a woman named Barbara Conable giving a workshop at a nearby university and her workshop was an all-day event titled “Everything The Musician Needs to Know About the Body“. My friend, a music therapy major, and I packed up and spent the day learning things that to this day, I have not forgotten.

Photograph of right posterior human distal rad...

Image via Wikipedia

At the time, I was still recovering from tendonitis acquired from my practicing at Interlochen. She asked for volunteers who had present or previous health issues. Of course, I volunteered, and she began to give me a body mapping lesson in front of the class. She told me to take my finger and run it all the way down one finger until I felt a mass of bones together: that was my wrist! Where the finger bone joined the wrist was actually the first joint of the finger! She told me: move your fingers and feel how they move….not move them from the first joint. It felt soooo much freer!

The grad school experience

I went on to graduate school where I took a class in Alexander Technique at Appalachian State for a whole year. It was wonderful to learn how to move and to learn how the body is supposed to move. But it wasn’t until I got to FSU that I REALLY began to be aware of my body.

Now, all through these years I had had an interest in exercise and weight training. I had been going to the gym since 7th grade when I was on the tennis team, but I really got into training regularly when I got to college. I read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on, and while I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was determined to learn and in the process of lifting, I began to develop mind-body awareness. My programming skills might have been seriously lacking, but I knew that when I did a one-arm row I supposed to feel it in my back, and I tinkered around with it till I did. I have no doubt this set me up for great body awareness come grad school.

At FSU I began to take Dynamic Integration (Feldenkrais) classes with Eva Amsler. This class began with all students lying on the floor for an hour every Thursday morning while Prof. Amsler walked around the room, asking us the strangest, easiest, and yet most difficult questions, in her Swiss accent.

“Do you feel your left leg lying on the floor? Which way are your toes pointing?”

“How much space is there between your ankle and the floor?”

“Do you feel your shoulder blades lying on the floor? Could you draw your little wings?”

“Think about how to get up, what would you move first?”

The class was incredibly eye-opening and between that class and her lessons I found myself questioning how I played this instrument that was almost a part of me, and questioning was there a better way? A different way?

While I was at FSU I continued my workouts, getting up about 6 every morning to walk to the gym, do my workout and walk home before preparing for class. I found myself asking the same questions in my workouts:

“Is there a better way to do this? ”

Am I moving most efficiently/effectively?”

“Should I feel this here or there?”

“If I increase the weight, does my form change?”

Looking back through my notebook of those two years of grad school, the practice notes in the beginning are peppered with questions to myself. The lessons revealed all kinds of new thoughts on how to think about my body, how to re-learn playing my instrument in the way that was best suited to me.

Actual Questions from my Notebook

Practice Notes:

I found that when slurring octaves my throat moves. I am attempting to only use my lips, mainly my upper lip. I find I can do this but it’s not clean at all. *How do I change octaves?

….the next day I answered this question:

I can change octaves by changing my support which creates faster air – blowing harder? But it sounds better when just my top lip moves down.

Warm up: long tones while singing – focus only on throat. Notice that air crept into cheeks. As I go lower, pitch wants to jump up, if I focus on only my aperture, I can feel it barely move to sculpt the air! Can only play very softly.

Played one note feeling upper lip move up and down and upper lip only while upper lip stays relaxed!

Long tones ascending concentrating on 1) Keeping an uninvolved throat 2) smallest possible movement in aperture 3) relaxed corners and/or air in cheeks.

The higher I go the louder I get! Why am I gripping the keys so tightly???

Flutter tonguing work: If I sing with the vowel “ih” in my mouth while I flutter tongue, the back of the tongue goes down. However, something changes when I take the voice away…I’m getting it but this is going to take WORK!

Pentatonic scales – focusing on feeling in whole body, am I creating unnecessary tension anywhere? Tension -front of shoulders, left rear deltoid. While I am just observing what’s happening in my body, tension-wise I am noticing more inflation in my cheeks only concentrating on that, not thinking about support and keeping fingers close to the keys.

When I sit on the ball and play, I notice I collapse into myself.

Lesson Notes/Questions:

The tongue is a muscle so we can relax it. When double tonguing, let the air move the tongue. Tongue is only interrupting the air.

Figure out which way I learn – hearing, visual or muscle memory. Sing it, write it down, or play it without blowing.

(about support) Just feel that you hold the tension – how it feels to play with and without.

Teaching principle: go where you haven’t been before – unexplored. You don’t have to say “I change you”

Observe, don’t control. Allow yourself to make mistakes. If you make a mistake, don’t stop, it punishes yourself. Just be aware when you do something wrong or right – was that easy? Hard? Instead of”when I do….then…” that’s controlling.

Trust = risk. To trust myself: 1) Observe when you control 2) risk 3) start to observe when you DON’T trust

For 3 weeks, every day, do finger work: practicing slowly, fingers slow close to the keys, observing – can also practice slowly pressing/lots of tension and then easy to feel the difference – but be really patient for 3 weeks before working other way.

Work on holding the body open.

There are lots and lots more of those in my notebook, but do you see the theme? The questions I was asking myself actually took a lot of guts. That excitement to discover, to learn, to play that I had in 6th grade that followed me all the way till now served me well; it gave me the courage I didn’t know I had to not put so much stock in what old teachers had told me was the “right” way, but it gave me the courage to discover and learn my own way. Not only did this make me a better player, it made me a much better teacher, I feel.

Exercises in developing self-trust and body awareness

As you can see by now, developing body awareness can go hand in hand with developing a trust of yourself. Look at te questions I wrote down as I practiced; have you ever asked yourself those questions? Has your practice session looked something like that?

1) this week, each time you practice, write down your own observations of your practice session. Notice what you are doing – can you do it without judging?

Look at the questions my professor asked of me and the way she guided me.

2) Take one of these each week and apply it to yourself and your practice session. Write down your observations

Are you afraid to observe? Do you find judgements coming up as you observe things? Do you have the courage to change if you observe yourself doing something less effectively than you would like?

3) sometime during the day take time to lie on the floor and make observations of yourself. Notice every part of your body and where it touches the floor. If judgements come up about how you are lying on the floor, just let them pass. Start on one side of your body and work your way up from your feet to your head – then compare each side to the other, and do the other side. When you get up after this, how do you feel? When you play after this, how do you feel?

4) while playing, start to feel other parts of your body than your fingers. You might be surprised to find you don’t even feel your fingers when you play. Take a day and focus on how your lips feel, what do they do? How do they change notes? Feel your feet when you play. Where do they touch the floor? All these thoughts think WHILE playing – how does it change your playing to concentrate on feeling your body and putting the “doing” on auto-pilot?

Be kind to yourself. Body awareness takes time and is constantly developing. Try some of these techniques and tell me below how you feel. Do you already have good body awareness? How did you develop it? If you have taken Alexander, Feldenkrais, Dynamic Integration, or body mapping lessons, share with others how it helped you.

NFA Convention Brochure (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
The Physical Flute – Alexander Technique and more body awareness exercises
What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
Spring is Coming, What are you Going to Do? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
Interview with Greg Pattillo, YouTube’s “Beatbox Flute” Guy (millenniummsband.wordpress.com)
De-Mystifying Support and the Diaphragm (fluteangel.wordpress.com)

Filed Under: Flute, Motivation and Success Tagged With: Alexander Technique, change, failure, Flute, flute lessons, healthy musician, High school, Interlochen Arts Camp, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Interlochen Michigan, Musical instrument, Thoracic diaphragm, United States

Do You Have The Courage To Fail?

April 22, 2011 By Angela 7 Comments

(Part 2 after “Are You Ready To Change?“)

That is a bold statement, “do you have the courage to fail”? It could almost be seen as a personal challenge, and take it that way if you would like, because I am betting that if you do, you are one of the most courageous people I know.

What does it mean, to have the courage to fail? Doesn’t failure mean that you didn’t do something right, you didn’t achieve what you set out to achieve, you didn’t do what you wanted to do, you fell short, messed up, let other people down, let yourself down, etc?

Yes. And is that a bad thing?

Not necessarily.

Quotes about failure

“Mistakes are not to be avoided by embraced. They are signals that you’re moving into new territory, breaking new ground, making progress.

“The first important step in weathering failure is learning not to personalize it – making sure you know that your failure does not make YOU a failure.”

“Your commitment to continual improvement puts you one step closer to your potential. And you’ll also find that what you get as the result of your growth is not nearly as important as what you become along the way.”

- John C. Maxwell

How do those quotes make you feel? I’m guessing a few ways:

“Wow, I feel empowered, right on!”

“That is soooo hokey”

“Yeah, maybe, but that doesn’t really apply to me”

Which one of these is you? You know what, none of them is wrong. You are not right or wrong because you feel one way or another. You just do. The question is, what will you DO with these feelings and how will you let these quotes affect you? Quotes are just quotes, they only mean something when you let them affect you.

We all make mistakes and we make them EVERY DAY. In fact, babies make the cutest mistakes. When they fall, we laugh and sometimes they giggle back at us. We don’t think less of them as people, we think it’s adorable that they’re learning.

Now, translate that to a teenager who trips and fall…suddenly no longer adorable because we think “you should have learned to walk by now”.

Judgement.

Failure.

Doom

Translate this into performance and you get the same thing. You make a mistake and you THINK everyone is thinking “you should have not messed up there, you should know how to play by now”. This isn’t always the case, a lot of times humans are a lot more sympathetic than you think and even if they know you messed up, THEY don’t want to be where you are and are probably thinking more along the lines of “that’s only natural, I’m sure she’s nervous playing all those notes in front of all these people – you go girl, I’m rooting for you!” while on stage YOU are thinking “oh no, I messed up! I bet they all noticed and they’re thinking about what a failure I am and how I didn’t play it right and I’m going to hear about it from everyone tomorrow” which leads to a continual mess-up loop and a bad mood the rest of the night.

Pretty unbalanced, huh?

Let me give you a few books that can help free you from your judgemental self.

The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey

I have not read The Inner Game of Music but I have heard that the Tennis book is actually much better, and because I play tennis, I “get it”. Even if you don’t play tennis (you should, haha!) you will have an easy time understanding the concepts in this book. He labels Self 1 and Self 2 and before you freak out that we’re going Schizophrenic, let me ask you, do you ever talk to yourself? Sure you do, we do it all day long all the time. Nothing wrong with that. When we perform, Self 1 goes into overdrive, telling Self 2 what to do. Self 1 being the voice and Self 2 being your body or your subconscious. Excerpt from the book

It is interesting to see how the judgemental mind extends itself. It may begin by complaining “What a lousy serve,” then extend to, “I’m serving badly today”. After a few more “bad” serves, the judgement may become further extended to “I have a terrible serve”. Then, “I’m a lousy tennis player,” and finally, “I’m no good”. First the mind judges the event, then groups events, then identifies with the combined event and finally judges itself.

As a result, what usually happens is that these self-judgements become self-fulfilling prophecies. That is, they are communications from Self 1 about Self 2 which, after being repeated often enough, become rigidified into expectations or even convictions about Self 2. Then Self 2 begins to live up to these expectations. …In short, you start to become what you think.

When asked to give up making judgements about one’s game, the judgemental mind usually protests, “But if I can’t hit a backhand inside the court to save my life, do you expect me to ignore my faults and pretend my game is fine?” Be clear about this: letting go of judgements does not mean ignoring errors. It simply means seeing events as they are and not adding anything to them.

Take out the tennis terms serve and game and insert “notes” and “recital” and does this sound at all familiar?

Another book is The Art of Practicing: A Guide to Making Music From the Heart by Madeline Bruser.

This is another book about letting go of judgement but also giving yourself the permission to make mistakes. She covers a lot of things: stretching, body awareness, posture, permission and also finding the easiest posture for your instrument. Beyond all this, she lays out some specific ways to structure your practice session, which I find immensely helpful, especially after one leaves school and it can be easy to get out of the habit. Sorry, but there are just too many great excerpts to list here, you’ll have to get the book.

Performance Power: Transforming Stress Into Creative Energy by Dr. Irmtraud Tarr Kruger

This is a great book about the psychology behind what we do and how we perform and how we can release that stress into better, more positive things. It also helps you question your “role”, and learn how to be a human “being” not a human “doing” comfortable in your own skin and able to truly perform. If the thought of actually confronting your symptoms of nervousness intrigued you, this book will really show you how.

Confusing success with fulfillment is one of the chief causes of performance anxiety. If we are motivated by “success at any price” then fears must appear; because when we think in this way we will be expecting something from others, thus becoming dependent on goals which have nothing to do with the task at hand.

If we wish with our activity to arrive at something or to prove something merely in order to prop up our faltering feeling of self-worth, then we will be endangered, and it will not be difficult to make us unsure of ourselves. Drive on by our “success trip”, we will then be following a mistaken concept fed by foreign, ersatz feelings, which make us dependent. If we appear in public with the intent to impress, we will be looking for something other than satisfaction or fulfillment. We Will have much more to fear than if our appearance were dedicated to the goals of seeking satisfaction and fulfillment, and of sharing our knowledge or ability with others in order to enrich our lives.

By the way, if reading that offended you, or poked at you and made you uncomfortable, that’s a sure sign that that is an area needing change and courage. Might be a good indication to read that one.

Lastly, I have one from Max Lucado. This was given to me when I was leaving Appalachian State University to transfer to Florida State to do finish my Master’s. The church I attended there was small but very loving and they let me know how special I was to them by giving me this book before I left. They were sad to see me go, but wanted me to be courageous as I set out on a new journey.

Let the Journey Begin: God’s Roadmap for New beginnings by Max Lucado

If you believe in God and have faith in His will for your life, this book is a God-send and a veritable relief to read. From the preface:

Deep in every heart you will find it: A longing for meaning, a quest for purpose.

If you ask the secularists what is the meaning of life they will say “we don’t know”. At best they might agree that we are developed animals. At worse, rearranged space dust.

What a contrast to God’s vision for life: “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to devote ourselves to the good deeds for which God has designed us”. (Eph 2:10)

God has placed his hand on your shoulder and said “You’re something special.”
Untethered by time, he sees us all. In fact, he saw us before we were born. And he loves what he sees. Flooded by emotion. Overcome by pride, the Starmaker turns to us, one by one, and says, “You are my child, I love you dearly.”

And he loves us forever. Should you ever turn from him and walk away, he has already provided a way back. Nothing can separate you from his love. If you anchor these truths firmly in your heart, you will be ready for whatever you may encounter on the road ahead.

So let the journey begin! – Max Lucado, January 1998

Ok, Ready to Fail!

If you’re truly ready to take this journey, I applaud you because you are a brave soul and you will be rewarded! Having the courage to go into the failure takes guts, so if I may, let me give you a bit of advice on the journey ahead:

Be kind to yourself. You are going to fail, sometimes ON PURPOSE. When (not if) this happens, take a moment to notice your reaction. Do you have an immediate judgement? Were you surprised? Whatever your reaction, be kind to yourself and realize you are not your failure. The mistake was just that, a mistake and how you choose to react to it will make all the difference.
If you do judge yourself, notice that. Pretend you are a student – would you judge your student? No, you’d notice the mistake and figure out how to fx it. Same with training – treat yourself as your own client. Realize that judgement is not necessarily about the mistake that just occurred – it represents something else. When you have that judging moment, ask yourself why? Have the courage to look beyond the immediate “I can’t believe I messed up, what a failure I am” thought and ask why do I think that?
In music, this is how I teach my students to correct their mistakes (and I believe this comes from The Art of Practicing)
Step 1) stop immediately and make note of exactly where the mistake happened.
Step 2) Look at the mistake objectively. Identify exactly what happened (if it was a wrong note, which one? Say it’s an interval of a 3rd and you are playing a 2nd….this might be a pattern and you will notice it happening elsewhere when you can identify it)
Step 3) Play the wrong note on purpose – does that freak you out? Allow yourself to make the mistake. Notice how it feels and how it sounds.
Step 4) Play the correct note (and by the way, this should all be done slowly and maybe even out of tempo or rhythm. This is crucial. You have to allow yourself to play the wrong note, to fail and notice where it happens, so that when you now play the correct note, you are acutely aware of it). When you play the correct note, take the passage out of time, perhaps only play the note before and after the erroneous note and make sure that you SIT on the correct note. This means that when you play the correct note, hold it out for a long time. This puts the sound of it in your ear and when you play it with the preceding and following notes, you hear the correct note pattern instead of the wrong one BUT you HAVE to play the wrong note first!
If you are learning how to fail in other areas of life, you can apply this same process. Take out “note” from the passage above and insert your circumstance: Allow the wrong ” food….exercise….person….statement….etc” to happen – experience the mistake in its entirety and then when you do the correct thing, revel in it.
The best advice I can give you is to notice this in your journey “If it feels weird, you’re probably right”. This means that mistakes often feel more correct than the correct thing. When you are correcting a mistake it feels weird, unnatural – GO WITH THAT feeling. When you sit on the right note it will sound weird, feel weird, and the more you play it correctly like that the less weird it sounds. Try it out and tell me what happened for you. I do this with clients all the time. In squatting, if a client’s feet point too far outward or their knees cave inwards and I have them correct that, they will tell me “that doesn’t feel right, or that feels weird” and I tell them to make it feel weird, because it means they are doing it right.

For more resources

I found this link of books from the Horn Studio at UI, looks like a great list!

Book list for overcoming fear of failure, stress and performance anxiety

And, if you want to feel better about failing, of course you can check out Fail Blog

Feel free to add any more resources that have helped you as well.

Stay tuned for part 3 in this blog series: Do You Have The Courage To Succeed?

Fail well, fail often! Love to hear your thoughts on how failing works for you!

Filed Under: Fitness, Flute, Motivation and Success Tagged With: change, courage, failure, Flute, flute health, flute lessons, Flute Masterclass, Happiness, Health, healthy musician, High school, Inner Game of Music, interest, Interlochen Center for the Arts, John C. Maxwell, masterclass, Personal development, Tennis, The Art of Practicing: A Guide to Making Music from the Heart, Thought, Timothy Gallwey

Are You Ready to Change?

April 20, 2011 By Angela 13 Comments

What does change entail? Why are we afraid? This goes along with Failure, being Afraid to Fail and its cousin, Afraid of Success. Which camp do you belong to?

We are all afraid of something, whether we admit it or not. We all have strengths and weaknesses, whether we admit it or not! A lot of times these characteristics go hand in hand, and this translates through every aspect of life, be it

Going to a new school in a new state
Embarking on a new relationship
Losing or gaining weight
Changing your body in some way
Changing your beliefs or questioning your values
Learning a new, challenging piece of music
Entering the gym, be it the first time or the 100th time
Accepting compliments
Accepting criticisms
Failing
Succeeding
Embarking on a new workout routine -venturing into the weight room and out of the cardio room

Are you a human being or a human doing?

No matter what, we all have challenges in life and things that can cause us to question our methods of doing things. Having recently been a student and entering the professional world a few years ago, that was a difficult transition. I was stuck in being a “human doing” instead of a “human being”.

What does that mean? How many of you, just like myself, get caught up in doing things to please others, to meet an unwritten quota, to show how busy you are to others just so you can receive validation of your worth as a person? It’s VERY easy to fall into that trap, especially if, like me, you were the good child, the good student, the one who excelled in something and thrived on doing well and pleasing others.

As long as you are also pleasing yourself, this is fine, but there comes a time when you have to take ahold of your actions and say “I don’t need to do X Y or Z to please Ms. X because I have worth as a person, no matter if I am busy or not.” That was tough to accept, and it required change, which is a scary place to be. A “human being” knows he/she has worth because they are alive, a “human doing” is caught in seeking validation from others for their worth as a person. Did you know that it is ok to NOT do?

Change Takes Change (Tangent)

It is ok to NOT do, just as it is ok to do. We get very caught up in being busy, in appearing busy, making things, doing things, how much of it is done to look good to others, to please others, or, as Dave Ramsey would say “we buy things we don’t want with money we don’t have to impress we don’t like”.

Can you translate that to your exercise life? Are you on a desperate carousel of weight loss or body transformation to “please people you don’t like”? How many of you get up at the crack of dawn to spend an hour on the elliptical, prepare meals that are tasteless and don’t satisfy, only to stare into the mirror and think “I’m fat and I don’t like myself”?

If you gave yourself permission to stop right now and change for you what would you do differently? Would you hire a personal trainer to take out off the elliptical and teach you about weights? Would you listen to your body and eat what you know is healthy, but in ways that TRULY satisfied you? Would life suddenly take on new joy and excitement in the journey that you suddenly realized you WANTED to take?

Can you translate that to your musical life? How much practice are you putting in to achieve YOUR OWN goals and not someone else’s? Would you quit torturing yourself over mistakes and start loving your sound? Would your attitude towards performance change to one of “Let me share this music with you that I love, so you can love it too” instead of “The audience is out to notice my every mistake and they’re waiting for me to fail”. Would you still practice 4-6 hours a day? Would you play more? Less? Start a group? Leave a group? What would you do FOR YOU?

So the question remains, what would you do if you gave yourself permission to NOT DO?

(Tangent over )

Identify Your Fear

This could be scary for you, but whatever your situation in life (relationships, trusting God, losing weight, learning a new way to practice/learn/play your instrument) you have a challenge. If it’s not right now, it will be in the future, or you have had one in the past. Stop and think for a minute, what change are you facing or thinking of facing? If you choose not to change, is it based on the fear that that change might bring? What is your fear? Some quick examples:

Learning to breathe from a new part of your body when you play, thus changing how you’ve ALWAYS played
Learning to accept criticism without taking it personally
Accepting your body as it is right now (which could be change for you) and if you decide to further change your body, what fears do you have about changing?

Body Awareness

Sadly, body awareness is not something that can be taught or adequately covered in a blog post, but I can at least start the thought for you.

Do this with me, look away from the computer and list off all the feelings you have in your body. Are you suddenly aware that you can feel multiple things at the same time? Close your eyes, does the awareness intensify? Do you feel pain? Do you feel comfort? Do you feel yourself starting to judge yourself for “poor posture”?
Lay on the floor and, starting from your feet, notice where your body is in contact with the floor and where there are spaces. Compare those spaces to each other. Work your way up your body from feet to head to hands. There is no right or wrong in this, how you lie on the floor is how you lie on the floor. No judging, just notice. Does that feel strange to do? To not berate yourself that your feet are not pointing in the same direction, or you have pain in your hips and know it’s because of your posture, etc? The first step in change is awareness. When you become aware, you are no longer judging, and from there, you give yourself the freedom to change or not to change.
“Awareness is attention that observes what you are doing without pushing you in a particular direction.” – Geneen Roth
Now, think about how you are going to get up, without actually doing it. That should be REALLY weird. As yo find your way to get up, remember, there is no right or wrong, just notice how you do it because really, when was the last time you noticed how you got up and down from the floor?
Try a chair. This I learned from Alexander Technique. Sit in a chair and just observe yourself, how you are sitting, where you are sitting. Put your hand on the back of your neck and stand up. Did you feel the muscles in your neck tense? Sit down and notice if they tense again. I will teach you a way to get up with less tension. Keep your hand on the back of your neck, but this time, before you stand, I want you to lean forward, from your hips (not your waist) until you are leaning far over, so far over that it’s almost hard to NOT stand up. Lean forward from your hips until the momentum carries you out of the chair and you stand up. If you did this “correctly” (haha) you will have noticed that the muscles under your hand in your neck barely tensed at all.

Amazing what you just learned about yourself!

So, you have just learned to observe yourself without judging. Was that scary? Do you have the courage to change now? Think about it, can you go throughout your day NOT judging yourself (or others) just observing? It can be a real challenge to do that and maybe even scary…but it can also be the first step to beautiful change.

As this applies to your instrument, the next time you pick it up to play, or sing, can you be very aware of the rest of your body? Can you think about the backs of your knees while you play? What about the outsides of your elbows? Do you feel the insides of your toes? Notice how you feel before playing, how the instrument feels in your hands, how your body reacts or doesn’t react and then when you begin to play, what changes? How do you feel?

When you are in tune with your body you will be able to pick up on pain and other strange things much more quickly. As my Professor at FSU is famous for saying “Do you feel your feet while you play?”

Have the Courage to Go Into The Fear

In Music or performing: like I said, fear and change can go hand in hand. My teacher at Florida State University, Eva Amsler is an absolute master at helping you learn to not only judge yourself, but learn to observe, have the courage to change and face your fears of failure AND success (mine was somehow the latter!).

One of the things she is big on is performance anxiety. This is HUGE. How many of us get nervous before we perform? Some of us get so nervous we get physical symptoms that prevent us from playing well: shaking hands, shaking lips, queasy stomach, weak knees, etc. She said that one day before she was about to perform, she noticed that her hands were cold. And she thought to herself “I wonder if I can make my hands colder?” She actually TRIED to make her hands colder! And do you know what happened? They got warmer!

Think how much courage that takes. Imagine your symptom is that you get butterflies in your stomach and I asked you, a few minutes before you were to take the stage, to notice those butterflies, acknowledge them….and make them WORSE! It takes immense courage to change, but I can vouch for the fact that every time I have had the courage to make my symptoms worse the end result is that they have lessened. Now, sometimes there is nothing you can do, especially if you are unprepared, but this technique is the result of the assumption that you are as prepared as you can be and all you are doing is acknowledging the part of you that is frightened and unsure and basically giving yourself reassurance.

As this relates to fitness: fitness can be a very scary place and it is easy to become overwhelmed by what we don’t know. We pick what is safe (machines) because it’s what everyone does and we’re less likely to “screw up”. Believe it or not, by those who understand fitness, we see a lot more people “screwing up” on machines than not.

Do you have the courage to REALLY change your body? This will be covered more in the “Are You Afraid of Success” post, but think about it. You desperately want to change. You want visible abs, tight legs, to be rid of the bat wings…what is holding you back? If you are not exercising or eating well, there’s part of your answer, but sometimes what we’re doing isn’t working, but we stick with it because we don’t know what else to do.

This is where it makes sense to hire a trainer – even if only for a few sessions, maybe a week or two, to show you around, help you understand how do lift weight safely, and progress properly. Let me tell you right now – lifting weights (strength training) can be very scary. It will take EVERYONE out of their comfort zone at some point, which is the goal, because you cannot grow stronger, you cannot change your body without challenging your comfort zone. A personal trainer will be there right by your side to guide you so that you do not hurt yourself and that you do not back down into your fear, but that you bust through it.

Now that you know what it takes, are you really ready to change your body? For those who have the courage to embark on the path, they will all tell you it was hard, it was scary, but it was worth it and they are glad they did.

Quotes about Change

“Change happens the way a plant grows: slowly, without force, and with the essential nutrients of love and patience and a willingness to remain constant through periods of stress” – Geneen Roth

“If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.” ~Author Unknown

“Change is inevitable. Everybody has to deal with it. On the other hand, growth is optional. You can choose to grow or to fight it.” – -John C. Maxwell

“There is no improvement except through change. To improve continually we must change continually.”

“You can’t avoid fear. No magic potion will take it away. And you can’t wait for motivation to get you going. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway” – John C. Maxwell

Change does not happen overnight, no matter how much we want it to. No matter how badly we want to memorize a scale, lost 20 pounds or have a significant other, it simply does not happen with wanting it badly enough. However, when you do want something badly enough, that can give you the courage you need to change your circumstances and make those things happen.

Pretty empowering, huh?

But with desire and change also comes failure. This is the second part…do you have the courage to fail? And the third part, which might actually be more difficult…do you have the courage to succeed?

Filed Under: Flute, Motivation and Success Tagged With: Alexander Technique, Body Awareness, change, courage, Dave Ramsey, failure, fitness, Flute, flute health, Happiness, Health, Human, interest, musician, Personal development, Personal trainer, strong, Weight loss, Weight training

October 19, 2010 By Angela Leave a Comment

I know I’ve been MIA for awhile, but I have been sooooo busy! Things have been going really well in life and lots of doors are opening for me. I submitted two proposals to present: one for the Florida Flute Association Convention in January and one for the National Flute Association in August. I was also asked to be on an expert panel of flute/health experts for another proposal that was submitted to NFA. Hopefully, you’ll see me presenting around the country this year!

In addition, I’ve been busy performing with the Panama City Pops orchestra and I also just played host to Dr. Paula Van Goes from Nicholls State in LA. She came to the Emerald Coast and gave a fantastic recital, on which I was honored to play some duets with her.

Also in news, I have founded a flute choir! If you have interest in the Emerald Coast Flute Choir, drop me a line. We are taking auditions and hope to begin rehearsals soon.

I’ve also been busy putting together a newsletter. If you are interested in keeping up with me (what’s going on in my life, playing tips, health tips, where I will be performing/teaching next) and/or what is going on musically in Panama City, drop me an email at angela@fluteangel.net and I will add you to the list to get my newsletter! You can also sign up by popping on over to my website at www.fluteangel.net and leaving a comment telling me you’d like to be added to the newsletter.

Upcoming November Activities!! (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
NFA Convention Brochure (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
End of Year Goodies (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
You need Skills! (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
The Skills You Didn’t Learn in Grad School (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
Vision Airlines’ Sensational Spring Break Seat Sale Ends Saturday (prnewswire.com)
Flute’s Flickers of Insight~It is Created!!! (fluteenterprises.wordpress.com)
Free ‘Flute-apalooza’ at McCaw on Saturday (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Filed Under: Motivation and Success, Uncategorized Tagged With: Arts, Emerald Coast, Florida, Flute, flute lessons, Music, musician, National Flute Association, Newsletter, Panama City, Personal development, United States

Audition Travel Lessons Learned

May 29, 2010 By Angela Leave a Comment

As you know, when it comes to taking auditions, only take the ones you really want or that are close by because they can be expensive. How expensive? Well, let me tell you…

This past Wednesday I flew up to Boston for a second round audition with the Air Force Band of Liberty. It was a challenge from the start. I barely got on the last possible flight out of Atlanta, which was overbooked and barely made it. Why was it a problem? Well, my mother in law works for the Airline and was able to get me a standby ticket for considerably less money. This has worked wonderfully for me in the past with no problem, but this time, apparently Boston is tough to get in and out of, so I have learned a lesson.

I made it to the hotel and had a really good audition. Unfortunately, I did not win the job, but as always, the audition reinforced in me what I need to do to improve my auditioning and preparation skills. Always good experience. I was scheduled to fly out the next day: Friday AM. Turns out that ALL of Fridays flights were overbooked. So, I decided to stay until Saturday, at least I get an extra day to explore Boston right?

Original expenses:
Airport parking + gas
Airline ticket
Meals
Hotel
Mass transit fare

Additional expenses incurred:
extra hotel night stay
additional meals
additional mass transit fare
Shuttle service to airport

So I have a great day exploring Boston: seeing Paul Revere’s House, exploring Little Italy (and eating gelato!), seeing the harbor, eating dinner at Legal Seafood, seeing all the historic sights of downtown Boston and Harvard, Quincy Market, etc.

It was a tiring day. I prepared to go to bed, knowing I’d have to get up in about 4 hours to get to my 6:45 AM flight. I call the airlines to make sure…

Bad news.

All flights for Saturday are now overbooked due to weather cancellations in Atlanta on Friday.
Ok……

So, now, instead of flying out Friday, instead of flying out Saturday, I’m here another day, flying out Sunday…HOPEFULLY! Thank goodness for a family friend who lives in the area and is sweet enough to drive out here (Lexington is kind of inaccessible) pick me up and let me stay at her house. Things wouldn’t be a problem except that I have no way to get out of here: the bus doesn’t run on Saturdays here so I can’t get to the train station to even go back to Boston.

There is no guarantee I’ll catch a flight tomorrow and the extra sad news? I had a concert to play with Sinfonia Gulf Coast tonight, that I had to cancel. So not only am I spending extra money here that I had not intended to spend, now I’m not MAKING extra money.

There are worse places and times to be stranded but let this be a lesson to anyone wanting to take auditions:
1) take only the auditions you really want
2) OVER prepare for them
3) bring extra money, snacks and changes of clothes, just in case

Total tally?

Extra days parking at airport
2 extra nights at hotel
Extra meals
Extra fare for mass transport

+ original airfare, meals, transportation

8 common air travel snafus (and how to beat them) (msnbc.msn.com)

Filed Under: Flute, Motivation and Success, Travel Tagged With: Atlanta, Audition, Bing Travel, Boston, courage, failure, Fare, Personal development, Quincy Market, travel, Travelocity, United States

From Nancy Georges – The Attitude of Excellence

November 28, 2009 By Angela Leave a Comment

Image via Wikipedia

I got this in my email box from IFBB Pro Nancy Georges and thought it was wonderful enough to share. Whether your goal is fitness or musical excellence or anything else, this applies.

THE ATTITUDE OF EXCELLENCE

What does it mean to be excellent? How do you define it? For me, how I define excellence, is when I am personally lined up with my own values, goals and vision as an athlete and in all areas. When I am doing whatever I can to achieve my goals and I am not slacking off “according to me” then I know that I am being excellent.

This is challenging to do, especially around the holidays when we are around more people who have their own ideas of what is good for you. In addition to that there is an extreme slacker mentality during the holidays.

Now I am not against relaxing. And I have to admit, it is not always easy. I get recharged pretty quick, so taking off an entire week to lounge around the house and eat, really doesn’t work for me. But, like I said, that is just me.

The trick with the holidays is to have a plan. If you plan on gaining 10 pounds, then go for it, but don’t put on 20. If you plan on staying in contest shape, then you are not going to be able to sit around drinking wine and eating cheese doodles all week with the gang.

Decide what you are going to do this holiday season. Write it out. Are you going to actually lean out, maintain, put on a few pounds, put on a lot of pounds? How many, how much. Are you going to improve weak body parts, get those glutes to sit up higher, build a little muscle? Write our your plan for the next 6 weeks. Once you know what you are planning on doing, then you will know what needs to be done to get there.

Being excellent, has to do with listening to your own internal monitoring system. Even when people around you are encouraging you to eat. Maybe they are even badgering you to eat. Now this goes both ways, just because you have decided to be excellent, don’t expect them to remove that tray of goodies, because you can’t control yourself. They have the right to eat whatever they choose to, but it is their choice. Here is your Thanksgiving and December plan.

1. Decide what you are going to do this holiday, in regard to your goals. Push yourself in a way that works for you. If you don’t have a show in December, I certainly think that a Thanksgiving feast is warranted. But you know your body, and you know your mind. Push yourself a bit, don’t be fooled by the “it’s just one bit” decide what you are going to look like on January 1st. Write out that plan.

2. Be willing to do what it takes to achieve that. Period! That is all, it is that simple.

Being excellent is a choice, don’t worry if others aren’t coming along, but don’t stop going just because they have taken a break.

Whatever your goals, whatever your vision, whatever your dream, do what it takes to have it. You will feel so proud of yourself, and that is the ultimate feeling of satisfaction.

Gobble Gobble, it’s turkey time.

Speak Up: How Do You Feel About Indulging on Thanksgiving? (fitsugar.com)
Cheat Day Strategies for a Hedonist (leangains.com)

Filed Under: Fitness, Flute, Motivation and Success, Nutrition Tagged With: Children and Youth, Cooking, Health, healthy musician, Holiday, Home, mindset, strength, Thanksgiving, What to Eat

Blogs to check out: strong ladies « The fitness industry’s copywriter

Women: How NOT to Get Bulky

You need Skills!

You need SKILLS – the things business majors learn.

The Courage to Succeed

Developing Body Awareness and Self-Trust

Do You Have The Courage To Fail?

Are You Ready to Change?

Audition Travel Lessons Learned

From Nancy Georges – The Attitude of Excellence

A Recent Performance:

Tweets from Angela

Blogroll

Entrepreneurship and Career

Ladies Who Lift

Meical Practitioners

Music Blogs

Musicians Specializing in Health

Nutrition

Resistance Training

The Music Strong Blog

Cart

Related articles

You need SKILLS – the things business majors learn.

Related Articles

Related Articles

Related Articles

Related articles

Related articles

Related articles

A Recent Performance:

Tweets from Angela

Blogroll

Entrepreneurship and Career

Ladies Who Lift

Meical Practitioners

Music Blogs

Musicians Specializing in Health

Nutrition

Resistance Training

Tags

Cart