LIFE COACHING FOR MUSICIANS
Being a musician is hard.
I'm not talking about the notes. There’s a side to this that is rarely brought up. It's also at the center of many of the majority of the shortcomings of modern music.
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?
Maybe for you, music was an infinite world of exploration as a child, but as you’ve grown, your imagination has exceeded your skill level, leaving you feeling frustrated and locked out of accessing the ability to hear and play what you truly want. The thing that initially brought you joy as a child now represents uncertainty and overwhelm.
Maybe the joy you had in your early years of playing was shunned by the other musicians around you, or perhaps your enthusiasm was misunderstood and was responded to with resistance, which negatively changed the way you feel about your playing going forward. This may have lead to you hiding away the outer edges of your creativity for fear of judgment, or adopting the belief that your skill ability is equal to your worth or validity as a human being.
Maybe you thought that the only way to be musically or socially accepted - to be yourself - was to become someone else. And despite your instincts, you convinced yourself that becoming that person was who you were meant to be, until eventually, you lost sight of who you are, personally and musically. Maybe you deeply want to stop wearing those emotional masks, but are not sure what’s behind them, or what to replace them with.
Maybe some of the beliefs you have about the possibilities in music were adopted as a way to feign competency and gain legitimacy, and aren’t serving you anymore. Maybe those ideas you learned to live by were other people’s ideals - people who were struggling, too.
Maybe you learned to use your instrument as a survival shield to protect against a difficult environment, to avoid the parts of you that you have hidden away. Or maybe the initial reason for you playing music was to protect and preserve your essential inner truth, or as social leverage to gain acceptance laterally through your ability to play your instrument. The old reasons for you being a musician may now be leaving you feeling empty, and you long to rekindle the initial passion you once had.
And maybe... you just feel stuck, like you’ve plateaued or your performance has peaked, and you don’t know where to go next with your playing. At the same time, you might also feel that the status quo of staying in the same place indefinitely is no longer an option. That drive to grow is still in you.
Why are we tolerating these states? It doesn’t have to be this way.
THINKING IN A NEW WAY
This is not an inherent problem about you, but simply a lack of alternate options for thinking about things in a new way.
It’s not that you either “have the ability or you don’t” or that attaining greatness is an experience restricted to a select few. The trouble with these binary beliefs is that they are rooted in vague, emotion-based comparative opinions that keep you stuck and looking outside yourself for solutions, instead of discovering individualized tactical solutions and possibilities that are your own to explore and develop from the inside out.
You have to find what works for you. The old stories, beliefs, patterns of playing — the way you think it “should” be— does not serve who you are or inform you on how to navigate the vision you have for your future. Maybe, your vision for the future that you believe in was created in response to your personal experience with the scenarios listed above.
There is a better future you can’t see yet.
I have observed again and again that the ultimate driving force of masterful technical execution and creative freedom is a certain way of thinking about music, about ourselves, and our relationship to music.
All of my current and former drum set students have known me in two capacities: as a technique and form coach and as a mentoring coach. After privately teaching drum set for several years, I have realized that the same principles I develop with my drum set students can also create incredible transformation — independent of the instrument.
Being a better musician doesn’t end at the level of finding playing-specific technical solutions. You need the necessary mindset to apply to the technique so that you can ensure effective application. When you inculcate the belief system, creative freedom follows suit.
There are few, if any, substantive resources for musicians, designed by a musician, for how to develop their own authentic experience of playing music that reflects who they are and want to become.
I believe it’s a universally needed service.
LIFE COACHING
As a certified Life Coach, I am excited to announce that I now am offering coaching services for musicians across all instruments and genres. All coaching is currently virtual, allowing for services to be available regardless of your geographical location.
If you have been wanting to get to the next stage of your creative journey and career, I can help to facilitate newfound self-awareness, confidence, and emotional resilience by supporting you as you build and implement personal, actionable, and tactical tools through our coaching relationship.
For a musician, what does Life Coaching offer?
Unlike therapy, counseling or consulting, working with a Life Coach is fully client-led.
It’s a process of self-discovery.
It allows you to find new ways of achieving your goals - and set new ones.
It’s a way of transforming doubts into strengths.
It’s oriented toward your future, not the past.
You will redefine the way you relate to the instrument, to music, and to your own playing by redefining how you relate to yourself.
You will access a more personally aligned, impactful way of playing, because you will transform your way of seeing.
With the support of a trusted Life Coach, you find your own answers.
You discover what works best for you to create change that you can sustain.
Your journey though our work together can help you to live into the totality of your creative vision with focus, authenticity, discipline and deep personal fulfillment.
This is your journey with music. You owe it to yourself to do this thing right.
How do you want to design your future? You may not know it yet, but you already have the answers.
Let’s discover them together.