A year older and it's time for change.

On the wall of my music room is the Holstee Manifesto. It starts like this:

This is Your Life.
Do what you love and do it often.
If you don't like something, change it.

I've been fortunate to do something I love for the last dozen years - making music for my living. But over the last several years there has been a slow internal shift. And this fall I made it official:

I’m changing careers.

I'm letting go of gigging and performing, and focusing solely on Inner Artist Coaching (with a little vocal coaching mixed in).
 

What is Inner Artist Coaching? 

You know how being an artist, a performer, a creative type person can be hard? There are many external obstacles in the world – irregular work and finances; auditions + rejections + more auditions + more rejections; freelancing and trying to find time for passion projects. I mean, the list could go on and on, right?

And then there are the inner battles we all experience in one way or another – self doubt; performance anxiety; fear of success; fear of failure; procrastination – writers block, composers block, painters block. Basically getting in our own way!

As I’ve written about, I tried many tools to overcome my performance anxieties. The one that has worked the best, has transformed my life, and that I’m now in a year long training for, is Internal Family Systems therapy/coaching.

The long and short of this approach is believing that the discomfort, pain, fear that we experience is there for a reason. It is in getting to know these emotions more deeply that they can transform into more helpful emotions or qualities, or just step out of the way when the job needs to get done.
 

How does Inner Artist coaching apply to being a performer or artist? 

A core belief of Internal Family Systems is that we already have many of the internal resources we need. Deep inside, we know how to perform, how to create, how to write, how to have resilience, how to handle criticism. Confidence, calm, and capability is hardwired into our system, just as fear as a survival technique is hardwired into us. 

Fear is no small obstacle. It is present to keep us safe and alive. The strength of this fear can derail us from many of our life's goals and passions. 

It is in getting to know the deep concerns of fear and discomfort that we actually uncover the confidence and calm and capabilities that we already have. 

I’m doing it right now. Every time I sit down to write, I have conflicting feelings. I have the desire to get words and emotions onto my screen, out into the world, to be seen and read and heard and valued. At the same time, I get a tightness in my chest, a turn in my belly, distracted and racing mind – fear.

I sit with the duality of desires – one to do the work and the other to run away. And in fact, when I stop and listen to the tightness in my chest and the turn in my belly, I become more deeply connected to who I am, and write from the center of me, rather than the wordiness of my head. And the tightness transforms into something else, something useful, something connected, something energized.

So that’s what we do in Inner Artist coaching. Get to know the parts of you who come up around your art. Get to know their concerns. Welcome them. Treat them with kindness and build relationships with them. We apply this process to your art making. Make some music and see what parts come up. Write something and see about the concerns. Create something and see where energy and creativity go astray.

It is through this process that transformation happens. Art becomes easier. Performing becomes more fun. Practicing, writing, editing, composing becomes more enjoyable. Flow happens.

Ripple effects

A recent event triggered some shame in me. It was annoying. Bad feeling. Disrupting. Painful. Old. And I was dismayed to find that I went to patterns I thought I had retired - of feeling disembodied, which then caused me to have a terrible time practicing at the piano.

We all have shame. It is a condition of being human.

Brene Brown defines shame as believing I am bad, as opposed to guilt, which is I did something bad.

Even though this particular event had nothing to do with music, when I sat at the piano, I felt hurried, distracted, anxious, frustrated that nothing felt or sounded good. I turned tighter and tighter as I tried harder and harder to force things back on track.

The next morning my husband took my one year old for a walk and I had some time to myself. I poured out all my frustration about the shame trigger into my journal. Lots of swear words, lots of scribbling, lots of chaos.

And then I sat back down at the piano. Ahhh, better. Space to breathe, space to move, space to make mistakes. Not perfect, not totally resolved, but better.

Then I repeated the process the next day. And the next day. And probably will again in the near future.

My contention is this – doing the Inner Work helps us do our Artist Work better. Things in our life ripple into our artistry. Our artistry ripples out into our lives. Listening to the concerns of the various voices in our heads, giving air and space to the bad feelings, gives us more room to show up with our best self to our art.

I know this is contrary to much advice out there - think positive, choose better thoughts, just take action. As if we could simply control our thinking and then our life would be all better. Heck, I've even given similar advice on this blog in the past! 

But just like trying to ignore a crying child, ignoring the distasteful voices in our head doesn't make them disappear. Just like a needy child, what those voices need is some love and attention. After love and attention, then they can settle back down. Allowing better parts of you to step forward and take action where action is needed. 

Give it a try. Here are some journaling prompts (or you can talk to yourself, or to your recorder on your phone, or to a person, or just mull these questions):

Today I feel really frustrated about……
Lately, I’ve been feeling like this in my body……
My inner voices have arguments about…..
What I'm concerned about at this moment is.....
One small, simple, actionable step I can take to address these concerns is.....

See how you feel after getting in touch with the reality of your emotions. When you listen to what's really going on in your head and body, how do you feel? Does it make work, or creative efforts, or practicing, easier? Or perhaps harder? 

With love and appreciation for reading, 
Marta