TAG: positive mindset

The SPIRE of Career Planning: How to Build Happiness and Optimism into Your Career Part 1

Career planning may feel daunting so here is something that can help to make the process feel fulfilling and motivating, build resilience and lead to greater optimism: The SPIRE model of happiness. Let’s explore the SPIRE of Career Planning! Career Planning is a great way to clarify what you want to achieve professionally and how to get there.  My method …

How Music Entrepreneurs Stay Positive: 4 Mindset Strategies to Help Through Tough Times

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My coaching groups at Yale are going strong! Students appreciate having a confidential forum where they can share successes and challenges with a trusted group of peers and learn new strategies for creating sustainable careers. With the semester winding down in a few weeks, our students, especially those who are graduating, are finding it a challenge to keep their spirits up …

How To Adopt the Attitude of Success Part II: Raise Your Energy in 7 Steps

My last blog post on how to adopt the attitude of success introduced the 6 different levels of energy– the different attitudes that you might have about your career– showing the thought that is associated with each level: Stress-Inducing Levels: Level 1: Worried Level 2: Frustrated Motivating Levels: Level 3: Managing Level 4: Service Level 5: Opportunity Level 6: Flow Here …

Group Coaching Lessons for Success-Oriented Music Entrepreneurs: Share, Learn and Grow

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This semester, I launched 3 career groups at the Yale School of Music as an experiment to see how group coaching could facilitate learning and growth for entrepreneurial musicians. My intentions were to provide: a positive, supportive, safe judgment-free environment that promotes learning through self-reflection and joint problem solving in which musicians can share with like-minded peers learn tools to help …

The Mindset of Success: Four Pillars for Today’s Music Entrepreneurs

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Note: A longer version of this post appeared in I CARE IF YOU LISTEN. It is a fascinating, challenging time to be a musician. Traditional institutions struggle to remain relevant as new technologies and new ways of performing, disseminating music and interacting with audiences are changing our very world. A new model and more entrepreneurial model of success is emerging. What …

How Arts Leaders Manage Challenge: Change Your Perspective

Rising arts leaders face a host of challenges including too much to do with too little time, constant deadlines,  not enough money, time or staff to carry out the great work, conflicting priorities and having to respond to numerous constituencies.   In these situations, it’s easy to focus on the negatives.  Yet happily, there are some very effective strategies to …

What’s Working for Music Entrepreneurs?: The Power of Living at Choice

Spring Break is here.  My students are on overload.  They have been performing a lot, as well as auditioning for DMA programs, summer festivals and orchestra jobs, interviewing for internships and jobs on top of all their schoolwork.  We began our last class before Spring Break with a check-in on what’s working.

What’s working is a great question because you focus on the positive aspects of your life.  It is another way to change your perceptions and use the forces of positive energy to motivate you.

Here’s the way it works:

1.    First you identify what is working in your life.

2.  Then you figure out what about it works, analyzing the steps you took to create your success.

3.  Finally, you apply your methodology to areas of your life that are not working as well so that you can overcome your challenges.

Let’s take a look at what is working from my class.

 

Financial Freedom for Music Entrepreneurs Part I: How To Overcome Your Fears and Become Financially Literate

Let’s start off the New Year with a topic that sends shivers down the spires of many musicians:  your finances.
What’s the first thing that you think of when you think “money”? 

“Dread.”

“I don’t want to think about it.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

Your attitude about money says a lot about how you make, spend and save your money.  By using a combination of the positive mindset of an entrepreneur combined with knowledge of basic skills, you can start to conquer your fears around money and begin to forge a healthy relationship with making and spending money, with the goal of achieving financial freedom.

How do you feel about making money as a musician?  Start out by taking the Financial Freedom Quiz. 

Top 10 Tips for Music Entrepreneurs: How to Create Sustainable Career Success

With the year coming to a close, it is time for top 10 lists.  My contribution to the field is a top 10 list for Music Entrepreneurs on how to create career success.  This list reflects my belief that successful music entrepreneurs align who they are with what they do  .

The short answer is be authentic, be unique, and master the skills that will enable you to create big dreams and make them happen. Not surprisingly, this list reflects the topics that I will be covering in my class next semester at YSM on Creating Sustainable Careers in the Arts.

Here are my top 10 tips for musicians who are committed to creating and sustaining authentic success: