TAG: values

Top 10 Confidence Boosters for Arts Entrepreneurs

Just think of how often confidence comes up in the course of your life, whether it is in rehearsal, in performance, speaking in public, making presentations or pitches, networking or interviewing for a job. Confidence is at the heart of your personal motivation and self-esteem to put you at ease. It is also essential when you interact with others in order …

Being in the Flow: The Start of Authentic Leadership

This past week, I attended the 2014 Opera America conference in San Francisco where I had the privilege of working with the 2014 Leadership Intensive participants.  These 14 talented mid-career opera administrators from North America and Europe were selected to participate in a program that provides training and resources designed to “bolster their leadership capacity and advance their careers”. My …

Finding Your Passions for Success: Think Expansively To Find Your Sweet Spot

I am a huge advocate of doing what you love and finding passion in your life’s work. Passion is at the heart of entrepreneurship. Not only is it incredibly motivating to have your work reflect what you love but chances are that you will be more successful if you are able to able to find happiness in your life, including …

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The Elements of Career Success: 6 Steps towards Fulfillment

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What are the common elements in creating a successful and fulfilling career? This question is at the heart of my work with professional musicians and arts leaders, as well as creative business professionals—in short, anyone who is committed to incorporating her passions into her work. Here are the 6 steps to creating a career that is not only fulfilling but …

Live Your Values Part I: How Music Entrepreneurs Make Smart Career Choices

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“Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same but you leave ’em over everything that you do.” Elvis Presley Values are your qualities of intrinsic worth and the principles that run your life. Core values help to define who you are and what is truly important to you. In the words of one musician: “Values will help you to create …

Top 10 Tips Time Management Tips for Music Entrepreneurs

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This year, one of my biggest discoveries was Quadrant 2 time management, the strategy that has you focusing on what is really important to you as opposed to what is urgent, and realigning your time to honor and commit to Quadrant 2 activities each week (for more on this, see tips 2 and 3 below). Q2 time management is helping …

Career Planning for Music Entrepreneurs: Tapping Into Vision and Going for Plan A

The past two weeks, I have had a great time working with the future stars of concert music and talking a lot about how to create a successful career as a musician. First, I spent two days with the Fellows at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, located in the picture-perfect hills of Northwest Connecticut on a beautiful estate where the …

Managing Multiple Passions: Taking Charge of Your Life and Living at Choice

One of the hallmarks of creative success is having a positive can-do mindset and feeling great about the choices that you make because this makes you feel in charge of your life.  This can be quite a challenge for those with multiple passions. I recently explored the challenges of having multiple passions and how to push through the fears that often paralyze those who love a lot of different things and are afraid to make the “wrong” decision. 

There is another big challenge in managing multiple passions: deciding which one to focus on.  When you love a lot of different things, it is tempting to want to do everything.  However, that is simply not realistic. In my experience, people who do “everything” wind up defaulting on their commitments, jeopardizing their relationships, feeling overwhelmed and often harming their health.  And yet, if we love doing a lot of different things, we might land up feeling resentful if we have to put off doing something we love.

Managing multiple passions is a function of choosing the activities that advance your goals and make you feel great about your decisions.  So here are a few strategies that can help you to focus your efforts and manage those passions!

Managing Multiple Passions: Achieving Creative Fulfillment and Pushing Through Fear

What do you do when you love so many things that you cannot decide what career direction to pursue?

As someone who transitioned from French literature to law to non-profit management to consulting to career coaching to teaching career entrepreneurship at the Yale School of Music and writing, speaking and coaching on career fulfillment, I was plagued by this very issue.  Indeed, over the course of my various career iterations, I went from utter frustration at thinking that I was never going to figure it out to embarking on a process of reflection and experimentation to learning the beauty of aligning one’s career with one’s passions, values and strengths and of honoring the twists and turns of the journey to creative fulfillment and career success. 

Yes, the process takes time and often leaves you wondering where you are going but once you connect the dots, there is nothing quite like it.  If you are someone with multiple passions and feel stuck in your tracks, here are some reflections on what might be holding you back and what you can do about it.