Goal setting with Clarity

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN MOVED TO OUR NEW WEBSITE. GO READ IT HERE.

---

When I’ve lost clarity about my goals, or I’m feeling overwhelmed and can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be doing, the first thing I like to do is bake something to clear my head.

I bake with a recipe that gives me clear directions to follow. 

How comforting to know that if I follow them well, I’ll (most likely) end up with something good and delicious in the end.  

So where do we find a recipe with clear directions for life?  

“Just tell me what to do!!!”  I have silently screamed (to the heavens, universe, myself, or anyone who is listening).

Well, after I enjoy a warm, soft-on-the-inside, crunchy-on-the-outside chocolate chip zucchini muffin (here’s that recipe), I go through a process that helps me create my own personalized recipe with directions to achieve my goals.  

A recipe that directs me, with purpose and meaning.

So, Grab your favorite journal and pen, and let’s hand write our way to clarity.

Creating A Recipe For Life With Goal Setting

Take your time with this process by honestly answering the questions below.  

I allow myself to break it up and do it over a few days or so.

These questions will take you through a process of doing an inventory of the recent past, so you can see where you’ve been, figure out where you want to go, and orient yourself towards that vision.

You can decide whether you’d like to look at the last year, the last 6 months or even the last 3 months to do your inventory.  Do what feels right for you.  

I’ve listed a couple of references at the end of this blog if you’re interested in an even deeper dive into goal setting.

Grab your pen and let’s start writing.

SIX questions to goal clarity for your recipe:

1. What were your accomplishments? None are too small to acknowledge. What’s working? Consider what actions you want to keep or do more of in your life.

2. What were your disappointments? Get them all out on paper. Consider what’s not working?What are some actions you can let go of?

3. What roles do you play in my life and how would you rate my satisfaction with them? Up to 10. (For me these might be something like:  Mom, Wife, Homemaker, Family Member, Community Member, CEO, Self-coach, Student, Voice Teacher, Artist)  

4. Which of those roles would you like to see the most progress this year? Choose just one that you’ll prioritize.

5. What are all the goals you’d like to achieve in each of  those roles? Once you’ve made a list of everything you’d like to achieve in each role of your life, and then, narrow that to three per role, starring the ones that make you feel the most excited. 

6. Which 10 goals are your priority? Making sure you keep at least one goal for each role, and keeping in mind which role where you’d like to see the most progress, pick your top 10 goals. 

Tips on Choosing your Goals

If you are feeling stuck around what kind of goals to set or how hard they should be, follow these S.M.A.R.T. goal guidelines.

Set S.M.A.R.T Goals

• Specific

  • Narrow it to be specific so you can do effective planning and really envision yourself achieving your goal.

• Measurable

  • How will you measure your progress?

  • Consider whether it’s best to set a process goal vs an outcome goal.  

  • For example: Practice voice 30 minutes a day 4x per week VS Learn to sing through my break.

• Attainable

  • Don’t make them too easy just to protect yourself from failing, but don’t make them so hard that you give up next week. 

  • Make sure it’s something you can reasonably accomplish within a timeframe.

• Relevant

  • Do your goals align with your values?

  • Do you feel excited about achieving them?

• Time-Based

  • Be realistic AND ambitious about setting a time frame for your goals.

  • Break your outcome goals down into steps and set timeframes for when you’ll accomplish each step in the process.

  • Start from the end date and work your way backwards.

    • Where do you need to be at the halfway point?

    • What needs to happen by the first quarter?

    • What needs to happen right away?

Now that you have completed the questions, take a moment to appreciate the work you just did.

See yourself accomplishing your goals.

How will you feel?

How will you celebrate?

Bonus points:

Forward this to a friend who you know is working on clarifying their vision.

The only thing better than finishing it, is completing it with a friend who you can hold mutually accountable to accomplishing what you said you would. Accountability is key.

I hope this gives you some inspiration and tools to create a RECIPE for a life you love. 

Bookmark this blog can come back to it a few times a year. I like to reevaluate mine every 6 months.

This simple process works really well for me, but if you want to go even more in depth.  You might enjoy a book called My Best Year Yet by Jinny S. Ditzler which you can find here. 

I’m also a former member of Brianna Brown Keen’s philanthropic group The New Hollywood where Brianna created a workbook for her goal setting process called Manifesting Your Mission, which you can get here. 

Please note that I am an affiliate for some of the resources I recommend. As an affiliate, I may earn a referral fee if you purchase these products based on my recommendations. Rest assured, I ONLY recommend resources I actually use myself.

John Henny and I talk about Mindfulness & Meditation On The Intelligent Vocalist Podcast

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN MOVED TO OUR NEW WEBSITE. GO READ IT HERE.

---

Top Voice Teacher and coach, John Henny, invited me as guest on his renowned podcast, The Intelligent Vocalist.

John and I discuss mindfulness and meditation and how it can help singers in both practice and performance. You can also check out my blog post HERE on this topic.

Listen below, or on any of your favorite podcast platforms.

---

Sign up to get this 3 minute guided meditation to help you get ready to sing, perform, or just take a breather during your day.

---

Meditation and Mindfulness to Improve Your Singing and Performing

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN MOVED TO OUR NEW WEBSITE. GO READ IT HERE.

---

When it comes to singing your best, your biggest obstacle might just be your mind.

The mind can be distracted by thoughts that are completely outside what we are doing.

These thoughts can be anything from your to-do list, thoughts of self-judgment, or wondering what you should have for lunch. Sound familiar? It happens to the best of us, and it doesn’t really benefit us when we are trying to learn a new skill or perform at our best.

This mind chatter can be especially unhelpful right before a performance. The more we try to control it, the more work it is and the more distracted we become.  

Sometimes, even if you are trying to think positively or self-coach with uplifting and encouraging thoughts, it can cause over-excitement and can even cause us to produce too much adrenaline, neither of which is that helpful right before a performance.

Mindfulness can help. Perhaps you’ve heard the term mindfulness, or your teacher has told you to practice mindfully. 

What is Mindfulness Exactly?

Mindfulness is being fully in the present moment.

There are a lot of benefits to this as singers and performers, and also just for life!

• We have more self-awareness and compassion.

• We feel calmer, have more clarity, and are less reactive to stress.

• We are fully engaged in what we are doing, free from distractions and judgment.

Sounds pretty good right? I think so, too! So, how do we do it?

In the same way, we exercise our bodies to stay physically fit, we have to train our minds to be mentally fit.  

How do I train my mind?

train your brain with meditation

Meditation has been a powerful tool for me in training my own mind. It’s something I have done for the better part of 20 years. It’s benefited me both as an artist and in my life in general. It’s helped me deal with anxiety (performance and other), stress, and depression.

I’ve tried many different kinds of meditation, and the beautiful thing is that there is no one right way to do it, so you can find what works best for you.

While meditation can be a part of someone’s spiritual or religious practice, it doesn’t have to be, if that’s not your thing. So, if you’ve always thought meditation was only for monks and yogis, it’s not. Anyone can meditate.

“In the same way we exercise our bodies to stay physically fit, we have to train our minds to be mentally fit.”

— Annie Little

How do I meditate?

Meditation doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, It’s one of those things that, in it’s true essence, is very simple.

You can do guided or unguided meditations. Guided meditations may be a bit easier for people who are new to meditation, and I like guided meditations for myself, as I feel like I am more easily able to surrender to the experience.

Practicing meditation can be as simple as:

1. Choosing something to focus on, like your breath.

2. Noticing when the mind wonders.

3. Bringing your attention back to the breath.

The mind is going to wander, and that’s okay. It’s not about trying to push away your thoughts and feelings. It’s about allowing them to come and go without judgement, and not follow them as a train of thought.

When you do notice the mind wondering, just gently bring it back to your point of focus.

Some days this will feel easier than others. Sometimes a lot of thoughts and feelings will keep coming into the mind. That’s fine. We want to gently stay with that exercise of bringing the mind back to the point of focus, no matter how it feels. That’s the exercise. The act of bringing your focus back is what meditation is.

“We are training the mind to have the ability to be intensely focused on one object, yet be aware of everything else. This creates a state of mind that is focused on the one hand and relaxed on the other. This is a state of flow.”

- Excerpt from a Headspace meditation with Andy Puddicombe

Benefits for learning

Benefits like increased awareness and improved focus come in handy when it comes to learning or improving your singing skills.

I always take my students through a mini guided meditation at the beginning of each lesson, and I consistently notice an increase in focus, relaxation, and a willingness to learn.

Awareness is so important when learning to sing, especially on a physical level.  There are so many sensations that we feel when we use our voices.  It’s helpful to deepen your awareness of your body to be able to map these sensations, so you can recreate the ones that work.

Benefits for performing

When the body is stressed, it triggers the sympathetic nervous system to release stress hormones like epinephrine and cortisol into the blood stream, causing a fight or flight response.

This can result in the heart pounding, sweaty palms, and tunnel vision, which can be enough to make some people not even want to perform.

Meditation can help keep the mind and body relaxed, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and causes the body to stop releasing all those stress hormones.

Meditation can help us learn to condition the body to relax when we need it the most, allowing for a more optimal performance experience.

Think of a cheetah in the wild, still and relaxed, in no rush at all, yet ready to pounce at any moment.  This condition of being relaxed and focused at the same time allows us to be in a state of flow, present in our minds and bodies. We are able to more easily tap into our intuition, allowing the “magic” of the present moment into our experience, letting go and trusting ourselves.  

Just like singing, Meditation takes practice

daily practice

Like most skills, we get the most benefit from meditation when we do it as a regular practice.  The brain reacts just like our body does when we stop exercising.  It likes to go back to it’s old ways.  

So, to keep these benefits and continue to increase them takes regular practice on our parts, so we are continuing to train the brain. 

Creating a habit of it by doing it at the same time each day and attaching it to another habit like brushing your teach, can be really helpful.

Even 10 minutes a day can cause positive changes in the brain.

Science Can Motivate Us to practice

Proof that it works can keep us going on the days we just don’t feel like it

The science behind the benefits of meditation is growing rapidly, and it can really motivate us to keep a regular practice.

Functional MRIs have allowed us to actually observe what happens in the brain when people meditate. Meditation can literally change the brain.  Studies show that it can rewire neural pathways that improve both the mind and body by building new positive neural pathways and decreasing the negative ones.  This is called neuroplasticity. 

Studies showed an increase in gray-matter density in the hippocampus (where learning, memory, self-awareness, compassion, and introspection happen in the brain) and decreased density in the amygdala (otherwise known as the lizard brain, which processes fear, anxiety and stress).  The amygdala is also involved in the processing of emotions triggering the fight or flight response. 

Meditation also effects the medial pre-frontal cortex, the “me center” of the brain, from where we primarily interpret the world.  This part of the brain is involved in regulating feelings of fear and anxiety.  Meditation can decrease the neural connections to the “me center”, allowing the brain to less focused on yourself, so when bodily sensations of fear and anxiety come up, you have the ability to not respond as strongly to them.  

Your ability to assess momentary physical sensations for what they are increases, so you allow them to come and go without becoming caught up in a story about what they mean.  This allows you to be less reactive and feel more balanced.

Don’t forget to grab your free 3-minute body scan guided meditation

---

Further Resources

Headspace - Headspace is currently offering a year of Headspace Plus for anyone who is unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is an incredible resource for learning and maintaining a regular practice.

Deepak Chopra’s 21-Day Guided Meditations - Deepak Chopra regularly offers free 21-Day Meditation Challenges that are wonderfully insightful and another way to start the habit of meditating regularly.

Waking Up - Created by neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris, Waking Up is a guide to understanding the mind, for the purpose of living a more balanced and fulfilling life.

INLP Center - Mindfulness Training: Experience the Benefits in Your Life - More about mindfulness and training opportunities here.

Sources for this article:

https://www.headspace.com/blog/2015/01/30/which-parts-of-the-brain-are-most-resilient-to-change/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/05/15/the-effects-of-meditation-on-the-brain/#5e2c08272ddb

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3184843/

Using Singing for Self-Care

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN UPDATED AND MOVED TO OUR NEW WEBSITE. GO READ IT HERE.

---

What if the goal of singing was actually to FEEL GOOD, instead of SOUND GOOD???

Explore the possibility of this in a conversation and mini-training in this episode of VoiceTalk, where Allie Tyler of The Whole Voice and I explore SINGING as self-care.

“I love singing. Period. And I want to do this because it feels good not because I need to be a singer.”

— Allie Tyler

Allie is one of those people who is like a ray of sunshine when you are in her presence. She will give you all the good feels, I'm not kidding.

I know for myself, there have been times when I would be so down about my voice, that I would not even want to use it because I was so frustrated.

What if we really could turn those negative emotions into something that would actually make us feel better??

Allie is a vocalist, songwriter, and the voice empowerment coach behind The Whole Voice, which focuses on the mind, body, soul aspects of both singing and self-care. She has her master's degree in vocal arts and has been teaching for the last 11 years. Allie is on a melody making mission to elevate human expression.

You can follow her on Instagram HERE.

Give the melody mantra exercise a try and let me know how it FEELS!