Back to the Harp—Without Killing the Vacation Vibe - PHH 219

But according to studies done by the American Psychological association, apparently almost 2/3 of US workers lose the positive effects that go with relaxing on a vacation. That's almost 2/3 of US workers lose those positive effects within a few days of coming back to work. They call it post vacation depression or blues or anxiety, and it's apparently a real thing. I don't know that that's true with our harp playing. It certainly doesn't have to be, because if we don't have a bunch of harp deadlines waiting for us, if we don't have concerts we have to prepare for, then most of our deadlines, as far as the harp goes, are self imposed. Which means that most of our stress is self imposed too. Doesn't mean it's any less real, but self imposed is something we can take care of.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now I play and teach all over the world and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level or or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement. You're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started.

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Can do for your harp playing is to develop the habits that lead to success. Whatever that looks like for you. All of us want to learn how to play the harp beautifully, how to play with confidence, and enjoy making music. And if you really want to learn those things, videos are great. But live learning is essential. You need to be able to ask questions and get answers. You can't do that with just a video, which is what makes the Miharp Mastery community so special. My Harp Mastery membership is for those who really want an online experience that lets them learn at their own pace and learn what they want and be able to learn live from expert coaches every single week. Plus, you get to connect with other harpists in the community who have the same desires for their playing. This is not only a powerful learning platform, but it's also the most generous community of harpists and anywhere on the planet. They're harpists with a positive outlook, a growth mindset, and a spirit of support for their fellow harpists on the journey with them.

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Welcome to the show. Now, I know I'm dating myself, but here goes back in the 1960s, there was a television show called Sea Hunt. The show centered around a freelance scuba diver named Mike Nelson, played by Lloyd Bridges. Mike Nelson was a former Navy diver and a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary. As a freelance diver, he was hired for all kinds of dangerous underwater work, everything from salvaging precious cargo from wrecked ships to rescuing people trapped in caves. Each episode had dangerous situations and villains who were ready to slash the hoses on Mike's air tanks. In nearly every episode, Mike would have to make a hasty ascent from the depths, which he would attempt to time carefully to avoid the bends, a potentially fatal condition more formally called decompression sickness. On occasion, Mike would have to spend time in a decompression chamber. Now, watching this as a child, I was fascinated by the danger of too hasty a return to the surface. On the one hand, Mike would be running out of oxygen and would need to get back on the boat quickly, but on the other hand, making his return too quickly could prove fatal. Talk about a dilemma. Well, today's show is not about the bends, but it is about the possible downside, although not a potentially fatal one, of returning to your regular practice routine too quickly after your vacation. If you're like me, you may come back from vacation with your fingers itching to get back on the harp strings. If you run right to the harp, however, you might find it more challenging or even frustrating than you expected. Broken strings and creaky fingers are annoying enough to deal with, but the real issue is that the pieces we're working on seem so far from where we left them. In my experience, diving right into your usual kind of practice can instantly deflate your post vacation high. Instead of being able to keep that feeling of freshness, relaxation, and renewal, you're right back into the practice grind. You left. So what's the fix? Well, the good news is that we don't need a decompression chamber. All we need is the right mindset and a plan. And I have Both of those for you today.

Now, I did an episode a while back that talked about some similar aspects of what I'm talking about today. It talked about the re entry plan for your fingers. This is a little bit different. This isn't about preparing your fingers and about your music. This is going to be about preparing your mindset and to help you get back into the swing of things without losing the that nice, cool, calm vacation mode. That's what we want to hang on to. And so that's a little different take on kind of the same thing. But I have put a link in the show notes to the episode that I did before. So this was episode 60 and it was called Enjoy a Guilt Free Harp Free Vacation with the Perfect re entry Plan. So I've put a link to episode 60 in the show notes. If you don't see that link or, or you don't see the show notes at all, you can just go to our podcast page. Go to harpmastery.com, look at the podcast and if you click on any one of those episodes, it'll get you to a page where you can browse and search and you're looking for episode 60 while you're at the Heart Mastery page. If you are a harp teacher, I invite you to click on the upcoming events and check out our teacher retreat. We are doing a retreat this fall, the beginning of October20, just for HARP teachers. So this is a different kind of retreat than we've done before. It's still at our beautiful 15 bedroom, 15 bathroom or 15 and a half bathroom, I think house in the Orlando, Florida area. And you know, house complete with the pool, the hot tub, the whole thing. It's a beautiful home and it's a relaxing place to be. And that's the point of our teacher retreat. It's not just about retreating and about recharging and reconnecting, but it's going to be an opportunity to collaborate with fellow teachers, to get some ensemble playing in, if you like, with some of your fellow teachers and to really have a chance to explore what other people are doing to make their teaching studios successful, what resources they use, what tech resources, what music, what pedagogy is new. This is a chance to really share and learn and I'm really looking forward to this. So we have that coming up. It is the beginning of October. It is actually Thursday, October 2nd to Sunday, October 5th, and registration is open. And if you get in now, you can take advantage of an early bird discount and get a little bit better than 10% off the cost of the retreat. The page answers a lot of questions, but I just wanted to give you a little hint about what we're doing and what you can expect on the retreat. We're going to be doing these, you know, pedagogy workshops. We're going to be doing roundtable discussions where we share ideas. We going to be doing sort of the little practical tool workshops, you know, those things where you can really learn what other people are using in their teaching. And of course, just time to just relax and rest. Play a harp. We will have some harps there that you'll be able to use. If you want to bring your harp, that would be fine. And we do have some harps available to rent. If you want to rent a harp for your exclusive use rather than sharing one, that would be just fine. There's going to be plenty of free time, but plenty of learning as well. Well, it's really going to be a terrific weekend and I hope that you can join us because after all, we teachers deserve a break too. So you'll find the link in the show notes or as I said, you can go to the upcoming events tab on the Heart Mastery page and you'll find a link to that as well. And do check it out if you are a harp teacher, I'd love for you to join us. Of course, our super Summertime Challenge is still going on in the Hub. It's so much fun to see everybody participating and I hope you are one of them. If you haven't still started, it's not too late. You have some catching up to do, but you can still get in on the fun. And our Christmas in July wraps up this week with a special announcement about a new addition to the My Heart Mastery Program. So you'll be looking for a video from me and it'll be all in our usual video channels. Take a look at that and check out the new addition to the My Harp Mastery membership. So that's coming up and you'll get that announcement too. Lots of fun stuff going on. I hope that one of the things that's going on is that you are getting some time away this summer and you're getting a chance to refresh, yourself, recharge, relax and just soak in some sun if that's your thing. Or head to the mountains, the beach, whatever it is you do to take a vacation. And maybe it's just a staycation, whatever kind of vacation you're about to take, I certainly hope you are going to take one. I want you to be absolutely Confident that when you get back to your harp and you get back home, you have a plan. As I said before, I talked about a plan for reentry for your fingers and about how you're going to set things up and how you're going to work on this kind of conditioning, this sort of stuff. But I want to take a different viewpoint about that today. I really want to look at the mindset. And this is why I always thought it was just me. I'd feel great on a vacation all relaxed, and I'd come back and think I'm ready. But yet at the same time, I don't always feel ready. I don't feel ready to get back to work. As I said, I thought it was just me. But according to studies done by the American Psychological association, apparently almost 2/3 of US workers lose the positive effects that go with relaxing on a vacation. That's almost 2/3 of US workers lose those positive effects within a few days of coming back to work. They call it post vacation depression or blues or anxiety. And it's apparently a real thing. Now, our harp playing might be a little bit different than coming back to work in the office. You know, apparently when people get back to work in the office, they come back to this mountain of stuff that's been piling up while they're gone. And so the stress comes back even faster. I don't know that that's true with our harp playing. It certainly doesn't have to be. Because if we don't have a bunch of harp deadlines waiting for us, if we don't have concerts we have to prepare for, then most of our deadlines, as far as the harp goes, are self imposed. Which means that most of our stress is self imposed too. Doesn't mean it's any less real. But self imposed is something we can take care of. And what I want to talk about today and what I'd like to help you avoid is that feeling that when come back and you're ready to get back to the harp, your playing just doesn't go the way you think it ought to. Things have slipped way far back. And you say to yourself, well, gosh, I had this so much better before I left. And you don't feel like you're starting where you were. You feel like you're dragging a heavy weight behind you just trying to get back to where you left it. So this is what we're talking about. How to plan ahead so that you can ease back into your playing in a way that supports you and keeps your Mindset clear instead of frustrates you. So I have three things that I want you to keep in mind. Three touch points for this whole process. And then I'll give you sort of a five day easy wins plan to get you back and into things in a really easy and sort of stressless way. So let's start with these three touch points. The first one is to embrace a beginning mindset. Now, not a beginner mindset in this case. This isn't about being a beginner, but let's just pretend that everything that you left on your music stand when you closed the door and left for vacation is new to you now. It's not where it was when you left, because frankly, it isn't. Practice is one of those things that goes fine as long as we do it every day, but when we don't, we slip back and we deserve the vacation. I'm not saying you need to take your harp and practice on vacation. I mean, if you want to do that, that's great, but you can leave the harp at home and enjoy your vacation. Just know that when you come back, we're going to approach this music as if you were starting over. We're going to allow ourselves to start from scratch. This is a very realistic way to look at what happens. It's not where we want to be. And that, I think, is the challenge of it. We want to believe that when we come back, our music is going to magically work because we worked so hard at it, so why wouldn't it stick? And here's the tricky part. If you just come back from vacation and you dive right back into your music, assuming that your fingers are up for it and they're not, you know, screaming because they don't have any calluses left on them, and they're not just creaky just from rust and disuse, assuming those things are okay, the first time you pick up that piece, it might go very, very well. It's sort of like the memory of it is stored in a buffer someplace and it goes really well and you think, okay, boy, piece of cake. This is nothing. But what often happens is that the next day you come back and it is as if you've never seen it before. And that's when you start scratching your head and thinking, well, what's going on here? And that's where that, that frustration can set in. So the easier path, and I'm all about taking an easy path here, the easier path is just to say, okay, let's approach this as if I were Starting from the beginning, you will be able to move through those beginning stages faster because, yeah, you've done work on this piece. And so this way you'll be able to create those quick wins for yourself and feel like you're moving forward instead of feeling like you lost everything that you worked so hard to gain with a piece. So that's touch point one. Embrace a beginning mindset. Here's touch point two. Expect the Resistance. What's the Resistance? The Resistance is that force in the universe that shows up in every time you think you're moving ahead and it pushes you back. You know, you get all those errands done and you think, wow, this is really great. Now I've got time to do this, or I have time to take a nap, or I have whatever it is, and then something else happens, or you feel like you've got everything organized and then something falls apart. The Resistance always shows up. And the more effort that we put into something, the more the Resistance is after us. And it can get kind of sneaky. In this particular case, when we're talking about the Resistance, when we've come back from vacation, the Resistance can show up in a lot of things. So you might want to come back from vacation, and perhaps you come back and you are so ready to play the harp. Well, think about the ways the Resistance shows up to keep you from doing that. Well, you've got broken strings on your harp. Argh. Nothing worse than having to replace a few broken strings. Or maybe it's just really out of tune and it takes a long time to tune it. That's the Resistance. There's nothing that can kill your joy for practicing more than having to take care of those kinds of harp chores. Just like, oh, oh. Or maybe it's just the laundry, right? You come back from vacation, there's a ton of laundry to do. There's a ton of grocery shopping to do because nothing's in the refrigerator. You've got a lot of mail to go through. You have to take a look at your bank statements. I don't know. There's so much stuff that happens when you're coming back from vacation. Lots and lots of errands. And that can overload your vacation mindset too, right? So all of a sudden you're back in stress mode when you really didn't want to be. You've got this errand list that has suddenly doubled in size. So here's the thing. You don't have to fight that. You can just go with the flow. Expect the Resistance. It's going to show up and you're just going to have to do what it takes and just breathe through it all, do it all and get to your heart. But when you finally have the time. So I want you to think about not fighting the resistance, and I'm going to give you a visual for it. When I was taking karate lessons, we had a book that was all about being the willow tree. The willow tree that was strong because it bent. The text went something like, the strong wind blows the willow. The willow never resists the wind, but it remains passive and it will never be broken or destroyed. In this way, we take advantage of the opponent's strength. Flow. It is a secret of the arts that we have to master through the practice. Now, that's a very karate way of looking at this, but I think this is what we're trying to do here. Stuff is going to show up that we don't want to show up. And if we fight it, it's going to be harder for us. We just need to bend, bend like the willow and we won't be broken. Remember, that's where your strength is. I know you understand that, but it's still so easy to fall into the trap of, okay, I'm just going to power through this or I'm going to just practice no matter what. Not a relaxed mindset, my friend. So think about that. Expect the resistance and be the willow tree. And there's a third touch point, the one that's going to help us start to really get back into the playing here. And that is that we're going to ease into it. Don't plunge right back. We've already seen that stuff is going to show up. The resistance will show up to keep you from plunging right back. And if you try to go back right where you left off, it's not going to work as well as you'd like. So no matter how eager you are to get back to your playing, I want you to take a breath, chill a little bit. Think about that wonderful moment on vacation when you didn't have any concerns or worries. And we're going to set this plan to let your fingers and your mind readjust more gradually. Now, I call this my 5 day easy wins plan. And that's what it's about. It's about taking things easy and generating wins instead of struggle. It is designed to get your harp and your fingers ready without creating the frustration that comes from trying to brush the dust off your pieces and the rust off your fingers at the same time. So this may feel A little bit slow to you, but it actually works really well. Especially if you've come back from vacation and you've got a bunch of errands and stuff to do. It's going to help you strategize how to get back to the harp in a really relaxed way. Doesn't that sound good? That sounds good to me. So on day one, when you're back and you're, you know, you've been at home, you had a sleep and you're awake. Okay, day one, we're ready to get back. This is what you do. I call day one readiness. All we're going to do today is replace your strings. If you have strings you need to replace and tune the harp, you're going to do that. In the morning. Or whenever you have time during the day, you're going to do that. And if you have new strings, be sure to tune them five or six times during the day so that they really come up to pitch quickly for you. And here's a quick tip. You know, when you put a new string on, there's no harm in tuning it just a little bit higher than it's supposed to be. While it's stretching in, it will stretch in a little bit faster, not, you know, monsterly high, out of tune, just a little bit. And that will help it stretch and stay in tune more quickly. So all you have to do on day one is get the harp ready. That's all you have to do. And this allows you to do the laundry, do the grocery shopping, sort through the mail, all that kind of stuff that is part and parcel of coming home from vacation, get the suitcases back to the attic, whatever it is you have to do. So day one is about readiness. Do not be tempted to do anything more. And the reason I'm saying that is because, first of all, you're a harp player. We're all sort of, you know, overachievers.

So I know that you're going to want to move faster, but taking the beginning of this week slowly is really going to serve you well. It's going to maintain your motivation because you really do want to get back to the harp. But it's not going to frustrate you nearly as much as rushing into it. So there's our day one readiness. Day two, I'm calling get reacquainted. All right, you're allowed to play today, but really it's about tuning and just playing slow scales and arpeggios all over the harp. If you've got a favorite, warm up that you like to do. This is a good time to do that. But it's only slow warm ups today. After all your muscles have been away from the harp for a while, your fingers have been away from the harp. You might not have the level of callus that you had on your fingers when you left. And your fingers need some time to move. I don't want you to damage any of those delicate fingers by trying to play too hard, too fast, too soon. So that's why I'm saying you can play your warm up or just scales and arpeggios. Do it slowly at a medium kind of dynamic so that you're not forcing anything. And if you can do them all over your harp in every register, from the very bottom to the very top, that's even better because your harp will be thankful. Right? The harp strings like to be played. They don't want to be just sort of hanging around there. They're not for show, they're for playing, right? So if you can do that, that makes an excellent day to get reacquainted. Notice we still haven't looked at your music. Please hang in there. Be patient. Day 3 All right, we're going to get to some music. I want you on day three to review your favorites. Now this one you'll need to plan ahead for because you want to know what these are. You don't want to have to be figuring it out after you get back. I want you to choose two or three or four never fail pieces. They can be very elementary pieces, not a problem. But pick a few pieces that you like to play, that you play often and you know they're going to be fine. Remember, this is an easy wins plan. We don't want to pick anything that has problem spots or that goes too fast or that is a little bit too hard, or we want to pick things that are truly easy. That's why I've called them never fail pieces. So on day three, you should do some of those slow warm ups again. Do some slow exercises too, and then play through three or four of those never fail pieces. This is going to be a fun day and you're going to have that feeling that, oh well, I could get back to that hard piece that was on my music stand when I left. Please don't give into temptation to go back to that yet. I'm going to give you one more day off. We're going to go back to it on day four, but day three, just the never fail pieces and those slow warm ups and exercises again. Your Fingers and your mind will thank you. All right, so there's day three. And now drumroll please. Maybe harp glissando, please. Time for re entry. So on day four now, it's still going to be different. We're not going to be just, okay, back to your usual practice routine. Day four is a re entry day. So after your slow warm up and your exercises, you may play through your pre vacation pieces. But play them through at a slow, careful, steady tempo. This is that beginning mindset idea. I want you to look at them almost as if you've never seen them before. Don't play them the way you were playing them before you left. Take them way back to the beginning and, oh, maybe, maybe you want to do some hands separately to start at maybe half tempo or wherever you weren't, if you were at half tempo before, then go back to quarter tempo. We're going to go slower, we're going to take everything more easily. This is about really getting back to those pieces, but in a very slow, controlled way. So don't push them, don't dig into them yet. This is all about big picture review. Once again, you're going to thank me when you do this, but it's a hard thing. You've been at the harp for four days now and you still haven't really gotten back to regular practice. And you know what? That's okay. You're allowed to do that and you can tell everybody I said so. How's that? All right, here's day five. We're going to go for it. Finally. This is the day when you can get back to the kind of practice that you're used to doing. Your fingers have had a few days to get back on the strings. You reacquainted yourself with your music that you left on your music stand. You did that yesterday and you're ready to start kind of working now. If you want to take day five a little bit easier. A repeat of day four is not a bad idea. If day four was a little bit more uncomfortable for you than you thought it might be, then do day four again so that you get another day of sort of slow review. It's going to keep your mind clear about what you know about these pieces and what you still have to learn. So you can do day four again or you can do day five regular practice. And then when you get to your practice after day five, you're back on track. And while you might not be back exactly where you left off, you're going to be close enough that you feel good about it. And that's my point. When we come back to the harp after time away, we should be putting ourselves in a place, positive place, not in another place of challenge and struggle that comes soon enough. We want to keep that relaxed mindset, that beautifully calm feeling that we discovered on vacation. We want to bring that back to our heart playing. It's going to serve your heart playing well and it's going to help you move those pieces forward a little bit faster. Because when your practice isn't such a struggle, you make progress more quickly. I know. Kind of simple, but it's true. Don't forget that you can check out that other podcast episode, episode 60, and learn a little bit more about a different way to prepare for coming back from vacation. Not a bad thing to do. These two plans kind of intersect too, so you can take a little bit from each and get the perfect plan for you. Because nothing is one size fits. All right, a quick reminder about our teacher retreat. If you are a harp teacher, this is a perfect way to put that vacation mindset in the middle of your autumn. So perfect way to do that. And you can find out more just by clicking the link in the show notes or going to harpmastery.com and looking under upcoming events. Speaking of upcoming, next week on the podcast we are going to be talking about harp instruction and I'm going to be telling you a little bit about what I think a teacher can and can't do for you and some best practices about how you can collaborate even better than you are now with your teacher. So we'll be talking about that next week here on the podcast and I can't wait to get into that with you. In the meantime, remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness and every day. See you next time.