Looking Beyond: Choose Your Focus - PHH 206

Too much focus can actually just result in this sort of pinhole focus idea. When what we really need is perspective. We need to step back a little bit. When we're just focusing on the problem, that's all we see. But when we step back, we can focus beyond the problem. And focusing beyond that moment makes that particular moment less significant. It makes the problem smaller.

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 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.

First, I want to let you in on something special. I think the most important thing you 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. We're ready for you. Join Us just go to harpmastery.comjoinnow. that's harpmastery.com join now.

Welcome to the show. Okay, here's Fact number one, your focus is in your control.

Fact number two, your focus is a critical factor in your success and harp happiness conclusion from those facts, what you focus on matters a lot. Now, in the last episode of the podcast, we were talking about focus in terms of placing your cords, and I cited one of my favorite Zig Ziglar quotes. You hit what you aim at. I'm going to put a different spin on that. Today, we aren't going to talk about focusing on a goal exactly. We're going to discuss how to shift your focus to get you beyond a sticking point or a challenge. Here's my idea in a nutshell. When we focus on the hard thing, we lose perspective on why we are doing the hard thing to begin with. And. And that can cost us a lot in terms of time and energy and enjoyment. I mean, consider some of the things we focus on that can leave us with a feeling of let down or even loss. For instance, we spend weeks preparing for Christmas only to realize on December 26th that we didn't really remember to enjoy the day. Or we put days of effort into making a special meal. Thanksgiving dinner comes to my mind and everyone is finished with their meal and watching the football game almost before we've sat down to our own plate. Or we prepare so much for a special performance that we don't know what to practice the day after it's over. So what about the things we focus on when we're practicing or performing? Are we focusing on the things that will help us grow and move us forward? Or are we only concentrating on the difficulties that are in front of us, whether those are wrong notes or stumbles or performance nerves. I believe that often we are looking through a microscope at too many of those moments when we really should be using binoculars to see what lies ahead beyond that hard part, instead of going into the rabbit hole where our perceptions are distorted. You know, that wrong note really doesn't matter all that much. We need a healthier perspective on what we're actually trying to do so that we can get past the sticking point and get back to loving the music. And that's what I want to talk about today. How to focus not just on where you're going, but what's beyond that. That's what's going to help you focus, find your way through some of those stickier places. Now, of course, this whole topic is. Is something I've been thinking a lot about lately as we've been preparing for our special clinic, which is coming up next Monday, May 5th. And that clinic is called Sharpen youn Focus, Elevate youe Performance. And my Special guest expert, Dr. Lucy Smith, will be helping us think about focus in a way that we, we can use to elevate our performance. She's an expert working with athletes and musicians on these kinds of performance issues. And as a professional musician herself, she's got a really terrific perspective and you're really going to get a lot from what she has to share. Now, of course, if you're a My Heart Mastery member, you know this is coming and it's already there for you. But if you're not a My Heart Mastery member, I want to make this available for you too, because there's going to be a lot of really important material in this session. The clinic itself is a one hour Zoom call and Dr. Smith will be doing her presentation and I hope having some time for questions and answers. And she'll be joining us from the uk. So it's really late at night over there, so we're at 7:30 Eastern Time, which puts it like 12:30 after midnight. Right. Her time. So I really appreciate that she's able to do this with us. And then not only is that part of our clinic, but at the end of May, the last Monday in May, she's coming back to host with me a masterclass where we work with a few harpists who will get some extra coaching on their specific focus problems. So, as I said, focus has been a topic on my mind and if you haven't registered for that clinic, I really encourage you to do that. Now, we've put the link in the show notes for you. It's under upcoming events on heartmastery.com it's featured in the Heart Mastery app. There's got to be a way that you can find it and register. There is a cost for this webinar or clinic, I suppose is a better term for it, really. And it is $24.99. $24.99. And you can register for that. As I said, if you're a My Heart Mastery member, there is no cost for you. It's included in your membership. That's just one of the perks of membership, of course. So that's coming up and I just want to be sure that you're all thinking about that. What we're talking about today is not the, is not exactly what we're going to be covering on that call. So don't think it's a repeat of this. First of all, this is me talking to you. And next Monday, it's going to be Dr. Smith. She's got a different perspective, and she's going to be walking you through strategies that you will want to include in your preparations, your practice, your performance, all those good things. So if you need to put this podcast on pause while you go register for the clinic, that's fine. You go do that, and you come right back. There's a little comic strip that I love, and I've shared this particular comic with you before, so if you've heard it before, I apologize. But it's so appropriate for what we're talking about today. I just had to remind you about it in this comic strip. It's a guru. He's sitting at the top of the mountain. A guy climbs up the mountain, and he says, oh, great Guru, tell me the meaning of life. And the guru just looks at him and solemnly points over to the side. So the guy walks over in the direction the guru has pointed, and he falls off the side of the mountain, splat, right onto the mountain, onto the valley floor. So then he comes back over, and he climbs back up the mountain. Oh, honored Guru, I must have misunderstood you. Can you tell me, where will I find the meaning of life? And so the guru points over to the side again. So the guy goes over and he falls off the mountain again and goes splat. Right on the valley floor, climbs up the mountain a third time, and this time he's all tattered, he's all beaten up. He's fallen off the mountain twice after. All right? He gets up there and he says, okay, Guru, I'm sure that I misunderstood you, but every time I go where you point in order to find the meaning of life, I just fall off the mountain. I go splat. He says, what? Where will I find the meaning of life? And the guru looks at him and says, well, it's just beyond splat.

I love that. Just beyond splat. So many things in life are just beyond splat, right? When we learn to walk as toddlers, we have to go splat before we can learn to walk. When we're in any aspect of our heart playing right, we always end up going splat before we end up making it beautiful. So many things, all the good things in life happen just beyond splat. And that's my point for today, that if we're focusing on the splat, we won't get beyond it, and that's where we need to go. So whatever the splat is, that's not where we want to put Our focus we want to go beyond. So although in our focus clinic next week, we're going to be talking about how to strengthen your focus and use it to help you play better and all those things. Today, I want to explore three things that we often focus on, but things that might actually be the splat. The things we focus on may not be the things that are serving us well. So I want to get you thinking about focus in a new way, one that's going to help you prepare for that clinic next week. I want to give you some ways to get beyond those splat points, beyond the things that we encounter that draw our focus in unhelpful ways. The three things that I'm talking about are things we have all experienced. And although we get better over time at maintaining a healthy perspective where they're concerned, we can still get tangled in thoughts that keep us from moving forward, that keep us stuck in the splat, and don't let us get beyond it. You see, focusing on the problem or the challenge can often make it bigger. It's not really true that talking about a problem makes the problem less. It can actually confirm rather than counteract a difficulty. Think about this common example, right? Your husband did something that annoyed you, so you talk to your best friend about it, and you just. And you complain and you talk about it. You're going to get it off your chest so that you feel better about it. Well, sometimes it works that way, but often that sympathetic listening that you get from your best friend is just as likely to make you feel justified in your annoyance as much as it is prepared to relieve it. I mean, you might actually feel angrier after you talk this all through, then feel better about can go either way. And lots of times it doesn't go the way we want. Too much focus on something can result in concentrating that feeling, in making it stronger, not less.

Think about how this applies to something that we might focus on in our practice, like focusing on that measure. That's hard. We can focus on it and focus on it and practice it and practice it and practice it. And too much focus can actually just result in this sort of pinhole focus idea. When what we really need is perspective, we need to step back a little bit and let that measure assume its proper place in the context of the piece. So that when we're just focusing on the problem, that's all we see. But when we step back, we can focus beyond the problem. And focusing beyond that moment makes that particular moment less significant. It makes the problem smaller.

Successful people are often described as having surmounted obstacles and challenges. Oh, they've overcome these things in their lives, and that may very well be true, but it's how they chose to surmount them that actually leads to their success. It's not the fact of the challenge itself. Lots of people face similar challenges.

But the difference comes in how we face them and how we understand them, what our perspective is on them. That's the idea that I want to talk about today. The idea that, well, focusing on that one measure may seem like the thing to do.

But what if we focus beyond that measure? Focusing on how nervous you get before a performance while focusing on your nerves, I guarantee is going to make you more nervous. We need to find out what we can focus on that is beyond the nerves that will help us put those nerves in their proper context. What can we focus on that is beyond where we are right now and how can that serve us better? So while I think that this viewpoint can apply to just about anything, we want to focus beyond. I want to focus today on three things that happen in performance. I want to focus on maybe making a mistake in the performance, and I want to talk about the performance itself. And I do want to talk just a little bit about performance nerves and how you feel and how you can change your focus to see beyond them. Now, this is not exactly a how to kind of episode. I can't give you the strategies for these today because there's only so much I can do in one podcast and because we're going to be talking a lot about strategies next Monday in the clinic. But I want you to think about your viewpoint. This isn't even mindset, it's just the way you choose to look at something. And that's the idea I want to plant in your mind, because I think when you get to that clinic next week, it's going to give you a new way to understand some of these strategies. Because when you can look at them with that kind of viewpoint, they take on a lot more power and they become much more useful to you. So that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about viewpoint and how to place your focus not on the thing that's hard or the thing that is a sticky point or a challenge or the thing you don't like. But what happens when you get beyond that and to project that just a little bit. So let's start with what happens if you're worried about a mistake or you make a mistake when you're playing for someone? All right, we know we don't want to make mistakes. It would be nicer to have all those notes correct. And that's why we practice, so that we can get more of the right notes every time we play. That's what is supposed to happen. But you know what? A mistake is a mistake. It's something that we didn't intend to do. It's an accident. It just kind of happened. So I can tell you, don't worry about the mistake. Your teacher can say, oh, you need to play beyond the mistake. And all of those things are good. But if we actually allow ourselves to focus on the mistake, what is it costing us? Well, it can cost us in terms of the flow of the piece. It can cost us in terms of just general harp happiness. If we're trying to keep score and focus on that mistake, it's like, oh, there's one demerit. Oh, there's two demerits, right? And then all of a sudden, we're not focusing on the music anymore. So here's our key. We don't want to focus on the mistake. We need to go beyond the mistake to focus on the music. Now, I started with this one because I think this is the hardest one for people because we like to get things right. So let's just imagine for a second that we were playing our favorite piece for somebody, and we're playing it, and we didn't make any mistakes. The music was perfect. It had seamless flow and seamless expression. That would be great, right? But even though there's that place inside us that is saying, yeah, it could happen. I could do that. I could really make a perfect performance this time, we know that it's a little bit on the unlikely side that that's really going to happen. So we need to give up on that idea of perfection. Not that we won't still strive to get as close as we can, but I think we can't score our progress or our success based on perfection. And we have to understand that mistakes happen. So, okay, let's say you make that mistake. Well, what would happen if nobody but you noticed the mistake? The music would still sound perfect to the listener. Well, that would be great, right? Because everybody would think you played a flawless performance. But if you still notice the mistake, it could draw your attention away from the music, and it could distort the flow of the piece. We could hear a stumble. It could distract from the expression of the piece of. And so that even if it sounded perfect to everybody else, you would still know it wasn't perfect. So is your focus so tuned into the mistake that it ruins the music for you, even though it didn't ruin it for anybody else.

Well, what would happen if you decided the music mattered more than the mistake? We're going to focus on the music, not on the mistake. Well, what would happen? Well, we'd end up with music. You know, a piece of music can survive a couple wrong notes. The music can matter more.

And, of course, it's our own freedom in our own musicianship. I mean, imagine if you could absolve yourself in advance and say, you know, it's okay if you play a few mistakes. It's not going to matter. And you're not allowed to keep score because.

Nobody else is going to keep score. And you're not allowed to either. So, you know, let's not do it. And the mistakes don't matter. They don't count. Wow, that could be very freeing, couldn't it?

By the way, I want to be sure you know this. When you listen to, like, a cd, a recorded performance like that, not a live performance, but one that was done in a studio, they sound flawless. Yeah, they are. They're engineered to be flawless. Those CDs are edited, often down to single notes, so that they sound perfect doesn't mean they were played that way. They can be edited. It's kind of like those supermodels whose pictures are airbrushed, right? It's not real life. So please don't judge yourself by what you hear on a cd, because those don't represent true performances. True performances have flaws. Maybe they're only flaws, you know, maybe they're only noticed by the performer. But that's the point. Because if we tie our focus to the mistake, that's where our experience of our playing, both in performance and practice, will be. But when we tie our focus to the music beyond the mistake, our experience of our playing allows us to find satisfaction and joy, even while we keep trying to improve and grow as harpists. Here's the thing. When you focus on the mistake, you are choosing to find the faults. When you focus on the music beyond the mistake, you are choosing to connect with the listener and with your own joy in playing the harp. It's about the music revelation. Yeah, I know. Okay, here's our second focus switch that I want you to consider. Don't focus on the performance. I have this big performance coming up, and all my energy is focused on preparing for this performance.

I know it takes a lot of energy. I know it takes a lot of time. I know it takes a lot of work. Of course, I know. I've been there, done that. But I want you to go beyond the performance in your thoughts and in your preparation. Go beyond it, to focus on the opportunity and the experience and the confidence that playing this performance will give you. I mean, let's face it, some performances are harder than others, right? Auditions, competitions are particularly daunting. But what if you go into them thinking, well, what would happen? What will happen if I win, if I'm successful, other than just the pride in my accomplishment or the prestige from having won this big award, what will I find on the other side? Well, if you were perhaps taking an orchestra audition and if you were to win the job, you'd have the chance to. To contribute to the sound of a great orchestra. Imagine how that would be, right? We focus so much on the audition itself, on the. Okay, all right. I've got to play this excerpt. I've got to do this right, and it's got to be note perfect over and over again. And I've got to, you know, do this and do that to make it work. But keeping in mind the goal, the goal of being part of that ensemble can make the audition seem just a little bit less daunting. It's a step you have to go through to get to that wonderful goal of playing with the orchestra. Of course, it could also give you an opportunity to play for other people all over the world. Wow. Okay. You know. Yeah. And if it's just a smaller performance we're talking about, it's not a big audition. Well, you know, playing for the people in your church might give you opportunities to play for other people in your community. Winning that big competition might give you opportunities to travel, to meet and collaborate with famous musicians. Or just playing that concert for little program for the people in the nursing home would give you a chance to meet and talk to lovely people who appreciate what you are able to bring them, the gift that you are able to share.

I mean, if you're just, and I use this word advisedly, playing at church or in a nursing home, it could give you the opportunity to strengthen your repertoire, to gain experience playing for other people. However you choose to look at whatever kind of performance you're doing, consider it as a step on your path, not the arrival point. This performance is. Isn't the end of your harp career. It's the beginning of another stage, this big performance that you're so worried and scared about. It's just another performance, and it's going to lead to more.

Assuming that you want it to. So it's going to take you places. It's a springboard. It's not, you know, the ultimate judgment seat, right? It's not where you stop. It's a step on the path. It's where you start. Once again, this is a change in your perspective. Go beyond that performance to think about what's next. I often encourage my students who are preparing hard for a big performance or an audition to think about what's going to happen after this. When the audition date or performance state starts to feel fairly close, we can start thinking about, okay, well, what's next? What repertoire are we going to do? What performance are we going to look at? What challenge are we going to aim at next?

Because this performance, whatever it is, is another stepping stone to another, another part of the heart path that they're going to travel. And you can do the same thing. It's just a focus switch. The third focus switch I want to talk about is about the nerves, right? You're nervous for performance. What would happen, do you think, if you don't focus on how you feel before a performance, you're not focused on how you feel now? I feel nervous, I feel intimidated, I feel stressed, I feel pressured, I feel afraid. But if we fixed the focus so that it wasn't on the nerves and on that moment, but that it was beyond, we could focus on what happens after, similar to what we just talked about with a performance. Right? Because how you feel, your feelings of nervousness and fear, that's now, but there's a later. We know those nerves are going to go away because you're going to start playing, and you won't have to worry about what the playing's going to be like because it'll be over. This is how you feel now, but there's going to be a later. So how will you feel afterward? How do you want to feel afterward? I mean, suppose your performance goes well. You'll probably feel proud and happy. Suppose it goes badly, how will you feel? Well, you might feel disappointed, and maybe you feel worse than disappointed. But either way, whether you feel proud because it went well or not so proud because it didn't go as well as you wanted, either way, you're going to learn. You're going to gain experience points. You're going to be more prepared for the next playing opportunity. Because without the failures, without the stuff that doesn't go the way we want, we don't learn how to make it go the way we want. We don't find the potholes, we don't find those weak points. You know, when engineers are testing something, they test it to the breaking point, don't they? They want to know what its maximum load is. They want to know where the stress points are, because they don't want to find those stress points after they've built the building or the bridge or whatever it is. They want to know what that particular piece of building material is equipped to withstand. And so every time we play, no matter how prepared we think we are, every time we play, we are presenting something for testing. It's like, okay, all right. This is a test moment for the piece, not for you. It's a test moment for the piece. How well does. Is your preparation going to serve you right now? Right? It's like, okay, all right, well, there's a pothole. Okay, well, now you have a chance to go back and fix it. No potholes. That's great. But every time you play a piece and you find another pothole, you get to fix it. You get to gain experience points at playing through a pothole. When it comes up, you're going to learn. You're going to have a better experience than you think.

So how you feel now doesn't have to be how you feel later. You can, instead of focusing on how nervous you feel right now before the performance, you can choose to be sure that you're looking at this moment as a step in a staircase. I talked just a moment ago about stepping stones on the path, right? But your playing over your lifetime is like a staircase. We are always going up. Sometimes the steps are small, like shallow steps, and progress doesn't come quickly. Other times, progress comes in big, big steps, but we don't always make those huge gains. But this moment, this moment that you're so nervous for, this isn't the top of the staircase. It's not even a land standing. It's just another step. Because once you play this performance, once you achieve that step, you're going to be ready for the next one. Once this moment is over, you get to take that next step. And what will that next step be? That's where your focus can be. So how does thinking of this moment as a step, rather than a landing or a destination, change your focus? How does focusing on the steps that are going to come after this one change how you feel about this particular step?

Isn't this step just part of a bigger climb? A rock maybe on the path up the mountain? We're going up the mountain, and this rock we have to get past first. But the rest of the mountain, the views from the top they're all still ahead of us.

We just need to pass this point to get there. Now, my objective today was to help you see the control that you have over your focus and how your focus can either serve you well as you're looking forward to the growth that you are capable of, or how it cannot serve you well if you're focusing just on the hard things that are in front of you. Remember, you get to choose and the choices that you make with your focus will directly and powerfully affect your ability to move forward with your heart playing how fast you make progress and the kind of progress you make are all determined by your own particular perspective. And you get to choose that. Now, on our clinic next Monday, our Sharpen your Focus, Elevate youe Performance clinic, you're gonna be looking more at strategies, looking at this from a completely.

Viewpoint. But I wanted to be sure that you had this viewpoint, just this little seed planted in your mind because it's going to make you see possibilities in what you learn next Monday that are so important. So remember, that's happening. But you have to register my Heart Mastery members, you do not have to register. You already have access to this. But if you're not a My Heart Mastery member, I urge you to take advantage of this. I don't bring in guests very often, but I think you're really going to like what Dr. Smith has to share with us. So that's happening next Monday. So you need to register now. You'll find those links everywhere in the app under upcoming events@heartmastery.com you can find those all over. So I certainly hope. And of course in the show notes here. Right too. Forgot that. So I certainly hope that you take advantage of that and join us for that call. Plus of course, the bonus masterclass that's coming up at the the end of May. The clinic call will be recorded and you'll have access to that recording as well. So you know there's no reason not to register even if you can't attend on the day. So that's happening next week on the podcast. We're going to talk about how to choose your next piece. So we're still talking about choosing and we're thinking ahead and we're going to talk about how to choose that piece, things you might want to consider, and some options that might be good for you. So that's coming up next week on the podcast. 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 into 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 every day. See you next time.