Multiply Your Growth in 2025 - 5 Key Factors - PHH 189

This is a factor of review that I think we often ignore, and it's something that isn't just applicable to harp playing, but it's really all the things that we do in life. If we keep our skill that we have worked so hard to develop fresh, then we can build from there and we go forward. When you review, you're not only playing in the past, right? Playing things you've played before and looking back, but you're reviewing those skills that you developed, developed that help push you forward into your future. So revue isn't just about repertoire. It isn't just about having a piece ready to play. Review is about keeping that level of learning that you attained and leveraging it to move you forward in what you're playing now.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist 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. 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 My Harp 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 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.com/join-now that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. When you hear this, we will be in the final days of 2024, and I for one, am looking forward to the New Year. Every year, as December draws to a close, I'm intrigued by the mysterious possibilities that may lie ahead. What opportunities will I discover? What challenges will I need to overcome? Who will I get to meet or to know better this year? I'm always excited to start the New year, and I hope you are too. Of course, I'm also setting goals for the New year, planning new projects, creating new ways to grow not just for the harpists in our various harp mastery programs, but for myself as well. I have so many ideas that it's hard to choose which are the key ones to focus on, but over the years, I have found that limiting myself to a few goals is critical. If I have too many goals or plans, none of them get the focus they need. On the other hand, if I don't plan at all, things tend to drift and I don't make any real progress. But once I choose my goals, I need to figure out how to accomplish them. Now, I have a sort of checklist that I like to use as I set my goals. It consists of five factors that I have found to be absolutely vital to achieving any of my goals. I call these my multipliers because I know that whatever goal I set, my progress will be steadier and faster when these five are in place. Like those sneakers that were around when I was a kid, they help me run faster and jump higher, and they can do the same for you. Now, by the way, we'll be talking about these multipliers in harp terms, but I'll show you how to apply them to any other goal, too. What works for the harp works for life. What we aren't going to talk about today are specific goals like how to learn a piece or improve your technique or whatever. That's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about those factors that are going to apply to each other. Any kind of goal. Now, if you want to dive into specific harp goals a little bit more, I would invite you to join our January seminar series. This is all about goals and goal setting. And of course, this is the Monday night course that our My Heart Mastery members will be doing in January. Our seminar series is a way for you to get the benefit of those calls and the PDFs that go along with them without participating in the rest of the My Heart Mastery membership. You don't have to pay for the monthly membership, obviously. And of course you don't get the resources that go along with that. The library and the archive of courses, the Scale of Success curriculum, the free access to My Answer bot, all the things that go along with membership, the sounding boards, the musicals, all this kind of stuff. But you do get access to these specific courses. So if setting goals is something that you're interested in, our January seminar series is looking at it from my 90371 perspective. We're adding some new materials to this idea, but the idea of how to set a goal, how to make sure that you keep yourself on track so that you can actually finish it, and how to organize a week's worth of practice and how to keep that practice day happening to avoid the distractions that come up and really keep yourself focused so that your doing what you need to do and keeping yourself on the path that you want to pursue. So that's our January seminar series. You will find the link to sign up for that series in the app. You will also find it on our website, just go to upcoming events. And there it is, the January seminar series. Of course, I would invite you also to become a full fledged My Heart Mastery member. It really is a terrific way to keep all those pieces in place and to get the accountability and just the connection to keep you focused and moving forward. So please consider becoming a My Heart Mastery member as well. We have a great community and it's growing all the time. If you want to find out more about what's included in the program, you can just go to heartmastery.com and look under our programs and you'll see My Heart Mastery and you'll see everything you need to know right there. I know you've heard the saying, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You know, it's not just one plus one adding up to two, but it's that when you have two things working together, you get more from it. You don't just get two things, you get a lot more. One of the ways I experience this personally is in chamber music. Because when, you know, when I'm playing by myself, it's great. And I love the Harp, solo, literature, and that's wonderful. But when I'm collaborating with even just one other musician, something else happens. It's not just two people playing their individual parts. It's a whole separate thing that happens. There's a different energy that is more than just the combination of the two players. The two players pouring themselves into the single work create something that is much more than just the two individual players. It's a fabulous thing to experience. And I'm sure that somewhere in your life, whether it's in chamber music or in something else, you've experienced the same thing, that when you're working with somebody, you can get more done. In fact, my flutist friend Joan, we've been collaborating for decades, and I won't tell you how many, but one of the CDs we did many, many years ago, and I don't think it's even really available anymore, called the Power of Two. Because the music that we put on that CD was something that was just that we felt anyway, was so much more than stuff that we could have done on our own. It was a real labor of love for us, that particular cd. But it was something we believed in very strongly, that we could do more working together than we could both working individually. And that's the idea that I want to bring to today's discussion. The idea that what we're talking about, we're not talking about specific goals, we're talking about multipliers. We're talking about the ways that you can use this extra power, this sort of exponential idea, to increase the result that you're getting, so that whatever it is you're looking for in your playing, I've identified five factors that need to be there. And when you work together with these five factors, you're going to be supercharged. If you and just one of these factors are working together, you're going to get a tremendous amount of progress happening. But you'll see how these five factors together are going to add up to the kind of progress you want to make. Whatever that means for you in your heart playing right now. The first one, and the one I personally feel is most important is the power of consistent practice. I have to tell you honestly, this is the one I struggle with. You might imagine. I've got so many things going on, so many pieces to harp mastery, particularly, that I'm working with, that I find it a real struggle to be consistent and practice daily. I. I find it sometimes helps to think about the word practice in sort of a different context than we usually do. Think about practice, as in I make it a daily practice too, where it has more of the idea of a healthful habit than a duty or something that requires hard work and fixing things. If your daily practice, your daily habit was to just sit at the harp and play something every day, you would still get benefit, even if you're not struggling to work through something hard or struggling to learn something new. It's about being at the harp and playing. That's the key to practice. And I find that thinking about it that way can make it so much easier to be consistent because it takes the blame, it takes the onerous task like component out of the picture. And it just means that all you have to do is play where I heard that before, okay? So that's what consistency can be. And it's so important, you know, if you've worked really hard on something and you feel like you've learned it and you've learned this piece and you come back to it a week later not having played it for that week, you know that there's backsliding that happens. There's stuff that was working really well a few days ago that doesn't work anymore. That's just the way this making music thing goes. And so consistency helps you build in more of a long term finger memory, if you will. It doesn't have to be brain memorization, right? But a long term in depth knowledge of something that prevents so much of that backsliding and loss of stuff. So what does consistent practice mean? Well, I think it means three things. I think first of all, you kind of have to schedule it. Don't feel like you have to schedule it every day. I mean, daily practice is what we want. But if you can schedule two times during every week that you know that you're going to be able to sit at the harp like I always have Monday mornings, you can say, or I always have Wednesday at this time. And find two times during the week that you know you can practice that almost never anything else happens in there. Put those in, get that in your schedule because at least that will give you means to go on, right? Even if the rest of the week falls apart and you don't get to do anything but those two times, you will have done those and that's helpful. So find that minimal schedule and stick it in. Don't get overzealous here and try to do too much, just a little bit is enough. Then in your practice, let's be consistent here with just a single plan. Keep your, your goal, your objective really clear. So that you know what it is you're going to do and hold on to that plan so that today's objective isn't going to be just a one day thing where it's like, okay, well today I'm going to work on technique and then you abandon it for the next time. Hang on to that for a while, right? So that you're building consistency through keeping a single objective for a while, as long as you need to, but you're not creating a brand new plan every time you sit down. Then one more tip. You might find it really helpful to develop a consistent practice habit if you stack it onto something else. This is traditional habit psychology that if you're trying to build a new habit, stick it, stack it by connecting it to something you already do. Like, you know, if you want to remember to floss your teeth, you stack it by doing it after you brush your teeth every time. Right? Same idea here. If you want to be sure that you develop that practice habit, maybe have that mid morning cup of coffee and then practice stack it onto something you already do, you'll find it much easier to be consistent. And I believe that consistent practice is key. Now, of course, this is perfect for anything you're trying to develop, right? Consistency, schedule it, stick to your plan, and stack it on something else. Now we'll be talking more about transforming your practice on next week's podcast because I think it's so important, but that's where I would start. If you want to power up your progress this year and multiply your success, start by making your practice consistent. But here's the power up factor, the multiplier number two. And I think that's the power of technique. Technique is all about how we can do what we do. And so making sure that your foundations are strong, making sure that you have the resources and the knowledge to know what you need to develop, and being sure that you're checking those mechanics, how your fingers work, how your whole body works, that you're developing facility, that you're developing speed, that you're training your fingers to do what they're going to need to do in any given situation. I do not believe, I know some people do, but I do not believe that you get enough technical work just from working on the pieces that you're trying to learn. There's so much more to technique than that. And if you restrict your technical development to just what you're learning in a particular piece, then you're not giving yourself the wealth of options that your fingers can give for responding to what that particular piece needs, you know, there's not just one fingering is another way to say that. And the more fingering options you have, the less time you have to spend figuring out a fingering, because your fingers are going to respond automatically. So the power of technique is huge here. And of course, you know, we'll be talking about technique sometime on a future podcast as well. But when your technique is strong and when you're working at making it stronger all the time, perhaps even consistently, then your playing is going to improve. You're going to be able to learn things faster. You're going to be able to survive mistakes more easily because your fingers will pick up the slack for you. You're going to be able to play faster, and so you'll spend less time trying to get something up to tempo. Your technique enables you to play, and it enables you to play in so many ways. So if this is a place where you feel you're lacking a little bit, this will be a huge multiplier for you this year. The third success factor, the third multiplier I want to talk about, is going to be hard. It's hard for a lot of people, maybe not hard for you, and I certainly hope not. But it may be something you haven't considered. And this is the power of playing, the power of sharing your music now. You don't have to share it with other people. Playing is key here. Remember that practice, the kind of practice we usually do, is not the same as playing.

When we think about practice, we think about stopping and starting and fixing and repeating. None of that is a part of actually playing a piece of music where we start at the beginning and we play through to the end, and we create something that is a unified communication, a musical communication. It's a single thought or maybe many thoughts that are all strung together, depending on the composition. But practice isn't the same as playing. So if you want to play, you actually have to practice playing, not just practice practicing, if you know what I mean. So playing is really important. And there's another way to think about this, too, that when you play something, even if it's not totally a finished product, if you're playing it just for yourself, getting it to that point where you can play it through helps you learn to do that better and to get something to that point more quickly next time. This is an important skill, and I find so few harpists actually practice it. Practice playing a piece you should not be, oh, gosh, I just used a bad word. That word was should. But let me Rephrase this so that it comes out a little bit better. What I was going to say was that you should not practice without playing. But let's get rid of the should in there and let's talk about this a little bit differently. I believe that every day is a great day to actually play something. What if you started your practice by playing through something every day, just playing it, not stopping, not fixing, not criticizing, just enjoying the music, seeing if you could create a beginning to end.

Performance, if you will, even in your own little practice room. Playing is why you started the harp. I can guarantee you didn't start your harp lessons thinking, gosh, I'm gonna. I can't wait to practice. Practice is gonna be fun. No, you wanted to play beautiful music. And every day we don't do that, we're separating ourselves from our real powerful why. So playing is so important, and remembering to do it consistently. Coming back to that word again is going to be a real success factor for you. It's going to open doors that you hadn't thought of because it's really, really different and it's fun. Now, the next level of this multiplier, of course, is practicing sharing your music. And if you want or do this already, maybe if you want to play your music for other people, you want to share it with other people, look at that as something you have to practice doing as well. So give yourself the grace to not do it perfectly or even maybe well right at first. You might have some real flops or what you think are real flops. I can guarantee you, your listeners aren't going to feel the same way about it that you do. Listeners are far more generous than we are with ourselves. So practice sharing it, realizing that every time you share your music with someone, this is a learning opportunity for you. It's a wonderful gift for them, but it's a learning opportunity for you. And you get to practice it. You get to, you know, rehearse. Doesn't have to be, you know, the world's greatest performance right off the bat. You're going to get better at it, but you have to approach it with that angle in mind that, okay, this, you know, this may not be exactly the way I want it to be. In fact, when you share your music, there are so many factors we're not in control of that it's rarely exactly the way it goes at home, but you'll get better at it over time. And when you learn to do it and learn to trust yourself to be able to do it, you'll find that it, dare I say, it becomes fun. Ooh, wouldn't that be good? So there's a multiplier right there. Practice playing. And if you want practice sharing, multiplier number four goes right along with that. And that's the power of review.

How many of us say that we're going to review our music and then we just never get around to it? Our practice time is limited, and we don't get to the review that we want to. And as a consequence, we lose the connection. We lose those polished pieces that we've had ready, and it's sort of that, you know, oh, well, gosh, I don't have anything ready to play anymore. Review is so important. First of all, it keeps that repertoire fresh. You don't have to keep every piece you ever learned in your fingers, but having a couple that you pull out and review is really helpful. If you need a repertoire because you play places, maybe you play at retirement communities or something, you need a regular repertoire, then you know how important review is and review for you might be. Well, I've got my core repertoire that I play all the time, and I don't really need to review that, but I'm going to keep some other pieces in a review rotation so that I can, you know, put new things into my program and take older things out, and I can, you know, create variety in my programming that way. Review is fun. It's all about playing again, and it's about building on what you know. This is a factor of review that I think we often ignore, and it's something that isn't just applicable to harp playing, but it's really all the things that we do in life. If we keep our skill that we have worked so hard to develop fresh, then we can build from there and we go forward. So all that time you spent practicing that piece that you loved and was such a challenge, and you learned it and it was great, and then you put it back on the shelf. Well, that's fine. You know, we would get tired of playing something and tired of working hard. We need a vacation from it. But when you can bring it back and start reviewing it, you can not only discover how much you learned and how much further along you are, but it gives you the chance to refresh all those skills and leapfrog your way across to the next level. When you review, you're not only playing in the past, right? Playing things you've played before and looking back, but you're reviewing those skills that you developed that help push you forward into your future. So review isn't just about repertoire. It isn't just about having a piece ready to play. Review is about keeping that level of learning that you attained and leveraging it to move you forward in what you're playing now. There are different ways to review, too. Obviously, you can use your review as playthrough practice, where you get out that piece that you used to know and you just play through it a few times and like, okay, I'm refreshing my connection to this piece. But you could also use it as semi sight reading practice, where you bring something back that's perhaps a little bit less familiar. You get out that review piece and you practice sight reading your way through it. Okay, yeah, we know it's not the very first time you've ever looked at it, but considering it as reading practice can be a really helpful way to think about. All right, I've got to keep my tempo consistent. I've got to play past any mistakes that are happening. And thinking about it from that perspective could be a really nice way to consider review, particularly if you're thinking that, oh, well, I'm never going to play this for anybody anyplace. Well, all right, so use it for yourself. And of course, you could also use a review piece as an etude. Say, okay, I'm going to take it way under tempo. I'm going to play it with the metronome. I'm maybe going to do some hands separately work, maybe work on some petals or whatever it is, and you're going to use it as an etude. Use it to work on your finger mechanics. Just make, maybe use it as a way to practice nice clean placing or you're raising or something like that. So it could be a great etude as well, help keep your knowledge and, you know, connection to the piece a little bit stronger and still give you some. Some technique work perhaps on the side. So lots of ways to use review. But don't ignore review, because I really think that it's an important factor in any harpist success. And that brings us to my multiplier number five. You remember back at the beginning of this episode, I talked about the CD I did with my friend Joan called the Power of Two. And that's the multiplier I want to talk about right now, the power of someone else on this harp journey with you. Now, there are lots of ways you can get company on your journey, but I think that having somebody to share it with you is so important. It's a very powerful multiplier. So let's talk about the different ways this could be, certainly it could be a teacher. And the value of a teacher or a coach is that they're experienced and they can guide you as they walk with you. In our coaching program, you might remember that we. We have three specific things that our coaches are there for. They are there to be your compass, your guide. They are there to challenge you to achieve what you want to achieve, and they are there to champion you to be your cheerleaders when you need it. So that's one of the just. Well, it's three, actually, of the reasons that a teacher or a coach is so valuable. But that's not the only way to use this multiplier. I encourage you to do it because I think it's a very fast way. When you have a teacher or a coach working with you, they can help you find the shortcuts, right? But having another harpist who's willing to share the harp journey with you, like an accountability buddy or a little harp partner, is very powerful as well. It's going to help you stay motivated. I mean, think about workout buddies, right? If you have a friend that you go to work out with a couple times a week, you know that you're going to get that workout in because you're going to. You're responsible to your friend, right? You and your friend help each other stay on track. Now, we have a couple ways we do that in Harp Mastery. In the My Heart Mastery community, we have sounding boards, and we have members that have organized small groups that meet regularly to play for each other. And that's fabulous. And we also, for free, totally free, outside the membership, just in the app, if you are a member of the Harp Mastery Hub, which is totally free, you can join our practice labs. And a couple times each week, we have scheduled times where we get together. And it's like a little practice study hall. It's totally silent, but we're all in the same place at the same time, virtually anyway, practicing together. And you know, there'll be sometimes just three or four, sometimes a dozen of us, they're practicing. And it's just another way to help yourself stay accountable, stay consistent. So the. And it's a multiplier, right? I mean, if you have anything like that that helps you stay connected and consistent in your heart playing, you're going to get where you want to go faster. So this is the power of two.

So let's review our five multipliers. Again, multiplier number five, the power of two. Working with a teacher, a coach, a harp accountability buddy, the power of two, don't go it alone. Multiplier number four, the power of review. Build on what you know. Let the work that you've already done help propel you forward into your harp future. Multiplier three, the power of playing. Remember that when you play, when you get it to that point, you're going to learn how to do that better. So don't put off playing. Make playing part of your regular harp habit. Multiplier number two, the power of technique. It's all about being able to do what you want to do better, being able to learn faster, being able to have your fingers play faster and play more accurately for you, right? So don't ignore technique. And then multiplier number one is the power of consistency, particularly consistent practice. Getting in there every day or as many days as you can manage, having a schedule, having a plan, sticking to it, all that so important. So those are five ways you can really jumpstart or supersize your success harp wise anyway, in 2025. And this is what I want for you as we're coming into this new year. I want you to achieve everything you want to do with the harp, whether that's just playing for your own pleasure or sharing your music with the rest of the world. I want you to find more joy in your harp playing. I want you to enjoy every minute of it. Well, all right, sometimes it's hard work, but the kind of joy that I have found in playing the harp is something that I want to be able to share with you and something that I want for you. And finding the power in these multipliers might be the key to your harp happiness. I certainly hope it helps you along the way. Next week I'll be back and as promised, I'm going to be talking a little bit more about practice and about three ways to transform your practice. So whether you are a seasoned practicer or whether you think your practice routine just needs a little bit of a refresh, I'm going to share three ways that you can put some New Year energy into your practice routine. A little bit of fun and hopefully very useful for you. Please remember that our January seminar is starting and you are welcome to join us for those calls. The seminar this month is all about goal setting. Not just on that, you know, 90 day scale, but really all the way down to how you manage your practice on a daily basis to make sure that you're going in the direction you want to go. So we'll be talking a lot more about powering up your, your practice, your goal setting, all that kind of stuff this month in the seminar, which of course is part of our My Heart Mastery community. And I would urge you to consider my Heart Mastery membership. There's so much there. Certainly all those multiplier factors we talked about today are things that are part of the My Heart Mastery membership, so they're all there for you. We also have a retreat coming up and if you would still like to register for the retreat, we have not closed registration, so you can go ahead and check that out out too. Remember that it's all about Harp Happiness. And of course, remember that 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. I wish you a very happy New Year and I look forward to seeing you next time in 2020.

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.