My Three Most Meaningful Gifts of 2022 - PHH 084

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want.

The way they want.

But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, the although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there, I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show.

I say it's a wonderful life. Now, I love watching that movie at the holidays or really any time of year, but the movie's not what I'm talking about.

I simply mean that this is the.

Time I like to pause and be grateful for this wonderful life and all the amazing people I am privileged to share it with. And that includes you, my friend.

So on this very brief podcast, the.

Last one of 2022, I would like to share my reflections with you, my thoughts on what made 2022 special for.

Me professionally and personally. Perhaps this will inspire you to do some similar reflecting.

Perhaps this was a banner year for you, or maybe it was a challenging one. Either way, I would encourage you to find at least one thing to celebrate. Before I start, though, I want to thank you for the great gift you have given me this year. I know how many demands there are for your time and attention, and I am very grateful and very honored that you share some of your time with me.

I love hearing that this podcast has.

Accompanied you in the car or at the gym or as you take a walk. I don't take your listening for granted and I thank you most sincerely for your time and your attention. It means more to me than you know.

Now, I would also like to start off by congratulating the harpists who took advantage of our coaching program for this upcoming trimester. Thank you for your courage and for your willingness to let us help share your harp journey with you and guide you along the way. So our coaches rosters are filled and I am grateful for that. So thank you.

And congratulations again. This is gonna be a great step forward for you, those of you who have been participating in our coaching program. For a while, you know the power that it can make. And so I applaud your continued success on your journey. And welcome to those of you who are new to the program. I'm looking forward to some exciting things for you in the start of the new year as well. But let me talk just a moment about the three most wonderful things that happened to me this year. Okay, so there weren't only three things. The three things that I'm going to focus on are the three things that were so important to me professionally. But I have some personal highlights that I want to share with you as well. First of all, I think the biggest change that we saw here at heart mastery in 2022 was, was a return to our live retreats.

For all of us, I think, you know, we. We persevered, we hung in there, we zoomed every minute we could during the early days, especially of the pandemic. But even though the. The pandemic has, you know, is, I guess, officially over and the situation has eased considerably.

Things still aren't back to where they were. And so in this past spring, we decided to hold our first get back to it kind of live retreat. And wow, it was a big one. It was really, really special. Mostly because being in the same room with harpists is fun, right? There's just a bond that we have. And then the whole retreat atmosphere where we're all living and working in the same house, the same environment.

Is so special. And the bonds that we form there, personal and harp bonds, are just so strong. And I have always loved working with harpists in this particular way. And for me, a return to the live retreats was huge. So in 2022, we had our getaway retreat in Florida, and then we also had a fall retreat in North Carolina. And both events were really, really fun. So we feel like we're back on track with our live retreats and they'll be, you know, back on that twice a year schedule. We have some ideas for adding some more live events have a slightly different nature as we go, but.

That was a huge gift for me. To be able to be hanging out with and working with wonderful harpists and people in the retreat settings is huge. And thanks to all of you retreaters who came and participated. And if you haven't been to one of our retreats yet, just keep a watch out. We have a getaway retreat coming up at the end of February, so you might want to jump in and grab a spot for that while there are still some spots. But that was a big gift for Me, a huge win and one of those things that just made me feel like.

Well, kind of like I used to, you know. So that was a great, a great win.

Another great gift, something that I always look forward to and hope for, but is always a wonderful surprise and gift when it happens, is that this year I got to see so many harpist transformations through the coaching program where we have harpists who work with our coaches and then come back to me on a follow up call and say, wow, I didn't really think that I was going to be able to get this done and I can't believe how much I did. I'm so proud of myself. That is a huge transformation and you know, I'm so grateful to be able to have facilitated that kind of thing and to just see that sort of, of growth happening is.

Truly a gift for me. We see it with our coaching students, we see it with the harpist that I work with in the gold circle. Those transformations are powerful as well. Just this is what we're working on, this is what we get done and.

We'Re all cheering when those kinds of things happen. So that's huge. The Play it with Confidence intensive and then the webinars that we got back to holding this year, also transformative for so many people. I will tell you that, you know, when I create these things, the intensives and the webinars, I think and I plan and I hope that they're going to be impactful, that they're going to bring energy and change where it's needed into the harp playing and the lives of all of you who participate. But when I put that together, you know, I know there aren't any guarantees. And so I'm putting together information and presentations that I hope will speak and hopefully transfer the knowledge that I have in a way that makes sense and provides inspiration and information to people who need it. But I know there aren't any guarantees. I know that this, you know, I'm just kind of putting it out there and we'll see what happens. But I have to say that the Play it with Confidence intensive particularly just surpassed all my expectations. There were so many.

Harpist who took that intensive, who came back to me, you know, emailed me, whatever, and said this made such a difference for me. I needed the permission that you gave me in this intensive to make the changes that I needed to make.

Or I didn't realize how I was holding myself back and now there's an entire world of possibility out there for me or just, just that they were grateful for the support and the understanding and knowing that there were people like them out there, that they weren't the only ones. They weren't the only harpists who were struggling with something, but that these are things we all struggle with and there are ways to get better at them. So that intensive.

In particular was a powerful one for me. Just hearing the stories from the harpists who were on that intensive and who showed up and did the work, it was impressive. So my thanks to all of you who were participating in the intensives or the webinars or the. In the coaching program, or particularly in my Gold Circle program.

I am so honored to be able to help you in the ways that my teachers helped me and move you forward and, you know, help you achieve your personal heart happiness.

Right.

So huge gift to me to be able to see those transformations happen and to hear the changes that our Heart Mastery programs have brought about for you. But mostly the biggest gift for me is just the people that I work with. My coaches, our certified coaches, are not only fabulous harpists, not only gifted teachers, but they are wonderful people. And dear, dear friends, Caitlin and Christina and MJ And Candace and Naomi, just wonderful people that I get to work with. And I'm so grateful that they have chosen to share their expertise in part through Heart Mastery. I mean, they do other things as well, of course, but to share that with our students is incredible. Not just through the coaching program, but they'll be working more with the My Heart Mastery members in the coming year, too. They have so much to share, and I don't want. I don't want any of our members to miss out on their particular takes on things and their. Their own viewpoints because they're so valuable. So I'm so grateful for my coaches. I'm grateful for the rest of my team as well. I can't do everything that I do here by myself. And I have in particular, two extremely amazing women that I work with, Lindsay and Amy, who help me in so, so many way. I am blessed beyond measure to not only be able to work with them, but to just to know them and to enjoy their company. And.

I'm just blown away by the fact that I get to work with these women as well. I am particularly grateful for the My Heart Mastery members.

These are harpists who show up and participate, and even if they can't be on the calls live, I know they're there because they email me, they let me know what's going on, and we have some new things for them. All the My Heart Mastery Members coming up in just the next couple months and I can't wait to be able to share those with the members. But.

These are harpists who are, who have have formed a generous, caring, sharing community. They support the other members. They aren't afraid to share their own challenges and to share their own wins because we love to cheer them on. So my Heart Mastery members, no, please, how important you are to me. And then my Harpison, my Gold Circle program. It is a treasure and a joy to get to work with you, to get to work side by side with you as we struggle and progress and do all the good things and all the hard work together to help you take your heart plank to the place you want it to be. Thank you so much for everything that you share with me. I look forward to our sessions together. I look forward to spending time at the Gold Circle retreats together.

You are amazing people and thank you for that. So just I feel extremely blessed, extremely lucky to have all of you in my life. Whether or not I have met you at a retreat or met you virtually through a webinar or an online experience or just here in your earbuds every week, I am so grateful, so thankful. And please know that you are just. You were a special part of my life, not just for last year, but hopefully for any number of years to come.

Certainly I had plenty of personal wins this year too in that we got my son, who lives in Wales, got married this year, so we got to celebrate that new adventure that he and his new wife are on, you know, this new phase of their life. And that's terribly exciting. We got to spend three weeks with the two of them this summer in Wales and that was just a blast.

We also, perhaps like many of you, we finally had an extended family in person get together, our first since 2020, and we had that right around Thanksgiving time this year. And what a blessing that was to see my relatives in person that I have so missed over the course of these, you know.

Pandemic months. So it's been a year of renewing those long standing connections, celebrating new ones, and it has been a wonderful year. I'm looking forward to so much more of that in 2023. I'm looking forward to sharing much more Harp Stu with you. I'm looking forward to more podcasts, some new directions that Heart Mastery is moving in, particularly our new youth program, Harp Quest, which has been developing in small steps over the past year. And we're going to be taking some big strides with that this year. So we've got lots of great stuff coming up and I look forward to working with you every step along the way and celebrating whatever harp wins you want to celebrate. We are right there with you. So thank you once again for being part of my 2022. It has been a great year. 2023 looks like it's going to be even better and I just can hardly wait to get started. So my best wishes for a wonderful rest of the holiday season and a Happy New Year to all of you. And I will look being right here on the podcast with you again next.

Week when we get back to something.

A little bit more practical and dive into some of the stuff that makes harp playing worthwhile. So remember, in the meantime, even in the holidays, or especially in the holidays, 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. Thank you so much for listening. Happy New Year and I will 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 every day. See you next time.