Recovering from Burnout - the 5R Framework to Recover and Reset - PHH 214

Sure, there are outer sources of power that can help spark our own energy. Things like, well, maybe even this podcast, or a coach, or a teacher, or a friend. All of those kinds of things can help spark your energy. But if you don't have a way to keep that going, if you don't have the inner system to keep that little spark alive and to turn it into the fire that you need to keep on going with the harp, then that spark is just going to die.

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 place. 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. Well, it's summertime here and time for a little R and R rest and relaxation, maybe even time away. You might be feeling like you need some time away from whatever stress you've been experiencing. I hope it isn't your harp playing that's been causing the stress. But even playing and practicing the harp can cause frustration and burnout. So if you're feeling like you need a break from your harp playing, I'm here to help and to make sure you take that break in a way that will bring you more confidence and more joy in your playing again. Actually, at the time you're listening to this, I am on vacation with my husband. We are in Bermuda, which is one of our favorite places to vacation. We went there for our honeymoon and loved it so much that we planned to go back every five years. We've missed a couple of those five year milestones. Covid was one of the reasons, of course. But this year we're going back and I can't wait. Often people will ask me if I take a harp when I'm on vacation, and I rarely do. I mean, if it's an extended trip or if I have a special project or performance coming up, then I might take one. But I firmly believe that no matter how much we love the harp, it's beneficial to take some time off. Like the old Coca Cola slogan, it's the pause that refreshes. It's good for us physically to relieve our fingers of the stress of practice. It's even better for our perspective. It forces us to pick up our heads, to let go of the busyness of practice and to reconnect with the harp and and with music. Aside from having to coax slightly sluggish fingers back to work after we get back, there are no negatives to taking a break. Now, I realize we have podcast listeners all over the world and if you are living in the southern hemisphere, you're starting a winter season, not a summer one. But you don't have to wait for summer to try out this framework that I'm going to share with you today. It can help you keep balanced all winter long. And if you just think you might need a refresh and a reset no matter what season you're in, this is gonna be a great podcast for you. It'll show you a system and a framework for looking at what you do in your harp playing. How to refresh yourself and how to come back to the harp refreshed. This is also a good time for me to remind you about our 2025 Super Summertime challenge that is happening in the Harp Mastery Hub. And as you know, the Heart Mastery Hub is our social media free social place for heart mastery. And it's just a place where you can chat with other member harpists who are in the hub. You can join our various meetups and our like our practice labs and our live Monday warmups and you can take challenges. And so we have a brand new challenge. It's a a little bit of a twist on a challenge we did last year that was a lot of fun. So this is the 2025 version of our Super Summertime challeng. Every week from now until the middle of August there is a little challenge task for you, something you can include in your practice during the week. And all you have to do to participate in the challenge is click on the post that's this week's challenge. Complete that challenge and comment in the comments how that challenge worked for you. There's a special little prompt for each week that tells you exactly what to post. And the deal is this. I want to encourage some accountability and I want you to try to take advantage of some of these things. They're not just fun, they will stretch your playing and help you grow in a variety of different ways. And most of them are fun too. So that's not a bad thing, right? But what you can do is if you participate in every week of the challenge and you are sure to comment in the comments for each of those weeks and tell us what you did, you will be entered into a drawing for a basket or a box or whatever of heart mastery goodies that will send you when the challenge is over. So when the challenge is over, I'll take all the names of everybody who has completed every week in the challenge, we'll enter them in the drawing, and one of those will be the lucky winner of our special little prize bundle. And of course I hope it'll be you. So take a look. If you're not around, you can go back. You can recover those challenges. You know, if you're away for a week and it's like, oh, I missed it, well, you can go back and you can do that. You can catch up. There's no policing of this here. Of course, you're on the honor system to only actually enter for those weeks that you actually did. But other than that, you can catch up and work at your own pace and get this done. So every week a new challenge pops up, and I encourage you to participate in that. If you're not a member of the Hub, it's easy to join. Just take a look at it on the Heart Mastery homepage. Or you can join and participate, in fact, directly through the Heart Mastery app, which is available on, you know, either your Google Play Store or your Apple App Store. So you can get that app and you can access it right from your phone. You can always have it with you. It's very cool. And we're adding some new stuff to the app this summer, so be on the lookout for that as well. In any case, the Summertime Challenge is waiting for you, and I hope you take advantage of it. So we're going to continue our summer theme now, and let's talk about using this summer to help you recover from whatever heart burnout you might have been experiencing. And if you haven't experienced heartburn, out, that's great. This will be a system for helping you to keep your energy strong. So let's get moving into this 5R framework. I mentioned a moment ago that as you're listening to this, I am on vacation, which is terrific. But let me tell you the conditions when I'm recording this. Like right now, we are in the middle of a blackout, a power outage. And there's nothing as frustrating in this 21st century era as a power outage. And I know I don't have to tell you that. I also am very aware that this is one of those first world problems. I mean, how fortunate that this is just an inconvenience to be without power. I mean, it's a real inconvenience because it's hot and our air conditioning doesn't work. Our well doesn't work because our well is powered, of course, and we don't have any power. And of course, we're not the only ones with this problem. It was a big series of storms that came through, knocked out power for a lot of people. Now, I know that just down the road, they've got power. I don't know why our neighborhood doesn't. I know when we were at our house before this, we were in the middle of nowhere, and we had generators that powered our well and powered our house. But here in the more or less suburbs, we elected not to purchase a generator, at least not yet. And so the power outage has left us without power. So I have to find an alternative source of power. You know what this is like here I am trying to record, and I'm Looking at the battery strength on my laptop, thinking I don't know if it will last and if I'll be able to finish the podcast recording. So I should stop blathering and get on with things, right? But looking for the power source is something that we understand. A blackout makes us very, very aware of our energy source. What this particular blackout coming at this particular time made me extra aware of is how the universe shows up to teach us lessons. Because this isn't just a lesson in my own scrambling to figure out, well, let's see, if I go up to the Dunkin Donuts, I can hop on the call with my assistant. And then it's not just about that. This is about the parallel. The universe showed up here to just give me a little dope slap and say, okay, look, burnouts, blackouts, not that different. It's all about energy, and it's about the energy source, how we source our energy. Now I have to wait for the electric company to take care of the power source here, but when it comes to a burnout, a personal burnout, like a harp burnout, which is what we're talking about today, we have to go within to find our own power source, our own energy source. Sure, there are outer sources of power that can help spark our own energy. Things like, well, maybe even this podcast or a coach or a teacher or a friend. All of those kinds of things can help spark your energy. But if you don't have a way to keep that going, if you don't have the inner system to keep that little spark alive and to turn it into the fire that you need to keep on going with the harp, then that spark is just going to die. And that's what we don't want. So let's take a moment before we get into ways to fan that flame and rebuild your energy. I just want to take a look at some burnout symptoms, because if you're not feeling burnt out, congratulations. I'm not either, even though I'm in the middle of the blackout, but I'm not feeling burnt out. But I know what it's like because I certainly have been there, and sometimes it starts to show up in sneaky ways. So I want you to be aware of some of the ways that that might happen to you, that you might start to experience the frustration, the difficulty, the challenge, the whatever that can lead to burnout. So, for instance, if you're starting to feel a lack of progress, and that's starting to be really frustrating and starting to defeat you, that could be on the Path to burnout. Or it could be something as simple as just sitting down at the harp to practice and having not a clue what you want to do. I don't know. I might do this. I might do this. But you're just not feeling inspired. Or maybe you found yourself lately feeling too tired to practice. Of course, you might have a very good reason. But remember that the harp is a way that you can find your energy. You can rejuvenate, at least on a pretty good day, right when you sit down and you can play something that you know that's a great feeling. And if you're avoiding that saying, oh, I'm too tired, I can't really do anything right now. I can't focus. That's something to be aware of and to watch because you don't want to let that feeling grow. Or maybe you're just feeling like you have nothing to play. Well, we need to get in there and fix that, don't we? Because everyone should have something that they can play. Every harpist can play something, and you have to find out what that is. So that's something you can easily do something about to. Don't let that defeat you. Or maybe you're just feeling this vague sense of guilt about the harp. Well, you know, I really should dust it. I haven't tuned it in a while. I haven't practiced in a week. And once you haven't practiced in a week, maybe that turns into two weeks, because, you know, the. The harp's going to be out of tune and it's going to be really hard to get back. And so that just kind of spirals into this little sense of guilt. And that can actually start to totally overwhelm you and make you think that, well, you know, the harp just isn't that much fun when, if you think back just a little while, the harp was really inspiring to you and it was a significant and important creative outlet for you. So don't let those kinds of feelings get in the way of your harp happiness. So those are some of the ways in which burnout starts. But what I really want to talk about now is this little 5R system that I came up with and I just did five Rs because they're easy to remember. When you think about these five Rs and use this system, you'll be able to come back to your harp and find that energy and find that joy in music again. That's what we want. And whether you use that now as part of your summertime ritual or whether you use it before you start back in the fall, or you just sort of keep it in that back pocket in case you need it sometime. I think you'll find it really, really helpful. So let's dig in. The first R is an important one, and I think it can be the hardest one of all. Once you conquer this one, everything else gets easier. But this first R is tricky. And the first R is released. Release. I want you to just let it go. I don't want you to feel guilty about taking this time off to recover. I don't want you to feel guilty about what you have or haven't done in the past. I don't want you to keep burrowing into the fact that you feel like you're not making progress. We can start fresh right from today. We don't need to worry about the past because that's over. We're about to create a future and we're going to get back to that future where we love the harp. That's actually a part of the past that we do want to recover. But I want you to let go of everything that isn't helpful. Let go of the challenges that you've had. There's going to be time enough to deal with them. Let go of the things that seem to be keeping you stuck, because we're going to be able to change that. There's a different way to do these things, and I want you to think about just letting it go. We want a clean start and just taking that big breath in. Letting it all out is going to be the best first step that you can take. Now, while we're talking about this, I do want to point you to a podcast that I did just a little while ago. It's episode 200 and called Small Steps and Big Growth, and it talks about these little baby steps that you can take to help you grow. This might be an inspirational podcast for you. If this is where you find yourself. You might have already heard it. I didn't do it all that long ago, about 14 weeks ago to be exact. But I think it could be really helpful for you here. So I've linked to that in the show notes in case you want to think about some things you can do to help change your mindset and change your direction going forward. But that's what this first R is about. It's about releasing the past so you can go forward. And once you've let that go, you've let go of the frustration, you've let go of the guilt, you've let go of the shoulds I should be able to do this, whatever it is. Letting go of those is powerful. Not easy, but powerful. But that puts you in a place to do the next step, the next R. And that second R is to reflect. Also not necessarily easy. Some of us find reflecting and journaling easier than others of us. I've never been a really big journaler. I mean, I'll take notes, but it is so important to take the time, even if you don't write it down, to just think about what you can do. Once again, I don't want to think about what got you here. I want you to think about what you're good at. That's where the reflection comes in, I think. And I think this is a very powerful reflection. So much of the time we get caught up in what we can't do, that we forget what we used to not be able to do that we can do now. Or we forget things that we are actually good at. Like, maybe you have a really strong technique. You might have been struggling with some points of expression, or you may be struggling with a piece you're trying to learn, but your technique overall is strong. Boy, that's terrific. Or maybe your technique isn't strong, but you're a very expressive player. Or maybe your strength is just that you have a lot of practice time and you love to get in there and practice. That's a strength. Not everybody has that kind of focus, let alone that kind of time. But that's beautiful. Or maybe your strength is just that you love playing the harp. That is a strength, and it's an important one if you're going to play. So I would encourage you here. Whether you're the type that keeps a journal or not, maybe you at least keep a practice log and you can put this on a page of your practice log. Take a moment and write down. Start with three. Write down three things that you do well. And after you've written those three, write three more.

I don't care how small it is. I mean, maybe one of the things you do well is you play little fountain really well, or you play hot cross buns really well. Whatever it is, you know, think about things you've accomplished on the harp. Think about things you can do. So that's important. So after you've put down three, and then you've thought, oh, three more, and you've thought three more, keep thinking, keep writing down three things until finally you can't think of three more things. Hopefully by that time you have a list of maybe a dozen things you do well, look at those and let them sink in. Let them really rise to the level of your consciousness and own them. What you do is important. What you can do is important to what you're going to be able to do. We don't have to worry about what you can't do right now. There's plenty of time to work on that. That's what practice is for. But we're going to want to remember the strengths that we have that are going to help us in every day in our harp playing. Once you have those strengths identified or those things that you can do or can play well, then try starting with doing more of that thing, whatever it is. If it's a piece that you play well, how many more places can you play it? Can you play it every day so that you can play it even better? Could you make the expression even more? Or if it's a skill that you have, like, you're a very expressive player, perhaps. Well, find a couple more pieces that you can add more expression to, see how you can amplify the way in which you use those strengths. Pick a couple and say, oh, look, I could do more of this. I could do more of that. Maybe you are really good at putting programs together, and you like to put together programs of music for the nursing home. Well, see if you can put together some more and play them someplace else. Whatever it is that you're good at, let's find it and let's do more of it. But before we can really get in there and do more of it, we need a reset. And here's our third R. We need to reset our mindset. That's an easy one to remember, right? So so far we have release, reflect, and now we're at reset. Where you are now is not a level that you can't get beyond. And that's where our mindset often gets stuck. We feel stuck. We are at a place where we can't move forward or we're not moving forward. It feels like we're just sort of churning our wheels. They're not going anywhere. They're spinning. We're in that little spinning circle of death that happens on computers, at least when computers have power, which mine don't right now. So that's the cycle that we get in. It's like, I can't get anywhere. I can't go past this. But you know you can and you will. This is a season. This is a moment. And where you are now is not where you will be in another month or in another six months. You're not going to be stuck here. There are ways to go beyond. Now we've got a glimmer of that when we talked about doing more of the thing that you're good at. But I also realize that sometimes doing more of the thing that you're good at feels like a cop out. I mean, to those of us who are really achievement oriented, it's sort of like, well, yeah, I could do more of that, but where's the growth? Where's the progress? And we're going to find that spot, we're going to be working at that, but we can't do it until you let go of this idea that you're stuck and that this is a barrier you can't get beyond. And this is where I'm going to take just a moment and I'm going to share a story that I have shared before. And so you might have already heard this one, but in case you haven't, I'm going to give you the short version of it. I think this is a good story to share right now because it's so indicative of the ways we get stuck and how our mindset is really critical to getting out of that place. So this is what happened when I was finishing my first year studying at the Curtis Institute of Music. I mean, it's an important conservatory. It was a big deal to be there. And I had felt like I was, you know, really in the elite group and I was playing well, at least I thought. But then toward the second half of my first year, my lessons just started not going anywhere. I would end every lesson in tears. It wasn't my teacher's fault. It's just I couldn't do anything right. Right. I was beyond stuck. This was a problem. And in fact, it was bad enough that my teacher said, you know, if you don't shape up, I can't ask you to come back. I just don't see where we're going to go anywhere. So I had to do a big mindset shift. And this was one that I ended up having to do on my own. I mean, my teacher couldn't do this for me. Nobody else could do this for me. This was what I had to figure out. That doesn't mean that you have to figure out your mindset on your own, but this was one I had to do because nobody else could help me. So I had to decide, first of all, what was really important. And at that point, what was important for me was that I stayed at Curtis and studied at Curtis because that was what I had always wanted to do. I wanted to be that good a harpist, that kind of harpist that was at that world class conservatory playing at a world class level. And if I got kicked out of school, that wasn't going to happen. So I took the summer and figured out that, all right, this was my do or die moment. I was going to have to change what I was doing if I wanted to stay in school and I had to work out my own feeling about it. I had to know that if I kept doing what I was doing, I was only going to keep feeling worse about it. That was the mindset I needed to change. So the first thing that I ended up doing was saying, well, I'm going to tackle this a different way. That was the beginning of my reset. And I said, okay, well, I'm not doing this thing that my teacher wants me to do very well on the harp, but my piano teacher really loves what I'm doing on the piano, so how can I take that skill and move it over to the harp? And I spent six weeks that summer doing nothing but playing something on the piano that I knew I was doing well and taking it over to the harp and figuring it out that way. But I couldn't have done any of that without first deciding that there was another way to look at it, that I couldn't just keep going with the thought process that I had. I needed a new one. That reset, that mental reset, was what allowed me to do the work I needed to do. And apparently it worked because when I got back to school that fall, my teacher was thrilled with what had happened with my playing. So, as I said, that's kind of the short version of the story. But I really think that it illustrates so clearly, or at least I hope it does, that it starts with how you think about the problem. The mindset needs to shift to a place of possibility, a place that allows for growth in a different way.

Don't get stuck on trying to do this at a very philosophical kind of a level. All it takes to reset your mindset is to just open your mind a little bit and say, all right, there's a way to do this. I just need to figure out how. And you don't have to figure it out on your own. This is something that you can get help with from a teacher or a coach. This is the kind of thing that you can get help with even from a teacher or coach in another discipline. If it's like, well, I can't talk to my harp teacher anymore about this because it's not working. Let me talk to my karate instructor or let me talk to my guitar instructor or let me talk to my painting instructor. Those can also be wonderful resources. And because they're outside the harp realm, it can be easier to accept and create a mindset shift that can apply to your harp playing. Just the same way I used my piano playing to improve my heart playing. So we have released, we've reflected, we've reset our mindset and now I want you to start putting that into action. And it starts with our fourth R rebalance. I want you to think about how you can rebalance every day at the harp. What is your everyday at the harp like and how can we rebalance it so that it supports growth instead of just going around in circles to shift the balance to create this rebalancing that I'm talking about, I want you to think about your practice a little bit differently and think about it not in terms of pieces and techniques and warm ups, but think of your practice in these two categories. One is challenge. What do I need to work on? Fix, improve all those things that we're used to doing in our practice that are going to push us to that next level. And then the second area is competency. What are you already good at that you can review? So review pieces are obviously part of this or exercises, techniques that you've done in the past that would be good to go over again or maybe things you're working on now where you're already at a level where you can start making it music and feel feeling competent with it. So thinking about your practice in terms of challenge and competency is a little bit different from what we usually do where we just think about what we need to work on. Let's face it, the core of our practice is fixing, it's correcting, it's self critiquing, hopefully without self criticizing. But it's looking at what we need to do better. But of course that's not the only thing we should be looking at in our practice. We should be looking at and recognizing the things that we do well and building on those things. You've probably heard there are lots of studies that talk about building on your strengths. Well, it's an important thing, I think in our harp playing or in any musical endeavor where we're so self analyzing and self critical all the time, it's important to recognize and do more of what we already feel pretty good at. This is how we're going to build confidence by looking at both sides of this equation. Yes, we can grow. We need to challenge ourselves and put those challenges in front of us so that we can get our technique to be stronger, faster, better, so that we can learn harder pieces and do more complicated things. But we can't live on just challenge. We need to keep that confidence level high by playing to our competency, playing to our strengths, playing with our strengths, using our strengths to help us play. Ooh, lots of different ways to look at that. But by using our strengths, we will remind ourselves of what we're good at. And that's very powerful when it comes to combating a sense of burnout. Which leads us to our last R, which is to rebuild. You've rebalanced the way you look at your practice so that it includes not only the hard things that you're working on, but the things that you do well. And now that you're back on track, the last step. And please don't do this earlier because it won't work. The last step to finally face and tackle what got you to burnout in the first place. You don't want to do this earlier because you need to have gotten your feet back under you before you do that. The first step in tackling burnout is not to figure out why you're there. That's further down the road. We've done some reflection, we've done all that sort of thing. But the last step, the one before this one, that rebalancing your practice is going to get you back on an even keel. And that's where we can start to rebuild that weak spot, that place that we got to that got us to burnout. Were we diving in too deep on something that was too hard? Were we not giving ourselves enough playing opportunity? Whether it's just playing music in our practice, you know, just playing review pieces and pieces we love, maybe sight reading new things. Were we not giving ourselves enough of the good stuff? Were we being too self critical? Did we not have the support and feedback from a teacher or a coach? What was it that got us here and how can we fix it? Once our playing is back on track, then it's time to look at this. Don't look at it first because things are going to seem bigger and tougher than they are. On the other hand, you don't want to put this step off too long either, because once your practice is back on track, you've rebalanced, you're feeling good again. It can be really hard to make yourself remember how bad that burnout felt. It can be really difficult to say, oh, yeah, let's see, what was I doing then? What got me to that place? Once you've rebalanced, this is the time to say, all right, what was the cause? What led me here? What do I not need to do anymore? Or what do I need to do more of? What is it that's going to keep me from getting here again? So that's our fifth R. Because once you've discovered what that secret is, that secret sauce, that's like, oh, this is what got me to burnout. It's very easy to avoid that. You can set systems in place, set little steps in place. Ooh, when I see myself getting too far down into the weeds, I need to do this. And you can set that up very simply. Like, when this happens, I do this, right? This, then that. It's really that simple. And so there are our five R's release. Let it go. Tomorrow is a brand new day and you get to start over. Clean slate 2. Reflect. What do you do well? Because I promise you do. There are pieces you play well there. Even if they're. Even if they seem like they're baby pieces to you, that's okay. That's a win. Think about what you can do and what you do. Play well and do more of it. Then reset your mindset. Let's get your head in a different place, a place of possibility, not a place of brick walls. Right? You're not being closed in anymore. The harp world is open to you. Then rebalance your everyday. It's that challenge and competency, both of those elements in your practice. And why? Because that's where confidence comes from. And then finally rebuild. It's time to face what got you here and fix it so it doesn't happen again. That's the 5R framework. So as you dive into your summer, think about using this 5R framework, whether you've experienced burnout or not, as a way to refresh what you're doing. It can be really, really powerful. So whether you're burnt out, whether you just need a HARP vacation or a harp reset, the 5R system is going to be very helpful. And next week on the podcast, we're going to keep that summertime theme going and we're going to talk about summer shortcuts, things that you can do to help keep your practice going in the summer, but just in shorter practice bursts. Nobody wants to spend hours inside when the outside is calling. So we're gonna have some summer shortcuts for you on the podcast next week. Don't forget our super Summertime Challenge. In the hub. That's happening too. So we're all about the summertime weather right now here at Heart Mastery. But whether you're in the midst of summer or not, if you're indoors or outdoors, however however you're spending your time, please 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 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 every day. See you next time.