Survive an Inflection Point Using Your Harp Story - PHH 105

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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. Welcome to the show. I've been thinking about harp stories lately. Not the fiction type of stories. I mean the kind of harp story we each have. The one about the moment we discovered the harp. Maybe it was the first time we saw it, or heard it, or heard about it. Maybe it was a long time ago or fairly recent. Maybe it was a dramatic moment or more of a gradual awakening. I love hearing how harpists discovered their passion for the harp. Every harpist story is unique and yet each shares the common thread of the magnetic pull of the harp. Many of you have heard my harp story. I myself didn't learn the beginning of it until I was in my first year of college studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. I had come to a crisis point, one where I was in a do or die kind of situation. In brief, my teacher had told me that either I fixed what was wrong with my playing or I was going to have to leave Curtis since I clearly wouldn't succeed there. The trouble was, I didn't know how to fix what was wrong and neither did she. But I was determined to do it. So fast forward through that horrible summer and when I came back to school in the fall, not not only had I fixed the problem, but my teacher declared me ready for international competition. It was a huge change. Now, on a side note, everything that I have done since in my teaching came directly from my work that summer. But the point I want to make today is what enabled me to find the motivation and the right direction to turn things around. That was discovering my harp story. Beginning in my frustration, I remember saying to my mother, maybe ranting would be a more accurate word, that I didn't even know why I was playing the harp in the first place. She told me then what I had never known before. When I was two years old, I heard the harp on the radio, asked what it was, and said that was what I wanted to do. Now here's the part that interests me now. Simply knowing that story and learning that it was the sound of the harp that I responded to made all the difference. In that moment, I knew that I had heard the voice of the harp and recognized it as my own voice. Knowing that story changed everything for me, turning what was a crisis into into an inflection point that propelled me forward in a way nothing else would have done. Today I want to show you how to use your own harp story to keep you motivated and even more important, keep you grounded and connected. With so many demands on our time and focus, it is frighteningly easy to let your harp playing sit on the back burner waiting for that mythical someday when you'll have more time. But your harp time can provide the peace and renewal you need, provided that you can release yourself from the need to achieve and let yourself be nourished by your music instead. I'll also share with you my thoughts on the power of inflection points and how we can see them as opportunities instead of obstacles. And we'll talk about three ways your harp story can help you refuel and enjoy your harp journey in Even when the going gets tough, it's all about you and making your music on your terms on the show today. I also want to take this opportunity to give you a little nudge. Well, or maybe it's a big nudge to join us at the August summer retreat. We have a few spots remaining and I'd love for you to be there. The theme of our retreat this year is mission possible. Now at Harp Mastery, our mission is always about your harp happiness. And even more so at this retreat where we are going to be sure that we make your harp happiness even more possible for you. Our workshops that we'll be doing are all geared around that too. We'll be doing a workshop each day of the retreat, one of them on streamlining your practice. Yes, it's possible. We'll talk about figuring out what needs to be done and how to figure that out and how to do it, finding the places you get stuck and devising strategies to avoid them. We'll have a workshop on crash proofing your playing. Yes, that's possible too. And we'll talk about the very basic, important and often overlooked principles of music preparation, preparing to play. And then we're going to actually run you through real life scenarios where you'll get a chance to to play for yourself. You won't have to play in front of the group, but to play, to observe and to talk with us about how we can help you strategize to make your playing for others more successful so that you can be more confident and have more harp happiness. We'll also talk about how to review your repertoire the smart way. Now, we've been talking in the My Heart Mastery Membership community. We've been talking a lot lately about reviewing your repertoire. We've dealt with that on the podcast here too. But I'm going to give you a different system, a really simple five step system. And it is the smart system. We're going to talk about how to manage your review, manage your repertoire and get that all happening in a way that's actually possible now. Of course, every day at the retreat also has lots of opportunities for one on one work with me or with the certified coach. Our certified coach, Caitlin will be with me at this retreat and we'll be working with each of the retreaters individually so that we can focus on exactly what you want to work on. We'll also be working as a group through some interesting technique things. I have a new series of exercises that I've created to move you through some of the more complicated skills. Some of those things that slow you down like four note chords or playing fast and special hands together challenges. And we'll be working on those. We'll also be working on those harp special effects. You know how those funny little signs you see in your music and you wonder exactly how you're supposed to do them. Well, we'll work on deciphering all of those and showing you exactly how to not only do those things, but how to incorporate them more seamlessly in your music. Plus of course there will be lots of fun stuff, some ensemble stuff. We're doing a two track ensemble this year so that the the attendees who want to dive into some really complicated ensemble repertoire will be able to do that. And those who aren't as comfortable playing in ensemble, we have some even some music free ways to to work on ensemble. And so we'll have fun with that. And of course we always have fun and games and lots of socializing time. In fact, I think one of the best parts of the retreat is just to be able to spend time with other harpists and you know, talk harp stuff, just, you know, be with people who get it right. We had a call this past week that. In which I talked with some of the retreaters and some other people who were interested in the retreat about what was going to happen at the retreat. And they. Some of the people have been at our retreats before and were just so enthusiastic about what they get out of the retreat and particularly about the. The opportunity to spend time with other harpists. It's a very small group. We're, you know, just renting a house and we get to spend all this time together. So it's not, you know, it's a very immersive, very friendly and very individualized experience. And so I invite you to join us. You will find the link in the show notes, of course, as always, but you'll also find the link if you go to heartmastery.com and look under upcoming events, you'll see a link to register for the retreat. We are closing registration soon so that we can get everything prepared, all the materials, all the food, all that good stuff. So. So do take a look at this. Take advantage. The dates are August 13th through 17th. You're going to have a good time, I promise. And it's going to be one of those things that, you know, takes your heart playing to the next level for sure.

So I invite you to join us. Please don't delay. Get in there and get one of those spots because I would love to work with you at the retreat. That could certainly be an inflection point for you. And that's what I want to talk about right now as we dive into our topic today. I want to talk about inflection points. In case you are unfamiliar with the term inflection point, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about the man who's credited with the application of that term in a business sense. His name was Andrew S. Grove, and he became the CEO of Intel Corporation. You know, computer stuff. Right. So that was his business. But his life.

Started out in much different circumstances. He was born in Hungary to a Jewish family. And you can imagine what this was like in the time of the Second World War. And this is how he described his life. He said, by the time I was 20, I had lived through a Hungarian fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis final Solution, the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint, where many young people were killed. Countless others were interned. Some 200,000 Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them. So this was Dr. Grove's story. He came to the United states as a 20 year old, a refugee who barely spoke English, began his what became an illustrious career as a busboy, and eventually put himself through the City College of New York with a degree in chemical engineering and later getting his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley. This is a man who certainly took advantage of opportunities. But he was known in business circles for developing this way of looking at business development and looking at a corporation as a living organism. And the concept of strategic inflection point was a vital component of his ideology. He believed that in business terms, a strategic inflection point is a time in the life of business when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end. And that was what he wrote in his book called Only the Paranoid Survive. But think about strategic inflection points for just a moment. Think about them in terms of your life. We all have those points where it's the proverbial fork in the road, yes. Where we could see it as an opportunity to move forward, something that propels us forward. Or it could signal a complete change of direction, as he says, perhaps signal the beginning of the end for a particular endeavor. I think that the period we survived and have just come through with COVID was definitely an inflection point for many of us, right? Causing us to rethink what we were doing, relook at our lives and either come back to them full force and take new charge as the situation changed, or maybe decide to pivot and go another direction. Certainly everyone's life has those kinds of inflection points. When you graduate from school, when you have a job, decide to take a job. When you get married, when you get divorced, when you experience loss. All of those are inflection points in life. In music, we talk about inflection as well. We talk about inflection in terms of accidentals. An accidental to a note, like putting on a sharp or a flat or a natural that's not in the key signature that's referred to as an inflection. Pretty basic. It's a change that we have to make. But inflection can also refer to expression, musical expression, where you inflect, think about when you're speaking. We talk about inflection with a tone of voice or an accent. And musical expression carries that same idea of inflection of creativity and expression. So I believe that you could look at inflection points as certainly a moment of choice. But some of them are sort of forced on us, right where we have those, as I described in my own heart story, we have those do or die moments. We're at a fork in the road. We either go one way or we go the other. And we don't have a choice about whether or not we can make that decision later. We need to make it now. Accidentals in the music are sort of a forced inflection, aren't they? I mean, you have to have to make that accidental change. If it tells you that that note's supposed to be an F sharp, well, that's what you've got to do. So there are those, you know, forced fork in the road moments. But sometimes we can choose to make a moment an inflection point for us. And sometimes deciding to make a moment a point of inflection, a point of choice, can give us power, can give us energy, can help move us in a particular direction. If we feel like we're stagnating, if we feel like we're just a little bit lost, or like things just somehow aren't fitting the way we want them to fit, we can choose to have that be our inflection point and say, okay, let me relook. Let me examine what's going on, and let me see if this is really what I want to keep doing or if I want to make a change. That's an example of choosing your own inflection point. And I think that that's where I really want to focus our discussion today. The idea that our harp playing just moves along on this smooth trajectory is an illusion, isn't it? It's got plenty of ups and downs. And we go along and for a while, our practice is terrific. Our playing feels comfortable. We feel like we're, you know, firing on all cylinders. We're just moving right along. And then there are other times when we feel like, I don't know, the music I'm playing doesn't seem to energize me. I feel like I am not growing anymore as a harpist. I feel like I'm not progressing as fast as I want to. And we have those moments where we're just less inspired.

Would be a kind of a mild way of putting it. And that's a place where we can choose. And what I want to offer to the discussion today, a way to make that a positive choice. I can tell you that in our certified Coaching program. There have been numerous harpists who have come into the coaching program telling me on their planning calls.

Well, for me, this is kind of a last ditch attempt. I've been playing the harp for a long time. I feel like I'm not getting where I feel like I'm not doing anything and, and I've gotten to the point where I think maybe even I want to sell the harp. But before I do that, I want to give it one last try. Okay, now for not our coaching program isn't one last try for everybody. But there are those people who really have, you know, felt like they've run the, the course with the harp and yet they didn't want it to be that way. They still want more from their harp playing and they're not quite ready to give up. So they create an inflection point. They create that moment when they come for coaching of, okay, I'm going to try a different direction. I'm going to try something.

And you know, fortunately, I'm proud, you know, I'm very proud to say that for the students that we work with, you know, we haven't and haven't yet at least had anybody finish their coaching session and say, well, okay, that did it. I'm quitting the harp. Now most of them are back for repeat coaching and they find their energy. After all, that was where they wanted to go. They just needed some help to get there.

We always have a choice and I don't want anybody to get stuck feeling like there's no way forward for them. So that's what's powerful about your harp story. It gives you the chance to choose.

When an inflection point is forced on you or when you are getting ready to decide whether you go one direction or another with your harp playing. Your harp story will be your lodestone. It will be your guidepost. It will tell you what is right for you. It will remind you why you started where you started and help point you in the right direction. For your harp story to have any sort of powerful impact on your choices, you need to know what your harp story is. And perhaps you're like me and you didn't know what it was, or perhaps you just haven't thought about it in a long time. This would be a terrific thing to journal on if you are the kind of person who likes to keep a journal. But it's worth taking a few minutes with maybe a cup of tea, something that will help you contemplate quietly and just sit there and remember.

Why it is when it was how it was when you first saw or heard the harp and decided that this was a terrific thing and something you wanted to pursue. As I said, it might have been dramatic, it might not have. You know, there are lots of harp stories that say, I was watching such and such a thing, a television program, a live concert, and there was a harpist there, and it just looked so magical. She looked so beautiful. Her dress was beautiful. And I thought, oh, that's just perfect. Now, before you discount the stories, the dress stories, as I call them, you know, when you've seen the harp and the harp looks beautiful and the harpist looks beautiful, and you say, oh, yes, that's for me, don't discount that as being surfacey. Remember that there are other people who see the beautiful flute or the beautiful bassoon or, you know, the terrific trumpet and feel the same way. So it's not that everybody would feel that way. You did, and so it's valuable. There are the harp stories that are all about hearing it. I did, you know, hearing a recording, hearing a performance, and listening to that magical sound that the harp makes.

There are the stories about live encounters. I was someplace and somebody had a harp and they showed it to me and I had a chance to play it, and it was magical. There's always a little bit of magic there, right? Anytime you have that connection between your inner spirit and something else like the harp, you know, that's. That's magic. That's pretty cool. You could call it destiny, you could call it anything you want, but it's still cool. So think about your harp story. Write it down, and if you like, write it in an. In the way that you would like to tell it to somebody now. I mean, somebody shared their harp story with me once that was. Well, I wanted to play an instrument, didn't know what I wanted to play. I heard this lady playing the harp at this sort of, you know, amateur hour, kind of a talent show sort of thing. And I could tell she wasn't playing very well, but it still sounded pretty. And that was what I wanted, something that I could play well, that I didn't have to play well, but still sounded good. That's a valid harp story. I'll take that. It has to do with what you want now. So why is your harp story important?

Because it will remind you that you're doing this for a reason that's important.

It helps you reconnect with that. Why? Right. And this is why it's important, because you're going to be able to come back to that when you have your harp story, go ahead and make it a harp legend if you like. You know, you can make it as big a deal as you like. But when you know what your why is, it's much easier to stay connected. It's much easier to be a part of your playing and keep your playing part of your life. So when you are in one of those down in the dump sort of places or feeling like you're not doing what you're supposed to do or should do or maybe wanted to do with your heart playing, you're not meeting goals. Perhaps none of that is as important as why you're doing this in the first place. So when you have that harp story written down, you can use that harp story to reconnect. Anytime you feel a little bit distant from the harp or from your music or you know that's why you were doing this in the first place. I can guarantee that once you've written your harp story down, it's going to make you feel good to read it again and to read it over and over. There's going to be some of that glow that you first had when you first encountered the harp. There's going to be some of that that lingers and some of that that you feel every single time you go through that story. This is how you'll get through some of those harder times. So use your harp story to reconnect.

Once you have your harp story, you can also use it not just to reconnect, but to recommit to what you want to do with the harp. It's so important. Sometimes we get lost in playing music we think we should learn or playing music somebody else has told us we need to learn or you know, we just sort of get off track. Remember, the harp was there for you to express yourself.

It's your voice, only prettier, right? I mean, maybe you have a lovely voice, but for me the harp is my voice. And I'll bet to some extent it is for you too. It's your vehicle of self expression. Or maybe one of them, maybe you have others too. But. But let it be that, right? Remind yourself, recommit to yourself that this is you and you're playing what you want to play in a way that makes you happy, serving others perhaps with your music. If that's part of your big why, if that's part of what is important for you about your heart playing.

But your harp story is a part of that. It's where this all started. Use your harp story to redirect your Energies to where they serve your playing.

Right? If there is energy that you are expending even in your practice, that's not really serving your playing. That's not helping you do what you want to do with the harp, then it's time to look at that too.

Maybe you don't need to do four hours of technique work every week. If that's not what you need to play the way you want to play.

Maybe you do. I'm not knocking technique work. Maybe that's exactly what you need. But think about what that harp story can do for you in those three words I just set out for you. It can help you reconnect, it can help you recommit, and it can help you redirect.

Your harp story will help you at any inflection point because it's going to show you that light that started you on this path to start with, right? It's like a lighthouse, like a beacon. It's going to call you to the direction that feels right to you. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to pursue the same harp goal as when you started. I know that my own personal harp goal has changed any number of times. You know, I started wanting to be started out in college, wanting to do exactly what my, what my teacher did until I found out that, that exactly what my teacher did was, was very much her, but it wasn't very much me.

So your harp story has your, your feeling embodied in it, but that doesn't mean that it's a single path. But when you use that, that truth of your story, that glow that you get to help make your decision at any inflection point, then you're going to be going the right way for you. Even if it's not a path that perhaps you had foreseen for yourself. It's all good and it will be your path, which is what's important. It all starts with your harp story.

Now, here's another, another thing. There are times when you get to that moment of decision and it's been sort of forced on you. You are at a place where you're thinking, wow, I'm not getting the satisfaction from my heart playing that I used to or I haven't made progress in a really long time. I've tried lots of different stuff. And the thought comes along, maybe this heart playing thing isn't for me. We've all been there. Take it from me, I have been there. We've all been there. And what you do about it is perhaps nothing. At least not right away. You don't have to make the decision to quit or the decision to go on without getting that. The information that you need and the information that you need is all embodied in that harp story. So when you get to a moment like that, the first thing I want you to do is absolutely nothing. How many times have you told me to. Have you heard me tell you to do nothing? Probably not very often, but when you get to one of those moments, it's time to take a step back. Not get all frenzied or worried, but just to do nothing and take a moment to reflect. Guess what you're going to reflect on? Yeah. Your harp story. Start there. Start there and re. You know, retell that story to yourself. Find that feeling that came when you first started the harp.

Then reconnect with that feeling and think, okay, all right. That's where that was. That's where I was.

And then think about how that is different or not from where you are at that moment of choice. And if necessary, redirect. Redirect your energies into your playing, maybe along a slightly different route than you've been or not, if that's your choice.

But once again, that harp story, that's your core. That's your. That's your personal legend. And that's where all of that heart playing started for you. That's where it all started. It's not where it all ends, but there's a wellspring of connection there that you need to remember to draw on. Just the way I did at that moment when I was about to get kicked out of school. It took me a while. I really had to, you know, once I finally heard the story and I thought, wow, I was so relieved to have found out that my story wasn't a dress story. I mean, I didn't know why I'd started. You know, maybe it's a little bit like, you know, being an orphan and not having known your parents and you wonder what those roots are. Maybe it's something like that. I don't know. But, you know, I didn't want to have to have been drawn to the harp because I just like the way it looked. That wasn't what I wanted my harp story to be. It turned out it wasn't, but I didn't know that.

It was not something I would have expected, but it was exactly right to know that I had heard it and known that that's where my heart lay.

So interesting for me and so powerful. It gave me the energy that I needed to get through those very dark days and the way I did that, by the way, just once again, giving you the very short version is.

That story enabled me to think about my strengths, to think about the reason I was doing this, and to figure out how to bring those into my playing at the point where I was right then, and that's what made the difference for me.

Now, you may not have any of those dramatic moments ahead of you, and that would be great. Nobody needs those dramatic moments. We all have little moments. And it's sort of nice to know that you have a way to make a decision at those little moments. But even if those never come up for you, just thinking about your harp story, and I do urge you to write it down because there's a lot of power in the written word and in reading what you've written. You might think about it as the story that you would share with your grandchildren or leave in a diary for someone to find later, you know, but that harp story is all about you and the harp, and it's the beginning of your story, and it's going to be the guide for your story, but it's certainly not the end. There's a lot ahead of you. I hope that this discussion has intrigued you, has inspired you to write down your harp story. You could think of it as one you'll tell your grandchildren or one you'll write in a journal for somebody to discover at another time leave for posterity. But I hope that you'll use your story to remind you about where you started that seed that was planted, in whatever way it was planted, and how you've nurtured that seed and grown it into a beautiful plant that is unique to you and makes beautiful, beautiful music. Now, it's been so long for me since I started the harp that every time I think about my own harp story, I'm reminded of one of the songs from Fiddler on the Roof.

The couple, Tevye and Golda, are talking together. And Tevye has been worried about the societal changes that have come about and how his daughters have been choosing their Hudd husbands for themselves, not just going through the matchmaker. And they want love from their relationships more than just the kind of process that was used, you know, from time, as far back as anybody in their community can remember, Tevye and Golda had been matched up by a matchmaker. And, you know, it was just expected that they would marry. They had no choice in the matter. And Tevye is sort of exploring this, and he wonders aloud and asks his wife, well, you know, do you love me? And she's sort of like, well, why are you asking this now? What are you thinking about? You know, we don't talk about that sort of thing. What do you, you know, I scrub the floors, I clean the house. What more do you want? And they finally, finally get through that sort of barrier and decide that, yes, they do love each other. And he the quote I'm thinking about is the one that says, well, you know, yes, we love each other and it doesn't change a thing. But Even so, after 25 years, it's nice to know. And that's how I feel about my harp story. Going back to my harp story doesn't change a thing. But after all these years, and it's way more than 25, after all these years, it's still nice to know. Nice to know how I chose the harp and why. Oh, yeah, it's nice to know. Well, as we wrap up for today, just a couple quick reminders. Next week on the show, we'll be talking about something much more practical about what to practice when you don't have anything to practice for. It's late in the season. Perhaps you have no more concerts coming up. You, you know, maybe that's not the sort of thing you do anyway. Maybe all the places you normally play, you go on some vacation, you don't play there. So what do you practice if you don't have anything to practice for? Well, that's the topic of our discussion next week. Remember, too, please. Lots of harp happiness will be happening at our summer retreat in August. I'd love for you to be part of that. We do have a few spots and I'd love for you to make that part of your own harp journey and maybe a little piece of your harp story even. So, please consider joining us there. But until next week, 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.