Personal Narratives Revealed ES61

Hello and welcome to Every Sing Podcast. My name is Nancy Bos, and I am so thrilled to be here with you today. The topic not only of the day but of the entire upcoming season, starting now with episode 61, is personal narrative. I know that just sounds like probably over-the-top exciting and you can't wait to learn more about personal narrative. But believe me, once you understand, I'm so passionate about this topic. It is, it is core, it is foundational to not only being a successful musician, but being a human. Being a successful human relies on understanding and molding our personal narratives. If you're not intrigued yet, just wait, listen to this episode. I think you're going to totally get it. Coming up after this episode though, we're going to dive in deeper and deeper with different experts from different fields. I've got tons of books that I'm reading that I'm going to talk to you about, give you the shortcuts so that you understand what this amazing field of personal narrative is all about. I'm throwing myself all in with research, writing, and this podcast. So thank you for joining me here. I hope you stick with it. It is going to change your life. But first, before the topic, we got business to cover. Um, reading glasses for this part. First off, you should know that, um, EverySing, as often as I can, I will have it on YouTube on the EverySing channel. EverySing is two words, by the way. So there's an EverySing channel on YouTube. Whatever I can, I'm going to put the videos of the podcasts up on there. But otherwise, you will always find this podcast on all of your favorite podcast players from Spotify to Stitcher to whatever, and please share it with your friends. If this content is life-changing for you, change somebody else's life as well. So Every Sing Podcast is brought to you thanks to two divisions of my company. My company is Studio Boss. The two divisions are studio— the publishing side, which is Studio Boss Media, where I publish nonfiction books on singing. And that is at studioboss.com. The biggest seller in the Studio Boss publishing lineup is Singing 101. It's been out for about 5 years. It sold tens of thousands of copies, which is kind of amazing for what started out as a self-published book. It is only 70 pages long and people buy it over and over. Choirs are using it, universities are using it. It is a basics foundational book about resonance, alignment, breathing, stuff that you just need to review from time to time in your body as it changes as we age. Or if you never got it in the first place, it's a great place to start. That's the Singing 101 book, but there's many others like Singing Through Change, the Teen Girl Singing Guide, the Practice Planners, and some new upcoming books as well. So to learn more about the publishing division and to actually buy the books would be totally cool, I would love that. Um, go to studiobos.com, that's S-T-U-D-I-O-B-O-S.com, and that'll link you to where you can find the books on Amazon, or just search my name on Amazon, Nancy Bos, B-O-S, and you can find the books that way. That's a great way to support the podcast, is by learning about the books and buying them and passing them on. The other fascinating thing though, and since I last spoke to you, this is a new division of the company, is the Celebrate Singing online events. This started out one year ago on World Voice Day with a summit where over 200 people gathered together online from all over the world, from New Zealand to Europe, even Russia. And we had a 2.5-day summit about women's voices and how they change through our aging, our lives, menopause, perimenopause, And it was, it was a fabulous success. So we turned it in. The division head is, her name is Kathy Ostenson, and that division manager and I turned it into an ongoing, almost monthly online education and community building events. And Celebrate Singing is coming up on its second annual conference. If you're listening to this before April 22nd, 2022, then you will want to attend that conference. But even if you're listening to the, uh, the, this podcast after the conference is completed, you can still, number one, you can purchase the recordings. So if you want that education, it's there for you. But also there's ongoing events, there's, uh, community building events, and there's education events. So to take part in this, you can even buy a season pass, which is a really good deal, and that gets you involved with any level of Celebrate Singing that you want to be involved with. I will say currently the focus of Celebrate Singing is still on women's, on adult women's voices. That's just because we need to build, you know, it's 1 year old, we need to build it. So we're looking forward to branching out into every singer eventually. The website is celebratesinging.live. Celebratesinging.live. You can attend live events, you can listen to recordings of live events, and just, just be part of the community. Would love to have you over there at Celebrate Singing. So because of these 2 entities Studio Boss Publishing and Celebrate Singing. That is why I am able to turn my focus to Every Sing! podcast and writing. So if you support— if you want to support everything, you can support Every Sing! through Studio Boss and Celebrate Singing. The next thing to tell you is that the upcoming Celebrate Singing Summit again is just a week and a half away from when I'm recording this. I hope to see you there. Okay, I think that's it for the business portion of this meeting. So now Let's get on with the big topic of personal narrative. The first thing to talk about is what is personal narrative? I used to say personal stories, the personal stories that we tell ourselves. But then I learned that some people think of the word stories as lies, like, oh, what story are you telling yourself today? Or you believe that story about yourself? You know, that it's got some negative connotations. So in talking with Kitty Verdolini, who is a voice researcher and voice teacher, she said, "Oh, you know what? In the world of science and research, we call it personal narratives." Now I will say that's still not a perfect word, and I know I haven't explained it yet, but I'll get there. If you type into Google "personal narratives," you get how to write your memoirs. That's not what we're talking about. Although I would imagine writing your memoirs would be an amazing way to look at your personal narratives. What we're talking about, personal narratives, are the stories that we buy into. They might come from ourselves, they might come from outside of us, but they are the stories that we believe and that we shape our lives around. All right, let me give you an example of a personal narrative that comes from our culture. This is a personal narrative that you might or might not agree with. It might be part of your life, it might not be part of your life. That's The judgments aside, this is a personal narrative that many people believe that a person should get married with their vows to be married for life. And in giving that vow that you're going to be married to this person for life, you are agreeing to cooperating with that person, or if they're uncooperative, putting up with that person until death do you part. That is a personal narrative. But we know that over half the population of the planet has decided that that personal narrative is not for them. Either they live with partners that they never marry, or they get divorced, or they stay single. Those are all choices that go counter to this longstanding personal narrative of one marriage for life. All right, so how does this apply to you if you believe— gosh, I really picked a heavy one to start with. Maybe I shouldn't have picked such a heavy one, but anyhow, here we are, we're sitting in it. If you believe that marriage is one and done for life, then you are going to make decisions in your life that impact how that marriage is going. If it's going really badly and you feel like you're dying or suffocating in that marriage, you're going to push hard for therapy or counseling to make things work out. However, if instead you decide, you know, this personal narrative needs to be modified, the modification that you might be looking at is personal happiness in a marriage is not something to put aside. If I can't be happy, if I can't fulfill my dreams, um, then maybe we should think about bailing. You know, dropping out of this marriage. That is another option for personal narrative, that you can modify what you originally thought to be true. All right, and then the third one is to toss it out altogether. And this person would say, you know what, marriage is an artificial construct of human society. It is not necessary In fact, I am going to be polygamous. I'm going to be married to 3 or 4 or 5 people at the same time. Or marriage is simply, um, BS and I don't buy into it. So you can see that a person can take this personal narrative idea and either buy in all the way, modify it to fit their needs, or reject it. All right, so that marriage personal narrative, that's one that came from the culture, right? Comes down to us from our religion, our society, and our parents. It's one of the big ones. There's a lot smaller personal narratives. I mean, okay, let's take a personal narrative that's super tiny, and that is chocolate is bad for you, or wine is bad for you. That's a narrative that you can be like, you know, I heard there's antioxidants and chocolate, and maybe if it doesn't have much sugar. So you're taking this personal narrative that chocolate's bad for you and you're modifying it. So, uh, what is it? Everything, um, oh gosh, I'm drawing a blank on, um, in moderation. That's what it is. All things in moderation. That's a modification of the personal narrative that chocolate is bad for you. And then there's the other end that says, you know, I reject that chocolate is bad for me, and in fact You only live once. YOLO! Chocolate shop? I'm gonna open one right now. And so these are all ways that we can take a personal narrative, tiny one in that case— well, made it kind of big by opening the chocolate shop— but we can modify it. All right, let's take a look at personal narratives that might affect, hmm, singers. Why is personal narrative important on the Every Sing podcast. Now, some of you that are out there listening actually are singers or singing teachers. A lot of you just find the content to be fascinating in this, and, and maybe it's a side hobby or something like that. So please don't feel like you need to be a singer in order to relate to this next part. I'm sure you'll be able to spin it on some personal story in your own life. But the reason why personal narratives are essential in EverySync Podcast is because over the decades that I was teaching voice, every single student in front of me needed modifications to their personal narratives. There wasn't a single student who came in entirely confident that they were the right person doing the right thing with the right voice in the right way. There wasn't a single singer who came through my voice studio who said, 'I am a great singer, I have a fantastic voice, I am ready to sing, and the world should be glad to hear me.' That would be an amazing personal narrative, right? But that doesn't happen. We are all human. Part of being human is having doubt or imposter syndrome or wondering if there's something we could be doing better. We're always striving, we're always hoping, we're always wondering. All these emotions that can chip away at a confident personal narrative. So sometimes my job as a singing teacher was to help that student find a personal narrative that even allowed them to call themselves a singer. Right? What does it mean to be a singer? Well, I don't make money at singing, so I'm not really a singer. Hmm, you're a singer. Well, I sang Star-Spangled Banner in my high school assembly once. Does that make me a singer? Yes, that makes you a singer. Well, I'm not Kelly Clarkson, so I guess I'm not really a singer. I'm just trying to be a singer. No, you're a singer. So that's the first one, is that everyone who's taking singing lessons needs to believe they're a singer. If I take dancing lessons, do I believe I'm a dancer? Yeah, sure, why not? There's— I mean, there's going to be gradients, right? It's not black or white. It's like I can be called a beginning dancer or an intermediate dancer or a salsa dancer or a waltzing dancer. I don't know. Ballroom, that's it. Ballroom dancer. So that— so there's gradations on buying into the personal narrative, but you got to get the person, the student in front of you, to buy into that. Do you buy into the fact that you are a singer? If you don't, please listen to the first 60 episodes of this podcast because you are a singer. We are all singers. Singing is older than being human. All right? Other mammals sing. Whales sing. Singing is not unique to being human. It came before spoken language. It is how we communicate through pitch modulation and vowel modulation. We share our emotions with singing, and then we layer words on top so that there's a story to go with it. Anyhow, that's a whole tangent. Let me get back to personal narratives. All right, I'm a singer. Am I good enough? Am I good enough? The thing that I always say to my singing students, and, and plenty of other people that ask if they're good enough, I say, if Willie Nelson can make millions of dollars singing, you are good enough. Mm-hmm. It's not as important to have the perfect voice unless you pick a genre that requires the perfect voice. It's more important to be the storyteller. What you should be asking yourself is not, am I a good enough singer, but am I a good enough storyteller to be a professional singer. Okay, so we work on the storytelling. We work on the storytelling. If you are a singer who feels like you don't know how to tell a story, that should be your focus because the voice will follow. If you've got authenticity and sincerity in your story, the voice will be there. It doesn't need to be, you know, Pavarotti's voice. It can be Willie Nelson's voice and you can still make change in the world. So I think you get the idea now. Of how personal narrative applies to Every Sing! Podcast, right? You got this picture of, okay, yeah, the stories that I tell myself as a singer or as a singing teacher, they impact how the world sees me, they impact my success. So I should make sure I have the right stories, right? Well, let me go off on a little personal story here, one that I just realized yesterday As I was writing an article for, well, I've got a blog now where I'm covering this stuff, and I also publish the articles on LinkedIn. So if you follow me on LinkedIn or the blog, you know what? I need to tell you the name of the blog. It's brand new and I can't remember what it is, but I'll look it up. I'll let you know at the end. So, and it'll also be in the show notes, and I'll tell you it every episode in the future. Point being, I was writing this article yesterday and realized, oh my gosh, this is part of my personal narrative and I didn't realize it was there before. Uh, writing, writing, writing, writing pulls these personal narratives out of the cobwebs of our brains so that we realize, oh, that's having an impact on me. Every time I write, I find new facets to my personal narrative. And once I find a new facet to my personal narrative, I can decide whether I should reject it, modify it, or make it go away. Well, this particular aspect of my personal narrative is that I don't know when I first started singing in church. I, boy, I was probably in 5th, 6th, 7th grade when I was singing solos in my small Lutheran church, and You know, ideally I would have hoped that those singing opportunities, those solos in church, they would have been a chance for members of the congregation to explore their own spirituality and to find joy in community and holiness of the music. But it never seemed that way. It never seemed that way. I don't recall if anyone ever said to me, 'Nancy, you transported me. I'm so grateful that you sang in church today.' That would have been great. That has happened to me as an adult, I will say, but not as a kid when this story was being formed. The comments were always, 'You sounded so beautiful. You should be so proud of yourself.' Yes, pride in church. Direct message judgment of the beauty of my voice. My Goodness, I can understand every word you say. What does that mean? I heard that one often, you know, or every word you sing, you know, it's like, well, you're welcome, or thank you, or is understanding my words, um, is that really— that's important? Okay, yeah, I guess it probably is. Um, and very confusing. None of it, none of those comments ever addressed the real reason why hopefully I was singing solos. They all made me feel instead like I was performing like it was a performance or a recital or a talent contest, and that I had just done a great job in the pageant of the day. Uh, yeah, not, not, not a great feeling. If you're a singer, you know this feeling. You want to— sometimes you just want to get out of the church before the service is even over because you don't want to have to take in those comments. You want to have had that moment with the spirit within yourself and then Release it and enjoy the transformation that took place. And the minute you start getting those comments from people, that changes things. That changes things. So, so getting out of the room sometimes is the best thing that you can do for yourself. Yeah, so that made me very self-conscious of performance at a very young age. I was dissatisfied with the results. I started to get nervous, performance anxiety in church. I remember specifically choosing to wear long, long skirts that covered my legs all the way because my legs were going to be shaking like this. And I could sing over that. Nobody would have to know as long as I had on a really long skirt. So why was I having this performance anxiety? I was having this performance anxiety because I felt like I was up there to be judged. So now, what difference has that made in my life? Well, as I said in the article, It made me turn toward small group singing, voice teaching, and music directing. I never got comfortable with being the singer in the spotlight. Does that mean that I think that— I mentioned Kelly Clarkson earlier— that she's a glory-seeking ego hound who just wants the spotlight on her? No, I don't. I'm so grateful for her and every other singer. Right now, Prince is popping into my head. So grateful for Prince, Peter Gabriel, even the opera singers that, that really are singing for beauty. Why do we go to those concerts? Why do we listen to those records? Because of how they make us feel, how they transform us, how they change us, right? Thank God for the professional singers, the soloists who get up there and do it on their own. So why Can't I be one of those? Why is my narrative such that that isn't something I want, that that isn't something that I crave or strive for? How about you? Do you want the spotlight on you? Do you want to be the one who entertains 40,000 people in an arena? Do you want to be the person on the TV shows and the award shows saying, "Thank you, thank you very much, I owe it all to—" You know, do you want to be that person? And if so, why? What is your why? What is your personal narrative that propels you toward that? Awesome. I'm so glad you're there. I need you. We all need you. Please do that. Do that. Tell us your stories. Help us tell our own stories. Help us feel all the feels. Or are you more like me and you're the person that's like, you know, I'm not really into the spotlight. You know, I'd rather support other people so that they can be in the spotlight. Not a bad choice. I can with deep gratitude say that I have helped thousands and thousands of people find their own stories, find their joy in their voices, and share it with the world. What a gift that I've been able to take other people and their singing stories and propel them forward into greatness. I love that. Is that what I really wanted? Is that what I want now? It's not too late. I've still got a good 50 years left on this planet. I could still become that professional singer. I need to decide this in my personal narrative. I do not want to die with regrets. I do not want to go with my grave wondering if this is something I should have done. I have had some glorious moments in singing, and, and thankfully they were caught on video so that I can't alter the memory. This really happened, and I can have full confidence. One is a performance of Morten Lauridsen's O Manu Mysterium at a church in Slovenia, and it was probably the classical singing highlight of my life. Another singing highlight of my life is a recording of a song called Seattle When It's Raining. You can go on YouTube and you can type in Seattle When It's Raining Nancy Bos. You're gonna have to type all of that in because it's a pretty obscure video, but, uh, but you can hear me singing this loving folk song sort of thing written by Robert Edwin, and I'm singing it to my daughter. And it was an amazing recording experience with my pianist. One microphone, one piano, one singer, third take. You know, it was, it was just, it was great. And I'm so proud and happy and gratified to be able to share that with the world. So is there more of that for me ahead? You know what, I've got a bigger mission right now. No, not bigger. I've got a different mission right now. My mission right now is to help you see what I see about personal narratives, what a change it's made in my life to understand that I have choices. These choices start by looking at your core values. What do you truly value? Not what does your partner value, what do your parents value, what does society value, what does your religious affiliation value. None of those. None of those. None of those. What do you value? We all have variations on similar core values, but there's variations. I can't tell you what your core values are. Community, family, laughter, the outdoors, freedom— those are some of my core values. How do you find your core values? I recommend a shepherd, a mentor. Um, I, I have, um, Pamela Malo is, is the woman who's guided me to find my core values in a very simple 2-hour online workshop. Um, Pamela M-A-L-O Malo, if you want to look her up. There's other ways to get to the bottom of your core values. I'm sure there's 100 books on it. There's other people offering workshops. Know what your core values are first. Because every decision that you make about your personal narratives, which impacts your whole life, is dependent upon your core values. Now I'm going to be vulnerable here for just a second. I try not to go too far into my own life, but this is an important one. Last summer I got divorced and I moved from Seattle to Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is in the southwestern desert area of the United States. Core values for me are laughter and joy. And I was not able to find laughter and joy in my marriage. And we tried, we tried, we couldn't find it. And I realized I could not live, I could not live without laughter and joy. So That was part of the end of the marriage. Part of the end of my time in the Pacific Northwest is that one of my core values is sunshine. I don't even know if that's a value. That's a biological need for me. And I had been in the Pacific Northwest for 25 years, and the seasonal depression for me was so real, so real, that I had to every fall start to prepare myself to defend myself with my strategy for how to get through the winter. And you know what? It doesn't have to be like that. So in choosing myself, in choosing my core values of sunshine, if that's a core value, joy and laughter, I was choosing to make massive changes in my life. Massive changes. Changes that impacted many other people. With regret, a lot of pain involved in those choices. But now, for the next 50 years that I'm on this planet, I get to live in those core values, living my best life. So yeah, finding your core values and deciding to live by them, that can be risky. That can change everything. Do you want to be the authentic you? Do you want to be the you with the purpose that you were put on this planet to live out? Do you believe that's true? If you think that, you know, everything I'm saying here is hogwash, we can live whatever life we just happen to live and life is life, then this podcast is not for you. I believe that we were given the opportunity to have a passion in this life that we can live out with gratitude and love and joy and fulfillment to make the world a better place for each and every one of us. My passion right now is to share with you personal narratives, how to get to the bottom of yours and make them the best that they can be. So I am now working on personal narrative in all my research and writing and speaking. I do still speak on Singing Through Change: Women's Voices in Midlife, Menopause, and Beyond. And I speak on that because when Kate and Joanne and I wrote that book, we had to do our own research. We did what's called a qualitative research study, phenomenological research study, where we talked to over 4 dozen women about their experience. We took their stories and turned them into a scientific research book full of stories. And that's when I realized, oh my gosh, the women with the most successful personal narratives had the most successful time through this challenging transition in their lives. So I am still thrilled to talk about— to give presentations and speeches about singing through change, because what I'm actually talking about is The stories that we tell ourselves that help us sing through the inevitable changes of our voices through midlife, menopause, and beyond, improving the quality of life of the women who are choosing to sing through menopause and aging. You go, girls! You keep singing. But otherwise, I'm focusing all of my writing, my podcast, and my, my professional speaking on personal narratives. And so thank you so much for being here with me on this journey. It's going to be fun. It's going to be a ride. It won't always be fun. Sometimes it's going to be hard. Sometimes it is going to be hard. All right, so I'm going to wrap it up there and say that if you want more, if you want more than just this podcast, look for my blog, which I'm going to put in the notes. Also, you can find it on LinkedIn. I'm publishing almost every day. I'm publishing weekdays. I'm publishing something about personal narrative. I just want to blanket, blanket my LinkedIn, blanket my blog, blanket my life with helping people find their personal narratives. Remember, to support this podcast and my work in this area, you can support it through buying books from Studio Boss Publishing through Amazon. You can support it through the Celebrate Singing events. Either come yourself or share it with somebody else. Please leave a great review so that other people find this podcast. Go into your podcast player right now and figure out how leave a review, I would love that. Or give me a thumbs up on YouTube or, or whatever it is that you do. Shout out for me on social media. And you can reach out to me, and my, my personal email address right here, right now is Nancy@studioBos.com. That's Nancy, N-A-N-C-Y, @studio, S-T-U-D-I-O, B-O-S.com. You can reach me there. That would be cool. The last thing I need to do is thank Stephen and Shannon O'Bent for this great music. I love you guys. Thanks for being part of my life. Until next time.