The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 093 Amy Baltzell: The Power of Mindfulness

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 93. Welcome to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, violinist, teacher, and high-performance coach, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're doing amazingly well. Today's episode is really special for me, and I think that if you've seen the title, you know that already. I speak with Dr. Amy Balzell about the power of mindfulness. Dr. Balzell is a speaker, author, Olympian, and a mindfulness and high-performance consultant for athletes, musicians, sport coaches, as well as international

Starting point is 00:00:58 marketers and commodity traders. She holds a doctorate in counseling psychology, is a Reiki master teacher, a mindful self-compassion teacher, creator and facilitator of mindful meditation training in sport. She's a certified mental performance consultant, and she was a clinical assistant professor at Boston University for over 20 years. Dr. Balzel was an Olympic rower and professional sailor, and she's an in-demand speaker, and she gives keynote talks and workshops all over the world. I could not be more excited about this episode. In our conversation, Amy talks about the Olympic journey that led her to devoting her life to helping athletes and performers, how mindfulness and self-compassion are transformative and liberating, and how they

Starting point is 00:01:47 can help us deal with fear, anxiety, and self-doubts, how meditation can help us train our mind and our heart so we can be more efficient in our practice. She gives us tips to cope with undesirable results and things we can focus on to improve our performance, and so much more. When you hear the concepts she shares, you know right away that her and I speak the same language. Amy's work embodies so much of what Mind Over Finger is. And if what we talk about resonates with you, stay tuned for a special invitation following our conversation. Also, I'm really excited to announce that the Joyful Practice Challenge 2021 Tips from the Masters starts this coming Monday, March 15th. Hopefully you participated in the 2020 edition and you're ready for more. And if you haven't,

Starting point is 00:02:41 it's not too late. Go back and listen to episode 72 and download the handout. And this time around, I've got a lineup of musical stars joining me. You'll hear from James Ennis, Elizabeth Fadley, Simon Fisher, Billy Hunter, Stefan Jakiv, Tessa Lark, Damaria McGill, and Alyssa Tong. Over two weeks with my amazing guests, we're going to give you everything you need to boost your motivation and infuse your practice with more mindfulness, joy, and efficiency. So visit mindoverfinger.com and sign up for the Joyful Practice Challenge. And now, without further ado, I bring you a powerful conversation with Dr. Amy Baltzell. Let's go to the show.

Starting point is 00:03:37 Amy Baltzell, it's such a huge pleasure for me to have you on the show today. Thank you. It's great to be here. I appreciate being invited. Amy, you're a well-being, mindfulness, and performance coach for athletes, musicians, and business people. And your work resonates very strongly with me because it really is in tune, pun not intended, with everything that I do with Mind Over Finger and the Deep Practice Model, which is what I use with my students and my coaching clients. And before we dive in all the good stuff, can you please tell us about you and your journey and how you got to where you are? Oh, boy. Well, as it relates to this, you know, I was an Olympic athlete, a professional athlete.

Starting point is 00:04:25 I was a 92 Olympic rower and I was a professional sailor in 1995 with the Allman's America's Cup team. and I had a great gifts physically and my mind was a mess you know and so I would win national championship after national championship and then I'd lose a race that was just like you know I should have won by miles kind of thing and uh or by seconds but you know and so I got involved in sports ecology trying to figure out like what what was honestly it was like an autobiographical kind of like exploration what happened and um I learned um incredible things about how to work with the mind so um you know i learned to work my own mind and i love to help other people work with their minds to optimize performance and so fear and anxiety and doubt and mistakes are not the block

Starting point is 00:05:14 to being your best you know and so i've spent the last 25 years um working with athletes musicians and more recently business people as well and um and what i found was it wasn't uh the answers weren't in the sports psychology textbooks and that was a bit disappointing because I thought the only place we really studied like performance in the mind is in sports psychology um there it's partially helpful but there's not really a specific answer and how do you help people really deal with anxiety and mistakes and fear and dread and self-doubt how do you do that and so um I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and I've come into the ideas of bringing mindfulness and self-compassion into the work with people I work with and it's transformative and it personally

Starting point is 00:05:58 helps me too you know I the fear that used to be create hell for me is it's disappeared and so it works on me it works on anybody that's what I think yeah yeah I love how it seems to have unfolded very organically in stemming from you looking for answers yes looking for answers for myself and then I find nothing more fulfilling than to work with someone who is aspiring to excellence and they're blocked by their own emotions and thoughts their conditioned responses and to give them uh freedom from that liberation and i think of like freeing people from hell really you know these people especially musicians you guys are like to me i call you a lifelong olympian you're not just in it for 10 years you're in it for 50 60 you're in it for a lifetime

Starting point is 00:06:47 you know you become your instrument becomes part of who you are and so it's really um to me that's why i'm so happy to be in this this podcast because musicians often can't afford to work with this performance psychologist you know and yet they so could value um could benefit from having these ideas so i'm really happy to be here so thank you no thank you yeah um you've been teaching at boston university for over 20 years and you're the co-creator of mindful meditation training in sport or mmts and as i'm sure you suspect i'd love to hear your point of view on the power of mindfulness how it can help and what are some simple strategies that musicians can adopt today so yeah so um i was at bu for 20 years and i left two years ago two and a half years ago

Starting point is 00:07:40 maybe and now i'm full-time consultant and so um now i get to do the work directly with people full full time and I find that a gift to be able to have that chance yeah so mindful meditation training and sport that was really kind of the culmination of all my years of study working with performers and trying to figure out how do you how do you help people with mistakes and and fear and dread and I stumbled into mindfulness that's kind of a side story with my sister was sick with cancer and I went and did some classes with her and I discovered oh my goodness this thing of you can accept reality as it is it's actually helpful really that was new idea to me instead of trying to change and shift you know it's like no actually it's okay that it's

Starting point is 00:08:29 like this it's okay that I you know um I'm angry frustrated whatever it is but then you start to see that but when I'm like this the outcome isn't so good in terms of my attention on creating the music or playing the sport it's not so good and so to realize that you can have difficult thoughts and feelings and it can be okay they're there and you can learn to work with them differently you don't have to shove them away push them away you can learn how to make choices and how you want to be instead of just reactive and so that's the core of the mindful meditation training and support. But what I added, which was at the time kind of cutting edge, and I think still is, there's not many people doing this yet, and I hope more people

Starting point is 00:09:14 do this, is people think like, you just need to be present and accepting, and then shift to your attention. That's all you have to do. You know, here I am, I made a mistake. Oh, I had this surge of frustration. It's okay. Just focus on the next note or the next phrase, the musician. The challenge of course is, if you're human and you're honest, if you really are invested in something and you have um a mistake in a moment that's a key moment people can get flooded with a regret and overwhelm and fear the future you know it's like it can become a very intense feeling and um if you don't give people something um performers ways to deal with that emotion and energy um you just tell them to focus on the next note they can't and so what happens is they're shamed to think they should be

Starting point is 00:10:00 able to this they can something wrong with them they given no skills to deal with that feeling and thought nothing you know there's no guidance and they're supposed to be able to just like get back into it and so um what's integral to the mindful meditation training sport different than most meditation or mindfulness interventions uh is that there's i put a lot of focus on what do you do and that you kind of get kind of washed over with embarrassment frustration dread regret mistake you know what do you do with that and um the key of is like you know becoming clear what can you bring to mind or what can you um recall um that would be soothing in some way and this is helpful i found this i had research on this i had about um about a dozen different

Starting point is 00:10:48 teams i did this with it was olympic athletes and injured athletes and collegiate athletes and men and women and um you know men actually surprise surprise not surprised to me you know they need self-compassion too they need to learn how to be kind to themselves in those moments or they too get pulled down by negative thoughts and feelings and so the program is um six hours it's only six hours it's just an introduction actually i'm right in the middle right now of creating an online program so this is kind of nice timing be out in a few months um where it's an introduction to how do you how do you work with yourself in these moments how do you tailor these ideas to yourself to make it really stick and help in moments when predictably you're going to get

Starting point is 00:11:28 distracted by uninvited thoughts and feelings that's the part of practicing that we usually skip right practice the notes right but we don't condition ourselves to really have control over our thoughts and our feelings as we're playing yeah and i would say you know train the heart and mind and i would say um i would say we don't have control over our thoughts and feelings we do not have control but what you can learn to do is um if you learn how to respond differently to it like i just worked with a swimmer the other day a swimmer and um when the practice gets really difficult she'll like um just kind of cave and um feel overwhelmed feel like she can't do it well if i told her you just can't have those thoughts and feelings you just need

Starting point is 00:12:19 to shift your thoughts and feelings she'd say yeah great but how do I do that and what I found is you just can't make someone make those thoughts and feelings go away but what you can do is go like there's that familiar feeling again there's that fear there it's okay it's here it's okay it's here I accept it fierce presence I accept it with fierce presence and you know and I'm now going to shift my attention to the one thing I know I can bring my attention to that will get me back into it I call it the domino of goodness that moment where you can like I'll just focus on my hands and connect in that moment you're bringing myself i'm bringing myself back to for that that sport uh right back engaged you know but to think that you can just like shove it away

Starting point is 00:12:59 and um feel and think differently i think is unrealistic over time if you don't feed that fear and upset over time it will start to dissolve it will start to transmute but it takes time and it takes great courage and that's why the self-compassion comes in because in those moments when you think, oh, here's that thought and feeling, I'm just going to push it away. No, actually, I'm not going to, I'm going to face it and accept it. And I'm going to allow it to be there. I'm still going to bring my attention back on what I'm doing. Woo. That takes good courage, great courage. So you're training yourself to have courage, really? Yes, yes. I wish the listeners could see me because I'm nodding and I'm smiling.

Starting point is 00:13:35 You're really speaking my language. It's really fascinating how at the core of the deep practice model when I was developing it for me it was that quote from Viktor Frankl between stimulus and response there's a space and that space is our power to choose our response and that's at the core of everything I teach this this ability to receive the emotions and the thoughts and choose our response exactly what you said make choices yeah And as I was refining the model, I was realizing more and more and more that self-compassion is key for all of this. And it's so hard to convince musicians or anyone for that matter, that self-compassion actually leads to more productivity. And, you know, I mean, do you have some thoughts on how we could help people really see how we can enhance performance?

Starting point is 00:14:37 Yeah, I mean, so if you don't have self-compassion, what happens? You pull yourself down and you give up. You go on automatic pilot. There's no one present there. People give up and disconnect is what they do. And the self-compassion allows you to stay engaged in the moment. It allows you to stay present to what you're doing. And I find it makes us more creative in problem-solving as well.

Starting point is 00:15:02 well being present that's the only way that we can be creative and problem solving you have to be present if if you are caught up in your mind and you're all upset like there's no one there to solve the problem yeah or if you just shut yourself down emotionally you just try to be like a robot there's no one there to feel and make the subtle changes there's no one home I'd like to in my last book I wrote about this idea of like uh you know like the um driverless car you know the driverless car like you know what what athletes and musicians they do is they become like that driverless car they just be kind of automatic and they're like they disconnect and they just allow themselves to kind of just do what they do uh but you know if a challenge arises or

Starting point is 00:15:47 subtle thing needs to happen and there's no one there they're not going to make that creative decision that's going to really make it beautiful you know yeah yeah i often compare it to when you're lacking the self-compassion and you go with this attitude of like oh come on get it done it's like someone who's just spewing really loud negative words in your ears constantly and you can't sort your thought and store solve your problems so when you actually can tap into this flexibility of self-compassion as opposed to the rigidity of the lack of self-compassion, for lack of a better word,

Starting point is 00:16:31 then you're really able to assess what is instead of judging it and find those solutions. Yeah, I'm thinking there's something about, this is the metaphor that comes to my mind that's helpful around self-compassion. If you're meditating, you're a monk and you're, This is not my story, but if a monk is meditating in a hut and he thinks, I just have to meditate, focus, focus, focus, focus, you know, and a bad thought, I'm not going to think of anything negative, no, no, no, just focus, focus, and his hut catches on fire. And you don't turn around and take care of it, your hut burns down.

Starting point is 00:17:10 I think if you don't give yourself what you need, even if you try to suppress it, the problem will show up again. I can tell you many athletes who will pretend there's no problem, and then they pass out. Pretend there's no problem, and then they can't swim. Pretend there's no problem, they can't throw the baseball. So you can like force away, just determinedly go forward and not give yourself what you need. But the problem is still there. There's still something that needs to be paid attention to. There's still part of yourself that needs to, it's kind of like if you can pause and give yourself what you need, there's not that like just energy drain if you're able to have self-compassion.

Starting point is 00:17:44 I love this analogy it's such a great way to illustrate it I was recently watching a short and excellent video that you made and where you were talking about the I hope I don't mess this up the mindful meditation cycle yes yeah do you want to tell us a little bit about that sure and you know if we have no visual here but we I'll try so if you can imagine um you know we think about meditation you focus on something and it doesn't it doesn't really matter what you focus on it really has to do with your um practicing observing whatever it is but let's say you focus on um the breath for meditation right and predict what will happen is you're going to focus on the breath what will happen is um eventually whether two seconds or five minutes later your mind will

Starting point is 00:18:34 become distracted. It happens. It's part of the meditation process. And then you might get lost in that thought. And then eventually you'll kind of like become aware, like, oh, there I am distracted. And in that moment, the next, you know, kind of like the next step is with that awareness, you can choose to bring your attention back to what you need to pay attention to. So like all of that is meditation. That's all normal. The same thing, it's equivalent to what happens in practice musicians thinking i need to practice this these phrases or these you help me out what would they need to practice musician i don't know a piece of music um i need to focus on it and then a mistake happens and then that's the distraction that's kind of the mind wandering

Starting point is 00:19:20 and then the mind's wandering uh and the criticism and they're not focusing on music they're focusing oh my gosh i'm not going to get the the job or i'm not going to be able to play is through or you know the mind starts to play games but when you become aware in that moment like oh I'm aware of the fact my mind is wandering I'm aware I'm getting caught up in the thoughts and feelings in that moment of awareness that's between the stimulus and response you talk about in that moment I can choose I can bring my attention back to the music or I can allow myself to continue to spiral out of control with these thoughts and feelings so that's I like to think about how that meditation practice can help train your mind

Starting point is 00:20:01 in your heart so you can be more efficient in your practice as musician, athlete, whatever it is. Absolutely. Yes. And I loved, I was taking, um, meditation training and the teacher was reminding us that we don't meditate to get good at meditation, but to get good at life. Yeah. Yes. And in this example, you know, it depends on what you want to use it for. You can certainly use it for, you know, living or enlightenment. Right. Yeah. Or whatever it is. um or you can use it and what I um for the athletes musicians you can use it to help you practice more effectively and perform better absolutely yeah yes you work with athletes and musicians I'm sure you see a wide array of problems and issues and emotions what are some

Starting point is 00:20:55 ways that I know that it's, you know, a podcast episode is too short to cover all the strategies and methods. And I would definitely encourage everyone who wants more clarity on those things to maybe reach out to you and start working with a coach in one way or another. But what are some ways that people experiencing some anxiety or negative thoughts or some undesirable results in their work um what are some ways that they can cope with that yeah so um one of the kind of classic ways that a sports psychologist to work with a performer to say okay when you are performing really well so musician think of a time when you're practicing and it's going really well like where is your attention and we're going to ask you like so for your what was your instrument

Starting point is 00:21:42 violin so in the violin this is for fun in the violin when you're really um playing beautifully where is your awareness not necessarily where's your thinking mind but what are you aware of when you're playing the way that you loved communicating connecting and you just it's just beautiful like where's your awareness it's usually just in the present moment yeah but what what i'm experiencing when i'm hearing so what you're hearing um say one more thing so what you're hearing what else what you're hearing anything else it could be on how comfortable i feel and when you're comfortable what what's happening what are you aware of ease and relax muscles ease and relax muscles okay so what i would say is you know so we yeah

Starting point is 00:22:29 you're a podcast we can't do the whole thing here but you think about when it's going well where are you what are you paying attention to when you're feeling confident and good what are you paying attention to and what i'm doing yeah okay and then in contrast and this is the listeners can kind of jot these ideas down and then you think when i'm really over embarrassed or frustrated or fearful what am i paying attention to it'll be a very different list yes and then I'll say yeah it's a very different list and then I'll say and this is you know so you can write the list when it's going well what do you pay attention to when it's going poorly what do you pay attention to and then I'd say guess what playing feeling good or feeling poorly

Starting point is 00:23:04 you still can pay attention to in the moment the music you know there's there's things that you can particularly pay attention to whether you feel good or not feel good that will help you perform well but what people think is when I play well I think this is what happens I play poorly this is what happens um and they don't realize that it doesn't matter what your emotions are it doesn't matter what your confidence is it it it's more pleasant but it doesn't really matter what really matters is where you choose to place your attention and when you learn when you realize like uh say um you know for my you know uh you know like an olympic level rower you know it'd be like the connection swing the connection swing sit up you can always connect

Starting point is 00:23:45 swing and sit up no matter how you feel but coaches and teachers don't tell you that they don't help you figure out what is like the one or two or three things i can focus on no matter what i can't make myself feel good i can't make myself feel confident i probably can't even make myself feel relaxed but there are things that you do when you're performing well that you can do uh no matter how you feel and those are the things that connect to and those are things to prioritize yeah so so i think you know and then and then the other thing i would say that's really can be really helpful is um it's okay to have any thoughts and feelings except number one is accept mistakes um uncertainty uh whatever the mind is doing accept it surrender to it how about this

Starting point is 00:24:37 it's a very different idea it's okay it's like this and then in this moment of feeling like this what do I need what can I bring to mind I worked with a golfer the other week and he brought to mind it sounds kind of so I don't know his dog when he brought to mind his dog picture of his dog he relaxed I had a musician once that um brought to mind uh the fact that his mom loves him and I thought he was joking it was a group of like 50 musicians I was giving a talk to I'm like, what could you bring to mind to be soothing? My mom loves me. And I was like, ha, ha, ha.

Starting point is 00:25:10 He's like, no, actually, that would really work because my mom loves me. I'm like, good, you know? So what if it's like I'm flooded with thoughts and feelings. This is really bad. Oh, I can accept it. I surrender to it. I fiercely and intensely surrender to it. I bring to mind what my mom loves me.

Starting point is 00:25:27 Okay. And now let me visualize how I want to play the next phrase. I see myself playing the next phrase like this. Then do it. you know so it's like this like it's a process that I've used with tons of different performers accept and surrender it's okay it's like this think plan ahead what do you need to bring to mind to soothe yourself enough it's a self-compassion that I can tolerate this visualize what you need to the next thing you need to do it's like when the audition or not

Starting point is 00:25:57 who knows but I do know I need to step up and hold the violin like this I need to relax my body like this i need to breathe like that visualize that visualize the next step you need to take and it's very soothing instead of the big picture of what i have to do you know or the big regret of what went wrong right this is so great and it's so powerful and what i love about this there's many things i love about this but i love how you make us draw from our own experience and I find that we are so quick to try to find the solution outside of ourselves but making this reflection of what is something that I can associate with to feel this way rather than what does my teacher think I should focus on yeah I think it's so great and the thing

Starting point is 00:26:53 is you want to focus what your teacher wants to focus on but first you need to give yourself what you need and what is that and giving yourself what you need doesn't mean like the anxiety or the negative thoughts are going to go away no they might be with you so even if those thoughts and feelings are still clinging on what can i bring to mind that would be soothing enough that i could re-engage with my music yeah absolutely i know that for me the one thing i attach with lately is i play from a place of joy and love there you go renee you're done you need you do not need me that's all we need ultimately it is about joy and love it's training the heart and mind i literally had notes here toward the end of this talk you know what is the thing um

Starting point is 00:27:34 advice i'd want to give you know it's like um you can train your heart and mind to play and practice with love acceptance passion engagement gratitude you know you get there anyone anyone can get there but it's it's hard work but that's beautiful that's where you're at you know this makes me think too because you mentioned the the dog story I remember one time when I was a young kid and my dog was sick and I was really well prepared I had to play a performance and I was well prepared the way young kids are which is everything's by memory and it's been really well you know the rote memory is all there and I remember having one of those flow experiences in the performance where I was thinking about my dog and I was just playing

Starting point is 00:28:21 and feeling so comfortable and so when you're talking about you know going back and thinking of a time when you're performing with such ease and it's that detachment from i mean that's probably not a good story it's a beautiful story it's because what finish your thought it's that detachment from the judgment of others amen the attachment to the outcome how well will play right right right and it was just a great experience i mean yes of course i was well prepared but i was also just really in the moment but see that's beautiful that's like that combination of being well prepared and in the moment that's the magic juice like that's it you know and then i would say but but then what happens if people's minds are not in the moment

Starting point is 00:29:09 you know because there's judgment and fear and you know all that what do you do with that and you can't say to someone oh just let go of the judgment fear and get in the present moment because they don't because it's like there it's uh almost impossible but you can say hey that's why i say surrender to those thoughts and feelings and engage in the present moment bring it with you but get back in the moment yes yep and it will happen is slowly that love and joy will start to grow and the fear and judgment will start to dissolve yeah yeah yeah because those emotions exactly what you said we have access to them whenever we want but if we if we're conditioned to do that yeah right you can't you can't make them come but i think by choosing to accept

Starting point is 00:30:00 whatever's arising and choosing to engage then you then you invite them in you invite them back yes oh thank you for this this is so so helpful and valuable this is awesome no it's a great conversation it's wonderful to speak with someone who gets what i'm talking about too i know i've given talks like i've gone to think tanks and uh like maybe many years ago and i would you know the current way of thinking didn't align with us at that time you know it was like so radical because you're supposed to be confident you're supposed to believe in yourself, you're supposed to have positive thoughts. Well, that's nice. And when that happens, that's great. That's almost like an outcome. But you can't get there by forcing

Starting point is 00:30:39 yourself to do it that way. You get to that confidence and joy and in the moment and just the next note, you get there by accepting where you're at and working with where you're at, you know? Yes. This is great. Yeah. There's another thing I saw on your biography that I'm really curious about i hope that's okay if i bring it up that you practice reiki yes i'm a reiki master teacher yeah and um yes what's your question i'd love to hear a little bit more about this yeah and how it could be helpful yeah okay so reiki you know what is reiki it's um it's hands on healing um and reiki at the very simplest level uh is something that can be soothing and um for myself i got into reiki because it was i needed something that would be uh

Starting point is 00:31:35 it's like a physical act of self-compassion so it's a physical act of kindness to the body you know and so what's beautiful about reiki is that you can um offer reiki to yourself you know and so um in a very simple few hours of training you can learn how to um um and at the very least it helps uh soothe your body and helps you sleep better and so um reiki for me has become more like a personally um helpful to my own kind of poise and balance and well-being but it's also like an approach to living so here's like a basic reiki tenet that i bring to probably all the work i do you know um for today may i not be uh lost in fear for the future today may i not be lost in regret of the past

Starting point is 00:32:26 may i have right livelihood honor my elders and be grateful and you can imagine musicians if they could really live this like may i not be lost in fear of mistakes or winning a seat or not may i not be lost in regret of notes i might have missed or something i didn't do well may i have right livelihood may I honor my elders like be grateful for who's helped get me here and may I be grateful because you know gratitude is a powerful way of getting in the present moment gratitude is being able to you know you're accepting reality as it is and you're appreciative for something that's arising what a great way to get closer to love and uh joy more quickly so even if people listening today could think to themselves like you know what what is it about myself my life as a musician

Starting point is 00:33:15 today that I am grateful for just as it is what if it doesn't even change a bit but what up to this moment in time what could I be grateful for the skill I've developed this love this ability to communicate in this unique special way this ability to channel love and share it through this unification of my body in this instrument and connecting with other musicians like beautiful yes I love this so much and you know as we're talking I can reach my my mala beads right here that a dear friend made for me oh nice and that's my gratitude practice i just sit and i try to find 108 reasons to be grateful wow and then i feel more creative more um just happier more um energetic yeah and just beautiful 108 that's that's impressive

Starting point is 00:34:07 i used to teach positive psychology and i remember students i would say just be grateful and they look at me with confused faces like what can i be grateful for or not and i would you know things like if you can't think of anything just the fact that you're breathing yeah and that i think of us as all as miracles like what's the chance of each of us showed up on this planet like out of how many eggs and sperm you know your parents like you won the lottery like you know we're here we're all like one in a million here we are you know and how how lucky we are yeah we had this chance to be on this planet even with all the challenges that are here you know but if we can bring our minds and hearts to what we're not what we think we should be grateful for what we could be

Starting point is 00:34:46 authentically grateful for that's the key word right there it's authentic otherwise it's just it's just words it's nothing yeah i love that and it's like you said it's the big and small things i know for me whenever i let go of my gratitude practice i find it more difficult to feel grateful but if I'm if I'm here and I'm saying thank you for my coffee this morning my coffee and the hug from my son and you know yeah yeah there's so many you know so many little things all of those things absolutely Amy I feel like I could talk with you all day but I'd love this yeah thank you Renee awesome how about a round of rapid fire questions before okay I free you up Okay.

Starting point is 00:35:33 What doubts or resistance have you had to face on this journey? I think, you know, for me, it's been a journey of coming to a place of peace and ease and love. And, you know, I certainly started on the opposite end of that. And I think wondering, will it ever end? You know, will the anxiety and self-criticism and push ever end? And it does. And being on the other side of it, I'm so grateful. You know, when you wake up and you think, God, I was such an anxious person for so many decades, and now it's dissolved.

Starting point is 00:36:10 I've worked it through. I've learned how to accept whatever arises, fiercely. David and Goliath, just be with it. And miraculously watch it transmute and dissolve to the point where that anxiety is not there anymore, you know, but the doubt that it would ever leave. i can think of many people hearing this thinking feeling so you know optimistic hearing you say that there's a way out there's a way out but you have to have the willingness to uh feel it allow it to be there yeah what skills do you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to

Starting point is 00:36:56 learning to play their instruments no question learn how to deal with fears and mistakes that people have to be given it's um it's really interesting and almost there's no training for musicians or athletes you know to deal with that you know the training's more intense and long and earlier and more and yet no one's giving them skills to deal with it yeah it's a very powerful skill do you have a favorite book that you would recommend to our listeners you know gosh you could read my books my books are good but um you know uh it's interesting because it's like it depends where you are in the journey yourself you know there's like um you know i love eckhart tolle's work the power of now you know it's really helpful to me personally um

Starting point is 00:37:42 the peaceful warrior was it's an excellent book and that's a book i think almost anyone could enjoy yeah dan millman it's an older one but it's really good and while we're here i highly recommend your books as well do you want to tell us the titles i'm going to put links in the show okay well you know um i wrote um i've written a number of books and um the power of mindfulness is my most recent one and that's where i explain this ideas of mindfulness and self-compassion to help with performance i think that's a practically uh it's a good good one um living in a sweet spot is a good a good book that really brings together um i think the most important ideas of sports psychology and positive psychology

Starting point is 00:38:27 to help give ideas about how to get in that place of uh presence and engagement you know My other books are a little older, or then the other one was at the, was it? Gosh. Mindfuls and Performance. That was such an academic tome. Only if you're an academic would I recommend that one. But I will have links in the show notes for all of these. Absolutely. Awesome. what's the best advice that was given to you or i should say what is an advice that was given to you that you would like to pass on to the listeners you know um you know the idea that it's okay to feel any to have any thoughts and feelings arise uninvited thoughts and feelings and you can learn to train your heart and mind so you're not stuck there so it's okay to have these thoughts and

Starting point is 00:39:26 feelings but you're not stuck there you can learn how to um move from fear anxiety embarrassment dread to love acceptance passion engagement gratitude you know you can learn how to train yourself and i used to think like you know how you felt was authentic and it was just real that's just how it was and it it is authentic wherever you feel and think because it's a summation of how you've been conditioned up to this moment but the next breath the next moment you can learn to change that you're not stuck feeling and thinking however it's been you can shift it so yes it's been real for this moment and you're not stuck with it I love that and I really hope that the listeners are hearing that you always say the heart and mind because we often think that it's

Starting point is 00:40:12 a matter of training your mind but for me it's it's so wonderful that you keep saying the heart and mind because I feel like they really go together you know because it's like this like so if you are feel say upset about something uh it's important to pause and think like what are my beliefs that are my thoughts my thinking that leads me to feel like this is it like I'm only worthy if I am perfect oh wow that's what's doing it okay how can I shift how I think about this musical journey so it's not like that how can I and maybe if I shift how I think about it will shift how uh my heart responds it's very powerful amy you mentioned that you have a program coming up what are some of the fun projects you're working on and that the listeners could check out

Starting point is 00:41:06 yeah so um the book i wrote in 2018 it was based on the mindful meditation training for sport intervention and um i've been thinking for a while that i would uh make it make it so people have access to it. And so right now I'm in the process of developing that online program, which should be available the next few months. Yeah. I know I'm going to be checking it out for sure. In conclusion, how about a quick actionable tip that listeners could implement today in their musical lives? Okay, sure. Before they do their next practice, visualize them. Think back to a recent time you've had a great practice. It could be actually a long time ago. It doesn't matter a time when you really were playing the way you wanted to play.

Starting point is 00:41:51 Bring that to mind. Visualize that before you start to practice again, you know, to get yourself in the mindset like it could be like this. It's like kind of bringing to mind the target of how you want it to be. Yes. I love that. I will try it today. Awesome.

Starting point is 00:42:15 Well, you're lovely. thank you so much for the invitation and it's really been really cool to be on the show and have a chance to speak with you yes i i feel so inspired by our conversation and you know it's so wonderful to sit down and and hear your wonderful wisdom on these topics that are so important i'm so interested in and i'm so passionate about so thank you for bringing this incredible value to my listeners thank you and i take care all right Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this chat with Dr. Amy Balzell.

Starting point is 00:42:57 I walked away from this conversation feeling so excited. And as I said in the intro, Amy's work embodies so much of what Mind Over Finger is. And if what we talked about resonates with you, go to mindoverfinger.com and check out the Music Mastery Experience, my life-changing, highly personalized group coaching program. Over the course of three months, I take you through a massive transformation in your music making. We cover all of those things you heard about in today's episode, in addition to tangible, effective practicing techniques. And I give you a real process to reach peak performance for those

Starting point is 00:43:41 auditions that are coming back, those concerts that are coming back, and to truly enjoy the entire experience of making music. So if you have big dreams, big plans, and you're ready for more in your musical life, book a call today and let's make it happen. In the Music Mastery Experience, you can get exactly what you need to create your ideal music making experience whether it's winning an audition performing optimally time after time leveling up your career or simply find more meaning and enjoy the process find all the information and book your call at mindoverfinger.com slash mme as always i'll have all the information related to this episode in the show notes including how to find out more about amy her incredible work her amazing books and her online

Starting point is 00:44:40 program and how you can get in touch with her and work with her you can find the show notes via your podcast app or by visiting mindoverfinger.com slash podcast so that's it for today don't forget to check out the Joyful Practice Challenge, also at mindoverfinger.com. Thanks again for tuning in.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 093 Amy Baltzell: The Power of Mindfulness

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