The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 174 Mind Over Finger with Drs. Renée-Paule Gauthier & Heidi Kay Begay

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

In this episode, I share a conversation I had with the wonderful Dr. Heidi Kay Begay — flutist, educator, podcaster, course creator and creative consultant for musicians — on her podcast, Flute 360. In our discussion, Heidi and I get to the heart of what Mind Over Finger is all about — a mindful approach to making music & building a career and life that align with your deeper purpose.   For everything about Mind Over Finger and to work with me visit www.mindoverfinger.com   MORE ABOUT DR. HEIDI KAY BEGAY Website: https://heidikaybegay.com/  YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjCkpdjL-_ZFZvNq7Ktlyew  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flute360  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heidikaybegay/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/heidikaybegay  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidi-kay-begay-d-m-a-173a6b107/   DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT FROM THIS EPISODE HERE

You're listening to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 174. Welcome to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, optimal performance, and building a purposeful life and fulfilling career. I'm your host, violinist and certified performance and life coach for musicians, Dr. René-Paul Gauthier. Hello there. I hope you're feeling fantastic as we're slowly leaving summer and entering fall. It's great to be back after a few months of fun music making, of resting, spending time with loved ones, and of course, thinking of new directions for the podcast. Speaking of which, season six

of the Mind Over Thinker podcast officially launches on September 15th. And I have exciting things lined up for you. Impactful topics, interviews with amazing artists, and a brand new series called Backstage Pass, where I take you with me at work to meet the incredible musicians I get to make music with. But you know me, I can't wait until the official launch to get the party started. That's why I thought it would be a blast to kick things off with a special pre-season episode. So today, I'm sharing a conversation I had with the wonderful Heidi K. Begay on her podcast, Flute360. I'm so grateful Heidi lets me share this conversation with you, and I highly recommend that you take a moment to go check out all of the fantastic

content she creates over at HeidiKBegay.com. I think this episode serves as a perfect intro for those of you who are new here at the Mind Over Finger podcast, and it's a great catch-up for those of you who've been following along for a while. Heidi and I have a great time in this conversation. We get to the heart of what Mind Over Finger is all about, a mindful approach to making music and building a career in life that align with your deeper purpose. So enjoy today's conversation where I know you're going to find valuable insights and stay tuned for the first official episode of season six next week, where we're going to continue this journey together and dive even deeper into optimal performance, self-discovery and growth. Until then,

much love going your way and à bientôt hi how are you good good you look so beautiful i was gonna say the same thing to you oh thank you you're too kind how's your monday it's great it's a the first day in many days i haven't had to drive for performances or rehearsals. So therefore I'm getting a lot of work done. I just got out of a coaching session with my music master experience people. And, uh, yeah, that's amazing. How's yours? Good. It's yeah. I cannot believe it is February 20th. I have no idea where January and February went. I'm with you. Yeah. How does it go by so fast? Yeah. Well, that just means we're busy which is good but 2023 just has this different feel and flow and I'm all for it but at the same

time it feels like 90 days 60 days has been crunched down to like a week yeah oh my gosh I hear you that's how I feel too and it's so fun to finally connect in person yeah yeah and I'm so bummed that you know you and other colleagues and music friends of mine in December were texting me and saying where are you at Midwest where are you I'm like oh my goodness I didn't even think about going only because I had a prior engagement but so definitely next Midwest you and I will have to sit down have lunch connect because I've been such a fan of yours for so long and I was thinking this morning coming into this call, you're such an inspiration and I admire you so much that someday when I grow up, I want to be Dr. Renee. Oh, well, I feel the same about you. So.

Oh, thanks. Yeah. So let me go ahead and dive in and start picking your brain if you're cool with that. Yeah. Sounds great. Okay. Cause the other thing that got me super excited about today was not only us officially meeting, but you and I have been on each other's radars for quite some time. We have been e-friends and now we get to actually scale the relationship to a whole new level. And I'm so appreciative of your time and knowing that you are also a podcaster. I was like, I don't even have to prep her or anything. We can just go. Although you never know, right? Yeah, very true. So I guess that's a great place to start then. Let's talk about your violin background, your musical background, how you came to your podcast, Mind Over Finger, all of that, because I really want the listeners to get a sense of who you are and what you're doing. Sounds good. Well, yes, the origin story, I guess. Is that what you want?

Pretty much. Yeah. Sounds good. I'll try to make it really quick, but I think it's probably the same for you where I really see how everything I was even at my youngest weaves into what I do today. And if I remember, I'll tell you a quick anecdote later. So I started, my parents were music teachers. And so from a young age, I was encouraged to take music and my mom would practice with me. She was not a violinist. My dad was the violinist, but my mom was a pianist. So, you know, she would sit with me and I would practice mindfully for, from a young age, many hours every day. And I also had a really wonderful teacher. His name was Jean-François Rivet. I have a podcast interview with him. And he was really just so enthusiastic and loving and generous and was really able to generate a real enthusiasm, not just for music, but he would talk a lot about arts and reading great books and eating great food and traveling and the experiences. and really talking about, you know, how beautiful chords resonate together. Just so enthusiastic about music that it early on had a very deep dimension for me, I think. So I'll fast forward a few years. One thing that's also important is as my mom was a music teacher,

I had many opportunities to perform. So from a young age, I started to have these techniques of preparing for performance that I now teach and I realize how it's important. But when I finally started practicing on my own and got to college and had assignments and juries, I realized I had two practice modes. I had the one where I go in the practice room and I just clock in the time, right? Take the instrument out and just play through stuff. But then I would have the many times when I procrastinated to the last minute and had to get ready for a lesson or a competition or a jury. And that was very different, very, very different type of practice, very focused, goal oriented, very efficient. And I'm going to fast forward a few more years. I went to New World Symphony where I discovered mindfulness and yoga and running and all of these things.

And subsequently, again, fast forwarding many years, I started teaching and realized that a lot of my students didn't know how to practice. And as I continued to perform myself and take and win auditions and apply and win competitions, I wanted to figure out a way to teach that to my students. how do we practice in a way that's efficient when we have had the background that I had with people guiding me every step of the way, constantly showing me how to do it. And that's when I decided to get my doctorate so I could really research the topic and developed what I call the deep practice model, which is kind of a small part now of my whole, what I call the mind over finger peak performance philosophy. And so I did the research I got the degree and developed the the model which I keep I keep on refining and I just

have always loved I've always been kind of a nerd and loved conversations and was trying to reach more and more musicians about this and then I just one day as a big podcast fan thought you know maybe I could just have these conversations I love having with other musicians with a mic in front of us and record them and share them with my students. And then finally I thought, oh, you know, maybe, maybe the world. So I started the podcast and subsequently the coaching practice and sharing the, all of my tools and tricks and tips and systems in the, a bunch of coaching offerings that I have and it's been a wonderful road and you know funny I will share this anecdote quickly because I think you had shared a similar story on social media but when I was a kid I

either wanted to be a violinist or a journalist okay and I became a violinist but I remember a few years ago I was standing at the fish off competition I was doing a series of episodes from the site and I was standing there with my phone in my hand interviewing someone and then it really hit me how wow they both came together like in this moment as an expert musician I'm actively reporting you know so I'm kind of so I love how these two things mixed and yeah this is what you know Mind Over Finger is all about kind of how do we practice mindfully and perform optimally, but it's so much more than that. Cause I'm also a certified life coach and I really see how it's actually the human who practices. It's the human who performs and we need to go deep and

dive in. So this is in the big, big nutshell, my story. Oh my goodness. There are 10 million things that I want to dissect. So I have to be very careful, but I resonate so much with your story it sounds like you are the violin version of flute 360 and perhaps flute 360 in some ways is the flute version of mind over fingers because there's so many parallels and I did not know this but you and I had this in common Renee and it sounds like your research from your dissertation was the backbone of your podcast yes oh yeah and you too right was my dissertation that's right And it's insane how you're right, how much of your past and your influences from your mentors and your love for conversations. And when you said, I'm a nerd, I love deep conversations. I am a massive nerd when it comes to that, too. I think to a certain degree, we have to be or else we both wouldn't have like 200 plus episodes. yeah so there's that and the journalism aspect that is so cool and just to see how everything

comes and weaves together to form this beautiful tapestry for yourself and your platform in your life and how you serve your people it's it's mind-blowing so thank you for everything that you put out into our community um because man just producing one episode right take some thought and time and all of that jazz. So thank you. Oh, thank you. Are you kidding? Yeah. I feel the same way about you. Oh, thanks. So yeah, just seeing the trajectory and how your dissertation research evolved into then a podcast. Did you ever think that you would be a podcaster and it would transform in that way? No. Yeah. It's really funny how I call it following the breadcrumbs and you just sort of feel a pull somewhere and I remember exactly where I was what I was doing

when the thought just entered my mind maybe I should start my own podcast and right away you go no no no come on like who does this but it's sort of once it's entered your mind then you say but oh but maybe and what would it take and then we are so lucky to have google and we're so lucky to have people like jason heath who's sort of paved the way and he was so helpful with me when i first reached out and i thought i was telling him i was thinking of starting a podcast and he was just offering all of the information and resources and so the community is very powerful too in you know when you ask for help you can find it yeah jason is phenomenal and that is so cool that he started you off and helped you in the beginning stages

because he has like 800 plus episodes. And I just met him at the Texas Music Educator Associations Festival last week in San Antonio. And he was there with Eastman and I was blown away just by his presence and who he is on air is truly who he is in person, which I appreciate so much. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's fantastic. Yeah. So if anybody wants to listen, I don't know, was he on your podcast Mind Over Fingers by chance? Yes. I think he was episode two. Oh, wow. That is amazing. Yeah. He's been on Flute360 and I think he's episode 125. So there's that. So going back to podcasting, I do want to dive into like the themes and the things you talk about through your podcast, because I know so many Flute360ers can really

just benefit so much from the knowledge that you can share about our mindset in the practice room. But I want to put a pin in that. For podcasting, because you didn't see yourself as a podcaster initially, and here we are. And I'm curious, how much has your podcast opened new doors for you? Or what lessons has podcasting taught you that you can bring into the practice room? All of these questions, because I know that there are so many parallels in my world, and I would love to see how your Mind Over Fingers podcast has opened doors, has helped you practice, has helped you perform, or whatever the case may be. It's very interesting.

The answer that comes up for me when you ask this question is not so much the outside doors that it has opened. And it has opened some and I'm sure it will, I, you know, I can explore that avenue more of what outside doors that can open more for sure. But I think the biggest impact is in all the inner doors that it has opened. First in just going for it. I was in that coaching call this morning with some of my clients. And, you know, I was talking about how sometimes you just try to do something that you don't even know if you're capable of it seems impossible until it's not and a thought enters your mind to do a podcast and you don't know anything about it and then you show to yourself that you're resourceful enough to figure it out but starting a podcast I don't

know for you but what people don't realize is I'm actually a raging introvert and I'm usually you know quiet somewhere in the corner you know and so to put my voice out there it's not necessarily something that comes naturally for me so it did require a little bit of courage but I really do feel that this this desire to share my message was stronger than all of my fears so I think that for me it's these limitations that it allowed me to sort of shed over time and I gained a lot of confidence and I learned so much too I mean I learned from all of my guests I learned from all of my clients it's just been so wonderful oh my goodness Renee I'm over here like so giddy and you You can see my face just lining up and I'm nodding profusely because yes, yes, yes.

I resonate with everything you just said. The opposite is I am a raging extrovert. So putting a microphone in front of me is not a problem. My parents growing up, there are three kids growing up. They would be like, oh, this is our son, Eric. This is our daughter, Catherine. And this is our daughter, the talker. There was no, there was no Heidi. It was just the talker. So you put a microphone in front of me

and voila, you've got a podcast, but I love the gem of what you just said of opening the inner doors. I had never, I mean, yes, I call it kind of like layers to this onion peeling back the, like, but the same concept. Um, and I was talking with Dr. Lisa Garner Santa at TMEA and she was my flute mentor during my doctorate. And she was the one who lovingly said, start a podcast. And so here I am with my flute 360 booth with all of my merch and everything. And she's like, Heidi, oh my goodness. Did you think, you know, five years ago when we started this thing, you would have a booth at TMEA. And it's like, no, I had no idea, but I'm so glad I'm in this space. And we were talking about the layers of this onion and finding my confidence, finding my voice,

realizing I had something to say, even though I'm an extrovert, that inner critic sometimes can be really strong, who would want to listen to my ideas, who would want to tune into this show, you know, and so finding and unlocking those inner doors. For me, she and I said, in the midst of this conversation, she goes, you know what this podcast has done for you? It is literally unhiding Heidi. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. One thing that was very liberating for me with the podcast, well, also in addition to the fact that English is not my first language, but I started working with a coach and at the time I wasn't working with her, but something she said, Brooke Castillo at the Life Coach School. And she was talking about this concept of B minus work, which is very

foreign to us musicians where everything needs to be A plus. And she was talking about the fact that if you wait for everything to be A plus to put it out in the world, then it never gets out. And I think that this is what I needed to hear in order to release the podcast. Well, yes, it's not going to sound like an NPR show and I don't have, it's not my full-time job. So it's not going to win a Pulitzer Prize for greatest writing. But my thought was, if I can say one sentence in there, that's going to make one person think and just help them in one way this week, I will have done my job. So I feel like if it's B minus, it's good to go. It's good enough. take it out. And that was so freeing to give myself this permission of not having everything

perfect and not even expecting it to be perfect. And also I find, for me, it's such a creative outlet that is very different from music where every night you have to start over with the performance, but once a podcast is recorded and sent out, you know, it's there. And I can just say, okay, you want to hear about motivation, go listen to episode one, whatever. I forget the number, but, and I just find that so exciting. Yes. And the relationships you get to build and the people you get to meet, it's mind blowing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my goodness. You said so many other wonderful things that I could just break down for years. And the other thing that I want to piggyback off of what you said, the B minus work. What triggered in my mind, as you were

saying, that was the minimum viable product in business, the MVP. Yeah, I think it's a similar concept. Oh yeah. It sounds like it. And that was very freeing for me too. As a musician, it's like practice, repeat, do it again. And is it air quote good enough to even put out there? And then you overanalyze and then write, wash, rinse and repeat. And there's a lot of great things to that, But we always, I think classically trained musicians were under this impression, like, if it's not a plus plus work, like you said, do I even put it out there? And for business, business has taught me the MVP, business owners will put it out hot and messy, and they don't care what it looks like, to a certain degree, because they're more concerned, and they're more focused on the progress over perfection. yeah they want to make sure that their product or offering gets out there so it can start impacting their tribe their customers their people and then once it's out there then they can tweak along the way if they see you know weak links or whatever the case may be but that is so

opposite to how we are trained as musicians yeah so learning the MVP and being a business owner now and working alongside other business owners it's like oh this is so freeing and I get to experiment and I get to play with my flute and my sound and what would this performance look like and do you know what I mean it gave me permission to be a little messy yeah and what I love about this as you were talking I was thinking about the fact that what if we had this attitude granted we we always aim to to grow and and get better and refine our craft but as performers how much we hold ourselves back because we want that A plus from the very beginning you know one of the big thing I talk about is that the best way to become better at performing is by

performing there's only one way to do it and I'm sure you agree with me on this but so many people refuse to perform until it has reached not only a certain stage that they can reach, but an even higher stage than that, like their ideal. And therefore they don't put themselves out there and you gather less experience performing. And then when you hop on stage, then it's very daunting and you, you know, sometimes traumatize yourself from a bad experience performing because, but, but you had no experience performing so you know it's it's this cycle so what if we accepted always met ourselves where we are and decided that right we're always trying to play our best anyway so why not hop on stage in the stage that we're in and see what happens and

learn from that and then this is when we start to really learn how to perform and that shows us also how to practice. Anyway, I'm going on this big tangent now, but what you just said about that made me think that if we granted ourselves permission to apply this in performance, I think that first of all, we would start enjoying performing a lot better, but so many of us would get even better at performing from gathering so much experience and we would be less afraid of performing. Oh, 110%. Yes. And that thought reminded me or made me start thinking, here we are we're sharing ideas and we're going back and forth you know like carpenters they measure twice and cut once and I think you know it's great because you have to be strategic you have to plan

and then you cut because you don't want to cut the wrong spot on the wooden board or else you maybe you lose some material or whatever but I think musicians exactly what you're saying Renee is I think musicians get stuck in the measuring stage a little too much yeah we need to cut more And by cutting, like what you're saying, by cutting, you're going to learn from experience, throwing yourself out there and then that performing and maybe performance anxiety will then go down quite a bit, right? Because you're doing it all the time. You're learning from experience.

Yeah. There's speaking of layers to an onion. There are so many. We could go like back and forth all day. Yeah, we really could. Oh, shoot. Well, a good segue then is into the topics that you bring up through your podcast. These are the things that you bring up through your show, correct?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So going through 200 some episodes through your podcast, I'm curious, what are the biggest hurdles that musicians face in the practice room or on stage? Or is it, do you notice like in these conversations, people are having a really hard time with imposter syndrome inner critic perfectionism what's the topic that seems to be coming up quite a bit through your content yes all of the above got it fair all of the above

one of the most interesting part of my journey for myself was what led me to get the life coaching certification from understanding powerfully how when i was sitting with my clients as a performance coach, I was talking to a human being and I quickly realized that we needed to go deeper. The performance anxiety, you know, all of this, we can throw tips and systems at it all day, but it's the underlying problems that keep the foundation shaky. So I really see things now, I have really understood kind of the three pillars of my systems or more of the, I would say the three corners of a triangle corner is, do you say corners for triangles in English? Yes. Okay. Okay. I think that sounds good. I just, I had a moment of hesitation here

for a moment, for a second, but I, I see it as we have the, and I will answer to your question, your question. That's the thing is I'm an introvert, but if you give me a microphone, I can speak all day. Perfect. I wouldn't want it any other way. So I'll keep it brief, but I see it as preparation, conditioning, and mind management. And all three are so deeply interconnected that sometimes it's hard to know where one end and the other begins because they always kind of happen at the same time. We can completely condition ourselves while we're practicing and on managing our minds so we can traumatize ourselves in the practice room. And so this mind management aspect is so important because when we have awareness about what we're thinking and how we're feeling

and we have this ability to gain clarity from this and process in the very healthy way our feelings things and, you know, manage our mind, then we start to practice differently. We start to condition differently. And then this is really how we can change how we feel, not only on stage, I would say, but about our whole performance experience. I would say right now at the age that I'm at, I enjoy performing and playing the violin more than ever because of this aspect. it's giving me a lot of perspective on what I get out of playing and what it means to me and I think that it was really crucial because I feel also like a lot of people are suffering from this infancy the I don't I don't know in English but the disillusion the you know the music world can

be very harsh and you're caught with the obligations of feeding your family and you know putting gas in your car and that gets heavy very quickly so it's easy to lose track of what is so wonderful about music so performance anxiety imposter syndrome all of this adds to the mix and it's easy to become burned out and you know it can lead to to depression even in some cases so when we can take a step back and really start to go a little bit deeper it really can transform the whole experience. Oh, completely. I love all of that. That is so wonderful. And again, you have the wheels in my mind turning very similar. That's why I'm saying like mind over fingers and 360, it's like violin flute correlation because like my three pillars,

similar thing of a circle, everything's connected. And what you had said earlier, like the violin or the flute that's that's the secondary instrument the first instrument is renee the first instrument is heidi and how can we unpack speaking of unhiding heidi or unhiding jane or joe what can we unpack so that way that instrument can shine and your voice can be amplified so you know that you have a voice and you can go to the stage or the audition with confidence and a lot of that soul searching and that's why i'm so appreciative and blessed because my podcast it has unlocked a lot of my own performance anxiety because it's made me realize oh my goodness like we put the renees up on pedestals because we see you larger than life and we're like oh my gosh i can never

talk to a renee but when you bring a renee into your show and you have this conversation you're like oh she's another human being you know and very similar to what we do on stage like i'm playing with the who's who in the flute world. I can't do that. And then you realize, yeah, I can because I have these conversations with the Renee's and the Elizabeth Rose and the Jason Heath's. I'm having these conversations. Well, what are you doing on stage? You're having a conversation with your peers and your colleagues. And then your listeners, that's your audience. So whether it's earbuds audience through the content or the audience members in the concert hall, you're sharing a story. And so like knowing how to shape that story with your vocal voice, like the, the articulated voice transcends beautifully into the violin voice or the foot voice.

so there's so much that you said about you know finding who you are and knowing who you are and having that confidence in order to portray that then the music making and everything just flows out of the person it's it's that's how I interpreted what you said yeah beautifully put oh thanks yeah and you're right it it does go very deep you know and and where is that line or that line. And there really isn't, it kind of cross intersects. There's a lot of intersection there and overflow. Um, yeah, no, that's amazing. So you mentioned at the top of the hour, you had gotten off of a coaching call. So I'm curious what programs are out there through your services? How do you help people? Um, how can people work with you? I'm curious.

Yeah, I have a variety of programs out there. I have an online course called Practicing for a Peak Performance, which is available, you know, as evergreen and it's my entire deep practice model system in there and how to condition for performance efficiently and some of the mindsets that we can use to, you know, manage our mind. and um yeah it's i mean i think i think it's great i i love it it's available there at mindoverfinger.com and then i have my my big program which is the music mastery experience and the doors are actually going to open very soon because we start over every june and i say we start over because i realized that i was so in love with my participants it was i'd never wanted to let them go so once you're done you're in forever so basically each year I welcome a new cohort of no more than 20 new participants but the the former participants are still involved are still there attending the coachings and the trainings and it's just a beautiful community and

this is I think of it a little bit as the the Rolls Royce of coaching programs for musicians because we really do performance coaching career coaching and life coaching all in one and it's just such a beautiful community so i cover everything from the the deep practice model to all of the conditioning exercise and systems that i use with clients but then we also go deep into the the life coaching aspect of things and so that's coming up again soon and i have a new workshop that's coming up soon. The first week of April, that's called the Performance Anxiety Solution, brand new workshop coming up. So I'll have more information on that during the month of March. And that's going to be a smaller offering. And, and then also I do one-on-one

coaching with people who reach out through my website. Oh, cool. And your website is mindoverfinger.com? Yes. Okay. Just want to make sure. No, that's amazing. Congratulations on all of those beautiful offerings from one business woman to another, like developing it, thinking of the curriculum, putting it out there. Kudos to you because it takes a lot of time and energy. Yes, it does. Encourage. Right? Yeah. Putting your thoughts out there and saying, you know hey I'm inviting you to enroll I'm inviting you to work with me it does take courage yes yeah it's like asking someone out on the date yeah and then eventually maybe proposing if it goes through the product suite a little bit

deeper yeah yeah going further into the relationship oh yeah and it's such a beautiful thing. I was talking about it in the coaching session this morning about how from getting coaching myself, realizing I will never not have a coach. It makes such a profound difference in my life all the time. And my new favorite motto is, you know, the, we keep getting coaching because you can't read the label from inside the bottle. And that's so often the case for me where I'll be in the coaching session with one of my coaches and I'll start laughing because I, you know, I'll tell him, I teach that stuff. Like this is exactly, you're serving me what I give my clients. And, but that's because we are so emotionally involved in our own lives that we often lack

the perspective that others might have. And a coach opens up a safe space for you to brainstorm and express your fears in the way that is not always possible with peers or spouses or friends and I just I feel that I hope that I am this safe space for my clients but I do strongly believe in the power of coaching it's been so transformative in my life because yes you have this one person who's there to show you your mind in a loving and supportive way, who believes in you, who, you know, how often has a coach with just a question like, huh, why not? What would happen if you tried? And it makes you second, you know, for a second, it makes you doubt that you can't do something. And then you take chances. I just find that this coaching relationship

is so beautiful and very precious for me. The coaching I receive is very precious, but I also get so much out of my clients and what I learned in these profound connection that we develop. Oh, that's phenomenal. So I'm curious, because you said that you, in these different seasons of your life, you seek out coaching. Are you taking a coaching program right now? I'm always in the coaching program. Yeah. Reason I ask is because I don't want to put you on the spot, but I want to dive in a little deeper with you. And if you're okay with being vulnerable with me, past or present, was there a coaching session within a particular season, whether in the past or right now that there's like a hurdle that you were trying to

overcome that you don't mind sharing where a coach really brought new light to to the problem the reason why i asked this is because again sometimes when i don't know sometimes i feel like 360 listeners will be like oh well you've got to figure it out you've got an album art cover and 360 looks bigger than life up in itunes and things like that and so like i know behind the scenes you know, from one female musician content creator to another, it's not always the glitz and the glam. It's not always like packaged beautifully. There's a lot of, um, not turmoil, but there's a lot of learning and growing behind the scenes. Right. And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to humanize what we do to the surface and say like, look, we don't all have

figure it out you know this is what I'm going through right now so full circle back to the question if there's something that you don't mind sharing that you are um growing in a specific area and a coach is helping you guide you through this issue I would love it if you wouldn't mind sharing something like that yes I would even add agony okay like when you said there's a lot of growth and learning and agony um yes i can think in particular i mean there's so many i would say core memory moments but i remember one of my first call with the wonderful jennifer rosenfeld who was my coach for a period and it was a simple question i i was discussing my thoughts about quitting a position that I have. And I think that I'm going to be very vulnerable and honest here.

Sometimes as musicians, it's very, or, you know, I shouldn't say just musicians. I think it's the same for all humans. As humans, sometimes it's very difficult to let go of something because there's this unknown of what if these other things don't work out, right? It's hard to give up something that we a given to go to the unknown and but other times also we were so we're sort of entrenched in these mentalities and we were just in this call and I said well but you know I can't quit and she said huh really she just said that it was just this word that all of a sudden, I can't explain what it was, but in this war, and it wasn't all in that specific moment, but it stayed with me that day and the following day. And someone that just raised the question

to something that I thought was just a fact given. Yes. Made me realize, huh, wow. And it sort of started to it was the first thread in the very big ball that I just kept on pulling until the whole ball came unraveled of starting to it's that saying I have on the board in my kitchen don't believe everything you think okay yes and you know that thing made me think and I end up I ended up quitting that very specific job after reflecting on that for a long time but that was kind of the the beginning of a really big journey it had already started with a couple coaches before that got me sort of going but then I just realized how much that person who as I said holds that safe space for you lovingly and coaching is like everything else in life if you don't feel

comfortable if it doesn't work for you you just must leave the the relationship so I think it's very important to to feel very safe so it's um kind of a sacred space where you must feel comfortable having said that your coach might often encourage you to step outside of your comfort zone yeah so that's the agony part um but you know that they have your back you know that they believe in you oftentimes coaches also wear the hat of you know business consultants so they can offer advice and guidance on how to do certain things in my case i'm a performance coach so yes i will also tell you well try this practicing technique or or things like this um but i hope i'm answering your question somewhere in there completely but i think coaching it's sometimes what happens

in the session. And then it's how what was said in the session stays with you. I will always remember also two more instances where I was sitting in the group coaching session with another coach and with Brooke Cascio. And at some point she said, someone said, I don't know. And she said, oh, I don't know. That's a lie. I don't know is a lie that you tell yourself to stay comfortable and stuck and then that just hit me I think it kind of just fit with whatever was happening in my life that day and I realized it's so true like how often do I tell myself I don't know just to escape something not face something you know avoid something I mean sometimes we do not know like if you ask me what is the precise temperature outside right now I don't know

what it is. So yes, I can, but I can, I can check somewhere and figure it out. But there are so many times we give our power away in our lives and we say, oh, I don't know. I don't know how to solve this problem. But if we just sat with ourselves for a minute and said, but if I did, what could I try? Or if I can't mess it up, what would I try? So that really resonated with me. And yeah, I mean, that's enough examples for now. Oh my goodness, Renee. I think you have a camera in my house and you're listening into everything that's going on at the big A house. And there, there may be a camera inside of my head right now because, oh my goodness, the, the two lessons, literally, if I'm being

very vulnerable and thank you for being so honest and willing to share that, I appreciate that. And to piggyback off of that, the two nuggets that you just shared and lessons that you learned through coaching is what I'm literally going through right now. Right now. That's why I said you've got a camera because there's no other way. but I think, you know, the stars align where there's these conversations. We seek out these conversations, right? And then you're, you're seeking out these answers and these, these friendships and conversations and these nuggets that are dropped in come at the perfect timing and at the right timing for what you need to hear in that season. And what you just said, I needed to hear. And just as a reminder too, for me, like, Oh, other people go through this. I, I'm not alone with having these, these thoughts and feelings and, and crossing this

bridge, um, within my own life, you know, like people before me and people after me will walk a similar path to a certain degree. And the nugget that you had shared about, you do know what to do. Oh my goodness. Like, you know, there's, I'm at a crossroads right now in deciding what to do specifically with 360 and different offerings and helping, you know, more flutists, more musicians and getting the business to scale, you know, and I was talking with my husband about this and he's just like, well, what would you do? And my first answer, I kid you not was, I don't, I don't know.

And he looked at me, he's like, you know what to do that, that literally, is that an excuse? You know? And so here we're talking about coaching and you're right. Coaching and spouses and friends are completely different. And I'm very blessed to have a spouse who will go there with me and not sugarcoat it. I'm very blessed for him to be like calling me out on my, my bluff and, um, really helping me see what, what is true, but he was right. Like by him saying like, are, are you saying that as an excuse? Are you saying that to, um, because you know what to do because you really do know what to do. You know, it's going to be not easy at first. It's going to be challenging. It's going to challenge you. So you perhaps are avoiding it because it's going

to ask you to grow. And change is hard sometimes, right? Because of what you said earlier, the letting go, going and, and holding onto something that you do know that is, is real. It's there. it's whatever, you know, you get it, but then letting go of something that is consistently there for the unknown. Yeah. That's hard because we're human. We like to be in our little comfort box and stepping outside is asking us to be challenged, to grow, to fight for something that you don't necessarily how it's all going to pan out, you know, and all these things. And so thank you for sharing that because I resonate so much with those lessons that you have learned.

And I probably, and I know I did to a certain degree, I needed to hear those things for myself within this particular season. And I need to hear them constantly as well. And that's why I get coaching all the time. And you know, it's the same with violin lessons. Okay. I still, if I, if I were to take an audition in a few months, first thing I would hire a performance coach and I would sign up for, you know, I would ask someone to give me lessons and I would play

for many people. There's, there's something about getting this outside eye on, on yourself is so it's for me, it's not just coaching. It's also where is it that I can get the support or working out at the gym for example yeah that I should do for sure these days should get that that coach I fired my coach a few months ago no I mean fire is a strong word I just I couldn't I couldn't I could not continue anymore on the schedule we had so I was like oh I need to pause for I need to pause for a little bit and then you know you see the um um dedication to keep going goes really quickly when you don't have that person waiting for you. Yeah. Right. It's huge for accountability. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And a lot of times when

I think about investing in a program or a coaching call or anything like that, sometimes like family members or friends will be like, how can you afford that? And my response always will be, how can I afford not to, I can't afford not to, because that means time, you know, and my energy, like if I'm going in one direction towards my goals, but I know like a coach could really help see things clearly, like what you said earlier at the top of the conversation, they may be able to see things more clearly where my emotions aren't tied up in it. And they can give me a perspective of like, that's great that you're headed that way, but let's just kind of pivot two three degrees let's do this it's it could be a complete um a completely different result

do you know what i mean or absolutely that much closer towards my end goal so i can't not not invest yeah because it's time saving it is time saving absolutely yeah and that's what i tell also college students there are so many more resources at their disposal than they realize and take advantage of I remember when I was doing my doctorate I had a toddler and a newborn I started my doctorate I think it was like two weeks after my daughter was born my youngest and I wasn't enrolled in some like pretty advanced you know contemporary music analysis class and I was like I don't have time to waste so I went to every office I office hour I could with the TA and I was often the only one showing up and that hour with him was saving me just so much time at home

it was it made a huge difference in how much time I saved in my success in that class yeah yeah I don't have time to waste like let's let's get right to it yeah so I would say if you're in college look at the resources that you have at your disposal and take advantage of it you know counseling also um counseling can be very powerful if that's needed because let's remember coaching is not the same as therapy so that's also another thing that can be really helpful for people who need it that's a good reminder yeah that's amazing so we have talked about many different topics and i don't want to like pull the rug out from underneath you and be like okay renee and bye you'd be like whoa whoa whoa so because we have covered a lot is there anything that you want to

leave the listener with is there anything that's on your heart that you want to share to wrap up this conversation with a nice bow let me try to think of something I'll try to come up with the deepest most life-transforming thing now the pressure's on I can't let me see what comes up I think that one of the things that can be the most important in our lives and that I talk a lot about with my clients and is a big part of the deep practice model is that concept of self-compassion. And I know it's a big thing and everybody talks about, you know, self-nurturing and all of this, but it's important to understand that self-compassion is actually, you know, speaking of time saver, it is a real time saver,

But it's at the essence of us functioning at our best all the time, because whenever we harbor a lot of negative feelings about ourselves, we bring that in everything that we do. And it's very difficult to sustain anything long term, any resolution that you have or take any project to fruition when you harbor a lot of negative judgment. So in my mind, self-compassion is not self-care in the sense that we don't hold ourselves to high standards or that whenever we don't feel like practicing, we grant ourselves permission to take a hot bath, things like this. That's not what I'm talking about because true self-compassion really serves you. So sometimes I think some people take self-care a little too far in the sense that they use that terminology, that language to avoid things that would be beneficial for them and still harbor negative self-judgment. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I hope that makes sense what I'm saying, but so to really pay attention to the language that we use with ourselves, the words that we say to ourselves, how we treat ourselves, and then to, to have real clarity as to what it is that we want in life, but also who we want to be.

Okay. And then through genuine self-support and self-respect, providing that for ourselves so how can we create this but really with a mind that is managed and a lot of objectivity and and self-compassion so for me self-compassion is really a way to self-respect and self-support okay um so that's a big one for me okay oh i love that oh my goodness I received my coaching tip for the day right there. No, the 360ers are going to eat that up. Thank you so much. That was such a beautiful gem.

Thank you. Yeah. Where can people find you on social media as we are wrapping this up? Everything is at mindoverfinger.com. So yeah, everything should be there if they hop over and hope they catch the podcast as well. Yeah.

Oh, for sure. Subscribe, you guys. the the show is phenomenal like literally I have been wanting to be in communication and in relationship with Renee for so long because of her show and just like pulling her and be like I want you in my orbit I want you in my orbit oh yeah same here I I love your show I love what you're doing for the community and you're really a bright presence in our podcasting world and our music world. Oh, thank you, Renee. Oh my goodness. You have made my entire year. So I'm good. You're such a blessing and I will let you enjoy the rest of your Monday and you and I will touch

base in a couple of days. I know. I can't wait to have you on the podcast. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks, Heidi. Thank you.