The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 236 Master Your Mind – The Framework Musicians Need to Break Through

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, and this is episode 236. This is the eighth episode of your Reset and Rise Summer series. We're getting there. This kicks off the final part of our arc, clarity and momentum. In this episode, I introduce a powerful tool to help you understand your thoughts, emotions, and actions so you can finally make the kind of progress that sticks. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, where we dive into the world of mindful music making, peak performance, and crafting a purpose-driven life and career. I'm your host, violinist,

Starting point is 00:00:45 certified performance and life coach for musicians, and your guide to unlocking your full potential, Dr. René-Paul Gaultier. Hello there, and welcome back to your Reset and Rise summer series. I'm so glad you're here. This episode is part of a special 10-episode journey I created just for you this summer to help you reignite your spark, rethink your practice, and show up with more clarity, confidence, and joy. Each episode builds on the last, so if you're just joining us, feel free to hop back to episode 229 and catch up. The series follows a clear arc. We start with reigniting your joy and connection to music.

Starting point is 00:01:31 Then we move into mindset tools like alignment, patience, and self-compassion to bring more ease and clarity to your work. After that, we clear away hidden obstacles. And finally, we wrap up with powerful tools to help you manage your mind and build real momentum. And if you're ready to go even deeper, check out my course, Practicing for Peak Performance. It's your full blueprint for performance success. And when you join this summer, you're going to get my Performance Anxiety Solution course for free. All the details are at mindoverfinger.com and the link is in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:02:12 All right, ready to reset and rise? Let's dive in. Hi, everyone. I hope you're feeling wonderful as you're tuning in. Today, I have a very special episode for you and definitely one that's very meaningful for me. Throughout these past four and a half seasons, my guests and I have shared with you many strategies and tips and tricks, and we've covered a lot of the basics on how to practice, how to organize your practice, how to bring more joy and efficiency in your work, different ways to practice for performance, what a life in the classical music field looks like, and much more. And now, with all that background and with the new year around the corner, we're ready for the next phase on the

Starting point is 00:03:09 Mind Over Finger podcast. We're going to dive in and get to a much deeper level, and I could not be more excited for the months ahead. Today's episode is the first of three shows where I'm going to share with you the basic elements of the coaching tool that has brought so much clarity and transformation in my life, and that has helped my clients get so many wonderful results. It's a beautifully simple, elegant, and extremely powerful way for us to understand everything about our lives, why we feel the way we feel, why we do the things we do, and why we get the results we get. This tool works for everyone and everything, and you'll find that it can have a positive impact on the way you practice, how you perform, and of course, in the context of your everyday

Starting point is 00:04:00 life. In this episode, I'm going to share with you the fundamentals of this tool. Next week, I will show you how to use it to create different results in your life. And in episode 155, I will use this tool to unpack the root cause of how and why we get performance anxiety and show you how to turn things around. This incredible tool was created by my teacher, Brooke Castillo at the Life Coach School where I was certified. And that's the main tool we use for ourselves and our clients to observe our amazing brain. It's called the self-coaching model, but we often refer to it simply as the model. And by the way, if you want more information on Brooke Castillo, her work, the Life Coach School, if you want to catch her fantastic podcast, or you want to learn

Starting point is 00:04:47 more about the model, head over to thelifecoachschool.com. I'm going to put that link in the show notes for you. So the basic premise of the model is that your thoughts produce your feelings, your feelings fuel your actions, and your actions create your results. You might already feel familiar with some of those principles because the model is based on cognitive behavioral theory and it encompasses a lot of concepts presented by other teachers and thought leaders such as Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, and Martha Beck. And it's not surprising that all of those teachings would meet because they are universal truths that apply and work for all humans. But what the model does that is different is that it gives us a clear and effective process to examine our thoughts,

Starting point is 00:05:39 to explore our feelings, and to understand what's going on. Now, we don't use the model to judge ourselves. We use the model to understand and support ourselves better. It's a tool that allows us to meet ourselves where we are with compassion and curiosity. It shows us our mind in a simple and powerful way. And it's so reassuring to see how much sense we make, how everything we do makes so much sense. And the model is a tool that's going to help you reclaim power in your life. Let's get started. If it's possible for you and you're in a place where you can write, get a piece of paper and write down the left side of your paper the letters C, T, F, A, R, one on top of another. If you can't take notes right now, it's totally fine. I've prepared a

Starting point is 00:06:36 downloadable worksheet for you that you'll be able to find at mindoverfinger.com slash resources. So the first letter is C and it stands for circumstance. This is the foundation of the model. This is where we identify what the facts are with no opinions or hyperboles. Circumstances are neutral, factual, and measurable. One way that Brooke explains it is that circumstances can be proven in a court of law. Everybody can agree on them. Things that happen in your past are circumstances. Other people are also circumstances, but only the things they do or the things they say, not your interpretation of those things. Example of circumstances would be it's 75 degrees and sunny outside. The meeting starts at 8 p.m. The tuner shows my F sharp is

Starting point is 00:07:35 too sharp, or John said you came in late for this entrance. Notice how all of those things are factual. They can be measured or they happened in the past. Notice also in that last one, John said you came in late for this entrance. Those are the words he said, nothing more. How important this distinction is, is going to make a lot more sense as we get into this next line, which is the T line. T stands for thoughts. Thoughts are the sentences in our brain. It's the meaning our brain gives to the circumstances in our lives. And our brain offers these thoughts without us being really aware most of the time. They come from our conditioning, how we were brought up, our education, or simply out of habit. We think thoughts because we've always thought

Starting point is 00:08:27 them. And being able to understand the difference between thoughts and circumstances is where so much beautiful work happens and where so much clarity is unleashed. I'm going to give you some examples here. Let's say it's raining outside. What's factual and circumstantial here is that there is water falling from the sky. Whether rain is good or bad, well, that depends on what your thoughts about it are. But the fact that it's raining in itself is absolutely neutral. If you're a bride and it's your wedding day, you might have some negative thoughts about the rain. You might think it's a terrible weather. But if you're a farmer and it's been really dry lately and your crops and your animals are struggling, well, watching those droplets fall might be the best

Starting point is 00:09:15 thing you've seen all week. So to you, it's absolutely perfect weather. Let's get back to our friend John who said that you came in late for that entrance. The words he said are neutral until you have a thought about it. Maybe you suspect he's right and you're open to the discussion that will come out of this. But maybe you think he just has it in for you and then what's going to happen after that will be very different. Here's another example that relates to the musical field. Let's say you're rehearsing a piece that you've never played before with an orchestra. The tempo marking says 144, and that's what you practiced. But the conductor takes it way faster, let's say around 160. And you're having a really hard time keeping up. Your thoughts about this

Starting point is 00:10:02 could be that the conductor is a moron, it's way too fast, that they're not respecting the composer's wishes, etc. But for someone who's played the piece a million times and feels super comfortable with it. They might find that this is an exciting tempo and a fresh perspective on the piece, and that this conductor is not afraid to take risks. The fact that the piece is being played at 160 is completely neutral, it's neither fast nor slow, until a human has a thought about it. Now where this really comes to life is in the next line, the F line, which stands for feeling. Feeling in this context is the vibration that goes through your body when you think a thought. And that's the mind-blowing part about it. Those feelings, those emotions

Starting point is 00:10:55 are not coming from the circumstances. You're not feeling sad or happy or frustrated or excited because of what has happened in your life, because of what someone else did to you, or because of something they said to you. Those things are neutral until you have a thought about it. And it's that thought that's causing your feeling. And we know that this is true because if it weren't, human beings would agree on everything and share the same opinions all the time. But we don't because we have different thoughts about the circumstances in the world. Let's go back to that last example. The circumstance in that example is the tempo is marked as 144 and it's being played at 160. You might feel overwhelmed and stressed about that speed. Your colleague might be

Starting point is 00:11:52 completely excited. Your negative feeling and your colleague's positive feeling about the circumstance are not caused by the tempo itself. It's caused by your respective thoughts about it. Let me give you another example that I think we can all relate to. Imagine that you're practicing in a practice room in a music school or a music building of some sort. Things are going well, you feel amazing, sort of coming out easily, and you're really enjoying yourself. But all of a sudden, you think you hear a voice or a noise, and you start to believe that maybe there's someone outside listening. Maybe it's a colleague, maybe it's your teacher, and you start to think about how they might be standing there judging you. What happens then? Well, I don't know for you,

Starting point is 00:12:42 but for me, all of a sudden, things might feel completely different. If you think someone might be standing there listening in, and your predominant thought is, they're judging me, you might feel tense or nervous and let me use this example to get us into the a line the action line because feelings emotions fuel all our actions our reactions and our in action let's get back to our example and think about the things that you do when you're feeling tense because you're thinking that someone is there judging you maybe you become hyper aware your inner critic might come out raging. Your thoughts feel like they're spiraling out of control. You're no longer carefree. Your body stiffens up. Your breathing becomes shallow. Maybe you

Starting point is 00:13:32 stop practicing altogether. You know the drill, right? Does that sound familiar? Things took a turn for the worse, but hear me out. It's not because someone's standing outside. Actually, for all you know, there might be nobody there. You're feeling tense because you're thinking that there could be someone there and that they're probably judging you. Then from feeling tense, you acted and reacted. Does that make sense? Now we get to this final line, the R line or result line. Unsurprisingly, those actions, reactions, or inactions create the results you have in your life. In this specific case, the result might be that your practice ended up not being so great. And I hope that you can see the relationship between all the elements

Starting point is 00:14:22 of the model and how they interact to create that result for you. So again, the process is a neutral circumstance exists. Then we have a thought about that circumstance. That thought causes a feeling. That feeling drives an action, a reaction, or inaction. And those actions, reactions, or inactions create a result in our life. I'll offer one more example. I think that's one you might relate to as well. You had planned to practice, but you're procrastinating instead. I hear this one from so many of you. And then you use that to judge yourself and make things even worse. By investigating what's happening, you can get some clarity on why it's happening and invite more compassion and understanding in your life. Let's put that in a model. On a piece of paper,

Starting point is 00:15:20 write CTFAR vertically on the left side. In the A-line or action line, we have procrastinating. First thing we can do is to establish a clear circumstance. Let's say in this case, you had planned to practice a specific piece. So in the C-line, you would write scheduled practice to work on X piece. When you take the time to think about it, you realize that the emotion you're feeling is overwhelmed. So you would write that in the F line. The next thing you can do is figure out the thought that is causing you to feel overwhelmed. By investigating a little bit further, you realize that this feeling of overwhelm is taking over you because you were thinking there's too much to do. So you put that sentence in the t-line. There's too much

Starting point is 00:16:16 to do. Now the last thing left to do would be to examine the result this is creating for you. And you might notice that by procrastinating on practice, you're getting behind on your work and you are in fact creating even more work for yourself. When you look at this on paper, all of a sudden it makes so much sense that you would be procrastinating, right? It's a very human thing to do to want to avoid feeling overwhelmed. It's completely logical that when you plan to practice, but your thought is there's too much to do, you feel overwhelmed, which makes you procrastinate and that creates this result of your work not getting done and piling up. For me, seeing how my mind operates is extremely comforting. It allows me to see myself with

Starting point is 00:17:09 so much more compassion and to honor this human that's just operating in the world. But also seeing how every action I take is no longer something that is out of my control by investigating it. I find this incredibly empowering and exciting. Having this method to become the watcher of your thoughts will create beautiful awareness for you. And eventually, you can use this powerful tool to create anything you want in your life. And that's what I'll cover next week. For this week, let's focus on getting some awareness. Let's also understand what the difference is between circumstances and thoughts and how the five different elements of the model interact with each other. Here's what I would like you to try. Whenever there's an emotion you'd like

Starting point is 00:17:59 to investigate, or there's something that you're doing and you'd like to understand the motivation behind your action, or maybe there's a result you're getting that you're not satisfied with and you'd love to figure out what happened, or maybe there's a thought that keeps floating in your mind and you're curious to see what effect it's having on your life. Whenever any of those things are happening and you feel a desire to explore, build a model. What is first helpful to do is to grab a pen and paper or grab your free worksheet at mindoverfinger.com slash resources and take a minute or two to write what we call a thought download. Write anything that comes to your mind in relationship to this circumstance, thought, feeling, action, or result. Then write

Starting point is 00:18:49 CTFAR on the left side and fill all the lines. You can begin anywhere, any line in the model, and you can fill it in any order. You don't have to go top to bottom or bottom to top. But here are a few rules. Make sure to keep the C line 100% factual. Also, you can create as many models as you want from one circumstance, but explore only one thought or one feeling at a time. And more importantly, throughout this entire process, remember to be extremely self-compassionate. And here are some questions that can help you to build your model. What are the absolute facts of the circumstance? What am I thinking about this circumstance? How do I feel when I think that? What do I do when I feel this way? What results are my actions

Starting point is 00:19:48 creating? What am I thinking that's causing the emotion and feeling right now? What actions am I taking that create this results that I have? What feeling is triggering those actions? And so on and so forth. I think you can easily extrapolate from here. There are a few more stipulations and many more nuances that I'll be mentioning to you in upcoming episodes and in the months to come. But I think that's enough for now. It's definitely enough to have some fun and come up with some powerful insight. So this is what I have for you this week. I hope you have a great time exploring the self-coaching model. Much love going your way and And there you have it. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today.

Starting point is 00:20:44 If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you'd share with your friends and colleagues. Take a screenshot, post it on social media and tag me. I'm mind over finger everywhere. I always love hearing your favorite takeaways. And if you're ready to take your playing career to the next level. I'd love to invite you to join the Music Mastery Experience. This is my signature group coaching program where we're going to dive deep into building your confidence and mastery and set you up for success and fulfillment in your life and career. You can find all the details at mindoverfinger.com. While you're there, check out the free downloads and online courses available to support your journey even further.

Starting point is 00:21:31 And don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter so you never miss an update or a tool to help you thrive. Again, thank you for being here. Until next time, much love and à bientôt.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 236 Master Your Mind – The Framework Musicians Need to Break Through

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