Musical Meditation: Create-in-the-Crack Hacks

This week on the podcast, a musical meditation to help you take the time you have to create with joy. Merideth walks you through three coaching questions and offers music to deepen your reflection. Grab your journal and your earbuds and get ready to be mindful. 

Self-Coaching Questions: 

  1. How much creative time is enough? Name an expectation for what, in an ideal world, you’d like to accomplish each week. What would you need to do to feel ready, productive, and creatively satisfied? Imagine a completely wide-open schedule as you do.

  2. Our lives are full. Take stock of where your days go, witness your schedule without judgment or with any intent to change it, yet.

  3. Brainstorm a few new cracks in the schedule where you can make something you care about or relish in the creative choices you already have.  What other creative things can you do that would not require you to be standing in front of a desk or an instrument? How can you take the time that you have today and be gentle with yourself as you work to believe that it is enough?

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Creative Lies: "It's All or Nothing."

Merideth debunks a common creative conundrum this week: “it’s all or nothing.” She shares what she is learning, creating in the cracks during her own life stage, plus thoughts from listeners from all creative disciplines and experience levels. Listen for some truths to replace the all-or-nothing thinking and get inspired!

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Musical Meditation: Tough Skin, Tender Heart

Self-Coaching Questions:

  1. Consider the big and small avenues in your life for rejection and reflect on what boundaries you may need to set.

  2. What painful rejection are you still holding on to after all this time? What painful words do you need to let go of, helpful or not? As you listen, imagine setting the rejection down and walking away. 

  3. What ritual might you use to tell a story of your creative work that uplifts you and helps you feel resilient and strong?

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Tough and Tender: Bouncing Back from Rejection

This week on the podcast, Merideth shares what professional musician life and pending published authorship are teaching her about rejection. Late author Rachel Held Evans was said to have had a Post-it above her writing desk that said, "Tough skin, tender heart." Merideth offers 3 ways to be tough and tender, to find joy in the process of bravely living into your creative calling. 

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Musical Meditation: Facing Creative Fears

This week on the podcast, some coaching questions and beautiful music for your earbuds. Explore these questions and reflect in your journal or with a friend as you listen:

  1. Reflect on how you want to grow. Imagine yourself being the person you dream of being. What is it like to be that person in your imagination?

  2. What do you need to practice? How can you break down your specific fear into smaller and smaller pieces that you can work through in your time? 

  3. In the face of fear, how can you love yourself well? What do you want your inner artist-child to know? What concrete things can you do to love yourself more today, this minute?

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Bonus: Finishing with Grace—Curtain Call Q's IRL + Musical Meditation

This week on the podcast, a bonus coaching conversation + musical meditation with harpist, Grace Browning of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Grace and Merideth walk through the  Curtain Call Questions from last week's episode and discuss how enjoying the process over the product makes for a more joyful creative life. Grace and flutist Rebecca Gilbert, accompanied by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, serenade us with Mozart's only piece for harp. 

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Curtain Call: How to Finish with Joy

This week on the podcast, Merideth returns with what she’s been learning while attempting to finish a manuscript. She’ll offer you a set of “Curtain Call Questions” to help you celebrate, grieve, and otherwise process all that needs to be felt when creative projects end.

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Anxiety and Depression are no joke:

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Artists: We have mental health resources compiled just for you here. You’re not alone.

The Artist's Oath Series: No. 6, David Westerlund

In our final episode of this round of The Artist's Oath Interview Series, Merideth chats with improvisor, facilitator, and leadership coach David Westerlund.

David delights in listening to the aspirations of leaders and helping them unlock hidden resources by facilitating meaningful engagement. This unleashes innovation and leads to resilient, supportive, joyful, and agile workplace cultures that allow organizations to have greater momentum and impact toward their mission. His work as a consultant, designer/facilitator, and coach is informed by the philosophy and practice of Liberating Structures and Applied Improvisation, both of which remind us that there is a lot of wisdom in the room and amplify our ability to tap into that and experience collective synergy.

He believes that in order to solve the complex problems we are facing, we must be collaborative and intentionally develop skills of presence, agility, relating, collaboration, and creativity.

David reads his inspiring Oath and encourages you to be present and discover joy. 

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The Artist's Oath Series: No. 5, Karen Rege

In the penultimate installment of our interview series, Merideth chats with jazz pianist and photographer Karen Rege. Merideth and Karen discuss academia, perfectionism, and everything Karen’s been learning riding the river of creative flow. She’ll share an inspiring Artist’s Oath and reveal an amazing not-to-be-missed summer opportunity for artists of all disciplines and experience levels.

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The Artist's Oath Series: No. 4, David James

This week, Merideth chats with upright and electric bassist, author, and software engineer, David James. As a multi-genre freelance musician around the Colorado Front Range, David spends most of his time performing in musical theater productions. Between sitting in small, dark orchestra pits with too many people and instruments, David resides in Broomfield, CO, with his wife, two kids, and entirely too many pets.

In this episode, David reads his Artist’s Oath and shares his story of the intentional decision to seek gigs again after some time off the instrument. He’ll inspire you to ask the right questions before you say yes to a gig and share what he is learning from viewing his creative life through a secular lens.

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The Artist's Oath Series: No. 3, Joshua Long

This week, Merideth chats with a coaching client, musician Joshua Long. Josh is a songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist with a passion for creating music that moves the soul and inspires change. With almost 20 years in the industry, he has honed his skills in a variety of genres, ranging from hip-hop, soul, pop, and contemporary Christian & gospel music. Josh is also a dedicated faith-based climate activist.

In this episode, Joshua reads his Artist’s Oath and shares the journey of reconciling his multiple passions to find his true calling as an artist.

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The Artist's Oath Series: No. 2, Sara McMahon

This week on the podcast, Merideth chats with Sara McMahon. Sara is a classically trained actress with tendencies to fly by the seat of her pants.  She is an improv instructor and performer who teaches others how to enhance listening skills, playfulness, empathy, connectedness, and liberation from fear of failure.  She performs and teaches at Unexpected Productions in Seattle and is an emerging papercut artist.

Sara shares her Artist Oath and reminds us to love the scene we’re in.

You can view her work on Instagram @saramacpapercuts and her website: www.saradelighted.com

Register for the Artist’s Oath Workshop to write your own.

Podcast Transcripts

The Artist's Oath Series, No. 1

This week on the podcast, we begin a new series featuring the topic of one of our most downloaded episodes from Season 2: The Artist’s Oath.

What is your relationship like with your creative impulse? How do you feel when you show up to the blinking cursor, the studio, and the rehearsal? Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to change the patterns in your mindset, the inner chatter, the lens through which you see your creative self and your work?

Join us this March to explore how crafting your Artist’s Oath can bring more joy to your creative life and hear from listeners from the Artists for Joy community.

Support the work of Artists for Joy

Register for The Artist’s Oath Workshop, April 21-22

Listen to this when you need courage

Self-Coaching Questions:

1. Name your "why." What do you most dream of doing? What do you want your life to be like? How can your greatest gifts meet one of the world's greatest needs? 

2. What is your current creative routine like now? Are you able to find a rhythm of consistent small acts of creative devotion? What obstacles are getting in the way of you practicing your art form with joyful consistency, so you can feel that net of safety under you as you leap?

3. What do you believe to be true about the nature of creative work? If the metaphor of comparing it to a game isn’t helpful for you, what metaphor is? If you return to those questions around your "why," do you believe that reaching your goals and living your dreams is possible? If you don’t believe that today, what roadblocks stand in your way? 

Musician with original or public domain music? Email merideth@luminaarts.org

Courage

How do we cultivate more courage? Why is it an essential attribute for the artist? How do we become more assertive and brave in the face of hard things? Merideth shares one of the moments of her career as an oboist that required some significant courage, plus inspiring results of a listener poll. Listen to learn three concrete ways to be more creatively courageous.

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Podcast transcript

 

Listen to this when you feel blocked

Self-coaching questions to work with your resistance:

  1. When you look at the distance between who you are today and your dreams or goals, what would it take to get you where you want to go? What stands in your way? Write down a few goals and the resistance that shows up when you take steps in that direction.

  2. Take one or two of the obstacles you are experiencing as resistance, lift them up, and look under them with curiosity. What feelings, fears, or resentments do you find there?

  3. How are you benefiting from staying blocked? (That question is inspired by Julia Cameron). How are your blocks serving you? How does the resistance benefit you?

Podcast Transcripts

Resonance & Resistance

This week on the podcast, the second of our three-part words of the year series: resonance & resistance. Merideth explores an exciting reason why resonance is a word of the year, plus she’ll offer some concrete takeaways for how to find your voice and get unstuck. 

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Podcast transcript