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Hello there. Merideth Hite Estevez, your host of artists for joy podcast here today. I have the last little bonus content before we dive into season three. Next week. It is a talk that I gave recently for a retreat at a local fine arts department at a university here in Michigan. I know so many of you who listen are arts educators or arts learners.

And I thought it would be fun to share this interactive talk with all of you here on the podcast. Maybe you're starting school next week. Maybe you started weeks ago. Maybe you have sworn against stepping foot in another institution of education of any kind for all time in eternity, either way. I think there is something here for everyone, including three tips for how to stay joy.

If you have listened to this podcast since the beginning, or followed me for some time, you will see that some of this content I have said before, but never in the same talk and never sort of succinctly based around education. So I hope that it'll resonate. Even if you may have heard it before I share my story of finding joy after Julliard, finding my way back to loving music again, after intense burnout and education was a huge part of coming in and out of that place.

And so I hope it resonates with you. One last thing, like all of the talks that I give these days, this chat was pretty interactive. So there will be times here on the audio where you will be asked questions, asked to close your eyes and reflect on something and feel free to pause. If you want to think deeply about those prompts or swipe up, and you can read some of them in the show notes.

I wanna start off with a little exercise for. Close your eyes and think of someone from your past present and future that played a role in your education. First, think of someone from your past, someone who may have recently graduated, if you're a teacher or someone that taught you something meaningful from your past.

Next think of someone from the present who is arriving new at your doorstep this week, excited to be mentored, excited to grow someone who is teaching you something now. And lastly, the future dream about a future student or teacher.

I wanted to ask you to think about those people, because I don't want anything to come before this, perhaps obvious fact that education is really about people. The people we teach the people who teach us the role that we play in their lives. I'll tell you more about my story in a moment, but I taught in higher ed for a number of years as an applied OBO instructor, even had a brief foray into teaching music theory and ear training.

And I left the classroom officially about a year and a half ago. And as I did that, I was reflecting on the role that arts educators play in the lives of people. It's really like nothing else. In my opinion, for example, when you compare the one on one FaceTime that arts educators get with their students each week, compare that to a professor of a large chemistry class.

For example, the arts educator often has a much bigger impact. Then the chemistry teacher might because between a private lesson, a mentoring session, a studio class, All the hours of rehearsals during tech week, your presence in the lives of your students is profound. If you are a student, then the presence of your professors in your life is profound.

I wonder, as you were thinking a moment ago of people from your past educational experiences, If you thought of good or bad ways that they may have yielded that impact on you, that presence in your creative and artistic journey. So there's no other way to start this talk, but by stating that fact. That there is an impact that arts educators have in the lives of emerging artists.

And it is deep arts educators, actions and skills that they pass down ripple through time, not only in the life of the student, but in the creative work that they put out into the world, no pressure, but we all know that they aren't just normal teachers clocking. They are part mentor, life, coach, spiritual director, creative director.

And I know when I was teaching, sometimes I felt tempted to be a counselor or a parent to a student. If that's you. I see you. I see all the ways that that work can be so satisfying and worthwhile and also stressful and heavy and sometimes frustra. So as we recognize the deep impact that arts educators have on students, I also want to release you from the heaviness of needing to fix them, of needing to be fixed by them of the need for them to solve all of your problems of putting them on a pedestal, because they cannot stop our suffering.

You cannot stop their suffering as well. Meaning as that can. The students burdens are not ours to carry. And if we're not careful as educators, our egos make it in the way it was at this point in the talks that I showed a picture of me in 1997, from the Swanee summer music festival, you can view that picture by swiping through the carousel.

For this episode on Instagram, that picture was taken circa 1997 at my very first summer music festival. I had only played the OBO for about a year and I was smitten in the picture. Seated, playing the OBO with my music, leaned up against another chair. Guess there was no music stand around. And I remember vividly how hot and humid it was in Tennessee in the summer and how I was trying for the first time to play the Fairling etudes for OBO solo, which were way too hard for a student who'd only been playing one year, but I loved it.

Here is what that girl knew. She could not get enough of classical music and of OBO specif. This 15 year old girl was out of rural South Carolina for one of the first times in her life. And she soaked up every concert, every lesson, every late night conversation with her roommate about music. She was like a sponge.

It was hard work. It was scary, but it was full of curiosity and joy flash forward. 15 years later to this girl. Then I show another picture at my Juilliard graduation. I was standing on the corner of 65th and Broadway holding my diploma, smiling from my dad's camera phone. And I had everything going for me.

I had just graduated with my doctorate degree from one of the best music schools in the country. I had played with the metropolitan opera orchestra in the American symphony. I was a Fulbright scholar and had graduated Summa cum laude. And I'd done it all by eating fewer than 1000 calories per day. This girl was not motivated by joy.

She was motivated by shame, by perfectionism, by feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy by the feeling of control she got. When she restricted her calories, she was motivated by her ego and the need to. I imagine that you started, like I did, didn't you, we all started off by being motivated by joy and somewhere along the way, maybe because our teachers maybe because things got tough, maybe because we felt pushed into a corner and we didn't know the way out.

I do know having coached enough artists of all disciplines through this exact feeling. That we are not alone in these struggles. Here's two studies for you. This one's from 2017. It found that 71% of artists reported problems with panic attacks and anxiety. One UK study found that 45% of musicians reported problems with alcohol.

And even though many of us educators have advanced degrees, they are likely not in counseling or psychiat. And so one of our jobs as arts educators is to be an advocate for our students and colleagues and help them find the tools that they need to get healthy. Whether that be a therapist, a coach, a nutritionist, or a medical doctor.

Here's one thing that I did when I was. I would have sticky notes with the numbers, to some of those people in the studio on the wall. And when a student comes to you with a problem that you are not qualified to handle, you ask them if they'd like to call together in the lesson to make the appointment and then follow up with them at the next lesson.

So those two stats are pretty sober. But compare them to this one, which granted is older is from 2008 from a project called the maps project. It measured people's happiness levels, doing particular activities. It turns out that four out of the top six happiest activities were arts and creativity related.

So it's clear that the arts bring creative. I heard someone say recently that they were able to get through the pandemic because of this or that show or this or that movie or this or that streaming service. And so with these stats has me wondering if the arts bring us collective joy and yet so many artists are struggling.

Is there a way to consume the arts without consuming the artist? And maybe you're thinking, what can I do? What can we do to make artists more joyful? Is education part of the problem. And before I can give you three concrete things that you can do for yourself and for your students, I wanna bring us back to where we started remembering the profound impact that you as an educator have on your student.

To remember the profound impact that you may be tempted to let your professors have on you. And so whether or not you are a student or teacher, allow me to suggest the way to help foster, creative and sustainable careers in music. And the arts is to model them is to be joyful yourself. So joy, a three letter word.

That I think can be the most motivating thing you have in your toolkit. As an artist. These are three things that I did to get my mind and spirit back on track. These things are ways you can shift the culture of your studio, of your school, of your own mind. Because since that day at my ju graduation, I've learned a lot about my own resilience.

I've learned that no matter how hard I had tried to quit. I just never could. The joy was always there. It was just a matter of reconnecting with it. Here are three things you can do to foster more joy in your creative life. Number one, take care of yourself. End on. Checkoff said, if you wanna work on your.

Work on your life. The number one thing I ask my coaching clients as a creativity coach. And by the way, I, I do work with well known exhibiting visual artists and principal orchestral players that come to me blocked or burnt out are stuck. And the first question I often ask after they've told me everything that's going on is what does you have for lunch?

Because of course what you eat matters, what you drink, how much you drink, how you sleep, how you take care of yourself, are you treating yourself like you are the instrument? And so until you start prioritizing your. And by that, I mean, mental and physical wellbeing. How in the world do you expect for there to be exuberant joy in your creative work?

So make the doctor's appointment, schedule the therapy, take the medication. If you need it. At this point in the talk, I had them all turn to someone at their table and share one thing that they can do to take better care of themselves. Who can you tell about your self-care plans? Who can hold you accountable?

And one last thing about taking care of yourself. Sometimes self-care hurts sometimes going to therapy to talk about hard stuff can be more painful than just staying silent, but that doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong or that isn't working or worthwhile. It's not always. Or simple or painless to take good care of ourselves,

but it will lead to joy. If you just keep going. Number two, reconnect with your own inner artist, child Picasso says every child is an artist. The problem is staying one. When he grow. So, how can you bridge the gap between your own snapshots of yourself when you were a child falling in love with your art form to maybe this moment when you're feeling burnt out and lost?

It is here that I had them turn to another person and share one thing they remember about creating as a kid, people shared that they used to make up dances that they used to write and direct plays that they used to sit at the piano for hours. Plucking out songs. When you look at that picture of yourself as a young creator, what do you admire most about yourself?

For me, it was that curiosity and courage. The fact that that girl of this SW summer music festival was not afraid to try. Even when she failed, she had a resilience and a easiness about her as she was. Number three, forgive yourself. The writer, Ann Patchett has this amazing essay about writing called the getaway car and in it, she likens the creative process to seeing a beautiful butterfly.

So the first part of her crafting a well known novel is just watching this butterfly and admiring it from afar. But eventually she knows that she has to pluck it out of the air and pin it down. And so eventually the writing of the story means killing the beautiful butterfly. She says that by the time the dead butterfly is there on paper, it doesn't even reasonably resemble the beauty of the live thing that she had seen at first.

And so she said, quote, forgiveness is key. I can't write the book I wanna write, but I can and will write the book. I am capable of writing again and again, throughout the course of my life, I will forgive myself and wow. Is it the same in music? We can't replicate the sounds that are in our heads. Can we.

And maybe if you're a dancer, you can't move your body the way you dream of moving. It, it always ends up falling even just a little bit short. And so of course we must forgive ourselves over and over and over throughout the entire creative process throughout the entire learning process. So forgive yourself after every.

Every breath, every lesson, every phrase, every show, because there's no joy without forgiveness, because as long as we remain EMBI to ourselves for not winning or doing more or being better, we don't love ourselves

here. I have them take a moment to think of something that really stings in their creative life. Something that they believed they failed at. And. I asked them to send themselves a text or email expressing forgiveness. And I added, if you can't forgive yourself yet, just say you're trying. So the three things are, take care of yourself.

Reconnect with your inner artist, child and forgive yourself. There are just three things that were monumental in helping me find joy after Julliard. And I've seen them transform the way my clients think about their work and their lives too. I read something recently that said the future of the arts rests in the wellbeing of artists and who cares more about the next generation of artists, more than educators, more than you as one of them.

So the culture that you make in your studio, classroom department, your own head, it shapes the culture makers of the next generation. So may you cultivate a culture of joy this year by taking better care of yourself by reconnecting with your artist's child? And by forgiving yourself one by one. Now think back to those people who came to mind earlier, when I asked you to think about your past present and future in the education system, what would it be like if you had helped those people take care of themselves, reconnect with their inner artist, child and forgive themselves, what would it have been like if that one toxic.

Have been able to help you do that. Joy is something way better than success or progress or job security, its resilience and strength, and it can sustain you through the ups and downs of a creative life that will inevitably come. Thank you for all the ways that you are impacting the next generation of artists.

And if you are one rest assured that. It's not too late to find your way back to joy for your art form. That was the end of my talk. I would love to hear your thoughts. And if you'd like to see some of the images that I am referring to in it, you can go to Instagram and swipe through the carousel post for this episode to see those today's music features me.

On oboe performing works that I recorded with Jani Parsons. You can check that out by clicking the link in the show notes. I will be back next week for a brand new full length episode, beginning of season three until then take good care

next.