Think back to the last big challenge you faced — in your career or in your personal life. How did you respond to it? Were you thankful? Maybe not at the time, but afterwards? Here's to Thanking Our Dragons — the counter-intuitive approach to responding to life's...
The clients I work with all have one thing in common: they are musicians in transition. They come to me because they are in that confusing, uncomfortable space between who they've been and who they're yearning to become. It can feel like being squeezed between a rock...
What if instead of letting fear and uncertainty overpower us, what if we leaned into accepting where we are now: Musicians — Welcome to the Ordeal. I know, it sounds like a video game. I wish it were. But it's our reality: we're in the Ordeal, the "all is lost"...
Who is it that inspires you? As a role model, as a hero, MLK exemplified a mission-driven life and the belief that each of us has the power to change the world. Of course, you may say to yourself something like . . . "I'm no hero. I don't have a grand purpose: I'm...
I just saw the Huntington Theater's production of Quixote Nuevo. It's a terrific contemporary retelling of Cervantes' Don Quixote. (You may know the storyline from the musical Man of La Mancha). The essential story is also what musicians experience in life. It's the...
A whole back I wrote a post on the Hero's Journey and seeing Star Wars again brought me back. George Lucas, the writer and director of the original films, created in Star Wars a modern myth. Lucas was, in part, inspired by mythologist Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey...
I recently sent the completed manuscript of the 3rd edition of my book, Beyond Talent, to my editor at Oxford University Press. If you imagine that a new edition involves a few updates of statistics and some added examples, guess again! At least in this case, it was a...
What does the hero’s journey have to do with your music career success? The Hero's Journey is the narrative structure that animates myths, literature, movies, religions, and psychological development. Identified by scholar Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey is the...
OK, I admit it: I'm a bit of a groupie, a nerd who loves Star Wars. Not just for some escapist entertainment, but because there's special relevance for musicians. Like virtually every narrative dear to us—from the Wizard of Oz to the Magic Flute—the Star Wars...
MONDAY BYTES - August 6, 2012 Last week's Byte focused on what you ultimately want. Now the question is, what do you need in order to get what you want? This is where the Wizard of Oz comes in. It's a classic hero’s journey tale, not unlike the Odyssey or Star Wars:...
