The Musician Centric Podcast
Two professional violists, Liz O'Hara and Stephanie Knutsen, explore diverse perspectives in the music field through conversations together and with friends. Whether gaining fresh insights from industry innovators or laughing their way through a show like Mozart in the Jungle, Liz and Steph hope to inspire musicians, particularly freelancers, to feel a sense of agency in their lives.
**Note: This podcast was formerly titled the ViolaCentric podcast**
The Musician Centric Podcast
Astrid Baumgardner on Coaching Creatives: How to Find Your Most Fulfilling Career Path as an Artist
Stories? Questions? Thoughts? TEXT us here!
Have you ever felt stuck in a career that doesn't resonate with you? With an exciting transition from law to career coaching, our guest Astrid Baumgartner has plenty of wisdom to share, having journeyed through such a change herself. Her invaluable insights from her book, Creative Success Now, are a beacon for those seeking authenticity and fulfillment in their professional lives.
What if you could uncover your own strengths and values, and align them with your career choices? We talk with Astrid about about taking a strengths assessments, her real-life students' paths to fulfillment, and the role that just plain 'happiness' plays in achieving your goals. This episode is a treasure trove of insights, personal stories and practical tools for self-discovery and success!
**If you enjoyed this episode, please consider rating and writing a quick review for our podcast!
We have a Patreon site! Support us and get perks, bonus content...and as mentioned access to our #joylovescompany sessions beginning on Nov 28th!
www.patreon.com/musiciancentric
Mentioned in this episode:
Astrid's website: https://www.astridbaumgardner.com/
...and her book: Creative Success Now : https://www.astridbaumgardner.com/book
The 'High 5' strengths assessment: https://high5test.com/
The CliftonStrengths Test: https://high5test.com/cliftonstrengths-free/
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Our website: www.musiciancentric.com, for merch, joining our email list, and contacting us with stories and feedback!
Episode edited by: Emily MacMahon and Liz O’Hara
ViolaCentric Theme by: JP Wogaman, www.wogamusic.com
Additional music by: Freddy Hall with www.musicforpodcasts.com
Podcast Cover art and logo by Jenny Hamson www.jennyhdesign.com
Thank you to our Sponsor for this season, Potter Violins: www.potterviolins.com
Interested in starting your own podcast? We can't recommend our host Buzzsprout enough! Click here for an introductory offer from them!
Steph and I got to be standees this past week. Yay, we've been like much to the first time in forever.
Speaker 2:It's been a really really long time, but it was really fun. It was a great musical experience.
Speaker 1:Also, you had an interesting experience just with people you didn't know, but knew who you were because of the podcast.
Speaker 2:We're so glad for every single one of you guys listening. I cannot even tell you. It means so much and we love you all. We love and adore every one of you. Yes, right.
Speaker 1:Here here and I will just say too, this is kind of a funny story about our week together. Stephanie came down. She hasn't played this job in quite a while and it was really a treat to get to spend the week with her. But in this particular orchestra, a lot of the people in the orchestra already list the podcast because it's just through word of mouth and some of our previous guests play down there and so there's some synergy there. But it was amazing because Stephanie showed up with her new stickers and she's just like hey, have a sticker, hey have a sticker, have a sticker. And it got me thinking that it would be really cool for those of you who are like our super fans. Can you let us know if you would hand out stickers if we sent you our little new stickers promotionally?
Speaker 1:Yes, we would send you a handful and you could give them to your friends and just spread the word about the new rebrand and what we do and it would help us out a lot Like have our little ambassadors out there, I love that idea. Right.
Speaker 2:I was little gorilla marketing it's like literally what you were doing all week.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it was adorable and it made me feel bad because I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2:if you're a new listener and I put you off by accosting you with a sticker, well, you're welcome because you're here now.
Speaker 1:It was so great. It was so great. I loved it so much.
Speaker 2:This is good to show you what having a friend who's like a really big extrovert will do for you. It kind of bleeds off and I'm like you know what. The stakes aren't really that high.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, I mean. What's funny is, yeah, I felt ashamed of my extroversion networking self, because I have admittedly not really done that before.
Speaker 2:It took your introverted podcast partner to come down and, like I was just watching you back there doing your thing.
Speaker 1:I was like, yeah, this is I mean. I don't know you, but here's a sticker there's hope for us introverts yeah, you're already great as you are. You don't need to do a thing.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Musician-Centric podcast. We are two freelance violists living and laughing our way through conversations that explore what it means to be a professional musician in today's world. I'm Steph.
Speaker 1:And I'm Liz, and we're so glad you joined us. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:So, as you may know if you're new here you don't know we have this amazing community called Joy Loves Company, which we started a couple of years ago to do Susanna Klein's Practizma practice journal, and we had a group of about I don't know a few wonderful, amazing people who joined us for that journey, and then last year we did the Artist's Way, which was intense and amazing, totally amazing, and we had more people join us in that journey. Even more people. So we're looking to break records with this. Joy Loves.
Speaker 3:Company group.
Speaker 2:Yes, and the great news is that we are doing the book that was written by our guest who we're having today. So her book is called Creative Success Now, and it's all about helping creative people find their true path based on their strengths, their values everything that you're going to hear in today's episode. But her book is all about that, so we thought we'd do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there are some exercises to do in there, some things for discussion. It's really great. I think this came up actually in our conversation with Astrid, but it feels sort of like this adapted 21st century version of the Artist's Way, which is really nice and practical and that's a good way to put it. Yeah, I really like the fact that it's sort of directed toward reasonable expectations for what our life looks like right now and how to sort of embrace the challenges we face making a living doing this which is not an easy thing to do.
Speaker 1:So I think it's really great and just such a positive, inspiring thing that we would be able to take this journey with our group. The group has been such a delight. It was a real surprise for us because we really got the motivation to do Prachtisma by having Suzanne on the podcast and I had worked through this journal with my students before. But just to have this group of really insightful, kind, warm people meeting every week to discuss their own journey, going through something like that with a challenge, the life stories that end up coming up as a result of it, and then the Artist's Way kind of even just amplified that experience for people.
Speaker 1:So it's really exciting to think about how year three would go with our JoyList company group and we want to invite all of you to consider joining us. In order to join, all you have to do is head to our Patreon and you sign up at the $5 month level and once you do you get all the information. You'll get a Zoom link to the weekly meetings which are going to begin on Tuesday, November 28th, right after the Thanksgiving holiday. You also get invited to a Facebook group. We have and really it's always been sort of a highlight of our weeks to spend this half an hour 40 minutes with our group every week talking about these things and just hearing perspectives, and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:So you're encouraged to join. Yes, please join us. It's a lot of fun and I really do feel like everyone is going to be able to get something out of this book. So even if you feel like you have your thing nailed down, you know you're doing what you want to be doing A little bit of self-exploration you can never go wrong with that.
Speaker 2:It goes such a long way, oh my gosh. And even if you feel like you're late in your career, there's no time for me to change now. There's no way for me to add to my professional enterprises.
Speaker 1:You can still get something out of this, and Astrid actually is a great model for that Absolutely, and also for any of you like me who sometimes, maybe, possibly don't always get our homework done. I don't know what that's like I know you don't. Thank God for you. Thank God for you. I just want all of you to know that there's no shame here. Oh no, it's so late back you guys. Sometimes you just haven't done your homework. It's really OK, that happens actually Still come.
Speaker 2:Our group still come you just don't come, because we're like that friend that sits like right next to you in class, that'll kind of like tilt their paper a little bit so you can you can see their answers. Yes, we'll do that for you, that's right.
Speaker 1:And I will also say this was true. There were some periods, phases of my year last year, where sitting down to really like be with the work that was required in the artist way was very hard for me to do. It was just a real challenge given my current life situations. And yet, week after week, every chapter we would delve into and we would talk about and I'd be like, oh, I'm going through this thing at this moment, internally, I'm realizing this thing, or I'm learning this thing, or it's so interesting how, like all of these little components, the book itself, the discussions that are had, the realizations that your friends in the group are having, they all inform each of us in some way. And that's why you know I'm glad you said, stephanie that everyone can get something out of it. If you have a great amount of experience with this, you'd be such an asset to the group because you'd be able to share those experiences with people and it's just really, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Great community, great material. So please, please, join us. It's going to be a lot of fun. And other ways that you can support our little podcast are by getting some merch. So you can get merch through our website, which will take you directly to Ensemble Outfitters. Lisa will hook you up and then, of course, you can share this podcast. Please, rate, review, do all those things that podcasts just always ask you to do, because it really does help, yes, anyway, speaking of playing to your strengths, our guest today wrote a book.
Speaker 1:All about that. She did, and not only did she write a book, but, oh my gosh, this woman is just amazing. She has a really incredible career, from being in legal profession to arts, administration, to education, and she's a fierce advocate of the creative life and has really created a place, I think, for creative people to find resources that would help them with their projects Just the things they want to do, the things they want to accomplish, understanding that each one of us is the only person on this earth that can say the thing we're saying, and recognizing that as such a strength and that it belongs in a place, somewhere. You know everybody's voice belongs somewhere. So, yeah, it was so inspiring to talk to her, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, she's amazing. I kind of think of her as, like your career fairy godmother. Yes, you go see her and she asks you questions, she puts exactly the right dress on you, gives you the means to get there and, yeah, just like has that magic fairy dust. She knows exactly how to describe the process to you too, and I just I love the idea that you know we're all unique individuals and we don't fit into one of these two boxes that I grew up thinking that I had to fit into as a musician, like either I was going to be a performer or I was going to be a teacher, and there's lots of other really cute handmade boxes that you could be in. So many.
Speaker 1:So many cute little handmade boxes.
Speaker 2:So we're here to help you find the right box for you.
Speaker 1:That's terrible. It's more like a platform, like a vehicle, like your mode of transportation.
Speaker 2:Your own bespoke ball gown.
Speaker 1:This is no, this isn't Sorry it's really bad.
Speaker 2:It's really bad we're doing a great job.
Speaker 3:You know what?
Speaker 1:I will say is this was a very interesting thing for my, like, my internal experience when we were talking to her was she was speaking so succinctly about some certain strengths and I think there's some characteristics in terms of leadership I've been thinking about lately and I don't know if this will resonate with anybody, but I've just been thinking about, like, what it means to be a leader, because I think I'm not trying to brag about myself, but I feel like I often get encouraged or placed in positions where I am expected to take on this leadership role and I've never really felt all that connected to the idea of being a quote leader, because I have this concept in my mind that a leader is the person who, like, makes the decisions and, you know, charges forward, and I never want to be a person that's just like sitting somewhere up by myself with a bunch of other people just waiting for me to tell them what to do.
Speaker 1:That is like a really uncomfortable thing for me. But something about the way she said in terms of, like, the synergizing of ideas, and then I took it and I was thinking about these other areas of my life and I think Susanna Klein was actually giving me a little bit of the same concept. It has been introduced to me a few times and I wonder if it's this like exploration of what feminine leadership looks like, as opposed to just like quote leadership.
Speaker 2:That's a really poignant idea, right. We have such like a patriarchal view of what a leader is, because men have been in leadership roles. Yes, but there is a feminine alternative, yes, and it's.
Speaker 1:It definitely is rooted, I believe and this has started to really resonate with me with this concept that the leader is simply like a conduit or a vehicle to pull the rest of the team together and those ideas all come together in a way that it really works well for whatever the endeavor is that's being attempted to be accomplished, and I just, yeah, that felt so much more comfortable to me. But anyway, I really felt like, without even taking the test yet which, by the way, we've got a couple links One that was recommended to us by Astrid in the conversation, and then she also has her own. That's, I think, a little more comprehensive. I think the one she recommended online is a little simpler, but anyway, I haven't even taken them yet, but I felt like, even just her talking, I was like, oh, I think that's something I do really well, or, you know, she would just throw out these examples and it really resonates. So, yeah, I think that idea of her being like an ultimate person who synthesizes ideas is accurate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll put that link in our show now so you can head over there and take that to you. Yeah, we're going to take it right and we're going to share our results we're going to share, for better or worse.
Speaker 1:I mean they're all strengths right, so that can be positive.
Speaker 2:They're only going to be awesome, ok, ok, yes, we're going to share them proudly, proudly, that's right. But anyway, just like our Patreon group, just like our JoyLives company group, we think everybody's going to have something that you're going to pull from this conversation. It was just so electric and there were just so many great points that really resonated with me personally. I know with you and I have a feeling that you, the listener reader, will love this conversation too. So enjoy this little chat with Astrid Valkar.
Speaker 1:It's that time of year we're back to school and we are back to gigging. Even if you're not mentally ready for the season, you can count on our season sponsor, PotterViolence, to get your equipment ready. When's the last time you reheared your bow?
Speaker 2:stuff. Oh, I feel like it was recently, but I bet it's been over six months, so I got to get over there and get it freshened up. Oh, and I need new backup strings and an instrument adjustment.
Speaker 1:Sounds like it might be about time. Yeah, I do love to get in there for a visit to our favorite technicians as we approach the change of season. Maybe I need a new case too.
Speaker 2:And, as we've said before, if you need a rental instrument, they're the place to go. My daughter and many of my students rent from Potters and the instruments are really fantastic, even the smaller violas.
Speaker 1:Yes, get back to your music this season with confidence by visiting PotterViolence. So your equipment will be ready, even if you might need a bit more of a warm-up.
Speaker 2:Our guest today is Astrid Baumgartner. Astrid loves helping creative people to be successful. A lawyer, career coach speaker and author of the book Creative Success Now, she teaches career entrepreneurship at Yale University School of Music. A professional speaker, miss Baumgartner recently gave a TEDx talk on cracking the code on creativity the secret to full blast living and as president of her coaching company, miss Baumgartner works with arts leaders who want to be authentic, powerful leaders, and professional musicians and creative entrepreneurs who want career success and happier, more fulfilling lives like us all Amen.
Speaker 2:It is such a pleasure and honor to welcome you to the Musician-centric podcast. Liz and I have both read your book Creative Success Now and we are so excited to get into it with you. You know we have been struggling through these questions and this journey for our whole careers and it's just so lovely to read this little condensed Think about this, think about that. But you have been all over the map in your career. You've been a lawyer, you've been an arts administrator, you've been a career coach, and I know that you really, truly believe that authenticity in your life and in your career has led you to where you are. So I wonder if you can talk a little bit about what brought you to this point in your career.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Steph and Liz, so much for that very kind introduction and thank you so much for reading my book, because I did pour my heart into that to help creative people be successful, Hence the name of the book Creative Success. Now, You're absolutely right about the whole notion of authenticity. That is one of my top values and I didn't discover any of this until I was well into my career. So I started off as a musician as a little kid always loved music and then sort of did the practical thing and went to law school instead of pursuing something creative.
Speaker 2:Sure your parents were very happy.
Speaker 3:They were very happy, very happy, and even back then I didn't really think of myself as a very creative person. I was a good student and I learned well, so I did my thing as a lawyer, but it sort of never felt like the right thing. To be very honest, and in the first nine years of my legal career I worked at four different law firms, just thinking, well, it's the firm, it's not me. But then, when I had two very small children, a one-year-old and a three-year-old, I started working for this French law firm, which dovetailed with my college major of French and my love of French language and culture, and so that seemed like a pretty good fit because it was also very part-time. So I felt very lucky that I was able to raise my children and still keep a toehold in the professional world. But as my children got older it just didn't feel again like the right fit, and once they were in high school I started volunteering at arts organizations. I figured let me do something that I believe in, because the law, as intellectually interesting as it is, just didn't feel like it was my mission. So I started volunteering at these arts organizations and found that, wow, it is so exciting to be around people who are passionate about the arts like me. And the other thing that was interesting is the kind of thinking that you need to run an arts organization. It's a very different sort of skill set from being a lawyer. Being a lawyer is very analytical and they want you to kind of stay in your lane, I mean at the very highest levels. Yes, there are creative lawyers, but not where I was doing. I was doing a big corporate law and instead here in the arts there's just a lot of room for creativity and for collaboration and strategic thinking and those things seemed to be what I was good at. And once my kids were about my son was about to go to college. My daughter was two years behind. It gave me the courage to say it is now my time.
Speaker 3:And so I left law and was able to start working for a French cultural organization and language school. It's a very large nonprofit in New York City called the French Institute Daniels de Francez. It's kind of a great fit because it dovetail with my love of French, my love of culture, and I was thrown six departments to run and figure it out. And there was a lot of figuring it out because, while I had done some management at my French law firm. I was never in this position, but I sort of figured it out and it was really interesting, because my definition of a nonprofit is big dreams, no resources, right and still right. And that's exactly what it was. And so we did all kinds of interesting things and I found it was very creative, because with the no resources you have to be very nimble and very creative, trying to leverage people, figuring out what they're good at and putting together the right teams. And I never went to business school, I just sort of figured this stuff out.
Speaker 3:It was kind of interesting, learning on the job, and at the same time, when I left law, I began joining a different set of arts organizations. I joined the American Composers Orchestra because I'm very passionate about contemporary music and I love composers. So within two years of my joining that board I was elected chair of the board. So I had these two leadership things going on. It was really interesting, and this is when I started getting a glimpse of what does it mean to be authentic? Right? It means doing things you love. It means doing things that you're good at. It means doing things you're passionate about right. And so I was humming along at the French Institute, realizing that it was time after three years, because I was the deputy executive director and I felt it was time for me to either take on my own organization or go off and do something else. And then the universe stepped in and I got dance sized because of a recession. So that was kind of interesting and for the first time in my life I actually took a break from work. So for six months I just said I am not doing anything, I'm just going to explore and see what happens. And so I met this really interesting fellow who they were, interviewed me for a big job at Lincoln Center, which I did not get, but I really love this guy who's a management consultant. And we then formed a partnership and we did that for a year and that was an interesting experience because I learned a lot about how to start a business and took a lot of notes on what was going on and what I thought could have been done better.
Speaker 3:And then I left that and then I sort of wandered around and then, unfortunately, I had a very bad health episode that kind of took me out of the running and, interestingly, I spent a month in the hospital, including two weeks in a coma. It was, yes, it was pretty traumatic, particularly for my family and my friends. And I woke up on my birthday and I sort of took that as a sign that I was truly meant to come back for a reason. And literally I was in the ICU, hooked up to like 17 tubes, and my mother walked in with a chocolate cake. Now there was no way I could eat it. But she said happy birthday, darling. And I went ah, my birthday.
Speaker 3:And then I looked around going where am I? Literally it was pretty crazy. And so I had a lot of physical rehab, that I had to go through a lot of surgery and then, six months after leaving the hospital, I was recovering from another surgery and I was on my couch and I heard a voice that said Ostred, you need to get up off that couch and help people with their life transitions. So I discovered coaching. Literally, that's how I discovered it. It was crazy.
Speaker 3:And within a month, I was enrolled in coaching school and I became a coach, and my coaching school was a very interesting place because they taught us great coaching skills as well. As well, if you're going to go out and do this how do you start a business doing this right? And they said you have to have a niche. So my niche was twofold Creative women, lawyers like me, and also young conservatory trained musicians. Because during my wandering period I went back to studying piano pretty seriously with a teacher at Juilliard and a young guy I think he was 26 when we began studying right, I called him my boy genius piano teacher, who is now the dean of the Boston Conservatory.
Speaker 1:And he was very close friends.
Speaker 2:You knew him when.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he was my boy genius, right? He's so cool, I love him. So, anyway, I really had a deep love for my piano teacher and his friends and so I started coaching them and doing workshops at Juilliard and, interestingly, my coaching school. They said one night we had a class and the teacher introduced himself and said hi, I'm Jim, I'm a lawyer, a talent scout and a coach and I teach, of course, at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and a light bulb went off in my head and I said I want to teach, I want to teach at Juilliard or maybe even Yale, and I wrote this in my journal In five years I am teaching at a conservatory, like Juilliard parentheses or maybe even Yale close parentheses period. So next day I was like, yeah, I mean, really, you know, and I had not read the secret or any of that stuff, but I just like that was going to happen. And so literally I woke up next day I went OK, if that's going to happen in five years, I need to get to work.
Speaker 3:So I started doing more career workshops at Juilliard and I eventually built up literally the equivalent of a course and I pitched myself to Yale and I knew the Yale School of Music people because we attend the Yale Summer Music Festival at Norfolk, connecticut. And so I knew the director, who happened to be the deputy director of the Yale School of Music, and said you know, I'm doing all this career work at Juilliard and I would really love to come to Yale. And his answer was your timing is excellent because we need somebody. And so I created a curriculum and they hired me to teach the class. And then they said oh, and by the way, would you like to create our new Office of Career Strategies? So I got hired both as faculty and staff at the Yale School of Music in three years.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 3:So my point in all this is I think it's really important to have those authentic big dreams, those dreams that reflect what you love and what your values are and what your mission is, and I think that that kind of passion and energy translates into the world, like if you're able to appreciate that and communicate that, I think people get really excited. And this is the fundamental thing that I teach is actually what I really start with is a positive mindset. So I have to say I am very lucky because I was born very positive. My mother is a very positive woman and I just absorbed that from her and I'm very grateful because it has led me through a lot. I mean, I was in the hospital for a month, practically dead right, but I just knew I was going to get better and it's been with me my whole life. So there are things we can do to become happier and more positive, and so that's the first thing I teach people.
Speaker 1:Can I just say though yeah, please.
Speaker 1:It's so amazing to me. I'm going to back up a little bit in your origin story, as they say. I think this is an inspiring thing for people to hear, which is why I'm kind of circling back to it. But you spent many years in a career that felt like it wasn't the right one for you without knowing yet oh, this is, this isn't really the path I'm meant to be on, and then you gave yourself that permission slip to do it, and I think it's important for that to be recognized, because so much of the time, I think we get on a conveyor belt somewhere and people just assume and you always hear stories of people who wanted to be a musician or wanted to do this or that and just never did, and that shift for you to be brave, to do it.
Speaker 1:I think you said I finally gathered up enough courage to say, all right, I'm gonna give this a shot. And that strikes me a lot Because I admittedly not that this has been the case in every aspect of my life, but I have admittedly many times been like this doesn't sit right, this doesn't sit right. It doesn't take very long for me to be like I gotta figure this out, right, right. It's that courage to make the change and follow that authenticity.
Speaker 3:I think that's right, and I always say I wish I'd had a me back then, because career coaching can really help and that is why I wrote my book, because process can really help. It doesn't give you answers, like as a career coach. My job is not to give advice. It is not to give answers. It is to help you discover who are you at your core, at your best, and how can we use that to make your dreams happen. And then my job is to listen. I provide a lot of resources and feedback and try to help people reframe a lot of challenge as opportunity. And I think that's where positivity comes in it's being able to see a challenge and say, just like what you just said, liz, and what am I gonna do about it? Am I gonna just sit with this or am I gonna figure it out? Am I gonna reach out to other people for help? Am I gonna read something, take a course, try something new? And there's no question, I experimented an awful lot.
Speaker 3:And in fact, in my TED Talk, one of the things I talked about is that if you wanna embrace your creative side, sometimes you have to go on a life experiment and just see what might be a possibility for you. And that's why there's such a connection to me between creativity and positivity and one of my missions in life. I mean, one of the things that I did after the pandemic was I enrolled in a year-long course in the science of happiness and became a certified happiness facilitator, and what I'm trying to do now in my work is to bring greater happiness and joy into the creative space, because I think there's such potential for creative people to be happy. I mean, just think about musicians. Talk about resilience, right? Okay, that audition didn't work, let me try another one. That didn't work Okay, I'm gonna try this other thing.
Speaker 3:I mean phenomenal, and resilience is such an important aspect of happiness, right? Having the sense of purpose, feeling like this is what I'm meant to do. That is such an important aspect of having a happy life. Being able to collaborate and work with other people and have really great relationships, being intellectually curious and growing All of these are aspects of happiness, and that is one of the interesting things that I learned in my happiness studies is that happiness is not just oh, I'm in a great mood, because we're not always in a great mood, and it's being able to accept the ups and the downs and then finding the way towards optimism. So that's why I always start in. Helping people is with that mindset right, absolutely, it's so important.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of us in the at least we're orchestral musicians, so a lot of the drive of our career is okay. I'm gonna win an orchestra job or for anyone else I'm gonna get that promotion. I'm going to reach that next level in my work environment and then I will be happy. But it's really not. It's kind of the backwards way to think about it, right, yep that's so interesting because there's so much research on.
Speaker 3:I love this. If you want to give a tagline to it, happiness breeds success instead of success breeds happiness, exactly Because if you're chasing that promotion, you're chasing that orchestra job, you're chasing that million dollar salary and you're not enjoying it. By the time you get there, it's like, okay, I got that goal on to the next. You can't even appreciate it, enjoy it, whereas what the research shows us is, if you are enjoying what you're doing and working towards a goal that feels meaningful, you're gonna feel a lot better about what you're doing, which means you're going to be doing a better job. And a lot of the research takes place in the corporate workplace, right. So if you're doing a good job, you tend to get promoted, right, and if you get tend to get promoted, you make more money.
Speaker 3:But there's more If you are the kind of person that is really so excited about what you're doing, you tend to give off a good vibe to other people and they enjoy working with you. So you cultivate better relationships. If you're a leader, you have better relationships. People respect you, all kinds of things. And then in the personal life better health, mental health and physical health and emotional health, better relationships, friendship, marriage, longevity, aging so interesting about happiness, breathing, success. So I'm so glad, seth, that you said that, because it's born out by the research.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and. I love this too, because I would also say and I believe I got this from my grandmother, because when I think about my Amida family. I'm like a total unicorn in this way. I was born with a really full cup of positivity too.
Speaker 3:I can't explain it.
Speaker 1:I can't explain it any other way. I'm just wired that way. I know sometimes I absolutely drive my friends crazy with it and it just is what it is. But I've really come to notice that when we are stuck in sort of like a loop of negativity, it's easy to stay there, and we've talked about this before on the podcast and done a little bit of research ourselves on the negativity bias and how our brains are actually kind of wired that way. They are wired to see threats, they're wired to see danger, they're wired to assume the worst in order to survive. And so, I don't know, maybe that means in the primitive years we wouldn't have done very well because we would have just been like everything's fine.
Speaker 2:Everything's good you know.
Speaker 1:But what's interesting is, even when my happiness takes a big hit and I've had a couple experiences in life where that's been the case and it's been really tough I feel like it really is this belief or this work that things are okay, that things are gonna be better that there are things for me to be happy about and be grateful for and that keeps me going, and the more you work with that, the more it compounds on itself.
Speaker 1:And it is true Like I don't think of it as an asset enough, but I know that you know the energy that you give to other people. It creates better relationships, it creates better opportunities. There's so much there. That's a rich thing to say, and so I just thought I'd go down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, but it's so true. And there's so many things I can add on to that. So there's a really interesting piece of research about positivity in leaders and there's this one characteristic of leaders who are literally they have the same exact resume, same exact experience One leader is gonna be four times more effective than similarly situated person, the person who can walk into the room and bring positivity and raise the level of positivity around him or her. And there's a new book that's coming out very soon by a colleague of mine at Yale, emma Sipala, and Kim Cameron at University of Michigan to document this and the studies that they've done, which is really interesting. And so you and I, liz, we're the lucky ones. We got born at this right A dose of fairy dust, but there's a lot we can do to make ourselves happier.
Speaker 3:There's some research from a fascinating psychologist, sonia Lubomirski, who wrote this great book for the popular press called the how of Happiness, and she explains that 50% of our capacity for being happy is genetic right, like you and me, 10% comes from our life circumstances where we're born, socioeconomic levels and the like, and then 40% is within our capacity.
Speaker 3:So that's not so bad that you can use that 40%, to learn practices right and to then create habits that inculcate greater happiness. And the other really interesting thing strengths. What are you good at? Let's face it, my friends, we live in a culture where we're constantly being compared to other people, where you get performance reviews that are slashing everybody down and what positive psychologists say, and strengths researchers say that it's better to focus on your strengths, on the things that you are good at, the things that energize you, and devoting time and resources to getting better at what you're already good at. And once you know what you're good at, you can then privilege that you know. And in my class at Yale it's really interesting I have my students take the strength assessment and then we form collaborative groups and we actually have a strengths meeting. That's what we're doing this week On.
Speaker 2:Wednesday in my class.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so cool Because we've already formed our collaborative groups and we're gonna have this brainstorm and then I'm gonna create the to-do list and pass out the tasks in the timeline, right? Those are the doers, and then we've got the relationship people. Who's right? No, but it's awesome to have different strengths on a team. That's the whole point, right? Because when you allow people to leverage their strengths, then that is half the battle in getting something great out of the collaboration.
Speaker 2:You know I love this, this whole strengths assessment and finding out what you're good at and giving you the permission to kind of let go of some of the things that you're not quite so good at. What if I'm just thinking about this? How tragic that you have to wait until you're in college to figure this out yeah right. Or if you're like a professional you know in one field and you're like okay, lana, let me figure out what my strengths are You're middle-aged?
Speaker 2:and you're like oh yes, okay, now I know my strength, that was me my friends, I know right. It's wonderful that you got there. But how many people are just forcing their square peg into this circle?
Speaker 3:Right, right, like if you're a real people person and there you are in a cubicle filling out Excel spreadsheets.
Speaker 1:I would never, I wouldn't last more than two years at that job, for sure, for sure, well so in your book, you have a strengths assessment that you can access.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, and I even found another one, so I want to share this one.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I see, I'll tell us it's all the things, it's free.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's free Because the one I love, the one that I recommend, it's now called Clifton Strengths and it's great. It's researched out of Gallup with millions of people around the world. But I found this other one called High Five Test, h-i-g-h-5 Test, and it's free. And so the Gallup one gives you your top five strengths out of 34. High Five is top five out of 20, and it's a much shorter test. A Gallup, I think, is 240 questions. High Five is 100 questions and it's not timed. So you don't have to sweat it out, because Gallup is timed if you don't answer default.
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, right, I know that's actually my preferred one because I think it's a little more accurate. But the High Five. I now do that with my students so they don't have to buy the book and spend the money. They can just take the assessment. So while you're listening.
Speaker 1:Well, we do both, then see, yeah, well, I do both.
Speaker 3:There's so much good stuff. I'm an assessment geek. I've taken Gallup four times and taking High Five twice. Ha To see the overlap.
Speaker 1:it's so funny, but it's so exciting to even think about that. Yeah, I'm excited to apply these concepts with something like auditioning because, oh, yeah, I really feel like it's so challenging. In the same way, we're having these discussions when you're training. In that way, you're sort of left to the strategies that worked for the people who are training you to do it and the general strategies that are shared with you by your teachers, and they're only sharing this knowledge with you because it's what's worked for them and that's really helpful. It's really helpful. But the thing is, I 100% resonate with this feeling of every time I try to go through that process, I'm putting myself in some sort of box. That doesn't feel right because I'm trying to build a strength that's not a strength, you know. I'm trying to exacerbate some sort of weakness to make it better, when, really, what would it look like if we took our own strengths in these types of situations and we just leaned into them and figured?
Speaker 3:out how that makes it work for us. So you know, and Yale, I ran the career office for 10 years and did a lot of career coaching about the individual and group, and I continue to mentor a lot of students in the career area, particularly the ones that show up at Yale and think, okay, I'll go for an orchestra job, but it just doesn't feel right, and feeling very forlorn that they don't know whether their opportunities exist for them. And then that's my coaching with them to see, well, okay, what are you love doing, what are you good at. And if they don't know, then to send them out on the exploration to say, great, use your time at Yale to explore and take in the data. So when you're in you know, when you've tried a new ensemble, okay, how was that? How did you enjoy the people, the repertoire, the whole setup right, and if you like that, do more of that. If you didn't like it, try something else. You know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a really great anecdote in your book about Ashley from Australia, Absolutely who you know came here to get his graduate degree, and can you tell us a little of the story? It's so good.
Speaker 3:It's one of my favorite stories. So he is a super talented, fabulous person. I just adore him. He was really frustrated because he kind of didn't know what to do with his career and he just won't apply for orchestras, you know, new auditions, and he just could not motivate himself to practice those excerpts. It just did not feel right. And in the second week of class we go through a values assessment. That's their homework. This was a light bulb moment for him because his values were things like lifelong learning and creativity and self-realization and he said no wonder I don't want to do these excerpts. It just doesn't feel like me. And again in conversation with him well, what feels like you? He said you know I love working with our composers here at Yale and working on new commissions and premiering new work and my dream is to do that. I'd like to go back to Australia and be sort of a new music cultivator and commissioner and performer. And that just so totally energized him. I mean it was a pretty quick turnaround and he spent the rest of his time at Yale collaborating with our composers because we have a really great composition program.
Speaker 3:And I went to his final recital which was just unbelievable. It was all this new work and video. And he had costumes and all of his classmates who worked with him were all had made this great makeup and they all dressed the part. I mean it was so amazing right, it was a. He put on a show, basically. And what's so interesting is so he wanted to go back to Australia and he applied to this university and was accepted and not just accepted to their doctoral program but they said, oh, and because of all the work you've done with composers, we want you to be in charge of our new music ensemble. So he gets to go back to Australia to become a professor and to run new music. And he and I still keep in touch and he sends me videos of what he's doing. And this is the funniest thing, because now he's actually soloing with orchestra, because he's premiering so much work.
Speaker 3:So he's got an amazing career that he loves. He teaches at this university and runs the new music ensemble, works with composers, premieres and solos as a clarinetist. So it's a great story. It's a great story. It's the power of knowing your values and aligning your life with your values.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so from the acknowledgement or the recognition of your strengths to get to values and then principles beyond them. We've had a sampling of this idea, this concept, before years ago, when we were in our baby stage of the podcast, we had a conversation with a good friend of ours who's also does values-based identity coaching, and it was such an energizing conversation because it's such a way to ground yourself in decision-making. So any perspectives that you have asked that you want to share with us about the identification of your values in particular, oh, absolutely Absolutely.
Speaker 3:First of all, I will send you my values assessment.
Speaker 2:okay, oh great Yay for assessments.
Speaker 3:We love them all. Yes, this one I made up, and I made it up based on the one I first took, and it's kind of a funny story. So the idea here is that you look through this list of what I call yummy values they're all great values and very honestly, go through them and say so. What really matters to me? Where have I made decisions? Where I've used these values? Where have I had situations where something was not right? Somebody did something, said something that really upset me, and what value was not present? You know that sort of thing. And so get it down to your top 10 and down to your top five. Now, why your top five? I always say that values are like your core principles, Like if you had a t-shirt that said Liz or stuff. I stand for one, two, three, four, five. So if you're aiming for values to help you with decision-making which I think is really helpful if you have 20 values, you're all over the place right, and so you have to crunch it down.
Speaker 1:I don't like to choose.
Speaker 3:Well, I didn't either, so let me tell you that story. So the first time someone handed me a similar values assessment, I freaked out because-.
Speaker 2:Like. I want all of these Because they're all desirable. These are all my values.
Speaker 3:They're all A and B. I have the perfect set of values, right, because I have that streak. I confess I'm a recovering perfectionist, my friends. And then it was a coach that I was working with, and so I went to her the next session. She said, ok, what are your values? I said, oh no, she said, come on, just pick. And so I just picked five, and they were authenticity, relationships, creativity, excellence and self-care.
Speaker 3:After my health episode, I just decided I got to take care of me before I can take care of all of you. It just came out, so it's very intuitive. Anyway, but the other thing is on my list. I'll just give you all a heads up. There are lots of words for relationships, right? There's relationship, friendship, love, intimacy, romance. There's also community and fellowship, and so if you find yourself checking off a lot of those relationship type words, just pick one and then say this bucket is my relationship value, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, another one learning. There's a lot of learning values. Lifelong learning is one of my top and I define. For me, lifelong learning means I'm creative, I challenge myself, I go for adventure, and so that's my bucket. So if you're the kind of person that just loves to learn and there are all these different aspects of learning wisdom, expertise, right. Pick one and that's your learning bucket, right.
Speaker 3:And then there's another really interesting one authenticity, which is one of my top values. So a lot of people pick that just say I want to be the real me, right. But some people take it a step further and say, well, what does it mean for me to be authentic? And then there might be a bunch of those values in there that define you as your authentic self and that can be your authenticity value, you know. So that would be my way of helping people find their values. And then, as I said, value should not just sit on the shelf, right? How do we align with those values? So I have an interesting exercise that I do with my class and in my leadership trainings, where I have people define what a value means. Ok, you pick authenticity what does that mean? And then write out a principle that says I stand for and use your definition. Then take that and commit to taking an action that shows that you actually do align with that principle.
Speaker 2:Oh, can you give us an example Sure Of what some people have done for their action?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, ok, I'll do my lifelong learning. I stand for lifelong learning and my definition is I'm creative, I challenge myself, I learn every day. That's my principle. So that means that every day I'm going to read something, or I'm going to learn something, or I'm going to do something in a different way, things like that. So good.
Speaker 2:Well, because it feels real. Yes, you know yes, and it feels personal.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure. And it's not just something that I know I've been guilty of going to a lesson or to a class and doing whatever the teacher said, almost blindly I mean, because when you're in college, when you're a student, you don't know yourself Right, going to a lesson and just doing whatever the teacher told me blindly, as if it was a prescription Right, like you have this illness, so you take this prescription Right and you do it.
Speaker 2:And you know I just did it Because that was me like a straight, a student, right, I do what the teacher tells me to do and I did those things. But you don't get nearly as much bang for your buck unless they're personalized to you specifically right To your values, and you have to tailor things to get the most out of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so good. I feel a very similar resonance to that, although on my end it was like then, faced with this crippling guilt because I wouldn't necessarily successfully complete the prescription, and I would just think, okay, I'm this failure because I can't do the thing that's expected of me. But really it's like got the way I'm wired and it would have been so helpful to have.
Speaker 1:But I also I mean, I'll throw this out there. I think that's an even more difficult, I think, challenge that we faced as women when we were younger, because there was just so much more of that vibe of being. You mentioned that one of the early projects you took on was for creative women lawyers. I can imagine there's a whole sub community there that needed this kind of support, needed this kind of awakening.
Speaker 3:Yeah, twofold. You know it's interesting because I still have one lawyer client. But she left and she started a business and I've been her business coach and it was just a really interesting process. She came to me as a baby lawyer in the middle of the financial crisis, when she was terrified of getting fired, and so her goal was helping me keep my job and so great. But what do you really wanna do, you know? And she wasn't sure, but it was very much about her strengths. Let's play to your strengths. And so, first of all, she was able to find work that was much more aligned with what she was good at, so she didn't get fired, she was getting promoted. She found a pro bono case so a lot of law firms will take on a case just to do good, right, and they won't charge the clients anything, just cause it's a really important thing. And she got put on this big pro bono case and ultimately left the firm, as you know, in charge of this case as from a business side, it's just a very interesting thing and then went to another organization through which she did her work and then decided well, why are they taking all of the fees here? I can do this on my own. So she's now got her own business. So that's pretty exciting. So I danced that with her and still continue to be her lawyer.
Speaker 3:Everybody else is a creative musician, an arts leader. But I want to go back to learning and copying our teachers right, cause I think we can reframe this In the beginning, when you don't know, you imitate right. You'll look to role models and you say, okay, if the teacher says do it that way, I will do it that way. And then, liz, obviously there was this little voice inside you that said oh, this doesn't feel right. And to listen to that little voice and say, well, if this doesn't feel right, what does? Let me explore, you know, and it just reminds me of one of my favorite books.
Speaker 3:It's this little book called Steal Like an Artist by a graphic designer named Austin Cleon. Oh, my God, I love this book. So I admire graphic artists, artists of any sort, because I cannot draw to save my life. And there's all these awesome little drawings. They're so cool. But his point is steal like an artist. What does he mean? He means be Picasso, go to the Musee de L'homme, look at African masks and then go home and paint Du Moselle de Vigno and invent Cubism, like he looked at those masks. He stole that idea and then he made it Picasso and instead of imitating those masks and saying, okay, well, let me see what I you know, he just struck out and did it, and I just think that's so brilliant for creative people Steal, like an artist right, go out and see what it is that resonates for you and then make it your own. It's such a great message.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's what we do as artists, Exactly absolutely, yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:That is absolutely also something that, if it were introduced more into the orchestral world, might be really beneficial to us.
Speaker 3:Because it does.
Speaker 1:I mean, we're really like, in a lot of ways, I think it's starting to change. We talk about this a lot as well, but replicating the concept of what someone said needed to be this particular symphony, this style, this way and it's always a little bit more fun when you feel like we're all doing a thing together it's really beautiful and blended, but I feel like I'm doing it myself.
Speaker 3:I feel like I'm contributing in this way.
Speaker 3:It's a challenge because of the machine that we're behind, but it's interesting and you know what you were saying earlier about values can drive decision making. I always say values are there for the hard decisions. Easy decisions, you just sort of know. But the tough choices they have to make professionally, like what career path am I gonna follow? Like, if you really value security, the life of a freelance musician is not gonna work for you and I think there's no good or bad there, it's just who are you. I think that that can really drive decisions, and in friendships and relationships, very much so. You see that in ensembles successful ensembles it's like a marriage.
Speaker 1:They are in sync and actually truly in a chamber music setting. You are celebrating each person's strengths, and I remember we had a panel discussion once with the Miro Quartet. I run a chamber music program and we were asking them about rehearsal dynamics when you get irritated with each other, because it happens, especially when their teenager's doing it and we were trying to point out all the things that ego gets in the way and that doesn't help with anything.
Speaker 1:And they gave so many answers that were like for my quartet too, we're like, yeah, we should be doing that, we should be trying that. And one of the things they said is basically, they never belabor any one person's weaknesses. If someone is having trouble with a passage, they just leave it alone.
Speaker 3:They really just leave it alone.
Speaker 1:And they just focus on all of the things that they can do better, and eventually those things work themselves out.
Speaker 1:However, that might look, sometimes they say, like it takes, maybe they adjust tempo somewhere so that someone can play it more easily. It's total respect and that is what makes it so great. So when you have an organization as big as an orchestra working for those values, that is a recipe for something pretty amazing. And, yeah, it's just great that we're living in a time where these things can be celebrated and acknowledged. I'm thinking about this conversation right now and thinking, if every one person is identifying these biggest important values to them, we're all gonna have different ones. And how amazing is that?
Speaker 1:Because that means that, as a collective, we're all contributing something that's unique to us, that's important for everyone, right, it's just really amazing.
Speaker 3:Yep, and I think that's the secret of success and successful collaborations is that the members really respect each other. They respect each other's talents, experience, differences right and understanding that it's through our diverse differences that we can bring so much more to the collaboration, to really admire that and celebrate that instead of having a bunch of mini-means, because that doesn't work. That's and I think that's, a problem with a lot of leaders who are insecure and therefore hire people and surround themselves with people who are just like them so they never get a contrary opinion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it's uncomfortable to see someone else's strengths where you have weaknesses.
Speaker 3:Yes, right right, Right, and if you just acknowledge Excel spreadsheets are just not my thing, right, Let me run a meeting right, yeah, first by a little of my quartet.
Speaker 1:We'll laugh very hard at that one, because people love spreadsheets, way to go. I'm more than happy to hand them off. I have no problem with that one.
Speaker 3:That sounds like. That sounds perfect right.
Speaker 1:This has been amazing, Astrid. This has been so great.
Speaker 2:This has been so great. Oh, thank you, this was great. What's?
Speaker 1:coming up for you? Do you have any exciting stuff coming up this year, oh?
Speaker 3:I have lots of exciting stuff. First of all, my class at Yale is just so great. I love my students and they're great. I live in New York City. I go to all these cool concerts, so that's very fun. I'm going to California for Thanksgiving to see my family, so that's really fun. Just you know, life is good. New York is back culturally, so that's exciting. I went to a phenomenal opera on Sunday. I saw a dead man walking at the Met.
Speaker 2:Yes, we did that at the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 3:Right. Isn't that an amazing opera.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was just great.
Speaker 3:Oh, and I'm going to the farewell concert of the Emerson Quartet in a few weeks.
Speaker 1:Pretty epic, yeah, very amazing Epic.
Speaker 2:Epic it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's just in the next month. That's what I'm doing, so it's all good, great.
Speaker 2:Well, where can our listeners find? You find your book Sure so Creative Success.
Speaker 3:Now Just go to Amazon or Born to Noble or wherever you get books and just put my name in there. Creative Success Now it'll come up. Visit my website, ostradbombgardenercom. I have a lot of resources. I have blogs, videos, all kinds of things. If you're interested in joining my mailing list, I send out a quarterly newsletter where I feature some blogs and some other resources and just share what I'm doing and what I think can help all of you, and there'll always be something new because you're a lifelong learner.
Speaker 2:That's it. So there'll always be something new in the newsletter, right? Good one, yes.
Speaker 3:It's true, very much so, because I can't write the same newsletter two times in a little. No way.
Speaker 1:No way. Thank you so much, Astrid.
Speaker 3:Oh, this has been wonderful. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening today. If you loved this episode, consider writing us a five-star review on Apple podcasts, amazon music, spotify or wherever you listen.
Speaker 2:Thanks also to our season sponsor, PotterViolence.
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Speaker 2:You can buy all your Musician-centric merch, including shirts, water bottles, koozies and a variety of other fun items.
Speaker 1:Our theme music was written and produced by JP Wogerman and is performed by Stefan Myself.
Speaker 2:Our episodes are produced by Liz O'Hara and edited by Emily McMahon.
Speaker 1:Thanks again for listening. Let's talk soon. Music.
