Just as with financial thought patterns, some singing thought patterns pass inadvertently from one generation to another with no consideration of whether they are true or whether they are serving or hurting us. These thought patterns are repeated over and over again until they are engrained in our minds as a habitual way of thinking. We proceed to act out what we think about, and cause it to come true in our reality.
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that people can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” —William James
Unless your singing career is everything you ever dreamed of, you may want to examine and possibly alter the attitudes in your mind about singing. Here are some thoughts I hear singers say about their singing careers. “I must sacrifice for my art.” (my favorite) “If I pursue my art, I’ll be a starving artist.” “There aren’t enough singing jobs.” “There are too many sopranos.” “I’m too fat, too thin, too short, too tall.” “I have a house to pay for, bills, and a kid to feed.” Here are two I heard just recently, “You mustn’t have too many singing gigs on your résumé from one place,” and “I must take this gig because I need the money.”
The first step in choosing your thoughts is to become aware of what you are thinking. You may choose to agree or disagree with my analysis of these thought patterns. They may or may not be accurate, but that is neither here nor there. My goal is to get you into the habit of becoming an observer of your thought patterns, and to begin questioning whether those thoughts are serving or harming you.
“I must sacrifice for my art”
Sacrifice can be viewed either negatively—as in what happens to a scapegoat or other animals slaughtered as sacrifices—or positively, as in someone who gives up something valuable for the sake of a greater good. Remember that the words you use don’t matter so much as the picture you see in your mind or the feeling you have in your heart as you speak the words. Let’s examine some of the things you might sacrifice for your art.
Is it time? You must take time to practice every day, which will take time away from the rest of your life. Practicing leads to growth and development, however. I develop disciplines through practicing that positively affect my ability to take on any life challenge. The more I develop my singing, the more I have the ability to profoundly move my audience, to bring them to new spiritual heights and depths, which is extremely satisfying. When viewed this way, the sacrifice of time to practice becomes positive.
Is it time spent with your family that you must sacrifice? As a singer, you may end up separated from your family for extended periods. I believe my family has been enriched from experiencing the person I’m developing into as I pursue my passion and blossom into the best person I can be. I do more for my family by becoming the best that I can be than in any other way. I give them travel experiences when I get to take them with me, exposing them to other cultures and lifestyles, expanding their minds, and enriching their souls. I teach them through my actions about using infinite creativity to figure out solutions in which I can accommodate their needs as well as mine. I wonder what I would be teaching my family if I argued for my limitations and gave excuses for why I couldn’t sing.
Is it money you are sacrificing? Let’s see … you want to have a singing lesson. You put your mind to work on finding a way to come up with the money. The idea you come up with provides a service or product to society. You get an exchange of money so you can now pay for a singing lesson. You go to the singing lesson, where you get to experience the exhilaration of a breakthrough, which leads you to express yourself more beautifully than ever, which leads you to bring an unknown person in your audience to tears because you touched them so deeply. They come up to you after your performance, shake your hand eagerly, and thank you from the bottom of their heart. Hmmm … what was the sacrifice?
Suffering is related to sacrifice. Many people are addicted to suffering; they believe it is noble to suffer. If things are going too well for them, they aren’t comfortable, so they create a situation in which they will be suffering again. If you find yourself continually suffering, you may want to do some self-examination with this one.
“If I pursue my art, I’ll be a starving artist,” or “I have a house to pay for, bills, and a kid to feed.”
Have you ever been told to get a “real” job with security and benefits? Do you have a fear of the position in which you might end up from the lack of a stable income? Do you fear that you don’t have the capabilities, creativity, or know-how to come up with solutions to those periods when you’re in between singing gigs?
At the bottom of these beliefs is the issue of security, an issue I touched on very briefly in Part 1. Security is an illusion based on the fear you don’t have whatever it takes to deal with any given situation that comes along (situations often are opportunities in disguise).
Having a secure, steady job can be risky. First, in this fast-paced, quickly changing information age in which we live, there is no secure job. Second, in my opinion, the biggest risk is to your character development. When you have a secure job with a steady income, how quickly do you learn to adapt to new situations? What motivation do you have to develop yourself enough to build some sort of income opportunity on the side where you can create passive income or assets? Because you have a secure job, how much money are you risking (because of opportunities lost) by not trying new things where you’ll be making mistakes, possibly costly mistakes, that you have the opportunity to learn and grow from?
Security, if there is such a thing (and I don’t believe there is), comes in learning how to find creative solutions to handle any situation that comes along. We all know people who have built a fortune and then lost it, only to rebuild it again because they knew how. Certainly, you will want to increase your knowledge of finances, and business building and organization, so your brain will have a larger database to draw upon when there are challenges to be solved.
“There aren’t enough singing jobs”
We’re very fortunate to be a part of a profession where there is a demand for continual self-development and perfection in body, mind, and soul. We’ve all benefited from having experienced a performance by a singer whose journey of continual self-development enabled him or her to give us a performance that brought us to tears.
If we believe the reason we’re not getting work is that there simply aren’t enough jobs, we stop the inward search for development and improvement. Maybe there is a reason you’re not getting work from your auditions. Inside of every audition or performance experience is an opportunity for growth, by going inside of yourself, searching for what it is you can learn from that experience and how you can improve.
We’re all aware of singers who have created jobs for both themselves and other singers. Creativity is infinite. The undiscovered opportunities are infinite. Rather than staying in the complaining/blaming/excuse-making mode, wouldn’t it be better to create?
“There are too many sopranos”
As a soprano, I’ve gone to auditions and listened to 10 sopranos and one tenor, 10 more sopranos then a mezzo, and have thought time and again: “Here’s another example of how you can take a negative thought and turn it into a positive one.” Instead of seeing too many sopranos, see this as an opportunity to develop your art to the fullest. When you are hired for gigs amongst the numerous auditioning sopranos, you will have more ability to express your soul with higher and higher levels of beauty and freedom, and therefore a greater capacity to touch and move those you sing for. How wonderful!
That being said, each one of us has a unique way of expressing our singular gift. Variety is the spice of life. It is wonderful that there are so many different colors and flavors of voices, even among sopranos, and I get to enjoy each one’s individual expression.
“I’m too fat, too thin, too short, too tall”
While studying martial arts under Bruce Lee, Joe Hyams, author of Zen in the Martial Arts, complained that his body didn’t work as well as it had when he was younger. Lee told him that one of his legs was shorter than the other and that instead of using that as an excuse, he had found a way to use it to his advantage.
Stereotypes exist in the operatic world, but they are different in everyone’s minds. Since you cannot be everything to everyone, you must convince your audience you are your character by a deep internalization of the role. I have often sat in a performance where the singer didn’t fit the stereotype in my mind of that character’s physical appearance—but the performer had developed the character to a point that made it believable for me.
“You mustn’t have too many singing gigs on your résumé from one place”
I did an audition recently where the auditioner brought up the fact that I had many gigs on my résumé from the same place. I don’t know whether this auditioner perceived this as good or bad, but I made the assumption he thought it was bad because of thoughts I had heard or been taught. My embarrassment over the matter caused me to answer in an apologetic and negative fashion.
As I was sitting on the airplane going home after the audition, I was asking myself what I could learn from my experience. What I came to realize is that instead of being embarrassed I should be proud that I am the kind of singer an opera company would want to hire over and over again, and that I had been fortunate to have a very fine regional company right in my backyard.
It doesn’t matter what the belief is around this issue or why people believe it to be true. What matters is how I view myself and my past performance experiences, because I was projecting those negative beliefs about myself wherever I went.
“I must take this gig because I need the money”
CS subscriber Kristina Valcarce e-mailed and asked me to examine this thought pattern. I will also look at the reverse: “I won’t take that singing job because it doesn’t pay.”
In the August edition of Classical Singer, Rod Gilfry said, “Singing is fulfilling and challenging. …Frankly, I was surprised I could do something that I love so much and get paid for it. But I never think about the money, I really don’t. Sometimes they bring me a paycheck after a performance and I think, ‘Oh, I forgot about that!’ And that’s nice. That’s the way it should be. … I think one of the reasons I’m successful—if I am successful—is that it’s not the end-all and be-all. It’s not something I have to do, so letting it go makes it come back with more value.”
I once joined a network marketing business because I fell for the sponsor’s line that I would make $40,000 per month in residual income. I ended up working 60 hours or more per week and was miserable because it had nothing to do with my passions and purpose in life. I did it for the wrong reason—for the money. I did it because I didn’t believe in myself and my gifts, I didn’t believe I could make money doing what I love. I did it because I had the “starving artist” mentality and was causing it to be true in my life.
If you’re doing something simply for the money—or not doing something because there is no money in it—you’re making a choice based on the wrong criterion. A better criterion is to ask yourself if what you are considering doing is connected with your passions and purpose in life. If one of your goals is to make a living singing and you take a gig that, though it may not be your ideal singing gig, is still taking you towards that goal, that is a good step forward.
When evaluating an opportunity that would head you towards your goal of making a living on your singing but doesn’t pay you money—and in fact will cost you money—you must ask yourself, “How much money will I make as a result of this investment?” How much is it worth to sing a role with a company, to not only get it on my résumé but to have the experience of singing the role? How much is it worth to make a connection in that process with someone who knows someone else they connect you with, which may lead to bigger, better things?
Now that you’re becoming aware of some singing thought patterns that may be negatively impacting you, how do you change those thought patterns? Begin by replacing these negative thoughts with positive affirmations, as discussed in Part 1.
Here are some singing affirmations I’ve come up with to habituate my mind to new ways of thinking: “I have a 10-million-dollar voice.” “I sing professionally.” “I create pleasurable, new, singing business opportunities where I share my singing gifts with the world.” “I see infinite opportunities and act on those opportunities.” “I always find a way.” “I have a multi-million dollar singing business.” “I create passive/residual income through my singing. I am exactly where I should be.” “I have the perfect singing background for the opportunities that present themselves.” “I capitalize on my singing assets.” “I run my singing business in an organized fashion.” “I learn, grow, and benefit myself and everyone around me through my singing.”
Feel free to copy some of my affirmations if you’d like, but bear in mind that they must have meaning for you if you expect them to work in your life. I would love to have you add to my list of affirmations with your suggestions.
Assignment: Start thinking about what you’re thinking about your singing. Write down positive affirmations about what you do want with your singing.
We have talked here and there about visualization. Visualization is Success Principal No. 3 and is a powerful tool you can use to reach both your singing and financial goals. I’m looking forward to sharing with you what I know about visualization and its application in Part 3.
