Tuesday Travel Tip: Assemble a Team of Experts

{The sign outside Nola Studios in New York City}

For the first round of auditions for musical theater, the first step is often to sing part of a song. While we are permitted to sing whatever we choose, we generally try to sing something in the style of the show. If things go well at one of my musical theater auditions and an artistic staff thinks I might match what they need, I am given a callback to do a particular scene and song from the show for the director, choreographer, and producer. Thus begins another series of events. For a callback, I develop a character, learn the scene, and learn the song.

Sometimes, it’s a lot.

Almost always, it all has to happen overnight.

I have two or three experts I can call on short notice. They serve as my vocal coach, voice teacher and acting coach. I collaborate with them on how to interpret my scene or song. They encourage me to make stronger choices and allow me to take risks, which is always the goal of an actor. When I rehearse alone, I don't seem to take things to the most creative place the way I do under the direction of my team of experts. They tell me what's funny, what needs to improve, and sometimes even teach me a better way to act or sing a particular section.

Without my team of experts, I would not be as successful in my callbacks. It takes an outside set of highly trained eyes and ears to help me achieve as much as possible in a short amount of time.

Although my years of training and experience are important, I can’t just depend on what I learned in the past to carry me through each new callback. I need to constantly improve in order to stay competitive. My team of experts pushes me to reach new levels that I wasn’t sure I had.

There are so many factors at play in the world of auditioning for musical theater. We sing, dance, and act all at the same time. To be chosen for a particular production, we have to have the right resume, right union status, right vocal range, be the right size to fit the costume, look like we fit into the family or group of friends that is onstage, and a dozen other factors. Among all of these aspects that I can’t control, I control the things that are within my reach. By working with a team who pushes me to be better, I’m ready when the producer wants a 5’5” Caucasian woman in her 30s for a quirky mezzo-soprano role.

Who is on your team of experts when you need to achieve something new?

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Monday Morning Musing: Moral Traits vs. Performance Traits

Last week on my Facebook page and Twitter feed, I posted this article from the New York Times entitled, "What if the Secret to Success is Failure?" I appreciated that it referred to a list of 24 character strengths developed by Drs. Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson that are consistent among cultures throughout the world. We use their assessment of strengths in my Personalize eCourse to identify key strengths as part of the process to create a personal mission statement and live a more passionate, fulfilling life. The New York Times article recounts the story of building these character strengths among students two very different New York City private schools.

I found a helpful distinction in the article between moral character traits and performance character traits. Have you ever thought about the difference? I hadn't, but once I thought about it, everything made so much sense. Moral character traits are ethical values like fairness, generosity, honesty and integrity while performance character traits include effort, optimism, social intelligence and perseverance. Both moral and performance character traits are important, and both can be taught. You may have learned many as a child, but you can learn them as an adult as well.

We have all seen examples of people who have developed their performance character traits and find great success, only to be brought down by their lack of moral character traits. Bernie Madoff comes to mind. However, my clients generally have heavily developed moral character traits and slightly less developed performance character traits.

In other words, my coaching clients are good people at the core who want to accomplish more with their lives.

They are exactly the type of people that we want to help have a greater influence on the world around them.

If that sounds like you, let's talk.

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Mark your calendar: the next session of 4-week interactive eCourses runs October 18 through November 15: learn more about yourself, get completely organized or learn proven methods to reach your goals.

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Monday Morning Musing: Excellence vs. Perfection

{Photo found at http://www.connectedprincipals.com}

I have discussions all the time with clients, friends and eCourse participants around the topic of excellence vs. perfection. In fact, we were discussing it this weekend in my online eCourse, Organize. Often, we allow our quest for perfection to cause us to not take action at all. if it's not going to be perfect, it's not worth doing. The thing is, some things actually are worth doing and we need to be OK with achieving something less than perfection for the sake of getting it done. Aspire to excellence, not perfection.

In the things you do, or need to do, or aspire to do someday, what does it mean to be perfect and what does it mean to be excellent? Because doing nothing just so that you don't have to find out that you're not perfect is not a great choice. In this article from the New York Times, the author found that "in the end, unless you negotiate peace with the demon of perfectionism, you’re left with the ruins of a dream and a painful testament to personal shortcomings." The important thing was not that the author's project was perfect. The important things was that he finished.

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How to you start to take action toward excellence instead of letting a quest for perfection hold you back? Let's talk about it and remove that barrier in a session of The Great Barrier Relief or any other of my one-on-one coaching options, available by telephone, email or a combination of both.

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Fear (and what to do about it)

{Photo found on Pinterest}

I meet people on a semi-regular basis who say they would love to work with me as a life coach, but they are afraid.

I find it rather brave that they would tell me they are afraid. It tells me that they are only afraid of certain things, not everything. After a brief conversation, I discover that they are not actually afraid of me as a person (wheh!) but rather what they might discover they need to do as a result of our coaching conversations.

Anything can be frightening until you have more information, but sometimes you can't get all the information you need without actually doing the thing that frightens you.

So you can be stuck or you can face the fear.

I can tell you that I have done many things that started out very, very scary: move across the country by myself, buy and sell a condo, and leave a full time job with benefits in order to follow my passions. I have also not yet done many things that frighten me, but I'm working on it slowly.

Sometimes fear is a useful reaction that helps you avoid some sort of actual danger. Other times fear is something that you must acknowledge, assess, and then act anyway. What kind of fear are you experiencing? Talk about it, gather information, and find people to support you.

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As a coach, I help people sort out which fears are worth listening to and which fears to manage and take action in spite of them. No matter which it turns out to be, I provide support and encouragement through the entire process, and help people live lives of passion and purpose. Check out one-on-one coaching by telephone or email and 4-week interactive eCourses that start this Tuesday, September 13.

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Do you know a smart, creative, spiritually-minded person who might be interested in this blog post? Please forward it in it's entirety, compliments of Dawn Trautman, Urban Nomad. Copyright, 2011.

Monday Morning Musing: Hard Workers and Whiz Kids

(Photo Source pixdaus.com via Pinterest)

In the last two weeks, I have talked to five different people who seem to be "stuck" in their careers. Oddly enough, they all have something in common. Early on, they were the Whiz Kids. The stars. Opportunities were handed to them because they were enormously talented and highly educated for their field. As they were given better opportunities, they exerted enough effort to make a good showing and got even better at what they did. They started to become well known within their field. They knew all the right people and did all the right things. They climbed the mountain and enjoyed the view.

So why are they stuck? It turns out that while the Whiz Kids were being handed everything and enjoying the view, others, we'll call them the Hard Workers, were fighting for every last opportunity. The Hard Workers took longer to get where the Whiz Kids are, but along the way they learned to go after what they wanted and put in a lot of extra work. The extra work was difficult and often inconvenient, so the Hard Workers asked themselves if it was worth all that, well, Hard Work. And for those whose answer was yes, they redoubled their efforts toward the goal.

And then one day the Hard Workers caught up to and surpassed the Whiz Kids. And the Whiz Kids were shocked. In fact, they looked around and didn't even see anyone else, because the Hard Workers had moved on to another mountain, which they climbed even faster. It wasn't because they were more skilled. It was because the Hard Workers learned so much about themselves as they climbed the first mountain that they were better prepared for the second mountain.

Eventually everyone can develop the skills for the job. The winners for the long haul also develop the necessary internal resources. They know if the goal is what they really want, and they are willing to do whatever it takes, even when it's inconvenient, as long as it aligns with their sense of right and wrong. The Hard Workers have the passion. The Whiz Kids who get stuck just haven't had to test their passion yet. They have gotten as far as their education and talent and connections will take them. They have an interest or ability in their field, but now they need to decide if they have the passion.

I can hardly wait to hear what the Whiz Kids in my life decide, because either way, they have an exciting road ahead.

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Know what makes you remarkable

Celebrating a winner of a giveaway (photo by Michael Sladek)

I was recently in Kansas City for this year's gathering of Lutheran Youth Workers. Over 500 people attended the event. They had all sorts of options about how to spend their time: workshops, massages, time with friends, spiritual renewal, connecting with vendors, exploring the city or simply relaxing at the hotel. Nothing was required, but once or twice a day, almost everyone attended the general sessions. After hearing a speaker and a musician, the end of each general session included announcements and giveaways. I was nominated from among our leadership team to deliver those announcements and giveaways. I gave prizes to the person who stayed up the latest, who had climbed the highest mountain, who had coached a sport the longest and other such categories. Between sessions, people who spotted me in the hotel would say, "Hey, I want to win something." I would ask, "well, what category could you win?" The entire time that I was there, no one had an answer. No one was prepared to tell me how they were uniquely remarkable.

I realize this was just a funny little game to win prizes, but I believe everyone is unique and remarkable and has something to offer the world. And I believe that it is specific enough to differentiate you from 500 others at an event where most of the participants have the same job as you.

What makes you remarkable?

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