Practice Happier: Small Shifts, Big Results

Michelle Lynne: Hey everybody and welcome back to the Fearless Artist Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Lynne, and today I’m very pleased to have on my friend and colleague Cory Barger from Practice Happier. Welcome, Cory.

Cory Barger: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Michelle Lynne: I have been wanting to talk to you for a while because I love anyone who’s helping musicians learn how to practice in a, as you describe it, happier way. Uh, when I first finished grad school, I worked with a life coach for a number of years to help me overcome a lot of inner criticism, perfectionism, and all that really unhealthy stuff, which is what the Fearless Artist was born out of. So I’m excited to dive into your story today, and you have a course for helping musicians, so I would love to learn more about that.

Cory Barger: And yeah, thanks so much for having me. And, and what you said about talking to someone about all of these negative things that we learn—it’s, I think, so important because there’s so much in our training that ingrains this stuff into us, and it’s really hard to come out from under it.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Cory Barger: So please, would you introduce yourself to our audience and tell us where you’re coming from? I’m Cory Barger. I am the Principal Bassoonist in the Phil DeRio Vera Cruz in Veracruz, Mexico, which is where I am coming to you from right now.

Michelle Lynne: And I just learned that you studied in London for your master’s degree. I would love to hear about your studies and then ultimately getting this orchestra position and when you started Practice Happier and why.

Cory Barger: So I grew up in Southern California, and I studied at UCLI—studied the bassoon—and I felt I was in a little bit of a strange position because I’d never had lessons before I went to college. And I always felt like I was really behind. I started playing bassoon when I was 14—the flute was my first instrument. And I was one of those people that got kind of bored all the time with everything. So I switched from playing the flute, I played the oboe, I played the clarinet, I played the bass clarinet, and eventually someone handed me a bassoon and a fingering chart, and that’s how I learned to play the bassoon. Oh, wow.

Uh, so needless to say, there were a lot of habits that I’d learned that were not very appreciated by my teacher, nor, you know, a lot—you learn a lot of bad habits when you don’t have any guidance.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Cory Barger: Um, I always felt like I was a little, I was really behind all my peers, but then I learned that everybody thinks that, no matter what level of preparation they’re coming from. And I feel like that sort of experience was really, uh, formative in how I teach now because we’re always feeling so isolated in our heads, in the struggles that we have. And, we come to learn eventually that actually most people feel these things. Most people feel inadequate; most people feel behind because that’s what the culture is constantly telling us. When I was at UCLA, I got some really bad tendinitis injuries because I was practicing so much—because I felt like I had to make up for being so behind—and I couldn’t move my thumbs at a certain point. Oh geez, which is really bad when you play the bassoon. There’s like 14 keys that your thumbs are responsible for, and so there was a point where I had to stop playing for three months. It was like in between my second-year jury and my third-year recital, so obviously I was really panicked and wondering how on earth I was ever gonna be able to graduate and make this my career. I went to all these doctors who were like, “Oh, just stop playing.” Um, and I was like, “No.” Um, so eventually I found an acupuncturist who really turned things around for me—luckily, my body responds really well to acupuncture—and that got me to the point where I could play for 15 minutes a day. I still was going to the practice rooms with my friends; we had this ritual of all going to practice together at the end of the day, and I didn’t want to be left out. So I would go with them, and I would, like, wander the halls and be everyone’s nightmare of the person who’s listening while you’re practicing. When I was wandering around, I noticed just how much time most of us are wasting.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Cory Barger: And I kept thinking, like, “Oh, it would be a lot more effective if, if you did this or that thing instead of repeating this thing the same way over and over again.” So I started to really notice how kind of outdated all of our ideas of skill acquisition are, and the way that we learn things and how we learn them. So I started reading a whole lot about psychology and performance anxiety, and most of the studies that we have about how we get better at things come from athletics. Um, so there’s a lot of detail and research there, particularly like studies on Olympic athletes on how to get really good at stuff. So that experience, while it was a horrible one, um, taught me so much about how to get more done in less time. And in the end, I played my recital, got good grades, graduated, and got a big scholarship to go to the Royal College of Music in London. And, uh, yeah, throughout that time, um, I was doing a lot of teaching, a lot of freelancing, and I got to the point where I could no longer live in England for certain reasons, and I had to move to California, and then eventually, I got the opportunity to come down here to Mexico. I took it, and I’ve been here for seven years.

Michelle Lynne: Seven years in Mexico. Okay. I mean, thank you so much for sharing all that. That’s incredible—and what a way to use something that was so awful, but then essentially start listening to your colleagues, coaching them, noticing, making those observations of maybe the unnecessary repetitions that they were doing that ultimately led to your injury, and then finding smarter ways to work. I mean, it’s incredible.

Cory Barger: ‘Cause like 85% of orchestra musicians will have an injury at some point in their career that will stop them from playing. Yeah. And that’s a huge number of people—and that study was done in, like, I think 2004. Um, but the numbers aren’t really changing very much. And from what I see in students and, um, colleagues, there really isn’t any change. And a lot of that has to do with the culture that we’re in as well—just this constant pressure to, to never be behind.

Michelle Lynne: Right? Yeah. So why Practice Happier, and what does that mean to you?

Cory Barger: Hm. That’s, um, funny that you should ask because I just was talking to, um, one of my followers the other day about this, and I posted a meme that was a little bit of a dark humor thing, and they commented, “It’s ironic that an account that’s called Practice Happier posted this thing.” And I was like, “Well, there’s a reason that it’s not called Practice Happy, because I don’t think that—I don’t want this to be a toxic, positivity sort of space.” Mm-hmm. And there are a lot of things that make me believe that “happy” is a long way off.

Michelle Lynne: So what were you noticing in your colleagues, clients that you came up with? Okay. I just want to make everybody a little bit happier with their practicing.

Cory Barger: Well, a lot of times just getting started is something that people have a huge problem with. Okay. Because the time that we have—say that you go in and you’re thinking, “Okay, I’m gonna practice for three hours or something.” Yeah. Um, that’s very intimidating, and a lot of people will procrastinate doing that. So just being able to get over the hump of getting yourself into the practice room is pretty hard. So think about how you motivate yourself. And I noticed that a lot of people do that very negatively. And the more I learn about motivation, the more I realize that it’s about how much dopamine you have available in your brain—it’s not any kind of moral, um, anything. So, um, finding little tiny ways to make the task more pleasant—that’s partly where Practice Happier came from—is that in my course there are quite a few lessons about just tiny actions that you can take to make that time a little bit more pleasant.

Michelle Lynne: Okay. Can you unpack this a little bit? ‘Cause I’m totally resonating with this—‘cause I also was like, “Okay, I’m flying in this morning, but this afternoon I’m gonna practice two hours ‘cause I’m desperately behind on some upcoming programs.” And of course I had a nap and I did not practice.

Cory Barger: I would say the nap was a better use of your time, right? Possibly. But then anxiety is gonna come in and tell you, “Oh my God, no, I need to spend this time practicing.” But actually, um, sleep is extremely, extremely useful for making sure that your brain gets rid of all of the useless things that it doesn’t need. So when we practice, um, basically our brains are kind of editing what we’ve been doing all the time. Mm-hmm. And when we give our brain the time to rest and actually clear the cache, delete all the stuff that we don’t need—delete all those mistake repetitions that we may have had—then we come back the next day with things being a little bit tidier. If we don’t give ourselves that time, then all of those things are kind of just muddied up in there. Um, yeah. So it’s very difficult for us to have a clear idea of what it is that we want. Um, that’s, so that’s one of the reasons that practice can tend to be, um, frustrating for people—‘cause you might not see results. So, take more naps. And even, yeah, even just a tiny amount of rest—like I will take a break after four or five minutes of really repetitive practice and just let my mind do nothing—so that my brain has a moment to just make whatever connections it needs to process the information that I just gave it.

Michelle Lynne: And I just read that recently too—that you need to give yourself that space to process what you just did. But so many musicians will just repeat, repeat, repeat, like, 10 times in a row. Mistakes.

Cory Barger: Yeah. Exactly. And that’s what I heard from my colleagues and my friends in the times that I was stalking them in the practice rooms.

Michelle Lynne: So when you’re saying, “Right, make it marginally happier to practice.” You said get it—making it easier to get started. Can you unpack that a little bit?

Cory Barger: Yeah. There’s a lot of ways that we can do that, and some of them are what you would think of as kind of cosmetic. But I like to, like, if I’m at home, I have a candle that I like when I practice because your scent memory is really strong and it helps to bring you to a particular mental state. And I know that when I smell that smell, it’s time to get to work, and my brain is just like, “Okay, fine. Let’s go do this.” Um, just sorts of things that make you feel happier—coffee, you know, whatever makes your environment feel a little bit better.

Um, but on a more practical side, giving yourself a schedule for what you’re doing helps a lot because when we look at a two- or three-hour block of practice as, “I’m gonna start and see where we go,” it is very overwhelming for our brain. And it means that we have to make a lot of really small decisions in the moment. If you’re having a hard time getting started practicing, make yourself a plan with four or five goals that you have before, like, even the day before you go into practice. And you don’t always have to stick to that, but having that laid out—saying, “Okay, I’m gonna work on letters A to C in the first movement of whatever, and I’m gonna polish measure 365”—and you know, very specific goals so that your brain has something to grab onto is going to make it a lot easier to go into that time without feeling like it’s an overwhelming, amorphous thing.

Michelle Lynne: I get that. I mean, I totally hear you. Where I find I get stuck is I’ll go too deep into the weeds, but like, so today, I’ve got a bunch of upcoming programs for some of the rep I don’t know at all—and then some of it I know—but it’s really hard. So then I’ll start working, and then I get stuck in the technical aspect. Like, I need to do this detailed work, and I told myself I would only spend 30 minutes on the entire thing ‘cause I just need to do a scrape of an overview. But in the meantime, I find myself in, like, three bars in a movement, five, going over and over and over.

Cory Barger: And what’s your mental state in that moment? Is it calm or is it a little bit panic?

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, totally. Like, “I gotta get this.”

Cory Barger: Yeah, exactly. And that’s what I find as well—that even if we don’t really feel that upset, um, making mistakes, being on the spot, feeling like we have a deadline puts us in fight-or-flight mode. And that means that we’re not thinking the same as if we weren’t. And a lot of times we’ll go on stage and be in fight-or-flight mode. And what happens when this gets activated is that the blood in your brain is not traveling to the same places that it would normally be if you’re calm when you’re practicing—you’re using your logical mind to solve problems, basically. We use every part of the brain when we practice, which is why music is generally recommended for so many people to stay mentally active. So when we’re in fight-or-flight mode, most of the blood goes to the back of our brain, where the instinctual part is, instead of the front part where logic is running everything. We might feel some danger on stage, but that same reaction is still happening in our brain, and we’re not aware that it’s happening. So in those moments, we get into this really repetitive, flow state of fear, and it’s hard to get out of it—and it’s exhausting and not very productive. Mm-hmm. So in those moments, I would actually stop myself. Once I become aware that I am not thinking very clearly, I would stop and move on to something else. And that’s one of the reasons I tell people to set timers in practice and actually stop when the timer’s up, because you may not be thinking as clearly as you think you are.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Can you give us an overview of the course and how it’s set up?

Cory Barger: Yeah. It’s, um, well, there’s actually two options for how the course is set up. It’s originally planned out as six weeks with individual lessons each day—I think of it as kind of like the stages of learning a piece. You start off slowly learning these smaller skills that you then can build up into what you would need to go on stage. And the other option is to attack your more specific problems directly, rather than going through a more gradual approach. So, say, for example, your problem is that you feel really terrible about yourself; you can go through specific lessons to help you build up your confidence. And if you feel like you are struggling with your motivation, you can go directly to the section about motivation. Whereas if you see the course in its entirety, um, you would get all of these little bite-sized lessons, and eventually come out with the goal of more confidence, better motivation, all of these things, without feeling like you’re very specifically tackling those issues.

Michelle Lynne: So you’re mentioning that if somebody’s struggling with lack of motivation, they can go specifically to that part of the course. Is there also something around imposter syndrome? ‘Cause we get people asking about that all the time.

Cory Barger: Yeah, definitely. Um, and that’s something I see all the time with my clients too. Imposter syndrome is really insidious, and yes—my lessons about confidence are really designed to deal with that. But I think imposter syndrome particularly comes mostly from the culture around us. Okay. So there’s a lot of work that we need to do as musicians and as leaders to deal with how imposter syndrome is affecting all of us.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. What are some first steps for someone struggling with imposter syndrome? Like, how do you help them start to unpack this, because everyone wants a fast solution—“Help me learn, yeah, and just stop feeling like an imposter.”

Cory Barger: Yeah, my favorite way to approach this is to ask, “Who benefits from me feeling like this?” And, so, not seeing yourself in a position or not seeing people like you in a position of leadership means that when you get to a position of leadership yourself and you look around, you’re like, “What am I doing here?” Mm-hmm. And I feel like that’s really the biggest driver of imposter syndrome.

Michelle Lynne: I know you have a workbook that comes with the course, and there’s a lot of great questions in there to help reflect. What are some of the more effective reflection questions that you see to help people struggle with that?

Cory Barger: Um, with imposter syndrome and confidence in general, I would want you to notice what kinds of thoughts you’re having. Mm-hmm. So usually we’ll get some sort of panic reaction when we’re feeling like an imposter—like, particularly when you’re preparing for a recital and you feel like you’re not good enough. And I want you to notice what kinds of thoughts you’re having about why you’re not good enough; what it is that you’ve picked up over the years about why you’re not good enough. What makes you believe that? Write all those things down. And then come up with, basically, a way to litigate this against yourself and be like, “Okay, here are all these reasons that I feel like I’m not good enough. Now, what evidence do I have that is the opposite of that?” Basically, what is everything that’s not that? And when you start to look, a lot of times people will initially be like, “There is no evidence that I’m good enough. I am absolutely not good enough. There’s nothing that I can tell you that would say I am.” And then you have to really dig a little bit deeper and say, “Okay, is there anything that I’m good enough at? Whatever it is that helps you to grab onto that feeling.” And we want to steal that feeling—so think about what it is that you feel like if you feel you belong somewhere. What does it feel like if you’re confident about something? Mm-hmm. What does it feel like if you are accepted?

Cory Barger: I’m sure you’ve heard about Beyoncé’s alter ego, Sasha Fierce.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Cory Barger: And how having that other side of you that has this confidence—what would it be like if I were actually confident? And then spend some time sitting with those emotions, sitting with what it feels like to have that be you, and then slowly have the experience of you going into the practice room, feeling like that for 30 seconds at a time, and slowly building that up until you break the association you have with imposter syndrome.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, I mean, I like that I’ve talked before about flipping into “Stage Michelle” when I go on performances. So maybe there’s a way to take Stage Michelle into the practice room, because yeah, that’s something that I do.

Cory Barger: A lot of the things that we do to prepare ourselves for performance are left too late. If you could bring Stage Michelle to the very first day of practicing, then you would see a lot of benefits, I think.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, because there’s an authority that comes in—there’s a confidence that comes in because the stage version has prepared and has the energy and the excitement to share with the audience. So I love that—bringing that into the practice room. Um, actually Angela Miles Beaching talked about that too, and she was on a podcast recently about how we can create that sense behind closed doors so that when you go out there, you’ve already prepared, you’ve already imagined that feeling, that energy, that outward shift.

Cory Barger: And a lot of times in practice, we think that we have to be prepared for any situation. Yeah. But what we really need to do is prepare ourselves to feel the way that we want to feel, and to be able to take that emotion and teach our body what it is that we want to experience, mm-hmm, so that we can more effectively experience it later.

Michelle Lynne: That’s good. So I’m just curious to go back to you making it easy—‘cause I know that also comes from James Clear’s “Atomic Habits”: make it easy, make it fun; that’s like the basics of habit building. Have it stack. Yeah. So I get the candle, I get the, you know, even wearing a specific outfit or something to give yourself the energy, ‘cause I know if I have a rehearsal outside the home, I show up in a very different energy state than if I just walk down the stairs and start practicing. So I’ve been thinking about that too: like, how can I shift into a higher energy mode? But if you have a sheer crazy amount of rep to learn and you do have a deadline—‘cause I know you said earlier, don’t go into this panic fight-or-flight state—then is there a way to practice calmly when you know there’s still this looming deadline? How do you help your clients with that?

Cory Barger: Yeah. So first, you have to get yourself out of the panic. Usually, when we’re in panic, we’re not very good at making decisions. We feel like, “Okay, my time is best spent drilling these three measures,” mm-hmm, but it might not actually be because the mindset you’re in is not allowing you to think clearly. It’s not allowing you to make decisions clearly, and it’s not really allowing you the level of coordination that you would expect yourself to have. And I think there’s a fine line here because a lot of us do go on stage and experience fight-or-flight. So if you’re in that state, a lot of learning is dependent on the mental state that you’re in. Mm-hmm. Um, eventually my goal is to help us not be in fight-or-flight so often. Mm-hmm. And there are a lot of ways that you can balance your nervous system.

Um, one of my favorites is a little exercise that you can do anywhere that stretches your vagus nerve a little bit. The vagus nerve is the nerve that connects your brain to the rest of your body, so a whole lot of information travels there all the time. And so if you keep your head straight forward and move your eyes all the way in one direction, in a moment you’ll either yawn, swallow, or sigh—and for me, I yawn almost immediately when doing this. Once you get that, go back to the middle, rest for a second, then move your eyes to the other side and wait for the yawn, swallow, or sigh. That yawn, swallow, or sigh is basically a sign that your body’s just given itself a little reset.

Michelle Lynne: You know what? I learned that on TikTok from a woman who was helping a binge eater. Is that something that I had to overcome too? And she was talking about how to reset your nervous system so that you’re not in this frantic binge-eating mode, ‘cause you get into this kind of stormy fog. And so she talked about the vagus nerve and also about rubbing the side of your neck to help relax as well—and it’s what you said: when you yawn, that’s when you know you’ve reached it.

Cory Barger: Yeah, yeah. And that’s exactly what’s happening when we’re in the practice room in that crazy mode of drilling things—we’re not thinking clearly. You know, because our thoughts are so powerful, and it really comes down to what we believe about ourselves—the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. I mean, what you’re thinking about imposter syndrome.

Michelle Lynne: If you don’t believe that you belong there, then you’re not going to act like you belong there. Exactly. Or you’ll be surprised you don’t know how to be, ‘cause you’ve never seen anyone in that position. And it just reminds me of, you know, before I started the Fearless Artist, I was watching women motivational speakers, women preachers, for years on Instagram. I was listening to their podcasts, and I never planned to have a podcaster myself or to have a TFA, but I think seeing these women on stage with microphones—I was like, “Yeah, I know what that looks like.” They’re so bold. Yeah. They’re so cool. They speak with authority, and so I think a lot of that has taught me how to do it instinctively. I just don’t want to… Yeah, yeah.

Cory Barger: So powerful, and that’s why representation is so important and diversity is so important. Because if you don’t see yourself in that position, or if you don’t see people like you in that position, it’s hard to imagine yourself there.

Michelle Lynne: So making your space comfortable for speaking—I know you have affirmations also in your workbook, kind of rewiring what you’re saying about yourself, having a plan in place. So all of this is like groundwork in order to actually, when you sit down, make better decisions about where to spend your time practicing, right? Mm-hmm.

Cory Barger: Yeah, because then you’ve set yourself up a little bit better for success. Like, say you’re planning your practice and you’re really stressed, “Okay, I’m gonna play this; I’m gonna be really focused for half an hour, and then I’m gonna do that and be extremely focused for another half an hour.” It’s not likely that you are going to be focused for an hour straight, just mm-hmm. The physiological reality is that our focus wanes. Knowing how much time you generally have in focus can be helpful. Um, but a lot of things affect that, like stress, tiredness, whether you’ve eaten recently or not. You know, it’s all going to affect how your focus is. So when we’re making plans and thinking about the perfectionist version of ourselves, that’s setting us up for failure—and we end up feeling terrible about ourselves when we’re done because we haven’t accomplished the 47 things that we said we were going to.

Michelle Lynne: And yeah, I mean, the happier thing is really, really great. Do you have any testimonies of, uh, students who have done your course or fun stories that have come back about people seeing changes?

Cory Barger: Well, one of my clients recently won an audition, so that was very exciting and awesome. Um, like, when we bring those experiences with us into the practice room and on stage, it creates so much pressure that it becomes almost impossible to get to work because we feel like we can’t live up to the pressure. And, um, yeah, they managed to get themselves into a practice schedule, won their audition, and they love their position.

Michelle Lynne: That’s awesome. I like that you’re emphasizing they got into a practice schedule that worked for them, ‘cause I think that’s the whole point of the course: to teach the process of preparation, right?

Cory Barger: It doesn’t necessarily need to be something that is the same all the time. We think of practice as a one-size-fits-all kind of thing, like, “Oh, if you’re not practicing for four hours, then you’re not getting anything done.” How many of us have heard this from teachers? What we do with the time is so much more important than how much time there is. Right? And generally, knowing yourself, knowing what your cycles of focus are, knowing what helps you get into flow, and knowing what helps you enjoy what you’re doing is so much more powerful than thinking you have to beat yourself into the practice room all the time.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Cory Barger: And that’s really what my work is all about: small changes that can have a larger impact than you would think.

Michelle Lynne: So this course, you would say, is for people who are having a hard time practicing, or for perfectionists, or people who are too hard on themselves, or people who are on the verge of burnout or have had to switch their practice techniques because of injury. Anyone else that it speaks to?

Cory Barger: Um, just anybody who wants to get more done in less time. Um, yeah, so even if you don’t need to be somebody who’s on the edge of burnout to want to get more done, I think. Mm-hmm. Um, I hope it doesn’t turn into some kind of productivity war among people, but, um, to make sure that we have more time to just go out and live our lives. Like if you’re tired of being stuck in a practice room all the time and not seeing the results that you want to see, then this is the course for you.

Michelle Lynne: Awesome. Okay. Well, I mean, you so generously have given our audience a discount code: “fearless.” And when they go to the link and sign up, they’ll get a free one-on-one with you when they buy the course. So, uh, guys, if you go check out the course, you can put in the code word “fearless,” and you’ll get a one-on-one with Cory to talk you through wherever you’re getting stuck with your practicing. I have the course; I love working through it. The workbook has been helping me a lot because it asks different questions to help you reflect. So definitely check it out. Um, Cory, where can we find you? How can we follow you?

Cory Barger: Um, you can find me on Instagram at Practice Happier. Um, sometimes I’m also on TikTok, but I post much more on Instagram. And my website is practicehappier.com.

Michelle Lynne: Perfect. And we always finish with an action point. So if everybody listening can do one thing after this episode, what would you recommend that they do?

Cory Barger: Next time you’re practicing, take a moment to notice whether you’re actually panic practicing or not. And then, um, do that side-eye exercise that I just mentioned, where you move your eyes to one side to reset your nervous system. And then, uh, take a selfie and tag us.

Michelle Lynne: Yes, that’s great, actually. I like that. I’m gonna do that too. So tag Practice Happier, tag the Fearless Artist Mastermind, of course, on Instagram. Um, thanks, everybody, for listening. Make sure you’ll follow Cory on the socials, and we’ll see you next time on the podcast. Be fearless. Thank you.