How to prevent burning out as a musician

Michelle Lynne: Well, hey, everybody, and welcome back to The Fearless Artist podcast. My name is Michelle Lynne, and I am the host of this podcast. Today, I wanted to come on and do a solo episode talking about something that’s extremely important. It’s also really important to me, and this is how to prevent burnout as a musician. Um, if you’re listening, you’re probably a freelance classical musician, and you know what the lifestyle is. It’s not a normal lifestyle. It’s running from thing to thing, juggling a huge to-do list. It’s rehearsals, competitions, concerts, students, teaching, admin, and trying to keep on top of everything.

And also, it’s just learning a lot of skills that we didn’t learn in school. We weren’t prepared for this. We’ve had to learn everything on the fly. We didn’t learn admin skills in school. We didn’t learn how to take care of a business or what it would be like to even think about having a business as a musician.

So I just think there’s been a lot that has been thrown at us that we’ve had to really adapt and learn. If you’re new, this is why we created The Fearless Artist Mastermind together with Deanna. We run coaching and memberships for musicians all over, to help learn how to navigate our careers and how to make choices that will ultimately bring us to careers that satisfy and fulfill us, and help us develop our strengths and skills.

So today’s episode, I just wanted to kind of dive in deep, because learning this, I think, has been one of the biggest struggles of my life. I’m always someone who likes to do a lot of different things, and I think ultimately that has prevented me from going maybe as far or as deep as I could have, because my focus has been diverted as well as my energy.

First of all, I just want to thank everybody for listening. Uh, your feedback means the world to me. This episode is something I’ve been planning for months, but I kind of started overthinking it because it is such a huge topic. So I just want to give some caveats as we start. Like, obviously, I’m not a therapist or a psychologist. So if you do feel like you are on the edge of burnout or you’re going through a huge stressful time, then I just want to encourage you to get the right help from the right professionals. I think today is just going to be a bit more about sharing my experience and some experiences of our audience, our community members in The Fearless Artist, and some strategies that we can use to help ourselves sustain the career. Because it’s not just about getting the opportunities; it’s, once they come, how do we keep things going so that we can take care of ourselves and have a long career that is fulfilling and brings us a lot of joy?

Okay, so as you’re listening, you may be hearing some things that you already know, like it’s advice that you’ve heard before. So I just want to encourage you, ask yourself, and this goes for anything that you hear, how are you using the information? The heart behind The Fearless Artist is really not to just teach and educate, but to encourage people to take action. Because probably you know what the right thing to do is right now, but you might not be doing it, and so the question becomes why? What’s stopping you from stepping into it, taking action on what you know that you need to be doing?

So if you hear something today and you’re like, “Yeah, I knew that,” it’s like, “Yeah, but are you actually doing it? And are you implementing it? And are you being consistent in it?” And if you are, then great, like kudos to you. But I just feel like for me, as someone who’s reviewed this content multiple times—because I also teach entrepreneurship at a university in Rotterdam—I’m always finding different ways to apply the information, how I can go deeper.

So, what is burnout? The World Health Organization defines it as a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Three main symptoms would be feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job or feeling negative towards one’s career, and reduced professional productivity.

So what can cause burnout for musicians? I mean, it’s kind of how I started the episode. Our lifestyle is insane. We’re on stage at night. I mean, we do not have a normal nine-to-five job. However, a lot of us still wake up in the morning and think that we need to immediately start being productive. You know, you’re tackling your emails or you’re going to start practicing or something, even though you may have had a concert until 10:30 or 11. By the time we got home, it was past midnight. You know, skipping meals, constant travel, unending to-do lists, learning to manage yourself, chaotic schedules.

Our schedules are never the same. Concert projects—you know, you’ve got eight-hour rehearsal days sometimes. That’s a three-week project, and then when that project’s over, you start something new. It’s working with different people, so you can’t necessarily fall into the habits of relationships with the same people over and over because you’re constantly changing your scenarios if you’re on different projects. Performance stress affects us physically. I learned in university, 80 percent of musicians have some kind of injury. So that’s something, obviously, that a lot of us are dealing with. Our sense of responsibility to the concerts and the rehearsals. Obviously, we care deeply about what we do.

We care about the quality of excellence. We want to be well-prepared. A lot of us struggle with self-doubt or limiting beliefs in what we’re bringing to rehearsal or working with people who might be at a high level. And so you really want to be prepared and do your best. And then maybe you struggle with perfectionism. Maybe no matter how well you’ve performed, you’re still counting mistakes or thinking about that thing that you missed or how you wished it would have gone better. So all of this combined—I mean, this is a huge combination. Reading this list even kind of stresses me out.

For me, the reason I wanted to do this episode in the first place is because last February, my schedule was quite intense, and I couldn’t handle it anymore, but I had to keep going. The other thing was that because there were so many things happening, I wasn’t sure how to diagnose what the problem actually was. So I didn’t know if it was, you know, I have seasonal affective disorder, long, long days with no sunshine. Um, was I just under too much stress from the work? Was I not spending my time recovering enough? Maybe I wasn’t eating properly, or maybe it was just emotional, or maybe it was hormonal, or I just didn’t know what was going on.

And I was just at a low point emotionally, like I was crying every day, had huge skin breakouts. I wasn’t happy, you know, I just kind of lost my bounce. And, um, it was really hard. And I didn’t know what to cut out. That’s the other thing, you know, as musicians, I think we have a lot of people telling us all the time, like, “Oh, you’re so busy, you’re doing so much, you’re always running around,” and like, yeah, because that’s the lifestyle. Like, that is the career. That is how it works. And it’s not a bad thing. So I’ve always been a little bit resistant to people who have, you know, the boring norm—sorry, not boring—but you know what I mean? Normal jobs, the regular routine jobs.

Because it’s like, you don’t get it. Like, this is actually how our lives have to be. And I had people saying to me, like, “Well, maybe you need to start saying no to concerts.” And it’s like, I’ve waited my whole life to have a performing career like this. Like, I’m not going to start saying no to getting to go play in France because I’m a bit tired. You know? Or like people who are saying, “Oh, you got to take care of yourself,” you know? And it’s like, how do you know what voices to listen to? And how do you know where the limit is? These are things that I really struggled with. Today, I just wanted to share a little bit of what’s helped me because thankfully, I came out of that. I think it lasted about two or three months where I was really down.

And now we’re in September, end of September, and I just had a really, really intense week last week, and I feel so great. I feel fit and strong and satisfied, and mentally have clarity, physically feel good. And I obviously could sleep a bit more, but I just—it’s a completely different version of me than where I was six months ago. And I think it’s because of all these habits that I’ve been going after in my life to kind of make sure that I can take care of myself and sustain the pace that I’m at. Because I also think that as high achievers, as people who are driven, it is going to be a fast pace, and the answer isn’t necessarily to cut things out, although you might have to do that—and I’ll get to that in a bit because I did start saying no to some things—but ultimately, it’s about sustaining what you’re doing. Because when you feel called to something, when you feel like you’ve found your purpose, when you feel like you’ve hit gold, you don’t want to just give that up or turn your back on it, right? You want to figure out, wait, how can I keep this going, and how can I do it in a healthy way? How can I maximize my output in a way that doesn’t drain me? And there are things that we can do to do that.

I love listening to a leadership podcast. It’s called Craig Groeschel’s Leadership Podcast, and he is a pastor, but he also does a ton of leadership trainings and stuff. And so he shared a story that really touched me. He came to the point where he was totally at the end of his energy levels, and he went to two different therapists. The first one said to him, a little bit like what has been triggering me—the people who say, “Oh, you need to stop performing so much. You need to stay home more often. You need to do less. You’re doing too much. You think you can handle it, but you can’t.” And then the second therapist he went to said, “Oh, we’re going to help you create a rhythm in your lifestyle where you can keep up what you’re doing, but you’re going to do it in a healthy way and not burn out.” And he was like, I needed that second person to really speak to me because they weren’t telling him, “You need to quit what you’re doing.” And that’s the last thing we want to hear. Again, like when people say to me, “Oh, maybe you should say no to concerts,” I’m like, are you crazy? Like, there’s no way. I’m going to do everything I can. Like, concerts are number one on my list. If I need to cut something out, it’s not that. I’ll try to figure out what else, you know?

So that was really hard for me, especially because you’ve got to try and not defend yourself against people coming up with these little voices that get in your head. And you’re also, you’re not really sure what to do either, because you know something needs to change, but you’re not sure what the right answer is. So anyway, this second therapist who said to him, like, “Oh, you’re made differently. We’re going to find you a schedule that works so that you don’t have to slow down, but you’re going to find a rhythm where you don’t have to get depleted and then wait for your vacation, but you can actually sustain.”

Some questions for everybody listening: How can you create a lifestyle that you’re not trying to escape from, where you’re not like, “Oh, I just got to get to the end of this project or finish this concert, and then I’ll go on holiday, and then I’ll be okay”? Well, how can we create a lifestyle for you today where you’re okay all the time, and then vacation is just like a great bonus, where you get to really enjoy your life and go sit on the beach? But it’s not that you weren’t okay until you got to that moment. Can we find a lifestyle for you where you’re recovering as you go? You know, and we can learn this also from athletes who, like, they work super hard in the gym, but then they need those recovery days so that they can get back in the gym and go hard, right? Like, musicians don’t learn this. Like, you need the recovery days in order to be able to practice and perform at your top level. Not just like the one-week holiday that most of us don’t even take, by the way. I saw a lot of you musicians during the summer, and you weren’t really on holiday because you were doing a festival or something.

Second question: How can you create a life that you’re excited to wake up to every day? Okay, so I got this great book called Touring and Mental Health by Tamsyn Embleton. And it talks about a bunch of different musicians who live this life on tour and different strategies that they use. I grabbed this because I’ve been playing 10 concerts a month on average, usually in France or Belgium. I live in the Netherlands, so it’s just been a lot of travel back and forth, a lot of scheduling. So the therapist in the book, she explains that you should: one, anticipate the challenges that you’re going to face. So if you have like a super intense couple of weeks coming up, think through what you’re going to have to deal with; two, develop positive counterbalances and practice new skills; and three, increase your social and practical support in your self-care. So she writes, “No matter where you’re at, you can improve your stress management skills and build resilience.”

And I think that’s a little bit why I felt like I so much wanted to share today. I’ve noticed that I’ve been able to build my resilience to the point where I’m not crashing today after such an intense week, but I’m able to keep going. And that, to me, is like a really green flag. And today in our Fast Forward call—which is our membership at The Fearless Artist—we have musicians who meet monthly on calls to share what’s going on. There was another singer in there who shared that she’s had a super intense few weeks, but that she is able to sustain the pace, and she feels good. And she has noticed that she’s at a completely different place than she would have been a year ago. She said, “A year ago, I would have not been able to say that I’ve been able to manage this level and keep going.” So that was really cool to hear.

You know, of course, we can talk all day about time management, but I think for me what it’s been more about is energy management. Because I noticed in those three months when I wasn’t doing well, it wasn’t that I didn’t have the time. I did have the time. I just didn’t have the energy. I was tired. I was tired, and I was emotional. So what I started doing was, number one, simplify. Just get everything off my plate that I didn’t have to do. For example, when I’m traveling, every city that I stay in, I stay at the same hotel. I usually try to travel the same way, whether that’s by train or by car, so that I don’t have to figure out new information every time and just kind of create a rhythm. Same way of getting there, writing things down so I don’t have to search for them about a specific city if there’s something that I need to remember, keeping things handy.

Another big thing that I started doing was assigning certain days to certain roles that I play. So I talk a lot about this, but I’ve learned to kind of split myself into the different people that I am. So there’s like Performer Michelle who does all the concerts, and then there’s Coach Michelle who does TFA, which includes the podcast hosting. Then there’s like the average normal girl on the street that you’re going to see at the grocery store that you probably won’t even recognize because she looks like a very normal person, and that’s like she’s off. She’s just chillin’. She’s a normal person. And I don’t mix those things up, because in the past I tried to do everything all at once. You know, you’re like trying to answer messages on your phone as you’re doing this other thing, or I’ve just learned in my head to give mental space. So, for example, for The Fearless Artist, Deanna and I work together on Mondays and Tuesdays, and that’s when I get the majority of my content filmed, my newsletters written. I’ve checked in with new clients, I’ve invited people to check out our membership Fast Forward, and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I might have a few loose ends that I’m dealing with or a couple of client calls. But for the majority of the time, I flip into Performer Michelle, because those are the nights that I’m usually playing or traveling. And I think that’s helped me so much because then I’m not trying to do everything at once all the time.

Another thing that has really helped is pre-deciding. This is something I learned from Marie Forleo. She’s like, if you wake up every day and you’re like, what am I going to eat? What am I going to wear? Am I going to go to the gym today? You’re just wasting so much energy because you’re deciding every day if you’re going to do it. So you’re much more effective if you decide on Sunday, like, okay, this is what the week’s going to look like. You know, if you can meal plan a little bit, have an idea. I try to plan my concert clothes in advance. Gym now has become non-negotiable. I don’t wake up and think like, “Oh, do I feel like going to work out?” Like, you don’t make decisions based on feelings anymore. You make them because you already decided once, and you’re sticking to the plan. Those kinds of things.

I think as musicians, we can be overly emotional with things like this. Eliminating energy drains—great key phrase for everybody: automate, eliminate, and delegate. What can you automate so that you’re not doing it every time, whether that’s paying your rent, for example? Maybe some of you open your phone, and you pay rent every month. Well, guess what? There’s a little setting in your bank app that you hit, and then it’s going to just do that automatically for you. You don’t have to think about it. So can you apply that to other areas of your life where you literally—or maybe you’re doing something every day that, if you just took a little bit of extra time, you could set it up so that it does it for you?

Eliminating things. I know that a lot of musicians, we get really busy doing nothing, and we’re so packed, and it’s looking at the end of your day and saying, where was I effective? What actions did I take that actually gave me a return? And this is what we do in our Fast Forward calls. We take time to zoom out on our lives and look and say, where am I investing my energy and my time and actually seeing results from it? And where am I investing time and energy and it’s not helpful? You know, if you just find yourself getting stuck on your phone, easy example. Or if you are setting your timer for 15 minutes and you’re being strategic about engaging with other musician accounts. And of course, there’s time for scrolling on your phone and just enjoying life. Like, we’re not against that, but it’s just about being intentional with your time and asking what’s actually helping me move forward on my goals.

Removing distractions. There’s a little app called the Forest app, and it is the best because it blocks your phone from the apps that you tell it to, and you can set it for a minimum of 10 minutes, and then all of a sudden you’re practicing, and you can use your metronome on your phone, and you can listen to Spotify, but nobody can WhatsApp you, and nobody can get to your Instagram. That’s been super helpful.

Another big thing that’s helped is choosing your thoughts and not letting the little voices of people who don’t understand get to you. So again, people who are saying, like, “Oh, you’re so busy, it’s so much chaos, and how do you do it all?” And maybe that starts to make you think like, how am I doing it all? Am I too busy? What do I need to change? You know, just being really careful with who you let in your brain, I think, is really important. Because that mental energy that it takes is definitely mental energy that you need to survive your schedule.

Somebody asked me yesterday, how are you always on? The answer is, I’m not. I’m not always on. I’m on when I come online because then I’m being very intentional about who I want to talk to. So if I go on my Instagram stories, it’s because I have something that I want to share that I think could help people. That’s why I’m doing this podcast right now, ’cause I have something that I want to share that I think can be helpful. So that’s when I’ve got my energy is high. You know, I did my hair and makeup. But like, the other day somebody saw me at the grocery store, and they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t recognize you,” because I’m not always on. And you shouldn’t be. You need to have equal time of recovery for all the times that you are on.

And of course, the social media part doesn’t show the low recovery parts, so it’s easy to think that people don’t take them, but they definitely do.

Another thing that’s helped is getting coaching. I talk about this a lot, but I do currently have a business coach. I’m in my own mastermind where I learn from other women who have businesses. I have a personal trainer. I have an accountant. I’ve worked with a life coach extensively for four or five years, helping me overcome perfectionism and self-criticism. I was in therapy for a few years. I’ve had a lot of mentors. I had a manager in the UK who helped me crowdfund my album and learn how to market that. I’ve had a lot of people mentor me, speak into my life, and I’ve learned how to glean from their wisdom and let myself be taught, and to learn from people who’ve got things figured out that I don’t. You know, I learned project management from this person that I mentioned who taught me Asana, and it’s like, here’s how to stay organized, and here’s how to create a workflow. You know, when we launch for our mastermind, for example, there’s a specific checklist that we follow. And in the past, it was just kind of like a bunch of WhatsApp messages and Google Docs. And now we’re much more organized, and we stay on task, and we have systems in place that keep us kind of protected. I’ve learned all of that by hiring other people to teach me because I recognize when you invest in getting this kind of training, you can go way faster, because you’re not going to make these mistakes or have to figure everything out yourself, and you also just save so much energy.

Another thing that’s really helped me is knowing when you’re in the flow and staying there. So as I learned about energy management, I think it’s really about becoming self-aware and saying, “Okay, I just don’t have capacity for this right now. So I’m going to trust that, and I’m going to go do something else,” whether that’s turning off your screens and reading a book or getting outside or calling a friend, whatever it is. But just becoming aware of, like—for me, one of the biggest struggles is, when do I push? Because sometimes you just got to grind, you know? And then, when do I say, “Oh no, I’ve had enough, and I really need to recover right now or take time off or take down time?” And I think self-awareness is something that you can really grow in. Just paying attention to what your body’s telling you, paying attention to what you’re picking up in your energy. Like, I notice if I get a little bit more irritated, I’m like, oh, okay, I’m really tired right now, and I need to be careful. And that means that I probably shouldn’t add anything extra to my plate right now.

Another thing is, as I mentioned, when you know you’re in flow, stay there. So today is a Tuesday, so that means that I worked with Deanna, but also I had a podcast interview that I did right before this with someone else, and we had a team meeting. But these are all things that are grouped in the same category. I’m not flipping around to a bunch of different things. I didn’t have to, like, run across town and have a rehearsal, or I didn’t have to teach a student. I think something that can really suck a lot of energy is when we’re always task-switching. So if you can organize your schedule to kind of clump things into groups, that has helped me enormously, because then it’s like I put on my role for the afternoon or the morning or the day, and then I just do that for the three or four-hour stretch, and then I feel like I’m way more efficient and accomplished. And then, taking specific moments of the day to answer the DMs rather than doing it kind of constantly as they come in. It’s like, okay, every couple hours I’ll have a look and see what I can knock off my plate.

I’m not trying to tell you that I have everything figured out. I’m just trying to tell you that I’ve made some progress, and this is what’s helped me, and maybe it can be something for you. So where I used to really get stuck was when I was doing like one hour of this, one hour of this, jumping around and talking to a bunch of different people. And, you know, now it’s just much more like choosing stretches that you can stay in the same flow.

Then of course, eating, sleeping—how many steps are you getting in per day? Are you taking any supplements? Magnesium before you go to bed is super helpful to help you sleep more deeply. I bought like a really bougie sleep mask, which has helped me when I’m traveling. I got really more strict about eating. I still scroll myself to sleep sometimes when I’m in a hotel room, which is bad news bears, but, you know, one step at a time, we’re working on that.

Another thing that can help is adding in some buffer time. I used to pack things really tight, like meeting after meeting after meeting. And now I’ve learned to leave half an hour in between, so I can get outside with my dog, get some sunshine, and breathe, you know, and like get a snack and not just pack everything so tight. I’ve also learned to start leaving earlier for concerts, and any of you who actually know me are going to laugh because I’ve had so many travel mishaps this year. But just leaving a little bit of extra time, especially when I’m driving, so I can stop and get gas and get a coffee and whatever.

I also really love to take some time off and go to this really great place an hour away in Germany, do some hiking there. And I’ve been trying to book a couple of days every few months just to kind of give myself a break and a breather for a couple of days. I heard this really beautiful analogy, I think it was Seth Godin. He’s talking about when they pour sidewalks, they pour concrete, and they intentionally crack the sidewalk every three feet because if they didn’t, the sidewalk would crack randomly, and it would be a big mess. So, how can you create cracks in your schedule, in your life, that are intentional so that you force yourself to stop, kind of regroup, so that you don’t crack randomly all over the place when you actually need to be on and keep your energy?

Um, can you be longer with your walks outside? Can you get the most sunshine? If anybody listens to Andrew Huberman, he talks a lot about the importance of setting your circadian rhythm. There’s a lot of things, like, you know, don’t take your first caffeine until 90 minutes after you’re awake. Try to get sunlight on your face first thing in the morning. Um, get outside, breathe in the fresh air. There’s a lot of physical movements that you can do right when you wake up to kind of get yourself in a good energy. I think sometimes in the past I would wake up kind of grumpy, and then my anxiety, anxious thoughts would kick in about, you know, upcoming programs or concerts. I think I remember when things were really bad for me, I was waking up with nightmares of, like, where am I going to sleep in Antwerp tomorrow? And I would have to be like, sweetheart, you’re not in Antwerp, you’re in your own bed. You know, like, you don’t need to worry about how you’re going to get there. That’s when I knew that I really needed to change something because I wasn’t okay.

Getting to the gym—I know a lot of you listening are also getting good exercise in. So like, what is your routine? Can you make sure that you stick to it even when you’re traveling? Remember, something is better than nothing. The two-minute rule will save your life. I should say this on every episode, but the two-minute rule, if you’re unfamiliar, is that you only have to do something for two minutes, and then afterward you’re allowed to stop. This is extremely helpful because usually all the resistance that we’re feeling is because we’ve made something way too big in our heads. So if you just tell yourself, “Look, I’m just going to do some squats for two minutes, or jumping jacks, or whatever,” or practicing—if you’re having a hard time getting back into a rhythm of practicing if you had time off—just do it for two minutes. Maybe you’ll sit there for longer, maybe you won’t. You know, you can apply this to your dishes before you go to bed at night. Just creating these little habits. And of course, just another plug for James Clear, Atomic Habits, habit stacking. There’s a lot of great info in his book there.

And then, the last thing I want to say is the fountains and the drains in your life. And for everybody listening, let me know if you want me to go deeper on any of these things that I’ve mentioned, because all of them, I think, could be their own episode. But a fountain essentially in your life is something that gives you energy, and a drain is, obviously, when you come out of a gig, and you feel like you were taken advantage of, or you just couldn’t stand the music you were playing, or the people you were with, or the atmosphere. Or maybe you were shoved in a corner on an upright piano, and people were drunk and screaming around you, and you were like, “Why am I here? What’s the point of this?” You know, like those kinds of things in your life. Can you eliminate drains and create more fountains? And these are all things that we talk about in our membership Fast Forward, helping people to get really specific about examples in their lives.

And just, you know, I started this podcast because I wanted to take more time and be vulnerable with my audience rather than just sticking to the 30-second Instagram reels that I usually make, because I want people to know the real deal, you know? I think Instagram is giving, like I have an amazing life and career, and there’s so much that’s fulfilling and exciting, and I’m so grateful. But there’s also a very real behind-the-scenes of the hard stuff, and that’s why I think I’m sharing today so openly about what I’ve been going through and navigating this new level of intensity. So, I just want to be open—super open. You know, I’ve got an assistant, sweet Puck… Shoutout to Puck—and she books my hotels and my trains and travel. So I get a new concert date, I forward it to her, it’s a WhatsApp message, and then within three days everything is booked and it’s in my iCal. And it’s the most beautiful, relieving thing to see all the credit card payments come through, and the hotels in my iCal, and the trains and everything. It’s like, “Ahhhh…” Just like a sigh of relief. And of course, there’s a training process in that that we went through, but now it’s settled, so it’s done. That’s an example of eliminating or delegating.

Constandina, she does my content for me. So I’m filming different things throughout the day, and then I put it together in an album, and she puts together different trends or reels that she thinks could work on my page, and then she’ll send them over. She even posts for me. So sometimes I’m in a coaching call, and then I’ve got an Instagram piece of content going out. And that’s amazing, because then that’s me being hands-off but still getting the content out and being visible for my audience. So that’s really awesome. So, is there someone in your life that you can bring on board to help you? Start to think about who you can ask, whether it’s a student that you have that has good admin skills, someone that you can start getting help with your schedule, content creation, emails, administrative tasks that you particularly don’t like, poster design on Canva, copywriting. Is there someone in your life that you can bring on? Editing to help you—just don’t get stuck. If you see that you’ve hit your ceiling, then it’s time to look for who can help you and start to get other people on board. And if you’re worried about investing, then I would really encourage you to look at the numbers and give yourself, you know, three months of investing in an assistant. And then at the end of three months, ask yourself, “Did I earn this money back by having them? Did I get more concerts? Did I get more students? Did I get more rest,” which is going to help you sustain your career so that when you’re 75 years old—well, maybe not 75, but I hope I’m still playing at 75—you know, you’re still going. Because then you’re going to be able to earn money when you’re old doing that rather than giving up and quitting because you didn’t take the rest that you needed now.

And then lastly, the thing that I wanted to share is I ended up quitting my conservatory job in Maastricht. And that was a very difficult decision. I wrestled with that for a long time. I didn’t want to let down the people I worked with. I really liked my colleague. I loved the students. But when I looked at the things that I was doing in my life between performing and running a chamber music series and TFA, and it was like, okay, I think this is the thing that has to go. And I just want to encourage everybody listening: sometimes you’re going to have to say no to really good things in your life in order to make room for the great. And that’s really scary because you’re like, “Wait, I worked really hard for this opportunity, and I’ve only been doing it for two years. So was it really smart to turn and walk away? Like, how does this make any sense?” And I think, you know, when you’re a freelancer and you’re looking for opportunities, and then you get one, you’re like, “It doesn’t make sense to leave it. Is it irresponsible of me? Will something else come?” And I had a good friend who said to me, “Trust your entrepreneurial spirit that you will be able to create the income that’s missing, or you just need the space in your schedule for whatever new thing is going to come in.” And that really changed things for me. He also really encouraged me when I wasn’t able to quit because I felt really guilty and I wanted to please the person who asked me to stay an extra half a year. And I was like, “Yes, of course, I understand. You can’t find anyone to replace me. Yes, no problem.” And then, thanks to a good conversation, I was able to say, like, “Wait, no, I really think that I can’t handle it.” And remembering how difficult that period earlier this year was for me, I was like, “I can’t risk that happening again. I have to protect myself and also protect the people in The Fearless Artist who need me and my performing career that needs me.”

So sometimes when we’re saying no to one thing, it’s because we just really want to say yes to the other thing. And that helps me a lot as well. And then they ended up finding a great replacement for me, so it wasn’t even an issue, but it felt like a big issue. So just, if you’re listening and you think, “I can’t quit because X, Y, and Z,” I would just ask you to really evaluate: is that true? Because I thought it was true, and it wasn’t. And now I have a lot more time than I would have, because that teaching schedule was very intense, and now I don’t have to be doing that teaching, and that’s freed me up to be able to do stuff like this podcast. So there you go.

I hope this has helped you. Remember that you’re not alone. Remember that there is a great community of fearless musicians out there who are pursuing their dreams, who are saying no to fear every day. We feel it, but we still put ourselves out there because we know the importance of finding the audience. This is something that we really believe: that every musician has an audience who would love to hear them and know about them and follow their career and support them. And it doesn’t have to be millions. It doesn’t have to be thousands. It just has to be a small, loyal group of people that are going to come to your concert, stream your albums, hire you to teach their students, and you can build your own fulfilling career as a musician. No matter where you are, no matter what city you’re in, you have access to the internet, which means that you’re limitless in being able to connect with people who are going to inspire you.

And with that, I really want to encourage you to check out The Fearless Artist and our programs. We have a membership called Fast Forward, where people come on, as I shared, monthly, and talk about the things that they’re working on, their goals, their projects. It’s very rewarding. It’s a community of encouraging people. But if you want to go deeper and have more of an intense group experience, then that’s really where our mastermind comes in. Those are small groups. That’s where we talk career strategy. That’s where we talk about building your fan base, growing your mailing list, actually going after your goals to see all real results. And if you’re someone who’s averse to posting on social media, then you can just check out our social media sprint. And within six weeks, we’ll help you create your own personal content strategy: how to define yourself as an artist, how to share that with an audience, who are you talking to, and who are you trying to reach? So if that sounds like you, just send us a message on Instagram, The Fearless Artist Mastermind, and we’ll be happy to talk to you about how we can help you pursue this fulfilling career. We believe that there’s a space for you.

And one more thing that I wanted to share, because I think it’s really important—and I know this isn’t for everyone, so I just want to put that out there—but my faith has helped me so much in being able to make these adjustments in my life and decisions. And I actually have a WhatsApp group with a group of people in there who pray for me, and especially with my traveling and the performance stress that I have felt, the intensity of the schedule. I just really ask them to cover me and to pray for me, and I feel it. I really do feel so much love. And so I just wanted to say that God is my source and my strength, and it’s been so helpful as I’ve been navigating my career, like when to say yes, and when to say no, and what’s the right decision for me, and am I missing out, and did I make the right decision, and what about everyone else who seems to be doing so great? And it’s just been about really helping me reframe. I believe that we’ve all been given a unique purpose with a unique skill and strength and calling, and that you don’t have to compete or compare yourself to anyone else because there are people out there who need your gift—your individual gift. And it’s a gift that we’ve been given and that we’re called to steward and craft and share. And that’s really my heart, and that’s really what we hope for everyone who comes into The Fearless Artist community: that they know that they’re just so deeply valued, and that there’s space for them as individual musicians within the larger community.

So just wanted to finish with that. Feel free to reach out to me anytime if you want to talk further, and I would love your feedback on this episode. Again, it’s a lot of information, so please tell me what jumped out to you, what helped you. We love to finish our calls with a takeaway, an action point. So your action point today is to decide which one of the ten things that I mentioned you are going to implement, whether that is getting in more steps per day, whether that’s organizing your schedule so that you can stay in flow and not jump tasks all day, whether that’s you’re going to join a community or get more involved with other musicians and learn from them, whatever it is. Write it down, send me a message on Instagram, let me know what you’re going to be working on. I’d love to hear from you. And please do share this with your friends. The podcast helps us so much to be found by other musicians who need to hear this message.

Remember that rest is productive, that you’re taking care of yourself when you choose to invest in wellness and your mental health and being outside. Remember that life isn’t a race that you have to win, and that we are playing the long game here. We’re going for the long game. So it’s not always about what’s next. Sometimes it’s just about enjoying what’s going and being so grateful. We get to do what we get to do. You have what it takes to build the career of your dreams. We’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks for listening. Be fearless.