What a terrific first week of sessions for the Fall Term 2024! It was so gratifying to see and hear your progress – keep it up! Thank you for welcoming me into your lives each week as you follow your dreams and pursue your passion for singing.

And now, the Labor Day holiday is upon us, and many of us have a three-day holiday. Molly and I wish you safe travels, as we and many of you will also be on the road.

This national holiday is an opportunity once each year to take time to reflect on how we make our work more meaningful.

And in our world of Vocal Training, I want you to think about understanding factors that contribute to making the work of Vocal Training more meaningful.

Obviously, just like our day jobs, the individual actions we undertake in Vocal Trianing sometimes require plodding work. This doesn’t always translate into meaningfulness in the short term. But sticking with it over the longer haul can bring huge rewards.

Here are a few tips:

• Awareness (of yourself and your wider environment), leads you to be more willing and able to be creative in how you think. And it improves how you deal with challenges and problems. Awareness also helps you come up with better solutions and adapt to changing circumstances. This can positively impact of your everyday Vocal Training tasks.
• Mindfulness helps us learn to recognize and acknowledge what’s going on in the mind, moment by moment. This increases awareness, and decreases rumination (The “I did that wrong” or “I could do that better” tropes).This Mental Conditioning leads to greater skill in singing and, eventually, meaning making through performance.
• Journaling is a great way to build awareness into your Daily Vocal Regimen. Before you end the day, ask yourself, “What did I find meaningful about my practice today,” and write it down. You can do this not only for yourself but also for those you perform with. Consider weaving awareness into group discussions and conversations on stage, or in the rehearsal hall or recording studio.
• Relationships. On a very personal level (which Vocal Training surely is!), time with others who share your dreams and passion is important to feel happy and fulfilled with your training. When possible, you can engage with others through active listening and showing appreciation for their work. These behaviors could then also enable greater psychological safety in the training environment as you feel more confident about what you do – and that fosters meaningfulness.

Have a wonderful weekend and holiday and see you on the other side.

M

Adapted by Mark Johnson for MaJoVTA.com from an article in The Harvard Business Review