Tuning Slide #4.40- Finding Your Voice (#1)

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.
― Madeleine K. Albright

Steven Covey was an imaginative and insightful self-help and management guru whose work changed how many people saw their lives and tasks. His most famous book was The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, first published in 1989. He listed three “stages” of growth into maturity and the “habits” that help highly effective people move to the next stage:
1. Independence
1 - Be proactive
2 - Begin with the end in mind
3 - Put first things first
2. Interdependence
4 - Think win-win
5 - Seek first to understand, then to be understood
6 - Synergize!
3. Continual improvement
7 - Sharpen the Saw

Any of you who have been part of Mr. Baca’s trumpet workshops know these seven habits and how important they are to many of us as we have developed our own musical maturity. These ideas have run through many of the ideas on the Tuning Slide over these four years, even though I have never specifically worked with these ideas in a series in the posts. (I think I just made a commitment to do that next year.)

In any case, in line with what I have been writing for the past six weeks about life lessons and music, I thought I would actually deal with an extension of Covey’s 7 habits that he introduced in a follow-up book, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (2004). The 8th habit is “find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.”

The minute I saw the word “voice” I naturally turned to music and the ideas from a book on the subject I had picked up last year. The Art of Mindful Singing: Notes on Finding Your Voice by Jeremy Dion who uses mindfulness and singing to describe how music can experience well-being through music. So, as a natural extension of the past six weeks I decided to start with Covey and see how finding our voice- and our song- can bring us greater well-being and then later move into a bit of the ideas from the mindful singing book.

Voice is Covey's code for "unique personal significance." Those who inspire others to find theirs are the leaders needed now and for the future, according to Covey. The central idea of the book is the need for steady recovery and application of the whole person paradigm, which holds that persons have four intelligences - physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. (Wiki)

As the title of the Covey book indicates, effectiveness as described in his first ground-breaking book, isn’t the end. Now he wants to show how people can move from effectiveness to “greatness.” At the heart of that is our individual ability to make choices. It has almost become a post-modern mantra that we can choose how to respond to just about any situation that we find ourselves facing. We can choose to be angry or to forgive, for example. We can choose to wallow in sadness or find ways to move on. We can choose to be satisfied with being mediocre, or we can look for ways to increase and grow in our abilities and skill. That’s where the first seven habits move us.

But many times we are stifled, inhibited or blocked from those movements. The book talks of "5 Cancerous Behaviors" (page 135) that inhibit people's greatness:

◦ Criticism
◦ Complaining
◦ Comparing
◦ Competing
◦ Contending

This list is one that we as musicians have certainly faced.

◦ There is the criticism that others aim at us for making mistakes or, in this point, the criticism we aim at others who we don’t want to be better than us. There are outer critics and our own inner critic. No one is ever good enough for a critic. We can choose how we respond (if at all) to these criticisms or take them and grow with them.
◦ There is the complaining (whining) that I “can’t” do that, I don’t have the time to practice that much, I will never be able to hit that note. Who does the director think he’s dealing with, Doc? Nothing is ever good enough for the complainer. We can choose to stay a whiner and complaining, letting the inner critic win, or we can decide to move on.
◦ There is the comparing of myself to others either better than I am or not as good as I am. When I compare myself to the better musician, I can end up with jealousy or envy or low self-esteem. When I look to compare myself to someone who isn’t as good as I am, I can tend to get that egocentric behavior and attitude we are often told we have. We can choose not to compare with others and seek only to be better that the person I was yesterday.
◦ There is competition. I don’t mean we don’t compete. We will. But if it is a win-lose competition, we have moved into dangerous territory as we may end up only wanting our way to win. We compete in order to be better than the other. We can’t help others achieve their greatness, an important part of the 8th habit, if we are always seeking to beat them. We can choose to reach out and assist others to increase their skills and ability.
◦ Here is contending which leads us to move even beyond criticizing to wanting to make the other person look bad. Contenders are always looking for a fight in order to beat the other. Again, we can’t reach out and help others in positive ways if we insist they are inferior and unable to do what we do.

Covey sees these as “cancerous.” They are dangerous; they break and inhibit relationships. They eat away at who we are. They undermine any ability we might seek to discover. In the end they can destroy the possibility of greatness. Not that there aren’t good musicians who might even embody some of these cancerous behaviors. There have certainly been enough self-centered, angry, jealous, mean individuals who achieve “star” status in all areas of life from music, to politics, to business and beyond. They force their personalities and dysfunctions on others- sometimes as bullies, sometimes as oppressive individuals, sometimes as just plain people we hate to be around.

We can choose to NOT be one of those people. I am deeply saddened when I hear of- or meet- one of those individuals. Some of them are mean to themselves in self-criticism, lack of self-awareness or self-esteem. They are short-changing themselves. Some are mean to others. They are short-changing others- but are also short-changing themselves. They will never discover the joy and wonder that might bring even greater possibilities in their lives.

When we truly find our voice, it will have an impact on all that we do and all that we can be. More on how we do that next week.