Inner Artist Series #1: The Importance of Personal Development

I've been taking a lot of business seminars lately in hopes of improving my overall hustle. A lot of these seminars focus on a word you don’t usually hear associated with artists--’personal development’.

Personal development is defined as being ‘activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitate employability, enhance the quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations’.

Wow. That’s a mouthful.

I first got introduced to ‘PD’ during my time as a fledgling fitness instructor. I had joined a team of kickass women who were incredibly inspirational to me, both within and without the group fitness room They all seemed to glide through life with this amazing sense of calm and confidence; nothing seemed to rattle their deep-seated belief in themselves and their abilities. I started asking around, and was told that every single one of them devoted at least an hour a day to their own personal development--not only as fitness instructors and mentors, but as individuals.

I wanted what they had so badly, I practically ran to the library with their suggested list of reads. I’ve kept up my personal practice of PD since that time, and I can honestly say it’s done incredible things for me as a performer.

Personal development is an incredible tool that can help hone your artistic skills with little to no effort. We as singers spend enormous amounts of effort training and obsessing over our bodies, so much so that we can neglect our mental growth. Think of PD as a ‘mental realignment’, an assurance that your mental artistic skills are keeping up with your physical vocal developments. It’s often the little details in life (and art) that can make or break you--so why not try to make yourself the best artist you could possibly be?

Here’s why: the words ‘personal development’ sound sorta icky, don’t they?

Be honest.

They totally do.

Most of us associate the words ‘personal development’ with training seminars, much as you would be forced to take during your first week at a new job...an experience I personally have never associated with the word ‘fun’. In reality, PD doesn’t have to be painful or require enormous amounts of time or energy to be effective. It can be virtually anything: a dance class that will help you move better onstage, a documentary about a composer whose work you’re currently singing, or simply reading a book on a topic that you feel you should work on. Books are my personal development source of choice-- I am a HUGE NERD, especially when it comes to books. I’m constantly reading in rehearsals and performances; it’s an easy way to distract myself when I’m not onstage AND to make sure that I get my daily personal development in!

That’s right---DAILY personal development. If you’re serious about making artistic excellence a habit, you’re going to have to prioritize it and incorporate it into your daily routine. Try experimenting a bit to find what and when works for you personally. If you’re going to be a professional singer/performer, you should get to know how your own brain works. Start to pay attention to how you learn new things, and what time during the day you’re mentally-functioning enough to really absorb new information. Use this information to decide when is best for you to fit PD into your daily habits.

The trick to forming a new habit is to make it ridiculously convenient, and PD is no exception to this rule. Take some time to reflect on your own daily schedule---is there a time when you could spend a few minutes focusing on learning a new skill without it disrupting anything? Could you listen to a podcast about freelancing during your commute, or maybe find an opera you’ve never heard before on YouTube? Could you take ten minutes out of your daily lunch break to read a few pages about advertising, or the physics of sound? Then the million dollar question---will you actually be able to spend this time focusing on this PD, without distractions or a sense of dread?

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t start seeing immediate leaps in your personal growth. Just like singing, changes often take repetition and time before they set in. The time you’ve invested into improving yourself is always, ALWAYS reflected somehow in your being, whether you realize it or not. So go ahead and research the history of your aria, or spend ten minutes exploring the best way to market yourself in today’s digital world. Trust the process and that one day, you’ll be able to put these ‘new tools’ in your ‘mental toolkit’ to good use. Who can say how far your PD’s effects will reach? It might just give you an edge over the competition and help you land your next big gig!