Simplify, breathe, listen
Another important mindset to adopt
In my last post, I wrote about mindsets for the new academic year and stated that mindsets are at least as important as systems, in fact systems are, in the end, concrete expressions of our beliefs and attitudes about work and ourselves. The systems we adopt derive from our beliefs and drive those beliefs.
Today I want to tell you about a mindset, a new rule for life, that I discovered this summer outside of my academic context but which lends itself well to life in academia and elsewhere. This isn't new by any means, but the context and how I have experienced it were new to me. And I think it might be helpful for many of you.
This all started, like so many things with me, from playing music.
I've been a musician for almost 40 years, ever since junior high school band; and I've been a bass guitar player for over 30 of those years, ever since college. My bass playing has been off-and-on the entire time, mostly "off". I played just for recreation through graduate school, then in the church worship band, and then eventually in the early 00's in a band in Indianapolis that played the Christian coffeehouse circuit (that's a thing) and some outdoor festivals. But then through a combination of having kids and having personnel issues, that band split up; and the bass went into its case and stayed there for the most part for the next 15 years.
As I described in this post from my main blog, in 2018 as I was facing life-threatening heart issues and emergency open-heart surgery, I bought -- as an act of defiance -- a new (to me) bass off of Craigs List and started playing again. I made slow but real progress. I joined another band in 2021, and this forced me to start taking my playing more seriously. I did -- and I rediscovered my love for the instrument.
At the end of 2022 as I was looking ahead to what I wanted to accomplish in 2023, I decided that 2023 was going to be the year of the bass: I was going to go all-in, and switching from "off" to "on", and leaving it "on". As part of this program, I started looking for a band to join that would really challenge me and which was actively gigging. I found this band very quickly, or I should say they found me, and by April they had invited me to come audition, in preparation for a busy season of gigs in the Lake Michigan lakeshore area.
The group had a deep playlist of about 50-60 classic rock and country songs that I needed to learn in the space of 2-3 weeks. I started practicing 3-4 hours a day to get the songs down. Some were easy, some were a lot harder than you think when you hear them on the radio or Spotify. Nevertheless I kept practicing and by the time the audition came, I felt I had them figured out well enough.
You might see where this is going.
I showed up for the audition at the guitarist/singer's home studio. The guitarist, drummer, and I set up and chatted for a while, then got down to business. But from the very beginning, something was wrong with me. Despite all my practice and preparation, I was playing very poorly. My fingers were going to the wrong places, even missing the strings at times. I wasn't holding down a good "pocket" like a bass player is supposed to. I was missing notes. It was all coming undone, and the cry within my brain was that I was blowing a golden opportunity.
Then there was a still, small voice in my head that said something that I'll never forget:
Simplify. Breathe. And listen.
Simplify: Stop trying to impress these guys with your mad bass guitar skills, or whatever. Instead, get back to the basics: Think of the structure of the song. The patterns and variations of the bass line. The chord changes. And then play the simplest possible thing that sounds good.
Breathe: First of all, remember to do it -- to breathe, that is. Breathing calms the body and gets your mind in the right place. Then remember to continue, almost like you're playing a wind instrument, to be in harmony with the rhythms of your body. You can't play a rhythm instrument if you're out of sync with yourself.
Listen: Stop focusing on yourself and start being a helper instead. What are the other guys doing, musically speaking? What do I need to do in response? How might my playing create space for them to express themselves? How can I use my instrument to make the other guys sound good? To make us all, together, sound good?
I can't remember which song we were doing when all this suddenly came to me. But in that moment, I played differently, better.
I stopped trying to do my patented Fancy Bass Fills at the end of each phrase, and just focused on playing the root and the fifth of each chord -- just that much, but with clarity and expression; with the right timing, note duration, and sound; and locked in with the drummer. And not only listening to what the others are doing but also watching them, making eye contact, looking for nonverbal communication that indicates that they need something or want something -- and then thinking about how I might help provide that. And again, remembering to breathe.
Immediately that song went from a labored and boring rendition of a cover tune, with the bass player trying to do too much (as usual), to being a song -- tight, focused, expressive, no more and no less than music. I was pretty surprised myself that this happened. My playing in the past was always showy and flashy, aimed at making an impression on the audience about how great I was. In one moment I put all that aside and did the opposite, and it transformed the song. And me.
That was May 10. I got the gig. The first performance was three days later. I've performed with this group 13 times -- an average of almost once a week -- since then, and we have that many more shows on the calendar through early 2024. It's been a blast and a privilege, and exactly what I had hoped for when I declared myself back for good as a player.
I went home that night and wrote the outline for the article you are now reading. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but I had this sense that simplify -- breathe -- listen had broader applications than just my one experience. And I think it does, especially for those of us in academia. I think this threefold message in fact is just the mindset that we need in higher education.
Simplify: We try to do way too much in higher education and make things as complicated as possible. We need to simplify wherever it can be done. Instead of endlessly trying to impress each other, or impress ourselves -- which is ultimately what the urge to do more, more and more is about -- have the courage to do less. Figure out what it is, what it truly is, that you are trying to accomplish as a faculty member and then do the simplest possible things that will bring it about. This almost always requires subtraction and not addition: Cutting things from your syllabus to focus on fundamentals, saying no to projects and requests that seem interesting, shuttering policies (if you're an administrator) that serve no real purpose. But for God's sake, for our own sake, simplify.
Breathe: Again, first of all remember to do it -- to breathe. Take breaks. Prioritize rest and recovery. Go for a walk on your lunch break. Whatever it looks like for you, do it. Then remember to keep breathing, that is, living a life that is both focused and relaxed, in harmony with itself. You cannot be much good to others if you aren't breathing.
Listen: Adopt the belief that your role is "helper". Look around at the other people in your sphere of influence as a higher education person. Stop talking, and start listening -- and looking. Make eye contact and watch. What are those people doing? What do they need? How can you use your position, no matter what it is, to make them better at their work? To make all of you better at whatever it is you are doing?
The burnout and chronic exhaustion that so many people associate with higher education can be traced back to some failure in one of these three verbs. We try to do too much and we say "yes" to everything for no reason -- so we burn out. We put our own wellness in last place -- so we crash. Or we carry on the tradition of selfishness and egotism that has been higher education's calling card for a thousand years -- and we fail to be fulfilled.
So don't do that. Instead: Simplify, breathe, and listen.
Thank you for the article. Can I subscribe to a service where you call me once a week and say these three words? Trimesterly review makes so much sense. I could never reconcile corporate quarter-focused planning with semester-based work schedule.
Maybe I should finally buy this Yamaha keyboard my friend is offering to sell…