What are you thankful for?

American Thanksgiving day musings...

We begin the holiday season. It can get ridiculously busy, materialistic and stressful. We as singers often enter our busiest season and don't stop til we collapse in a heap just after New Year's!

As we pursue a career in this business, where so much of time we are faced with rejection and worse, indifference - it is very easy to get negative and bitter and jaded. And why wouldn't you?

So, my thoughts today are about how you reclaim your love for your craft - and what you have to be thankful for. Leave the rejection and the indifference and the stupidity and the ignorance, and the racism and the sexism and the size-ism, and the arrogance and the rudeness, to seek its own level. It will.

Wrap yourself up today in your positive self-filled creativity and purpose.

What are you doing all this for? Have you lost your joy? Your reason? Your passion? It's time to re-discover it and and re-claim it!

Give thanks for your passion - for ANYTHING. Some people walk through life in beige clothing. They are passionate about nothing. You have the potential to live in VIVID COLOUR! Live it!

Give thanks for your body - yes, I said it. Your body is where your instrument resides and where it find tangibility. Yes, it may need some firming up, it may need a few inches or pounds shed, but it is YOURS. EMBRACE IT. TRUST IT. Make changes that are healthy and true and real for YOU not for the business. Today - enjoy your food and and enjoy that body. Treat it with respect and with love. Give thanks for what it gives you - strength, health, a place that your voice can call home.

Give thanks for your talent. No matter where you are on this journey, you have something you are working with and developing and discovering and nurturing. This is a wonderful thing. This is uniquely yours and it's your responsibility to discover what it can and will do. Don't worry about what it might do, or what it doesn't do - what DOES IT DO NOW?!? EMBRACE that!!!

Give thanks for those people around you who create a safe and and soft place to land. Who mentors you? Who encourages you? Who builds you up? Who inspires you? Who reminds you that you are worth it? This net of people is crucial - and we often forget how much they do for us, just by being there. That net of positive energy is larger and more potent than anything else.

Give thanks for POSSIBILITIES!!!! If you are on a path, strong, vibrant, passionate, talented, creative and building craft, there are always possibilities!!! And the possibilities are positive! If there are possibilities, then another step can be taken. If you are breathing and can lift your head and sing a note - it is POSSIBLE.

Give thanks for choice. Choice allows us to create and re-discover - and make another choice!!! There are only choices. We learn from those and make more!

Give thanks for opportunity. It can come in the strangest forms and in the strangest ways. Keep your eyes open for those doors - don't stare at the closed ones!!! Open doors and unlocked doors dare you to walk through - and so you should!

Give thanks because you are a living, breathing artist developing your craft. Your life is important. Your BEING is crucial.

Seek the level of your spirit. Seek the level of your talent. Seek the level of your ability. Seek the level of your craft.

Today - be thankful for YOU!

Happy Holidays!