One of the core values of Brave Musician is community and as we head into uncharted, confusing, unpredictable, and frightening territory right now with quarantines, the reality that performing and seeing live shows is temporarily no longer possible, the challenges of moving work and education online, and isolation, we need community more than ever. In an effort to help facilitate that, we are going to offer you some Brave Musician Challenges - we have 7 of them right now and they can be repeated for as long as we need to. (And there’s some bonus ones to toss in so we don’t get bored.)
We have an opportunity here to create, innovation, rest, experiment, and collaborate in new ways. There are so many resources available for us to try and learn from. But it’s also a time of great challenges - isolation, frustration, being overly-critical, comparison, getting stuck in our own heads, and feeling overwhelmed. Brave Musician is here to help with both with tools, conversations, resources, and support to work through it all. Most importantly, fellow Brave Musicians, reach out and support each other. We can do this always, but it’s especially important right now with everything being one gigantic question mark.
I do have a couple of suggestions (so far) to keep in mind before we get to the challenges:
- You have everything you need right now. You don’t need fancy equipment, lighting, or a particular space - use your cell phone in your messy room, it’s ok!
- Share what you are practicing/listening/creating with someone (or everyone), don’t do it all alone.
- Stay connected to others in some way - phone, text, video, social media.
- There’s no right or wrong way to share right now, don’t filter right now. Show the beautiful and the ugly.
- Be careful of comparison or telling yourself that you’re not doing enough. Follow your passion and intuition, but check in with others too. People might be putting some amazing things online and we will have access to more stuff than ever, remember that what you are doing at any level is important too.
- It doesn’t have to be perfect. (I had to remind myself of that multiple times while writing this post!)
- Do what you feel comfortable with - but also, allow yourself to be challenged.
- Support other brave musicians in their journey.
This is a time for us to come together and work together in new creative ways. And it’s an amazing opportunity to show the process even more! You can share with your family, friends, send a text to one person, send it to me at monica@bravemusician.com, share on social media, do whatever feels right to you.
We’re going to post one of these challenges on our social media each day, but I’ll include them all here. Feel free to do them in any order! Make sure to mention Brave Musician, and use the hashtag #bravemusician and challenge hashtag below so that we can support you and share what you’re doing.
Brave Musician Challenges
- Post a video of yourself making music. (#bravemusicianchallenge1)
- Ask for help (#bravemusicianchallenge2)
- Let go of a belief that no longer serves you (#bravemusicianchallenge3)
- Develop a new belief that can help you move forward. (#bravemusicianchallenge4)
- Share something that inspired you recently (#bravemusicianchallenge5)
- What are you practicing right now? (Better yet, share something that you are currently working on, that right now, sounds bad.) (#bravemusicianchallenge6)
- Celebrations! - share a Brave thing that you did recently (#bravemusicianchallenge7)
- Bonus: create your own challenge that the Brave Musician community can do (#bravemusicianchallenge).
I’m really looking forward to seeing what all of you share, discover, and create!