Music, Motivation, and More - The Positivity Podcast with Jerald Simon

Goals, Guts, and Glory by Jerald Simon

November 05, 2019 Jerald Simon Season 1 Episode 7
Music, Motivation, and More - The Positivity Podcast with Jerald Simon
Goals, Guts, and Glory by Jerald Simon
Show Notes Transcript

I'd like to welcome you to my podcast, "Music, Motivation, and More - The Positivity Podcast."

My name is Jerald Simon, and I am the host of "Music, Motivation, and More - The Positivity Podcast.

I am the founder of Music Motivation® (http://www.musicmotivation.com) and the creator of the Cool Songs Club (https://www.coolsongsclub.com).

In this episode, 007 - "Goals, Guts, and Glory", I talk about the following:

1. Intro/Opening: What are your goals? 

2. Positive Perceptions: "Set Goals. Goals give you directions..." pg. 15 from Perceptions, Parables, and Pointers by Jerald Simon

3. Motivation in a Minute (a motivational/inspirational topic): "Decide what you want..." pg. 171 from Perceptions, Parables, and Pointers by Jerald Simon

4. The Music Within: Sweet Melancholy by Jerald Simon (from the single/book "Sweet Melancholy" - by Jerald Simon

5. Poetry that Motivates - "The Prince of Possibility" pg. 31 from my first poetry book, "The 'As If' Principle" (motivational poetry) featuring 222 motivational. inspirational poems I have written.

As a music educator, I have written 25 music books featuring original music I have composed and teaching piano students worldwide about music theory, improvisation, and composition. I refer to them as Theory Therapy, Innovative Improvisation, and Creative Composition. You can learn more about the various music books I have written on my website, http://www.musicmotivation.com. -

I began composing what have become known as Cool Songs to help motivate teens to want to play the piano - the FUN way. You can learn more about the fun, COOL SONGS I composed each month that have accompaniment minus tracks so students can play along with drums, guitars, keyboard synths, and other instruments and sound effects on my COOL SONGS website at https://www.coolsongsclub.com -

Here is a link where you can download a FREE PDF book on motivating teen piano students ("20 Ways to Motivate Teen Piano Students to Want to Play the Piano - the FUN way): http://www.coolsongsclub.com/freebook. After entering your email where you'd like the FREE PDF sent, the page will then refresh and you can learn more about the COOL SONGS Club.

You can join the COOL SONGS Club FaceBook group on my COOL SONGS FaceBook group page at this link: http://facebook.com/groups/coolsongsclub/ - If you know anyone who would be interested in joining this new group, please invite them. I'm excited to share ideas, suggestions, and hear your thoughts, ideas, and tips on motivating and inspiring piano students - the FUN way!

Support the show
Speaker 1:

Know what you are doing and what you will be doing at each stage of your life. Don't leave, change up to chance, see what changes need to be made, and then make them go for the goal they are after all your goals, never give up on your goals. Never give up on yourself, keep pushing yourself to continually outdo yourself. Welcome to music, motivation and more the positivity podcast. I am your host. Gerald Simon, every weekly podcast asked is sponsored by various businesses, groups, associations and organizations. Today's podcast has been sponsored by the cool songs club Today's podcast is titled goals, guts, and glory, as an introduction. And welcome to this topic. I would like to ask the question, what are your goals? Have you ever really thought about that? Have you taken the time to think about what your goals are? And honestly, I, everyone, to some degree or another has goals, we all do. And every year we are taught, January 1st is a time when we can set new goals for the upcoming year, but I don't think we should ever wait that long to set goals. We can have daily goals. We can have weekly goals. Monthly goals. See a goal is something that gives you direction. It gives you purpose. You are shooting for or aiming at a desired outcome. Now, a goal, unless it is to down. And unless it is carried out where you have step by step items or to dos to help you get through accomplishing what you set out to accomplish a goal. If it can't be measured, it won't be obtained. If you can not obtain or attain, whatever you have set out as your goal, then you won't see progress. And without progression, you won't be improving because you need to see that you are moving in the right direction. And oftentimes people set themselves up for failure because the, these goals that they hope to accomplish are not written down and without having a written down goal, then the goals don't have any hope for achievement. Now you can have a goal that you don't write down, but you tell yourself what you need to do to accomplish that goal. It's not about writing the goal down. It's about coming up with a plan where you have a map. Think of it as a roadmap to help you get to your desired destination. You need to know what you are hoping to accomplish, where you are going. But if you don't know all the little steps along the way that will help you achieve or accomplish what you are hoping to accomplish, it's never going to happen. I teach piano lessons and I enjoy teaching piano lessons. And of course the desired outcome or goal is to learn how to play the piano. Now, everyone may have different ideas about what they want to learn, because everyone is unique. Everyone has different tastes, interests, so they may have different styles. They want to learn. Some may want to learn how to do improv. They want to learn how to do jazz or blues, or Booy some may want to learn how to compose or create music of their own. Others may want to understand music theory. See they want to learn and know how to create chords, how to create scales, but not just creating them, but what they can do with them. It's that practical application of the music theory. So with a goal, we need to figure out what we want to accomplish for the positive perceptions portion of this podcast. I'd like to read to you on page 15 of my book, perceptions, parables, and pointers, a paragraph that talks about setting goals. This is what it says. Set goals, goals, give you direction, create a one year goal plan a five year, 10 year, 15 year and 20 year goal plan, plan, and prepare for the future. Decide what you want to learn and then learn it. Your goals will help you plot out your destination for on beginning to end, be prepared, know what you are doing and what you will be doing at each stage of your life. Don't leave, change up to chance, see what changes need to be made, and then make them go for the goal they are after all your goals, never give up on your goals. Never give up on yourself, keep pushing yourself to continually outdo yourself. Now, with that, I talked about creating a one year goal plan a five year, 10 year 15, even 20 year goal plan. That is not something you need to do all at once. It's not something that you need to even focus on and spend the entire time deciding what you want to accomplish or what you want to do. Simply try this this week, today, even set aside five minutes, everyone can find at least five minutes from their day. And even though we have busy and hectic schedules, we all can take five minutes every day to write down what we hope to accomplish that day. It's interesting Benjamin Franklin, every morning, he used to take out a piece of paper and he used to write down not only what he hoped to accomplish, but what he hoped to work on and do that day. And then every night he would look back and reflect on what he had accomplished or what he had not accomplished every morning. He would ask himself what he could do to help those around him. And then every evening he would ask himself what he had done that day to help those around him. Now we can learn so much from that great example. How, how can we help ourselves? How can we help those around us? What can we do? And if you will take five minutes every day, and what I generally will advise people to do take five minutes in the morning before you go to work or before you go to school, before you help your kids get ready and go off to school or maybe five minutes after you've helped your kids get ready and go off to school where you can sit down with yourself and write down what you would like to accomplish that day. Maybe you can write down what you would like to learn that day. Maybe you can write down who you would like to help up that day. Now we're only focusing on the day, see hours evolve in today's and days transform into weeks and weeks before you know, it become months and then months turn into years, but it all begins with the day, one day at a time. And then you can break that day down into smaller chunks, a few hours here and there, or 30 minutes, 10 minutes. And what we are going to do five minutes every morning, take five minutes out of your day to write down five things you would like to accomplish. I often refer to this as take five. You take five minutes out of your morning schedule or routine to write down five tasks that you would like to accomplish. That maybe you need to plant some flowers. Maybe you need to repair something in the garage, or maybe one of the bedrooms needs to be painted. Whatever you have, either as a to-do list or a checklist, write down five tasks that need to be accomplished today. After you have taken five minutes to write down five things you would like to accomplish that day throughout the day, think about what you are doing, or as the case may be not doing to accomplish list those five tasks. Then before you go to bed, pull out that piece of paper and look at those five tasks. Now, sometimes five is too much for people. So instead of take five, we can just focus on an easy three. If you will take three things, if you can't do the five focus on three, three simple things, think of it as baby steps, you are trying to accomplish something today. Maybe you are an author and you have a book that you've published. What three steps can you do to promote or market that book today? Maybe you can do five. What five individuals will you be contacting today or five organizations to help you market or promote that book again, we're just taking it in small chunks. We're breaking it down into manageable and obtainable little areas that we can on. We're not trying to do everything. We're not trying to be everything for everyone. We are trying to focus on take five. So today, try to do that for yourself. And that will help you as you set your own goals. And as you begin to understand, it takes guts to put a goal out there and then to go and accomplish whatever you want to accomplish. It's gutsy. But in doing that, you will learn so much about yourself because you will push yourself and you will grow. It's that growth mindset where you are growing every day, little by little you're learning, you are evolving. You are improving, you are progressing and we all are, or we should be striving to improve and progress for the motivation. In a minute section of this podcast, I would like to read, decide what you want found on page 1 71 from perceptions, parables, and pointers. This is an anonymous quote, but this is what it says. Decide what you want and write your goals. Then convert your goals into positive present tense statements called affirmations, affirm your goals each day until they become of your subconscious mechanism. It's a wonderful quote. And it's something we can think about often. What can we do to first and foremost, decide what we want out of life. What do we want out of today? What do we hope or want to accomplish this week? This month, this year decide to decide it's that first step making the decision to make a decision. And once you've made your decision, then you can create a game plan because you already know your desired outcome. You already know your destination. Once you've decided what you want out of life. It is merely a matter of formulating the steps to help take you from point a all the way to point Z. And along the way you have points B C, D E F G. Moving on some may be pitfalls. Some may be ladders. Some may be slides. You may have ups and downs, twists and turns, slides that take you to places you've never even thought possible. The good days, and the bad days will teach you. But everything you do will help you move closer to that goal. You have already established because once you set a goal and once you decide what you want to to do, then it's just a matter of doing it for the music within portion of this podcast, I would like to have us listen to sweet melancholy. This is from a piano book. I created also titled sweet melancholy and an album. I'd love to have you listen to this. The piano part features a bittersweet, almost contemporary classical new age style, and sound. It only features the piano, but listen, as I perform sweet melancholy,

Speaker 2:

The, the, the, the, hello, the I

Speaker 1:

Now in that piece, we have a lot of key changes, but we also have a lot of movement and momentum. You can almost feel the tension. You can feel the good times, the bad times. It has this sweeping left hand pattern that goes up and down the piano. So I hope you enjoy that. You can listen to any of my music on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, or any of the streaming sites. They're also on Amazon and other sites, but I'd love to have you listen to my music and let me know what you think for the poetry that motivates portion of this podcast. I would like to read to you the prints of possibility. This is on page 31 from my poetry book. The, as if principle motivational poetry. Let me read this to you. The prince of possibility within you is nobility, power and courage and strength, endless possibility. You'll soon discover at length, discover your divinity, awaken your ability. The power to do is there for you. Your, the prince of possibility, not thing is impossible. The world is at your command. Do your best and take a stand and accomplish the task at hand. Be a prince of possibility. You are born with great nobility. The power to do is there for you as the prince of possibility. Now we could also say prince or princess of possibility, but it's the power of possibility. We've talked about positivity in the past and how positivity can make us or ma us. It can shape us, or it can scar us because the positive thoughts we tell ourselves can shape and mold us in ways we never thought possible. But the power of possibility is the power of potential. It's raw, it's untapped, it's unharmed energy. It can transform anyone, take them from any state to a new lifestyle, to a new person, a new being in the first paragraph I said within you is nobility, power, power, and courage and strength, endless possibility. You'll soon discover at length. I think sometimes we underestimate our own potential. Sometimes we underestimate the potential of those around us as well. It may be because we know ourselves better than anyone else. And it may be because we know those around us. And we have seen them in their good times. And in their bad times, we have seen them be successful. We have seen them fail. We know of our own successes and our own failures. And sometimes because of that knowledge, when we look in the mirror, we look in the mirror and we see our present state, and there's nothing wrong with that. But we are also looking at the past and we are looking at where we have been, what we have experienced, what we have seen, what we have done, what we have learned, what we not learned. We relive both the failures of the past and the successes of the past. And sometimes by doing that, when we see ourselves in the present, it almost creates a personal prison where we limit our potential because based on what we have experienced or seen or done or not experienced and not seen and not done in the past, we then create assumptions about ourselves. And most of the time they are not correct because we mistakenly assume that based on past performances, the future will be to a large extent, much of the same of what we have already done. Now that's a dangerous thing for us to experience or think or do because if we have been successful in the past, and we believe that our success in the future is sure. Sometimes when we do fail or we do have a misstep in the future, and it crushes all of our personal thoughts about ourselves, because we have had success in the past and maybe others expect it. And maybe we demand it of ourselves because we are afraid to fail in the future because of the great success we've had in the past. And so that limits us. Likewise, if we have had problems from our past, if we have had failures or setbacks, and we look at ourselves in the mirror that can then prohibit us from progressing in the future and realizing our through potential, by seeing the possibilities that abound within us and within others, because we limit ourselves in this poem, I wanted to use key words or key phrases to help everyone realize that it does require some effort. It does take some work in the first paragraph. It says within you within is nobility. And then it talks about endless possibility. And then second in the second paragraph, it says, discover your divinity. No one can discover your divinity for yourself. You need to do the work. Discover the next line says, awaken your ability. Sometimes we fall asleep in life. We do. And we miss out on opportunities because either we have let ourselves get into a routine that creates a rut and we get stuck in that rut. And we can't get out on our own. We, we literally cannot get out without assistance from others. So we need to be awake, but sometimes we need to be awakened. And that requires others to help us to wake us up. The power to do is there for you, you're the prince, or I would add princess of possibility. I wrote this poem for myself. And so I wanted to let myself know that I was a prince of PO possibility, but whether you are a prince or a princess of possibility, you still have potential. The third paragraph says nothing is impossible. The world is at your command. Do your best and take a stand and accomplish the task at hand. And then the last paragraph, talk about how you were born with great nobility. The power to do is there for you as the prince or princess of possibility. So it is my hope that we will discover our own divinity, that we will awaken the greatness within us. Everyone can accomplish great things. And again, according to the podcast title of this podcast, goals, guts, and glory, it takes guts to set goals, but by setting and by achieving those goals, the outcomes are glorious. We change in ways we never thought were possible because we realize our true potential. And within us is awakened the power of possibility to discover our true divinity. So today, as we have already talked about, take five, five minutes to write down five tasks to do items or goals you want to accomplish today. And then every day take and write down five goals. You may have a busy day, so then only write down three things to accomplish, but always make sure that when you wake up first thing in the morning, you write down what you hope to accomplish today and each day. And then before you go to bed, review your progress, look back, hold yourself accountable and see what you have accomplished. Maybe what you were not able to accomplish and what you could accomplish. And then you will start to see a pattern emerge in. It will be a new habit. And the habit is the formation of your potential, your possibility. It's the power of your success because you set goals, you give yourself direction and then you follow through. That is what life is all about. It's about determining what you would like to accomplish, telling yourself and others, if appropriate, that you would like to accomplish, whatever it is you'd like to accomplish. And then once you have that determination, once you have that support from family and friends, then you can put in the work, you can do what it takes. It may be difficult. The best things in life generally do require a great amount of work because cause they are the most rewarding things and it does not come easy. It cannot, it should not. It will not. It will take sacrifice. It will take dedication. It will take determination. It will take commitment. But as you demonstrate to yourself that you are committed, as you demonstrate to your loved ones, your family, your friends, that you are determined to do, what it takes. You will see progress. You will realize the power of your own possibility and you will see more clearly than you ever have before that, as you do your best as you work, as you sacrifice, things will start to fall in place. Maybe not all at once. And things definitely won't happen overnight. Change often takes time, but do not postpone the power of your possibility. You have potential and greatness within find that, discover that for yourself. I hope you enjoy listening to these podcasts. If you have any family or friends who would like these podcasts as well, please share these podcasts with them. I'd love to have you give a five star rating to the podcast and subscribe to the podcast on whichever platform you would like to follow along, but know that you can achieve whatever you set out to achieve. You can accomplish what you hope and dream of accomplishing because you can do whatever you are determined to do. And with that dedication, you will see great things happen in your life. Thanks so much for listening until next time. Keep up the great work, do your best smile all the while and have fun. Thanks for listening. See you guys subscribe to music, motivation and more the positivity podcast with journaled Simon to receive updates about each new weekly podcast. Every Monday, a new podcast is released to help motivate and inspire individuals to learn, to grow, to do, to be and become the very best they can become. These are all motivational messages that inspire men and women of all ages to do and be their best to set goals, to work on improving who they are and who they would like to become. Thank you again for listening, connect with us on social media to become part of the conversation. As we all work together to motivate each other, to do and be our best. You can learn more about my music and various books. I've published by visiting my website, music, motivation.com. My music is available on Spotify, Pandora on iTunes, and can be found on all online music stores and stream sites. My motivational books and poetry books can be purchased on Amazon from Barnes and noble, various online bookstores, and also traditional bookstores as well. If you'd like to learn more about motivating and inspiring piano students, please visit my website. Cool songs, club.com to learn how and why I began composing what had become known as fun, cool songs. These cool songs were composed to help motivate piano students the fun way, especially during their teenage years. So hope you check it out and please feel free to contact me. If you have any questions about anything. My contact info is found on my website, music, motivation.com, but I would love to connect with you. And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Thank you again for listening. Hope you guys have a great week. See you. Bye.