You know how experts always say to sleep on criticism that has been posted about you and wait a day before you respond - I have slept on this one for 365 days and after waiting one year to respond - I feel I have fully identified and unlocked the value of the much talked about but seldom utilized "power of the pause".
Just last year on this date, a "hit and run" style comment was placed on an already unkind post that was eventually removed...but not before I could screenshot the comment to place on my desk for a year to reflect on each and every day for one year.
“I never comment on someone’s looks but you could look at those 2 and see the greed”
This is what I told myself…
“This is a comment…only a comment …from the emergency social media alert system…to practice a drill that leads to psychological safety for myself and others- I will exit the premises by NOT deriving meaning or any importance into what someone I do not know nor have ever met felt they had to place into a comment in response to an already unkind post made by someone I actually do know, have worked with and have valued highly with this wonderful experience we share called music.
This is only a comment…
Attention signal sounds for 30 seconds and I read again.
“I never comment on someone’s looks” BUT… "LOOKS" greedy
Sigh
Through my “paid” work - i.e. -the only work we get “paid” to do - as a strategic business planning and diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging (DEIB) consultants, we have had some amazing experiences talking with and educating people about unconscious bias.
In my opening segment I define what unconscious bias and it goes a little like this- “bias is an inclination to judge without intention, awareness, control or even our own permission"
In other words, we encounter something we see with our physical eyes, we take in that physical data and what we cant SEE......we "fill in the blanks" and make up a story with what we THINK is going on that also aligns with our inclination to make a decision without thought, awareness or control.
Our brain makes up stories and most of the time without our own permission. Have you ever had a thought come into your brain spontaneously and without asking for it? This is unconscious bias. Unconscious bias often transforms into confirmation bias.
I teach organizations this…the “thought” is not - wrong because unconscious bias happens all day long without intention, meaning you can't really control your thoughts but if you do physically do something with the “thought” - make a decision or take an action without properly filtering the data that comes into your brain- in a way that provides advantage for someone and disadvantage for someone else - that part might be limiting you to new possibilities and may be hurtful and devastating to others as well.
We make up stories all day long. Last year, I went through an exercise once where I logged in all of my inclination to judge without intention, awareness or control- even watching the news, listening to people converse, read social media posts or even people watching- which everyone will admit to enjoying to some extent- and later in the week- checked all of the stories I had made up in my head about what I thought was going on with what actually happened and 95% were not accurate or even close to being the original story I was telling in my head.
It takes a discipline to stop the “automatic” brain from hijacking your thoughts, your friends, your lifestyle, your family and even your career. As part of this exercise - I had to first separate “facts” from “opinions”
This is called “pausing” by the way. The deliberate brain can totally save your relationships, make better business decisions and broaden your perspective beyond what you had before the automatic brain hijacked your deliberate brain.
When you pause- you
1) Take a deep breath
2) Acknowledge your thoughts and your judgments
3) Say to yourself I know what is coming into the brain first and foremost but WHAT ELSE COULD BE POSSIBLY BE TRUE?
4) if you still need fill in blanks - you go to the person who can help you fill in the blanks and you ask.
5) THEN when you have the data you need- you can make a more thoughtful and deliberate decision. It may be your original thought and if so - it is a validated one.
People post things for lots of reasons but most likely the reason is that some internal dialogue or external dialogue and lands in your brain at the point of impact and it is one that aligns with YOUR narrative, background and experience and not with the ACTUAL narrative, background and experience that is yet to be uncovered.
RENEE COLLINS COBB - SHORT FILM ON THE TOPIC OF UNCONSCIOUS BIAS
I don't share a whole lot about this- but I have never felt I had to until an opinion was communicated about how "greedy" we looked - but music is nothing that either of us draw or have drawn income from NOR do we fault or judge anyone who does.
In the 1980s-90s, we “served our time” in the performance world before, during and after receiving our Music Education and Music Performance Degrees from the UK School of Music.
After both of us went through marriages that did not support nor even allow what we were both doing separately with music- we both abandoned ship to keep the peace in the home, raise our separate families, and live each day in what most musicians call “your day job”. I honestly didn't even pick it up again until I was 55.
In between that time around age 39, I suffered a stroke that left me profoundly deaf and unable to hear or coordinate my left hand with my right hand to play the piano. As you can imagine, this was devastating but also re-tooled me with skills in other areas and I learned to adjust and compensate with not being able to hear sound, pitch and to manage noise in the background. People have also made fun of this too. Really sad.
The two of us reconnected around eight years ago and both sharing a passion for music, working with the university oral history department to record stories from music legends before they were no longer able to tell their stories - and also upon learning that each of us had put music on the back burner for 35 years- we decided we loved that about each other and didnt want to spend the next 35 without music and art in some form or fashion in our lives because in our previous marriages - we had felt incomplete and not whole without it.
Fast forward…
Did we want to get out and perform in venues? NO
Did we want to reengage in time consuming and disciplined practice of our classical music training? NO
Did we want to create experiences that would engage others in loving what we had missed for so long? YES
Did we want to help others get the recognition they needed to provide tools and resources and time to help ANYONE that asked for our help? YES
Did I have the talent, skills and background to do all of this which is totally outside of my comfort zone? I didn't think so but my husband DID.
Do I care about what others say?
I wish I could say NO all of the time but here is why I do care. I have been through years of PTSD therapy that has helped me discern the value of what someone says about me and if it even makes a difference, affect my emotional well being or to simply discard it upon that data hitting the brain. BUT If someone who is not as well equipped to read thoughts about what someone they don't know or even worse- what someone they do know has said about them in print or even in speech - then I do hurt and feel for how people react if it is in a way that is emotionally devastating…especially when it is a post that evokes comments like this one…
“I never comment on someone’s looks but you could look at those 2 and see greed.”
The 'hit and run' comment was really sad to me for a lot of reasons however this one comment was really hard to digest in a way that I could even process....so I engaged the power of the pause and intentionally waited 365 days until addressing it now.
Because of confidentiality and privacy, there have been a lot of efforts on our behalf that are invisible and only heard about if the person we have helped has chosen to disclose.
Please do not ever believe for a second any story that someone is not doing great things for the community because these are things that are less likely to make an appearance on social media:
Drug addiction, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorce, food insecurity, sexism, underrepresentation, poverty, mental health crisis, unemployment are all examples of things that other musicians are helping people with that will most likely not be visible to you nor should they be.
I addressed this very dynamic recently in an interview I did with Nashville Voyager after another "hit and run" comment on social media.
You also may not see the value in creating connections for others who have been desirous of performing at a venue but never got a chance until they showed up and out at a radio show or a singer/songwriter round. In many cases, these have led to a really big gig, a full length video on a TV network, a full length- low budget / high quality album from one of our shows, 15-20 hours of normally expensive air time in one single weekend or even an acceptance speech on a really big and highly valued stage.
No one has ever been forced to be on a stage, be at open mic, sing in a songwriter round, or be on a radio show. There are simply too many people who have these desires for us to go out and try to get artists that need the show for some reason. We don't ask why people feel they need to be on the show but are delighted for whatever reason that is.
Everything you do and every decision you make is a choice- even a decision to post or comment on a story from your perspective or to comment on one without any the data you probably should have before you post or comment.
When I am in business meetings with corporate VP’s and executives I am often charged with making notes of how people interacted with each other and to moderate and listen for comments that are made in real time on something that someone just says without intention, awareness or control.
When they do, I am responsible for asking the follow up question-
“what data do you have that supports your conclusion?
Does it take time? YES
Does it save time? YES
So in the words of Hans Christian Anderson, who said “when words fail (and do they ever fail!) …MUSIC SPEAKS (and does it ever speak)
Let’s let music and the arts in general “speak” for a change.
This has been a long read for you and if you have read this with interest to this point- I would guess you probably want “music to speak for a change” as well.
It is my personal and professional belief that you do not ever really know what is going on in someone’s life and that everyone is doing simply just doing the best that they can.
And because of the high value I place on this way of thought leadership- I TRULY believe that about all of you regardless of what you TRULY believe about us or anyone else.
Renee Collins Cobb, M.Ed. and Warren Cobb are Executive Producers of Overtones LIVE and Co-Owners of Listen Locally, LLC, as well as Executive Directors and Founders of Room 17 Productions, a non-profit 501c3 organization. We are also partners in Dreamland Entertainment Group and The Scribe TV Network.
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