What if the key to unlocking your full potential lies in the relationships you cultivate? Join us in this eye-opening episode of Creatively Balanced, where we uncover the transformative power of positive connections. Drawing from her extensive research with professional soul singers, Dr. Williams explores how personal, professional, romantic, and even self-relationships can significantly impact your success, happiness, and performance. Whether you're a performer or someone striving for excellence, discover how a positive mindset and supportive bonds are essential for achieving peak performance and lasting fulfillment.
Imagine being stranded in an ocean of challenges and fatigue—now picture a lifeline being thrown to you in the form of positive relationships. This episode delves into the vital role these connections play in providing emotional and spiritual support during tough times. Dr. Williams shares compelling insights on how nurturing these bonds can reinforce feelings of hope, joy, and love, guiding us through life's darkest moments. Tune in to learn how to enhance your self-awareness and improve your professional and personal relationships, ultimately recognizing the critical importance of human connections.
What if the key to unlocking your full potential lies in the relationships you cultivate? Join us in this eye-opening episode of Creatively Balanced, where we uncover the transformative power of positive connections. Drawing from her extensive research with professional soul singers, Dr. Williams explores how personal, professional, romantic, and even self-relationships can significantly impact your success, happiness, and performance. Whether you're a performer or someone striving for excellence, discover how a positive mindset and supportive bonds are essential for achieving peak performance and lasting fulfillment.
Imagine being stranded in an ocean of challenges and fatigue—now picture a lifeline being thrown to you in the form of positive relationships. This episode delves into the vital role these connections play in providing emotional and spiritual support during tough times. Dr. Williams shares compelling insights on how nurturing these bonds can reinforce feelings of hope, joy, and love, guiding us through life's darkest moments. Tune in to learn how to enhance your self-awareness and improve your professional and personal relationships, ultimately recognizing the critical importance of human connections.
Hello and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Creatively Balanced. My name is Dr Angelia Williams and I am a researcher, a peak performance coach, a psychological skills coach and a professional vocal coach. Today we're going to discuss relationships, how positive relationships affect our level of success, our happiness and our stage performance outcomes. Also why we should value positive relationships. Let's discuss I'm more than my lipstick? Yes, I am, and my heart, he had my heart. I'm more than my lipstick.
Speaker 1:
So when we say relationships, there are different types of relationships, right, different context. So you know, there are personal relationships, which these relationships are, of course, with friends, with family, with just within the human experience itself. It could be somebody that you know, you work with, that you have become closer than just a coworker, right? You guys are good friends, you guys see each other and experience each other outside of the workplace, so that turns into a friendship. And then you have professional relationships. These are relationships in business, so that could be a coworker, a manager, a supervisor, you know whoever has the authoritative position over you. It could be a venue owner for singers, venue owners, musicians, your band, right? Your sound people, whoever works in AV. You know, those are more professional relationships.
Speaker 1:
And then you have romantic relationships. You know which. That somewhat explains itself, right, it's romantic in nature. You know the type of relationship that a husband and wife have, the type of relationship that a boyfriend and girlfriend have. You know, those are our romantic relationships.
Speaker 1:
And then you have a relationship that a lot of us forget about. That is your relationship with self. How is your relationship with yourself? How do you view yourself? How do you talk to yourself? What is your level of self-worth? Right? These are things that we don't really think about enough, and it's something that takes a lot of introspection, right? So relationships outside of yourself are called interpersonal relationships and relationship. The relationship that you have with yourself is an intrapersonal relationship, right? And so your interpersonal relationships. You know it's. It's sometimes it's easier to gauge how you feel about another person than it is to gauge how you feel about your own self, especially living in a society that is extremely fast-paced. Sometimes we just don't take a look at how am I really viewing myself? Because the way that you view yourself has a lot to do with A the people that you choose to spend your time with and, b the decisions that you make, just overall in life. That has a lot to do with how you view and value your own self.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so you know, a dissertation is not something that a lot of people are going to read, and I understand why. A dissertation is a scholarly level writing and research about a specific subject, a very narrow subject, and so to the general public, it can be daunting to read something like a dissertation. So, because I know that I am going to bring some of the findings of my own research with professional soul singers, okay, and so in my own research, I work with professional singers, and my goal and my objective is to find things that hinder performance outcomes and also things that assist in performance outcomes. So what that means is, you know, have you ever seen a singer that gets up and they do amazing? Right, and when I, by the way, when I use the word performance, please do not get caught up on that. Christian community, please do not get caught up on that. Christian community, please do not get caught up on that. We have labels for things so that we can better understand them, and so when I say performance, I just simply mean, in a Christian context, when a person gets up to minister. Okay, so let's not get caught up on things like you know the word performance. It's just a description, you know it's not the spirit behind what's going on, so much it's a description of an event.
Speaker 1:
So what I have learned is that relationships and this is something that sometimes you know, because I am a quote unquote performer myself, and so I, you know, I have experienced many things as far as how relationships impact me when I get up but sometimes you think that that's just you, based on your personality, and don't realize that it is actually a phenomenon, right, you don't realize that it is a common thread between people. It's just a common thread in the human experience. So one thing that my research unveiled that I thought was fascinating was that psychological preparedness through a positive mindset presents optimal performance results, and what that just simply means is a positive mindset, you know, brings you, know you have better performances. That's what that simply means. But one thing that really somewhat astounded me was the research based on the data also shows that positive relationships help to have optimal performance results, and so what that means is your relationships have a direct impact on your performance results. So when you get up to sing, to act, to dance, to preach, to teach, whatever it is that you have to get up in front of people and do public speaking right. Your relationships have a direct impact on how that turns out, and so, if you have a lot of positive relationships, value them, because not only do they help you to live longer which studies show that people that have positive relationships actually live longer Not only does it help to live longer, but it will help you in your performance outcomes.
Speaker 1:
Okay, one thing that my research has shown is that it heightens the level of self-awareness when people have positive relationships. So self-awareness is key, because the more that you know and understand about yourself, the more you understand how to move right, what gigs to take, what gigs to turn down, who you should work with, who you shouldn't work with on a professional level, because of your level of self-awareness, basically, you know yourself right, you know what works for you and you know what could be a possible catastrophe. Number two psychological empowerment. So it means that people feel stronger on stage, more confident, more motivated when they have positive relationships in their lives Right in their lives right. And so confidence and motivation, those are things that prepare you before you even get on stage. The more motivated you feel, the more confident you feel. Of course, that turns out to be better performances, stronger performances, right, subjectively optimal performances, meaning that you will feel better about the performance, so you will feel more accomplished. And so we know, not only through our lived experiences, but through massive amounts of research, and just you know through my own research negative relationships have a strong bearing on your performance outcomes and just in your life in general. Right, because negative relationships eat away at your level of self-confidence, your level of self-worth, your level of self-efficacy and your level of motivation. It begins to deteriorate your relationship with yourself, right? It's almost like it builds a completely new schematic regarding your relationship with yourself, and that's the last thing that you need in life.
Speaker 1:
Now I will say this be very careful when you are speaking with someone that you know is in a an abusive relationship, is in an abusive relationship, okay, abusive relationships have a whole other dynamic and there are so many variables that go into why a person would stay in a relationship that is abusive. So the last thing that you want to say to someone that you know are in an abusive relationship is well, why don't you just leave? Help them to leave, give them resources, help to facilitate that process, versus you being a negative force in their lives as well. Because you begin to treat them, some people begin to treat them. Some people begin to treat people that are in abusive relationships like they are stupid and can't think, like they are weak. Please, don't do that. That's the last thing that that person needs. If you're going to help, help by facilitating the process through love, through helping that person to see that they are more valuable than that, through creating or supplying resources that that person may need to leave and when I say leave, all abusive relationships are not just with people that live under the same roof, so people that don't live together can also be in negative and abusive relationships. Okay, so just keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:
I want you to view the power of positive relationships like this.
Speaker 1:
Imagine that you are out in an ocean.
Speaker 1:
There is no one, only you, and you are just.
Speaker 1:
You're out there trying to survive, you're treading water, but you're getting extremely fatigued, you're exhausted, it's hot, you have nothing left in you and someone just out of the clear blue sky comes to throw you a lifeline, something like a rope, something you can grab onto, and they can pull you to shore or pull you onto their vessel. Just imagine and envision positive relationships like they are that rope. You know, there are things that we can go through that are very dark and we just simply need a rope. That positive energy and those positive interactions help to reinforce the feelings of hope and joy and love within your spirit and in your soul. That's how I want you to view positive relationships from now on, because that will help you to value them, that will help you to cultivate them, that will help you to cultivate them and understand their level of importance in your life. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Creatively Balanced. Again, my name is Dr Angelia Williams and it was nothing but a pleasure to spend time with you on today.
