I’ve been developing a pilot program for at risk children in Washington DC. The purpose is to provide music lessons to the children for free by some of the best musicians in the city. Is this a pipe dream? No. I’m actually going to enroll some of the best musicians into this program.

I’ve caught the “Oprah’s Big Give” bug and now I’m hooked. It helps that I’m also in a course in which I am required to do a community project and so with my love of music and my wanting to give back, I decided to create the “Music Makes Futures Bright” program. I will be offering this program to area organizations that deal with at risk youth.

I will be blogging on here from time to time about my progress. So far I’ve been able to recruit two amazing women to the advisory board. I still have a core team to develop and I need to recruit the music mentors.

If you are in the DC area and are interested in being involved with the project, please give me a call at 202-635-3567 or make a comment on this blog. You are also welcome to donate. If you are out of the area and still want to contribute, you can also donate money to my donation site that is on the right side of my blog. My first fundraising goal is to make $5000 in online donations by June 15th. I appreciate any help you can give.

Until next time…

I recently attended an integrity seminar and it focused on how many people are lacking when it comes to it. People lack integrity in their careers, relationships, financial weath, health, etc., and because of this, these areas are not working for them. Without getting too deep into the seminar, I will tell that I met at least five participants that were either musicians or composer/songwriters and they were all saying the same thing. Basically, they don’t write and they don’t practice. They have become secret musicians and no one knows that they are even involved in music.

One person I talked to admitted that he was a songwriter only after I mentioned that I was one. He told me that he didn’t feel the right to say he was a songwriter because he never writes. Yet, I could see just how much pain he was in because he realized that he doesn’t write and he really wants to. Whatever the reason that he doesn’t write is not as important as beginning to turn around the thought in his head that he is not a songwriter. I told him to say it. He needed to admit to others that he was a songwriter. There’s no need to get into the excuses as to why he doesn’t write. The more he says he is a songwriter, the more his mind will believe it and he will began writing on a regular bases.

It’s the self-talk that influences the actions that we take. This person I met in the seminar got himself into a rut, and he let his passion for songwriting go into the background. The problem is that it doesn’t work for him to let this happen. He is not happy and he is not functioning properly. Speaking things into existence has been talked about in many books including a lot of religious text. This idea is nothing new. Words are very powerful.

So if you are a secret musician and you want this to change, the first thing you must do is speak it into existence. Tell people what you do. Tell as many people as you can. If they ask if you have anything for them to listen to, tell them that you will have something very soon and put a deadline so they can hold you accountable.