Beyond the Lecture Hall: finding your “why?”

The pages of academic press and other media outlets, are full of headlines decrying decline of higher education, especially in the arts and humanities. In as much as there is no more a perfect solution to finding one’s path in life as there is no perfect interpretation of any given piece of music, there are indeed strategies and tools that college students can learn in order to make the best decisions for them to succeed in their chosen field.

Knowing who you are - your personal tendencies that help you thrive and succeed, is one of those tools. The awareness of your personal traits that help you succeed in life, or barriers that prevent you from achieving your goals, will help make informed decisions about what success means and most importantly - how to get there.

Have you ever talked to someone and left the conversation more perplexed than when you started it? Or after a meeting, have you asked your peers about its outcomes, only to hear something very different than You thought you heard? If you lived in different cities, states, and countries, these conversations can be even more confusing.

There are a few ways to explain this phenomenon, and one of them has to do with the personalities of those talking and listening.

Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, categorized 4 body types: choleric, sanguinic, flegmatic and melancholic, describing the fluid content of human bodies that made people act a certain way, these personality tendencies affecting people’s health! As the ancient scientists and doctors were struggling to make progress in curing diseases, they noticed important differences in human predilection and response to their environment.

As the medical science and knowledge of the human body evolved, it was psychologists that started to use these ancient terms to discuss human temperaments also known as personality types. Cholerics - high strung and driven, they seek autonomy and thrive under pressure. Sanguinics love to be around people and in the center of attention. Flegmatics - tend to be quiet, supportive, and would rather be a part of the team. Leave the Melancholics alone, the chance to obsess about the small details just might be the highlight of their day!

In turn,  organizational psychologist and author Thomas Erickson, popularized Hippocrates’s idea of human temperaments in a clever book series, where he gave each personality a color: choleric - red, flegmatic - green, sanguinic - yellow, and blue to the melancholic.

Music also has colors and timbres. Is Liszt’s music choleric, or perhaps is Debussy’s flegmatic? Could Mozart’s sonatas sound sanguinic, and is J.S. Bach’s contrapuntal mastery the penultimate melancholic sound? The works of some composers resonate with us more than others, for many reasons; and when we play with others we take on a role beyond our instrument. Speaking of instruments….. As musicians, we all gravitate to an instrument that resonates with something within ourselves, over time making our selves come alive when playing.

Of course, we are not defined by a single personality type, but under pressure certain characteristic tendencies help us persevere or get in the way. Combined with our socio-cultural background, if we learn to harness our personal characteristics, they can guide us. Knowing where we come from as well as what our strengths are, will build our internal compass on our path to success.

If you would like to learn more, please reach out and we can continue this conversation…..