From Opera Singer to Life Coach
Rosalie Sullivan, Met chorus mezzo-soprano and Certified Life Coach.
I had a sense from the beginning that this was going to be a long road. Even last spring, it seemed unlikely that The Met would be able to reopen August 1st for the 20-21 season and I had a feeling that I might be out of work into the fall, if not for the entire year. Once the shock wore off, I began doing some serious soul-searching – what would I do if I could not make music? How would I support myself? Staring into the unknown, wondering if, when, and how the arts industry would ever recover, I knew I had to turn inward to discover what to do next.
In 2008, in a similar moment of crisis and transition, I stumbled upon Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. There on page three, I found words that I still think of today: “Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”
I am someone for whom a sense of vocation is essential. This is why I became a musician: to pursue something that inspires, challenges, and stretches me – something that draws me onward to become the best possible version of myself. Without that sense of meaningful investment – of purposeful motion toward a higher goal – life loses its color, my energy dries up, and there is less and less of me to share with my world. It is not really surprising, then, that from the depths of my soul-searching came the decision to become a certified life coach (CLC). In this way, I hoped I could create meaningful work for myself outside of music and with a schedule I could control, both during my extended furlough and whenever The Met could safely reopen.
I began by availing myself of the incredible free resources on offer at The Actor’s Fund. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Countless times, I have discovered the support and information I needed in one of their free programs.
In the synchronous way things move when we set our wills into action and take even the smallest steps forward, doors opened, and connections were made almost effortlessly from the moment my decision to pursue certification was made. One of my sister’s high school friends is herself a successful coach and generously offered me an hour of her time to talk about her path. By the end of our call, she had talked me through her certification process, sent me a link for the next upcoming 5-day intensive training class, and invited me to join her monthly coaching community call immediately after we hung up. I registered for the five-day CLC intensive training with Life Purpose Institute (LPI) the next morning.
Rosalie (second from top right) and a gaggle of Cendrillon spirits posing backstage during a dress rehearsal.
When LPI calls this an intensive, they mean it. For five straight days in July, I was on Zoom all day, learning coaching tools and techniques, discussing ethics and code of conduct within the coaching industry, and most importantly, coaching and being coached. It was transformative and inspiring in ways I could never have imagined. It was also exhausting. In order to receive certification, we were also required to complete 12 hours of buddy coaching with a classmate, display competencies by coaching a different classmate in front of the group within a limited timeframe, pass a written final, and document sessions with at least three practice clients for a minimum of 12 hours. I wound up doing about 25 hours and was officially certified on December 7.
Rosalie (far right) and her fellow Cantoria choristers from David McVicar’s production of Tosca.
In many ways, I’ve been coaching myself and others informally all my life. Anyone familiar with the cycle of preparation for an audition or performance knows something about self-coaching and the dedicated daily commitment required to succeed in either effort. That’s who we are as performers: we have to be in order to succeed and to survive. After nearly two decades of working toward my goal to be a professional opera singer and ultimately landing one of the most competitive jobs in my field, I know a lot about the highs and lows of pursuing one's dreams; about pivoting, resilience, and dedication; about finding and losing motivation - and how to get it back again. I also know what it's like to be a high achiever and a recovering perfectionist. What better preparation could there be for a coach aspiring to serve others in finding greater fulfillment for themselves?
From the time I was young, I’ve had this driving inner force that says more is possible and I’m fascinated with trying to figure it out: How do we get there? How do we get stuck? How do we get unstuck? What is required to draw nearer to those dreams that we hold so dear? This is what calls me to coaching now: a desire to use my passion for vocation and my years of experience as an artist to help others uncover their own answers to these questions and lead lives of greater calm, clarity, possibility, and fulfillment, even in times such as these.
We begin 2021 facing great uncertainty, both in our industry and our nation. Standing on the edge of my own personal frontier, waiting to see what will happen in our industry and preparing to launch my coaching business in earnest, I take comfort in knowing I can take action daily and find genuine joy in watching clients transform before my eyes.
There is tremendous power in one person creating and holding space for another - supporting her and encouraging her in her own exploration and development. It is the power of any collaboration or creative act, a power that we all know so well. It is this power that we must continue to harness and to share in the days and weeks to come.
May we all be well supported in our transitions, our trials, and our transformations.
If you’re interested in knowing more about Rosalie’s Life Coaching practice, please visit her website at https://www.rosaliesullivan.com.
Note: Rosalie’s article was also featured in the Winter 2021 AGMAzine, the official newsletter of the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA). You may read the whole newsletter here.