Did you set singing goals at the beginning of the year? Or did life take over and you never really got around to it? Either way—this is your moment to pause, reflect, and reset.
In this episode, I’m walking you through a simple midyear check-in with prompts and tangible steps to help you:
🎯 Celebrate progress (even the small stuff)
🎯 Get honest about what’s felt hard or inconsistent
🎯 Set meaningful, realistic goals for the next 6 months
🎯 Break those goals into doable steps and get the support you need
Six months is more than enough time to strengthen your voice, build confidence, and feel more aligned with the singer you want to be.
00:00 Mid-Year Reflection: Checking In on Goals
03:10 Identifying Challenges: What’s Not Working?
07:58 Moving Forward: Embracing Change and Growth
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Okay, everyone, we are officially halfway through 2025. How is that a thing? I don't know how it's a thing, but we are officially halfway through the year. Actually, by the time this comes out, we are a little bit past halfway through the year. So I really wanna make today's episode just a check-in with where you are in the year.
been doing this myself, really looking at goals that I set back in January. I am one of those people that sets goals at the start of every year. I pick a word for the year, I do all of it. And so I just took some time myself these past couple of weeks to look at what were the goals I set? Where am I? What's working? What's not working?
So whether you are a person who sets goals at the beginning of every year, whether life gets in the way and you don't set any of those, whether you're somebody who just doesn't really get into that, I still think this episode can be helpful for you. I wanna give you some really specific prompts that you can work through on your own. I'm a big fan of journaling, whether you are writing it down or I'm a big talker, which if you've listened to this, it's a big shocker. So I will sometimes think about things while I'm on a walk.
and I just record myself, I leave myself audio messages and it can be really incredibly helpful just to take time to take stock of where we are because six months is enough time to get a ton accomplished If you're already feeling like, we're halfway through the year, forget it, I guess I'm not gonna meet those goals after all. That is not the case, you can be in such a different place in six months than you are right now or further down the road, whatever your goals are.
Let's jump in. I want to give you some prompts just to help you kind of assess where you are at this mid-year point so we can get rolling and make 2025 at least personally. I'm not going to talk about the year as a whole because I shudder. I'll just cry the whole podcast.
But at least personally, we're just focusing on us, not the state of the world, to have it end as positively as it can.
So the first prompt I want to give you and the first thing I want you to think about is what is working? What is something that you've accomplished at this point in the year? And it doesn't have to be huge things like, well, I'm not on a major tour right now, so I can't write anything down. It could be something as small as, which is actually not that small, I am not cracking as much on songs that I used to crack on. I feel a lot stronger. My confidence is a lot better. Some of those high notes that felt unsteady.
feel so much more in my reach now, whatever it is, So whether you wanna press pause right now, take a few minutes to journal this out, or if you're not a write it down person, like I said, just be pondering it, and then when you think of something, leave yourself an audio message, whatever works for you. But I think it's important to think about it, mark it in some way, and then celebrate it.
Because I find singers and just humans in general, we're really great at easily and quickly pointing out all the things that we don't do well enough, that we wish we did better, that we haven't accomplished enough in. We're not always so great at taking the time to go, hey,
actually have done X, Y, and Z. They might be small, they might be big, but they are improvements.
So the first thing I want you to do is just take the time to think about what has been working so far, because we want more of that.
The second prompt I want you to think about is what's been hard. Where do you feel stuck? Where are you feeling frustrated? Where do you feel like you're really inconsistent?
And for both of these, I want you to really think specifics. So when we come to what's been hard, what's really been frustrating you really get specific. Like is it as specific as I'm trying to sing this one song that I have to have for a gig and this note in the chorus is just killing me 50 % of the time and I don't feel any better about it now than I did.
or if your goal was to warm up and work out, practice singing several times a week and you're not doing it at all. That's okay. Write those down. Get as specific as you need to. And then part two of this is I want you to think about one solution that would help you with that.
One, you could book a session with a coach, book a session with a professional and just let them know in that session you wanna focus on a warmup and workout routine that's gonna help your voice get to the next level for the next however many weeks you wanna work on it. If that's not something that's feasible for you, you can do something like join a membership like Vocal Pro where you get a new workout every week.
If that's not feasible, go to YouTube and find one that feels good and sounds good in your body. Not everything on YouTube is great. Some things are really great. Go and just look and listen to your own body,
You want to get specific about what has been getting in your way. And then I just want you to think about at least one solution for that.
prompt three, what's next? What is one potentially bold, but yet still doable goal that you want to achieve by December 31st of this year?
And again, time to get specific. Perform at one open mic. Strengthen my mixed voice and get that note in the chorus that has been driving me crazy. Rock solid.
Audition at least three times before the end of the year.
And then part two of this prompt is I want you to break that down into two or three steps or more. That's another kind of stumbling block I find frequently with singers. Maybe the big goal is I wanna be doing a nationwide tour and I'm not and I'm frustrated. Okay, great. Well, how often are you playing out in your own community? How often are you playing in a larger area? Are you doing mini tours? A tour of the East Coast, West Coast, Midwest. How often are you on social media? How often are you putting out
new music, what are the smaller steps that can still feel quite big, right? It all depends on where you are with your singing in your own career and journey, but what are the smaller steps for you that can get you to that bigger step?
So that's three prompts for you to consider to get really specific, to come up with solutions, to break down into smaller chunks. And then I want you to just think about what is going to make these things realistic for you. How can you actually work them into your life?
So I have this great group of girlfriends that all work in the creative world in one way or another. We're all self-employed and we all get together to just cheer each other on.
and to keep ourselves accountable, keep each other accountable. So we will make quarterly goals and share them with each other. And then we break those into smaller chunks and every week we tell each other, okay, here's my main goal for the week. Here are the small side quests I'm gonna do for the week.
What's been really helpful about that is when I first went to share those with people, my list was ridiculous and completely unrealistic. It was like, here's the 27 things that I wanna do. Well, you guys, nobody can do that in a week. It doesn't matter. And also, I have a family and a full-time job and all the things that we are all juggling. So I can't get that list of 27 things done. It's not realistic.
So having this group, this accountability group of friends has forced me to really sit down and go, what is realistic, Amber? What can you actually get done? Look at your schedule for the week. What can you actually get done and what takes top priority? And I block it into my calendar. And there are weeks I don't get as much additional things done that I want and there are some weeks that I knock it out of the park. So I celebrate when I knock it out of the park.
I say, it's okay, you're doing the best you can when I don't get as much done as possible and I just keep working through that week after week.
So for you, think about, do you need to block time on your calendar? What is realistic for you? Is it you can vocalize 10 minutes a day? Is it 10 minutes, five days a week? Look at where you are. What are really realistic goals for you? How can you get support? Again, that could just be you get together with a group of friends or a friend who's there with you to keep each other accountable, to talk to and be like, okay, here's my goal.
Help reminds me that this is what I want to focus on and you can be there to support each other. or you look at a membership like Vocal Pro where you have me and an entire community of singers around the world to help cheer you on, to help keep you accountable, to help give you more guidelines and structure.
or whether you just set up a system for yourself, you know yourself best, that's going to help keep you on track as best as possible.
The whole thing with this guys is not to get overwhelmed, but I just like times like this, start of the year, mid-year, random Tuesday, where you can really stop and take the time to just look at how you've been doing, what you would like to do differently, what you have been doing that you're really proud of, that really works, that really feels good, and then go from there.
I find it incredibly helpful. I hope that you find some of these prompts in this episode helpful as well. If you want some additional support to help get you on the right track for these last six months, I've got several free things for you. One, I've got a free training for you all about 25 different movement tips to help you from vocal warmups to workouts to cool downs to performances.
I will put that down in the show notes. You can try two weeks of my vocal pro membership for absolutely free. It is a great way you all to have support and to have constant structure and challenge. And it's just, I love that sucker to death. I'll put that down in the show notes too. Just check it out. If that's not the right thing for you, but you're like, Amber, just need a little more help. I'm not sure what the best way to go is.
You can book a free 15 minute consultation with me or my fab associate coach, Eva Cassell. Just let us know how we can help. Happy singing everybody. And I hope to see you in next week's episode. Bye.
