We’re looking forward to introducing you to Matthew Hinsley. Check out our conversation below.
Matthew, a huge thanks to you for investing the time to share your wisdom with those who are seeking it. We think it’s so important for us to share stories with our neighbors, friends and community because knowledge multiples when we share with each other. Let’s jump in: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
I love mornings. I love the peace, the stillness. I look forward to the morning every time I go to sleep.
I have had the same routine for many years and it goes like this.
I make coffee. I sit with my journal and write what comes into my mind. In this way I express and still my MIND. Next I breathe through Qi Gong meditation, tracking and releasing energy along three meridians, front, back, and sides. In this way I awaken and greet my BODY. Continuing in breath, I repeat a series of personal mantras, keys I’ve discovered that remind me of my greatest strengths and challenges. In this way I bring awareness and strength to my SPIRIT. Last is strength, flexibility, and movement with yoga, and then I’m ready for the day.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I recently wrote a book called Form & Essence: A Guide to Practicing Truth. I’d like to share the path that led me to it.
I am a community leader in the arts. I’ve had the wonderful chance to raise many millions of dollars, and apply those resources to community-building efforts with music. With my team I’ve developed curricula and programming that has reached over 100,000 kids across the US and in over a dozen other countries, we’ve developed groundbreaking music programs that nurture the soul, including thousands of hours of deep connection with incarcerated youth, countless concerts reaching hundreds of thousands with artists from all around the world, and millions of dollars paid to working artists.
All this has allowed me to witness the undeniable power of invisible and hard-to-measure things. The smiles, the positive feelings, the meta-characteristics inside of us, the significance of our actions that make the difference between success and failure in relationships and in business.
In the modern world I believe we are overly attentive to things we can see, own, measure, and claim – to Form. My gift is to bring awareness to all the other things below the surface, the Essence, that are equally important, but often undervalued and misunderstood.
The book, then, is a summation of the deepest lessons I’ve learned in thirty years of observing and catalyzing positive community transformation and human development.
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
I was asked to give a keynote speech for the University of Texas School of Architecture. I am not an architect, I am a musician, and so I spent time thinking about what of value I might be able to offer.
I remembered that in college I took an architecture class. After the class, my eyes had been opened to architecture in a new way. Where before I had largely paid attention to street-level store fronts, all of a sudden I was looking up, seeing materials, styles, columns, and details of buildings in a new way.
Buildings had not changed, my awareness had changed.
And I realized that’s what we do with music. Beauty is around us at all times. In nature, in animals, in human creations. It is always there. In music we practice sculpting it, paying attention to details, inviting awe. While I had been engaged in making and teaching music for years, it was this moment of reflection from the perspective of another discipline that helped me realize the deeper meaning of practice and awareness.
I shared that realization in my keynote speech that night, drawing parallels between music and architecture, but in a way I shared the realization with myself as well, and it’s been with me ever since.
What fear has held you back the most in your life?
Fear manifests in many ways. I am a performer, a ‘three’ on the Enneagram, someone who instinctively values himself based upon achievement and the regard of others. naturally, then, fear in me has most often shown up as a fear that others will be unsatisfied, angry, or disappointed.
Earlier in this interview I mentioned the mantras I practice as part of my morning routine. The first mantra I came up with was, “I rise above the cares of others.” I discovered the phrase to help me address this fear.
Over the years I have become a student of love. As defined by David Hawkins in his paradigm-shifting book “Power Versus Force.” Love overcomes fear. It is, however, not something one does once. It is, instead, a lifelong practice of awareness and intention.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. Where are smart people getting it totally wrong today?
Social media.
Social media is the commoditization of thought and experience. It is judgment-based medium that distracts us from what really matters. It invites the conversion of Essence into Form. The algorithms that power social media have also come to inform mainstream media, making the information most people ingest on a daily basis, a race to the bottom in terms of catastrophe and division and oversimplification.
I wish every human would read Max Fisher’s “The Chaos Machine,” and then distance themselves from social media interaction and develop sensitivity and healthy skepticism around polarizing content.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What do you think people will most misunderstand about your legacy?
People who do not know me well will think my legacy was about raising lots of money to make programs happen. They will miss that it was never about the money. It was always about deep connection. It was always about service. It was about relationships regardless of money or business. It was inspiration not information, people not products.
In that space of wanting nothing, I gained everything.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.matthewhinsley.com/
Image Credits
Jack Kloecker
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
