Meet James Meade

We recently connected with James Meade and have shared our conversation below.

Hi James, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

What’s interesting to me about this question is that my relationship with my confidence and self-esteem has changed so much from childhood, to early adulthood, and now as an established creative. As a young boy, through early adulthood, I held very low and fragile image of myself. These days I feel very grateful to have a completely different relationship with myself.

I hope readers indulge me as I talk about this subject in a very open way. It’s an important subject because it seems there aren’t many channels of information for those of us who’ve come from tough mental and physical spaces and slowly built ourselves. Also, the truth is there’s no laying a universal cobblestone path for people. It seems more honest to share some channels that were conducive for change within myself.

Considering the utility of sharing, it will be useful to some to mention the obstacles that were necessary for me to overcome were rooted in being reared in a space where there was a lot of destructive behavior and encountering a lot of violence. That type of environment left me a really nervous child with a feeling of very little intrinsic value.
So confidence and self-esteem came very slowly to me. It was a process of accumulating information from people I admired, testing that information through hard-working and soft-forgiving processes, slowly believing in processes that provided repetitive positive results, then eventually arriving at the conclusion that all of us are the result of disparate processes. It’s just that some of us are given opportunities to go through processes at very different times in our lives. I hope those who identify with this understand, solidarity can still be found despite the feeling of their own seemingly “unfortunate uniqueness”. The uniqueness, while a source of struggle, can also be a light for the world. A well of empathy and energy.

After such a preface though, let’s dig into the key word in the question, development. I think the most useful way of presenting such a process would be to correlate formative times with books that found their way into my life. My hope is to create a bit of a Russian doll where the reader can get something from the notions presented in this article, but also provide avenues, for those who are hungry, to explore.

The process of development had to do with an interesting cyclical interplay of developing self-discipline, understanding the substance of self-esteem as well as finding purpose and meaning in my personal life and in my work. For this reason the examples below are separated by developmental phases. I’ve always been a believer in the idea that “If you’re looking for it, you’ll find it.”.

Self-Discipline

These first books came at a time when I was young and had very low self-esteem and was lost in terms of direction. This time had the distinctive characteristic of a child realizing the person is a moldable thing and becoming open to processes. At this time what I was looking for was “What does self-determination look like?”

Bruce Lee – My Definite Chief Aim
Bruce was probably the first role model I had as a young man. Of course, the movies were the gateway drug but I read everything: from his biographies to his early instructional work on Chinese Gung Fu, Bruce was the first person I’d encountered who had access to a certain type of self-determination.

Living The Martial Way – Forest E. Morgan
This work introduced me to the idea that people can express respect and protect themselves through internal processes rather than external ones. An example of this is rather than defending yourself outwardly when you feel attacked, a person could touch base with themselves and reaffirm internally our picture of ourselves.

Jiddu Krishnamurit’s Online Lectures
Vicariously through Bruce I found Jiddu Krishnamurit in my early 20s. Krishnamurti allowed me to understand the difference between judging and simply observing. I learned from him that often people suffer from judging information too quickly, or sometimes at all. Simply observing, rather than feeling an urge to come to a conclusion, can allow us to proceed along more honest, forgiving, and productive paths.

Self-Esteem

This next round of books I found and revisited between my late 20s and early 30. Up to this point I held the reality that people are shapeable, developed some discipline, but was noticing my dependence on end results. What I was looking for essentially was “what intrinsic value do I have?”.

Gloria Steinem – Warrior Within
I found “Ms.” Steinem’s work in my late 20s as I was going through a difficult end to a meaningful relationship that left me feeling very raw and exposed. Ms. Steinem, taught me the power of self-esteem. At a time of looking for the power of self-esteem I began to see that even sports psychologists understood that athletes perform at their belief level. We’ve all had moments where we fell below our potential because of negative self talk. For me, this book was a real-world exploration of the power of how we see ourselves.

Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
This is a book that’s very famous but it’s a novel telling of the path of Buddha. This was important to me because it let me see that even someone as incredible as Siddartha(Buddha) had to experience very different phases of life and incredible disparate kinds of efforts to reach their goal. It also caused a reframing of what the meaning of failure is.

The Good Earth – Pear S. Buck
I can’t express how beautiful this work is by Buck. For me this is a book about how the small things not only count but they add up! It also has a lot to teach in terms of considering the content of things in life decisions rather than impulsively giving in to the superficial.

Meaning & Purpose

The Last work I found just a few years ago in my mid 30s. I began reading these when we were all in quarantine. Like many, distractions were removed so some deeply rooted energy came up for me. I found I still had unnecessary amounts of anxiety in my life and work that had to do with a past of physical violence. Determined to overcome this I began boxing and did a couple of amateur fights to learn to “observe” myself in these situations and to no longer be so swayed by my strangely wired nervous system. To this point I’d thoroughly accepted that we’re all moldable. I’d accepted that my self was worthy of such work. At this point though the big ask was “Of all these people I admire and identify with, what makes their work sustainable?”.

Rickson Gracie – Breathe
Reading about Rickson and the Gracies taught me a positive can be rendered even out of the most terrible circumstance. Rickson had lost his son, what he’d rendered from it though was to become a more present father with the children that were still with him. To find these positives though, when we ask hard questions of ourselves, sometimes coming to something as simple as the breath can help to find clarity.

Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning
As a survivor of the holocaustVictor Frankl taught me that meaning allows us to sustain ourselves through the most difficult circumstance.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

At this time my work is centered around broadening the cultural horizon of my instrument through the arrangement and performance of works from around the world. As an educator, I’m working toward providing an equality of opportunity for today’s youth in [music]education regardless of socio-economic position.



In terms of performing, I’ve just completed a project with Guitar Salon International in Santa Monica, CA. This was a partnership where we highlighted some beautiful music by pairing each piece with a different, one-of-a-kind, handmade instrument. With the help of Cincinnati Recording Service, I also recently recorded my arrangement of a minimalist piece entitled ‘Tomorrow’s Song’ by the Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds. Minimalism is really asking a different kind of clarity from my hands that feels useful and exciting. 



The rest of this year will be full of booking concerts nationally within the United States as well as a short tour in Ireland where I’ll give concerts and record another of my arrangements for guitar and the Irish Bouzouki. I’m really excited to see where my efforts will lead me. The main goal in the future is to perform both solo and find new collaborations with other performers, especially those with a bit of elbow grease in their playing. 



With regard to my teaching, I’m coming out of a time of founding and running a non-profit that was called NoteAble. It was a free of charge, ensemble-based after school music program in Cincinnati. Since closing NoteAble my focus has moved toward balancing my teaching with the pursuit of a more vibrant performance career. Though, I’m always looking to connect with potential students with enthusiasm for music. I keep a very active private studio in-person and online.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

One of the most impactful skills that immediately comes to mind because I regularly sense the effects of the skill in other people, is to work on your people/social skills. You gotta practice becoming an approachable, good-communicating, relationship-building person. This is a tricky one since as a society we increasingly seem to have more and more social anxiety. However, the exposure and repetition of simply putting yourself out there is irreplaceable for changing your capacity in this department. It’s also a very fulfilling experience to see your confidence put others at ease.



Second, learning to take notes and reflect! If there’s one thing I can say for sure, it’s that everyone brings different strengths and weaknesses to their craft. None of us have it all together when we start out. So what I would recommend is probably, at its root, the hardest things to do. Learn to sit down with yourself quietly and reflect…honestly! It can be as simple as asking “How could I have avoided some these little 15 minute gaps where I idled in decision fatigue?” or “What’s one daily/weekly habit, that if I were to stop or replace, it would improve my current situation?”. Little things done consistently add up.



The third is simple, consistently work on your craft. We increasingly seem to be living in a world that provides short-term reward for transient ideas in a trending fashion and strips individuals of attention when a fad passes. I’m fortunate that I was poor long enough to practice my craft for the love of making something beautiful without noticing the lack of external monetary validation.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

Lately, I’m realizing that as a person from a really small town with modest upbringing, my current challenge is learning to present myself to potential sponsors and representation as the person I know I am. A very hardworking, earnest, and modest person…who just happens to have reached a high level of craftsmanship worthy of sharing with the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jamesmeadeguitar.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/james_meade_guitarist/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesmeadeguitar/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/JamesMatthewMeade
• Other: https://jamesmeadeguitarist.bandcamp.com/