We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matthew Hinsley. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matthew below.
Matthew, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
Music is a wise and gentle teacher. I started playing violin when I was three. Along the way I discovered cello, and piano, and some wind instruments, but when I found guitar at age ten I really connected. I’d go on to study classical guitar in high school, college, and graduate school, practicing thousands of hours, and developing a deep lifelong relationship with the art and with work.
At first music study seemed to be about accomplishing things. My teachers would set goals for learning, and I would try to meet them. Soon, though, the goals became more subtle, focused on the how and not the what, with attention to the quality of small movements, the feeling inside my body during complex passages, my breathing, the many details of timing and articulation that made it all come to life.
But along the way something else happened. My daily work with the instrument became a kind of communion. While goals were always present, they became implicit. What were once finite goals melted into an understanding that the work would never be done, indeed, the goals were mere markers along a path of glorious opportunity. My relationship with the work became a personally fulfilling commitment built on an understanding that a life well-lived involves growth, discovery, and refinement. Music became my companion.
So it has become with my work, be it community organizing, leading, fundraising, or writing. There is a kind of peace knowing that I’m on a path I don’t fully understand, the end of which I’m not actually trying to reach, though there may be markers along the way. I find it energizing, and it gives me access to things like curiosity and joy that I’ve observed are harder to tap into with a more finite mindset built around to-do lists, deliverables, and deadlines.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’m a nonprofit community leader in the arts. For over twenty-five years I’ve produced shows with artists from all over the world, built wide-ranging service programs, raised millions of dollars, and most recently opened a new concert and creative learning center in central Austin, TX, called The Rosette.
Perhaps most significantly, my organization, Austin Classical Guitar, has had the opportunity to add guitar as a for-credit subject to American public schools. We’ve built programs in every Austin ISD school, in five juvenile justice centers, with partners in 45 Texas school districts, 40 states, and about 15 countries. We also developed the world’s first lifelong learning system in braille for blind and visually impaired classical guitar students. Creating a new, rigorous, course subject in schools is a complex process involving deep investments in teachers, schools, and communities, creating big infrastructure while maintaining sensitivity to small and specific needs, and creating the business and resource elements necessary for scale.
Our vision is a young person, standing on a stage with a guitar, smiling at applause, proud of what they’ve accomplished. I’m so grateful to have been able to reach that vision now tens of thousands of times near and far.
Writing is one of my most favorite things and I’ve just released my seventh book called Form & Essence: A Guide to Practicing Truth. This book is about the undeniable importance of invisible and hard-to-measure things in a world obsessed with data and demonstration. It’s about infinite mindset, about paying attention to the internal alongside the external. It’s been really well received, and I hope its message will do good in the world.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Trust, Awareness, and Joy.
We all have dreams that come from a place of inspiration. I think those dreams, when allowed to flourish, are representative of a kind of deep truth we carry within ourselves. It’s really important to trust those ideas, to trust yourself, to fan the flames of inspiration. Education is wonderful, and so is advice, but sometimes precedent can become a sort of prison, boxing us into the status quo, limiting our ingenuity. I think it’s really important to make space, be it through journaling, or meditation, or exercise, to listen to yourself throughout your life and career, and to trust the voice you hear.
There is a whole universe below ground, beneath the things we see, surrounding the world through which we drive our cars and pay our bills. It’s the universe inside, it’s nature, it’s our countless critical relationships that sizzle and delight with care, or fester and contaminate with neglect. It’s really important to develop practices that keep us aware of the invisible, aware of how we feel, how others, feel, the true impact we’re having on the world over and above the things we do. Awareness of the internal and invisible is endangered, however. It always has been, because we are spiritual beings in physical bodies. But nowadays, with the digital world omnipresent, every social post, text message, and news flash pulls our attention outward, away from our spirit, into the world of form. Maintaining deeper awareness is a key to mental health, as well as the cultivation of true, collaborative relationships.
Joy as a level of consciousness is, for me, the ultimate goal. I don’t mean a constant state of smiles and laughter, so much as a deep, unwavering connection to the miracle of it all. Knowledge that some days we may get the deal, other days someone else will, some days we may get the seat on the airplane, other days someone else will, but that any of it exists at all is a miracle for which gratitude is always available. Joy is tricky, though, because to arrive there as a level of consciousness means releasing our narratives of suffering, separateness, and entitlement. These tend to be deeply ingrained, but if we can release them and welcome joy as a gift to ourselves and to those around us, we are able to access a kind of power and freedom previously unavailable to us.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
I have been greatly influenced by The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Riso and Russ Hudson.
Get this book!
You’ll learn in new ways that we are all different people with different underlying motivations.
You’ll learn a system of understanding that will inform you about yourself, about your colleagues, about your family.
Working with any other human any time for any reason will be dramatically enhanced with sensitivity to differing personalities. What before may have seemed annoying habits that felt bothersome or even meddlesome, become understandable and helpful alternative viewpoints that will make you and your work stronger.
Contact Info:
- Website: matthewhinsley.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-hinsley-31387b87/
Image Credits
Jack Kloecker Arlen Nydam