Ep. 36 How to Overcome Difficulties & Achieve Your Dreams feat. Angela Shanker

Ep. 36 How to Overcome Difficulties & Achieve Your Dreams feat. Angela Shanker

Why do we stay committed to our dreams? Elena and Angela Shanker discuss this question as they talk about being a successful musician in NYC and following your dreams despite hardships. to learn more about how she can support you in seeing and using...

Why do we stay committed to our dreams? Elena and Angela Shanker discuss this question as they talk about being a successful musician in NYC and following your dreams despite hardships.

Check out Elena’s website to learn more about how she can support you in seeing and using the power that resides within you.

What is your current relationship to commitment? For some, commitment is a burden. For others, it’s an obligation or responsibility. But let’s dig a little deeper. What is your commitment based on? If it is based on external things, like perceived wrongs you see in the world that you are committed to fixing, that’s good! However, we all have a finite amount of time, so we can’t fix everything that we believe is wrong in the world, no matter how hard we try. Elena shares that when our commitment is based on something that is happening solely outside of us, that can cause us to eventually burn out. She notes that when your commitment comes from your core—from who you are and what you are passionate about—that passion-fueled commitment can be easier to fulfill, even when you run into challenges and obstacles along the way.

In this episode, Elena talks with Angela Shanker, who is a beautiful example of a passion-driven, musically-gifted, dream-chasing woman. She and Elena talk about how Angela’s love for her craft and her family fueled her to consistently achieve goals that others deemed impossible, including making a sustainable living as a musician and music teacher in New York City, pivoting from her work in classical music to musical theater as she successfully learned how to play multiple new instruments during the pandemic, and becoming a musician in the orchestra for the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular for the past two years!

If you want to be inspired to stay committed to your dreams and push through the hard days, you do not want to miss this episode of The Collective Corner!

Let’s Get Social!

Want to hear more from Elena? https://elenaarmijo.com/ 

Check out Angela’s website: https://angelashankar.com/ 

Connect with Angela on Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/angshankarmusic/ 

This podcast was produced by the following amazing team:

John Biethan, President of Imagine Podcasting

Sam De Santo, Creative Director

Rye Taylor, Podcast Design Strategist & Producer

Alan Meaney, Audio Engineer

Meg McCarley, Brand Designer & Social Media Manager

Raejan Noh, Content Writer

Aaron Boykin, Musician & Artist (Get updates about Aaron’s music via Instagram)

Elena Armijo

Executive & Leadership Coach, PCC
Angela ShankarProfile Photo

Angela Shankar

Performer & Mom :)

The daughter of two musicians from her native Cleveland, Ohio, Angela is a performer and educator in New York City.

Active in the musical theater world, Angela recently finished a run of the award-winning musical, Harmony, written by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman. She’s currently subbing at The Music Man on Broadway, starring Hugh Jackman. This past holiday season she was in the Radio City Music Hall orchestra for the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular show and is looking forward to kicking off the 2022/2023 season soon as well.

In the Fall of 2022, Angela premiered a new concerto, written for her, by composer Michael Boyman, with The Chelsea Symphony. Click here to listen.

In addition to performing regularly with TCS, Angela is a founding member of the reed trio, Reeds Amis. The International Double Reed Society invited Reeds Amis to present and perform the unpublished works of Fernande Decruck at the IDRS Conference in Tokyo. They recently released their first CD; Reeds Amis, The Reed Trios of Fernande Decruck and it can be streamed on YouTube Music, Apple Music, and Spotify.

You can see and hear Angela on the Golden Globe winning television series Mozart in the Jungle, including a solo passage from Messiaen's Abîme des oiseaux from the Quartet for the End of Time in Episode 7 of Season 3, which was filmed on Rikers Island. A deeply moving experience, she has since worked behind the scenes to establish a chamber music program at Rikers with The Chelsea Symphony and with the support of the NYC Department of Corrections.

A … Read More