Building Your Castle
There are obviously hundreds of ways to succeed as a musician, but this blog post will be dedicated to the underlying foundational tools, without which you will never sustain great success. The best analogy I’ve found in describing foundational tools is that of a castle built on sand. When the storms come, and they will come, if your castle is build on a foundation of sand, it will inevitably crumble back into the earth from which it came. Even if by chance you make it big, if your castle is built on sand, it doesn’t matter, it will eventually crumble.
The history of music is riddled with these geniuses who had foundations of sand including Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Bradley Noel and recently Amy Winehouse. These artists never built a rock solid foundation and when the storms of “responsibility” from great success came, they were not prepared and as a result fell apart, their souls returning to the source from which they came, hopefully to be given another shot at building a real foundation.
So how do you build a foundation from which to launch your music career?
The biggest problem here is that most people are busy hacking away at the branches or symptoms of a problem and never address the root cause; and as we all know, branches grow right back, its only a matter of time. Take for instance, you want to get a gig, but you’re not a great marketer yet so you go to a gig service like Sonicbids and sign up for a subscription and three months later you not only have less money but you still have no gigs. Problem is, you still haven’t addressed the root of the problem.
Beliefs & Values
To address the root of the problem we need to address the root of our outcome or results. So working backwards, a result comes from the following:
Beliefs & Values >>Lead to>> Thoughts & Emotions >> Lead to >> Actions >> Lead to>> Results
As you can see, at the root of our foundation is our Beliefs and Values. What you believe and what you value are conditioned since birth and guide your every decision and therefor results. So if you believe that rich people are evil then you might make money, but when you do you’ll either loose it, squander it or give it away. Or lets say your parents said you’re wasting your time and you’ll never make a living as an artist, you may indeed never become a great successful artist so long as you believe this is true. Your innate tendency will be to sabotage your career whenever you become successful, just as Jim Morrison did.
This is of course, unless you do something to change your Beliefs and Values. The good news is that beliefs and values can be changed in a way that supports your foundation into a rock solid platform to launch a successful music career.
Ok so lets get down to the nitty gritty here. To change this foundation you’ll need to do some re-wiring. Think of your brain as a computer with files. You’ve got a bunch of non-supportive files, i.e. I’m not good enough, I’m afraid of what people think or how I look, bla bla bla. Now we simply need to do two things
1) Stop using those files that don’t support success.
This would be all the “less than files”, treating yourself like crap, over eating, over boozing, never exercising, watching a lot of TV all because you don’t “Believe” you are worthy of a strong body, strong mind, abundance in all things. Whenever in doubt about your actions or thoughts here is the three-prong test: “Do they feel good to you, to others, and the greater good of the world?” If your thoughts and actions don’t support all three, ditch them. First exercise here is to write down 3 non supporting beliefs or values you have about your health, wealth and personal identity.
2) Start re-wiring and replacing those old negative files.
Next we are going to write down some new beliefs about those same 3 non-supporting beliefs. For example: If you eat like crap and you believed it just didn’t matter, then think about replacing that belief with a new belief that your body is your temple and vehicle to success, if its not treated like a thoroughbred it will never run like a thoroughbred and therefor never be successful.
MOST IMPORTANTLY: Now you need to reinforce these 3 new beliefs. This is even more important than writing down your new beliefs, as we need to re-wire and re-condition the neurons in your brain. Here are 4 areas to focus on:
a) Hang out with people that have high standards mentally, physically and spiritually. Try meetup.com or other communities of people with high standards like a yoga community or personal development group. write down the beliefs you have that keep you from moving ahead or stepping up. now write down the new beliefs you will embrace (read below how to embrace) and act upon.
b) Incantations / Reaffirmations: Here is the skinny on these actions: Your brain is wired by a bunch of neurons, with connections based on past memories and events. Your brain translates thoughts and emotions into actions based on these connections. If you stop recounting those memories and start creating new positive affirmations, those old connections will “BREAK” and be gone forever. But this takes discipline. You must commit to do one of these items first thing in the morning and before you go to bed at night for 10-15 minutes minimum each day. Here are a few actionable items:
exercise 1) Incantations could be done by simply looking in the mirror and saying “I love you” or “you have immense power, you cannot be defeated.” You can even try putting your hand on your head when you say these incantations out loud. You’ll notice it has a different effect, its a resonance that travels through your entire nervous system and as silly as it seems, it works.
exercise 2) or try buying a book or audio book from Tony Robbins or T Harv Eker or other personal development master. Just by listening while you jog, walk, bike or whenever, you will be rewiring your brain for success.
c) Spiritual Exercise: chanting, meditations and other more spiritual exercises are also essential in building a rock solid foundation. If you believe philosophically, that the reason you are or are not successful is due to randomness or a wand waving dude on a cloud, that’s cool and all, but the reality is you’re basically saying: “I don’t have control over my circumstances.” This viewpoint by its very nature puts you in a position of powerlessness not to mention irresponsibility. Without personal power you will once again fall apart eventually.
exercise 1) I’m not going to take a stance on what type of spirituality you should practice, only practice it you must, or else the castle will blow away when the storms come. Just make sure the philosophy is in alignment with the principal of cause and effect. This way you take on the belief that you are at cause for your present circumstances and are therefor in charge of future outcome and success in the music business. You are in power. So how can you reaffirm this? Try lighting a candle or just sitting down in a quiet place and breathing deeply through your nose with the intention of affirming your connection to the source of infinite strength, courage, wisdom and power. By reconnecting daily to your source, you will gradually regain power and take control of your destiny.
d) Take care of your body. Your mind is connected to your body and responds to everything you put in your body. If you eat crappy food, its because you believe you’re not worthy of good organic food or you believe you can’t afford good food or you believe it doesn’t matter. Whatever you believe, that’s what you’ll do and those are the results you’ll get. If you eat crappy food, you’ll feel like crap, you don’t need a Phd in nutrition to figure that out. In order to support your mission as a musician who shares and inspires others with music, you must first change your belief about your own worthiness. If you want to be successful, what is the best food you can eat? Well, you need energy to write songs and to get your ass off the couch right? This means high energy foods that aren’t cooked to death, that are NOT processed and refined, that typically means Less carbohydrates and more fruits, vegetables and high quality protein. Check out the “paleo diet” if you want to find out more.
Feel free to comment below with any great ways to strengthen the foundation and succeed as a musician.