I had a kind of epiphany in a dream the other day, but when I woke up it was muddled and sloppy and I've been trying to piece it together since.
When I put it to words, it sounds like things I've said before, but after the dream, these things seem to hit a lot closer to home and resonate a whole lot louder than they ever have before.
The crux of the message was that the most powerful things come from inspiration without thought. Thoughts can be useful tools, but they are not where power comes from, and they more often distract us from our real power.
The push to make your song better isn't what makes it good. What makes a good song is the amount of fun you had creating it. Fun is the magic sauce.
You can see this clearly when you watch the Beatles write music. They are having so much damn fun, and that is why they are one of the most popular and prolific bands of that era.
Not everything that is fun will be a hit....but the point isn't to be a hit, the point is to help you evolve. And then somewhere along the path of evolution, you will inevitably find success, whatever success means to you.
What success means to you can change over time as well. But success tends to be a positive feedback loop between what you do and what you get from what you do. The payment or the time or recognition necessary to allow you to do more of what you love.
A lot of times the progress we meet from following our excitement is watered down or cancelled out completely by our worries about how it will achieve what we want it to achieve, but the whole point that I'm discovering is to forgot about what I want it to achieve.
Having a vision for what I want to achieve is fine if that vision is exciting for me, but when I start to feel that the vision is unrealistic, or that I need to make uncomfortable sacrifices for that vision, the problem isn't that I am not doing it right, the problem is that I haven't faced my fears around failure.
What I mean by that is, if I am not afraid of failure, doing the work necessary to improve is also exciting. Practicing guitar or studying a skill or dealing with clients becomes an exacting part of the process because it means I am making progress.
I realized that whenever I start to worry about whether or not something I'm doing will have it's intended effect, whether it's an ad to find students or a song or some merchandise I am selling, this worry is an indicator of two potential situations and I need to figure out which one is more applicable.
When I'm worried, it means:
1 This is not something I should be doing and I am only doing it because I'm scared that not doing it will make it difficult to succeed.
2 I should be doing this but the results of it may not be immediate or straightforward, I am getting too distracted by my narrow view of what I think should happen as a result of this.
For me, an example of the first one was spending hours a day on social media trying to promote my work. Massive waste of time for me, didn't achieve the intended effect and distracted me from meaningful work.
Sometimes this "waste of time" can also be meaningful of course, I mean I started a podcast thanks to this push for promotion and now I'm designing merch to sell, and I've learned some new skills and useful information such a video editing and how the algorithms work. I've also grown closer to a few people thanks to these.
As for the things I should be doing but get too caught up in the outcome, those are the moments I want to do something but can't seem to focus. When I say "I want to do THIS today" and can't seem to start. There is obviously resistance there and that usually comes from attachment to outcome.
If we can let go of the outcome, we find the fun and we can follow that to the next step. If it leads us nowhere, there is more baggage and unhelpful beliefs to discard.
So for me right now, I am starting to discover some old demos I had left around. I want to put some energy into playing with those and seeing if i can write a few new songs. I also want to collaborate with my partner and a few friends and even my students. I want to restring my electric guitar and start practicing with effect pedals.
I feel more excited about organizing some shows but first I want to create a new version of my music. A lot of the things I'm playing haven't changed much since 2013 or 2015. I've changed a lot so I want to discover who I am musically right now.
I have also been practicing my scales, not out of obligation as much as out of excitement for what I can add to these new songs.
The dream told me not to worry how any of this comes across to others. Don't worry about putting out an album if I don't feel like putting out an album. The point is to have fun creating so just do that more and more.
The result will be a more beautiful version of success than I currently am imagining. This is inevitable if I become good enough at following my excitement.
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