As a Musician, You Are What You Say You Are
Who are you?
That’s a difficult question to answer when you really get into it.
Because you might identify with your gender, your religion, your job, your bank account, your family…
And all these things are you, but at a deeper level, they aren’t. They are just the things and the people you’re surrounded by every day.
What we’d do well to recognize is that word creates world.
At first, this is going to seem like woo-woo nonsense. Because you don’t just say, “I’m a millionaire” and automatically become one overnight. The stacks don’t just land in your lap. The world doesn’t work that way, does it?
But the thing about the way we communicate is that we often talk about things through the lens of the past.
And the tell-tale sign is the way we start sentences with these kinds of phrases:
- “Based on my experience…”
- “What happened last time was…”
- “It’s never gone that way before…”
- “I’m always this way…”
- “They’re always that way…”
- “This is always how it turns out…”
What you can tell right away is that whatever follows these phrases is going to be based on some experience that’s already occurred, not based on what you’re wanting to create in your present and future.
What you might not be able to tell without examining a little deeper is that you’re creating your world with these sentences. You’re saying, “the world is this way, that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it will always be.”
So, it might seem like semantics, it might seem a little rigorous, but when we give up our judgment of what we think will happen – which is based on memories, which are unreliable to begin with – we can be more intentional about the process of creating things the way we want them to be.
We can start looking at the world with no lenses. And creating from nothing is the most powerful mode of creation.
Creating from nothing is the most powerful mode of creation. Click To TweetYou can create yourself as a musician or you can create yourself as a music business. And like we talked about before, businesses like to do business with other businesses.
You can create yourself as a musician or you can create yourself as a music entrepreneur.
It’s not about judgment, or criticism, or what others might say about your self-identification. It’s about living into the possibility you’re now creating.
We can say we’re aspiring, or amateur, or we can begin creating ourselves as professional. “I am someone whose work is valuable, and I get paid for my work.” You can begin living into that possibility now.
This is not about creating some made-up identity or insisting that others see you a certain way. It’s not about victimhood. It’s about being in power. Being rigorous around your language and living into a future that’s created rather than a future by default.
I’ve been asked before “Why music entrepreneurship?”
And I respond by saying, “Because it sounds like something you’d want to identify as. It’s empowering.”
But again, it’s not just about identification. If promises and requests don’t follow, then there is no power in the creation. It’s about living into the world you’re creating. That’s the part that I want you to get.
For a proven, step-by-step framework in cracking the code to independent music career success, and additional in-depth insights into making your passion sustainable and profitable, be sure to pick up my best-selling guide, The Music Entrepreneur Code.
