"Do it For Yourself"

The past week has been rough due to the loss of my friend. I think I spent a lot time thinking about what I could do to help, such as starting a min-fundraiser and screaming positive affirmations, giving my album out for free, and thinking of new ways to create more content for my students I currently teach. So today I meditated and I thought “Why don’t I do something for myself?” Instead of reading books and watching videos on youtube about motivation, or change, or marketing, why don’t I write down what I already know I want to hear, read, and do and save myself the time?

I feel like much of my inspiration that seems authentic is when I’m doing things for myself. I’ve been reflecting on responsibilities that I have taken on or ideas that don’t seem to manifest and I think its because “there’s not much in it for me.” Even feelings of “I’m being of service, or I’ve made lots of friends, I made a difference, I overcame my selfishness to make this happen” aren’t really there.

The argument could be made that some deeds are just intrinsically good to do in it of themselves, but not for the reward. Yet I observe myself and possibly you relate, when we honestly want to do other things that give us a better and happier experience than what we are currently doing, I think it makes the experience more pleasurable for others around them too. Happiness is contagious, even in struggling times in sports or games, their can still be happiness in the grind.

Personally I wish I had more experience with saying, “Hey I change my mind about this, I want to do something that makes me happier.” and that being normal. Usually responsibilities seem like a prison sentence with wardens of cheap one line phrases like “Follow Through” “Finish what you Start” “Keep focused” so on and so forth. It’s really difficult for myself to follow on something that creates stress, anxiety, and alienation from what I actually want to do. It’s hard to focus on the duty at hand when I’m distracted with a vibration of peace and happiness coming from the opposite direction.

I do ask myself introspectively “Why does this create stress?”, because I feel trapped and like I’m wasting my life and time on this. Things we do should add to our lives, not take away from them. If I was truly only be meant to do this one thing, “Why would I have other options in my head?” “Why is it enjoyable to do this and not the other stuff?”. Trust that, someone’s got to be the one to live my life, I think I’m the best qualified for it.

Doing it For Myself

When I was drafting the Steel Souls album, unbeknownst to people who may not record music, there’s a huge song graveyard of tracks that seem contrived, aimless, or rather, cliche and aiming to please. The songs I like the most are ones that reflected what I actually wanted and needed at the time when I was trying to write them. Personally my favorite is End of The Beginning because I was reflecting on what seemed bad at the time actually turned out really well.

Many of the greatest songs were not written with, ah yes this is going to sell like wildfire and then the song was written, the artists was experiencing real life just like you and me and then wrote the song. Afterwards they may say, this is going to sell, or afterwords they could say I’m not sure about this one and it goes viral. Who knows? When I create and serve with this mentality I tend to be more successful and happier. It’s because its honoring my choice which increases my happiness. I need to make things that protect my freedom and give me freedom. I deserve to live and to make money at the same time.

I want, You want.

While I believe that I can give people the tools to learn to create and do music, I’m not quite sure I want to always continue to backtrack over the same pentatonic scales and rock songs with each new student for the entirety of my career. So I made The Crossroads and No Bars Held program. I believe that to be as straightforward as possible, most of what it takes to be a good guitar player comes from individual practice, alone with a drum machine or metronome. Playing with other people helps, but if you want people to play with you, you should be practicing beforehand and after. Somethings you just have to focus and pay attention. Even when learning to scream or about business, sometimes there’s not an easy video, or extra help, or a straightforward plan other than just try it out and follow instructions.

While I would definitely learn the guitar all over again, I’m not going to learn it 1000 times over again! So I’ve consolidated everything that I think is valuable to start learning on the guitar and still included a sense of the grind in the program. I completed this because I thought “Wow if I could teach millions of people, for a fraction of the cost, and have freedom to travel and create more music that would be awesome”. I will be honest, when the idea of teaching video response lessons or sticking to a content schedule comes up, I immediately get bummed out. I think that’s okay, and being bummed about things is a good learning opportunity, just as feeling excited is. Possibly if I had the resources I would hire somebody to figure out how to use these programs to hire other awesome teachers to do the lessons, keep track of their responses, and continue to help them just build their own guitar brand with their videos, in a Multi-level marketing fashion.

What things can you start doing for yourself? Is it your art? Is it your thoughts? Is it your career goals?