What do you really mean when you say you want to be a successful artist? It’s very easy to say ‘I want to be successful’ but what does the end product really look like for you? Have you ever sat down to think about it clearly? What would your day to day existence as a successful musician look like?
Would you be playing stadium shows month after month?
Are you hunkered down in your basement home studio, emerging every few months (or years) with a new masterpiece?
Are you traveling the world, moving from city to city, project to project, colab to colab?
And what else is in your life? Where is your home? What is it filled with? Who else is around you?
What are you doing outside of music? Do you hang out with friends, go hiking or play other sports, what is your bedroom like? What are you eating for breakfast?
And, unavoidably, how much does it all cost and how are you paying for it all?
The reason I ask all these questions, and why I think it is important to think about, is not to freak you out or because I believe in the power of visualisation, but because the map of how to get to our dream destination can often be found in the details of what we can imagine. In my course we will work through an exercise that asks you to…
What you’ll be gifted with is a look at your journey to becoming….
The final part of this process is simply to take each of these goals and think about what you can do right now in order to start moving towards them. And if you find yourself thinking “I can’t do that because ….” the reason you are giving is exactly the thing you need to be working on.
Try this small exercise: sit down for a few minutes and write down what your schedule for an average day as a successful musician would look like. From the moment you wake up until your head hits the pillow later that night. Put in as many details as you can:
where you are,
your morning routine,
what you are working on,
who you are working with, who else is in your life,
what you do when the work day is done,
what snacks are in the cupboard.
Once you have this all written down, start to think about two things:
First, what you would have needed to achieve, in order to reach this imagined situation: what sort of work would you need to have done, who would you need to have met, what sort of money would you need to have earned?
And second, what would need to change in your current situation in order for you to start achieving these things: what skills would you need to learn, what connections would you need to make, what equipment would you need to buy, what money would you need to earn (and what would be your options for earning it)? What order would things need to happen in? And if you don’t know the answers to any of these questions, how can you find them out?
What you now have in front of you is a list of practical goals that are directed specifically towards your dream destination. Some of them might seem out of your reach for now but they don’t have to be achieved all at once. For each of these goals there will be many steps and many surprises along the way. But once you know what you are aiming for you can set everything else aside and focus on what you now know to be the most important.