6 Mindsets of Modern Musicians

Your mindset accounts for about 80% of your success, but is it optimized for your success? In the 21st century, the start of the modern music business, are you running the right programs internally to operate at your best, or are you struggling due to bad conditioning and internal scripts that are operating to reduce your effectiveness and your quality of life?

When I was growing up I knew I was a little bit different from most people in how I saw the world, so I went out and I studied successful people. And the more and more I studied successful people the more and more I related. The more and more I realized that these people were just like me, and I just remember feeling like I could really understand them deeply. These people became lights in my life showing me the way. I was so moved by so many of these people throughout the years. They have been a positive motivating force throughout my journey and I always felt a sense of it being the wisdom of the ages passed along to me. I started building relationships with people on deeper and deeper levels.

I questioned everything about myself and my capabilities and got to my values and ideals and became the person I dreamed about becoming as a boy. It took 15 years at about a book a week of self education and self actualization and meditative practice to arrive at the truths and systems and beliefs and models that form the basis for how I help musicians to operate optimally in the modern world. Now I know that these people are not any different from me and that if it can be done, it will be done by me. These are six mindsets that are the basis for how to think as a Modern Musician, they will get you into the right place to live the Modern Musician Lifestyle.

The Champion’s Mindset - Effort and attitude

A champion will say, I can achieve my goals and also believe in themselves enough to do it.

A champion is at cause, in their life and in their pursuit of excellence. They control their actions and responses on the road ahead and only seek to focus on that which they can control. Their effort and their attitude. Only the things you can change.

They are focused on the vision and the present moment working toward their goals and performance targets. A champion will own the journey, saying, I’m on my way to greatness… I’ll do what it takes for as long as it takes to have what I want. My head and my heart is in this. I’m here for the long haul. I’m born to be a champion and I’ll test and try and fail my way to success, but I’ll eventually earn my title as champion.

Internal gremlins and the breeze don’t knock them off their game. They are committed and disciplined to achieve the goals they have set out for themselves.

Thoughts such as limiting beliefs or bad self talk are not the cause of failure, as the champion doesn’t allow anything to impede their progress on their goals.

They are Focused and attentive to detail. Modern Musicians get laser focused on their goals and pursue them with purpose and passion.

The Modern Musician has the champions mindset.

Mastery - A Fixed vs. Growth Mindset

Here is where the attitude and the approach play such a huge role… It’s the difference between doing something ordinary vs doing something extraordinary. You can never gain new capabilities or achievements by playing it safe, you have to take risks to leap and to learn and to grow through the many challenges that shape and grow your character

A fixed mindset is one of things just being the way they are. They believe it is something you are either born with or you aren’t. The fixed mindset believes it’s talent alone that you need to have.

A growth mindset means that you believe your learning, skills, experience, capabilities and talents can be grown and developed over time.

With a mastery mindset you are in a place of the constant pursuit of excellence. You are a on a journey to mastery and forever playing The G.A.M.E.

It is the growth of your content business and the mastery of your craft and operations. It is through this always improving mindset that you can advance your thinking and advance your life in the key few areas that will have the biggest impact on your results.

Fulfillment is the goal.

Fulfillment is at the base of the Modern Musician Lifestyle. It is about the fulfillment of your life purpose and work. It is about setting and achieving long term and short term visions for the future.

You have to learn visualization. You have to see the show going well on launch, or earning a four figure sync placement, or feel the rush of connecting with the audience…

If you can see your vision in 90 days making that 30 grand, you have a better chance of it happening vs something you don’t want. If you remember what makes you motivated and think of this every time you work on an activity that fulfills the content and makes the desired outcome possible, then you are more likely to achieve your goals and realize the vision.

If you can see fulfillment as the goal then you can enjoy the process as well as the destination. You appreciate all of it and focus on what fulfills your soul.

Microprogression leads to exponential growth - Momentum building daily progress.

The goal is to think long term about whats best for you to have everything that you want and deserve.

Then the goal is to think short term and accomplish targeted objectives. It is through these small daily improvements incrementally that we make over time that progress us forward in all the areas that we focus on. These small habits over time lead to a compounding interest in increase in return at some point, and are the foundation of your success infrastructure . You are not going to start off lifting 300 lbs on your deadlift. It won’t occur all of the sudden. You will build up gradually over time with increasing gains in strength and size until you reach that level of workload. It will take deliberate, consistent concentration on the goals achievement with micro-progression until you get there.

With micro progression you are simply initiating the process of growth through desire and then working towards that desire and turning it into a virtuous cycle of improvement and refinement that progresses you most effectively. Over time you’ll develop the habit of always there being something there reminding you why, turning you on, making it real, and making progress in this way is the best way you can root yourself into successful processes of manifesting your desires. Your mind can be working with you, igniting a seed of desire as you drive the dream. You make progress through your daily dials. The three tuning knobs for your artistic, entrepreneurial and personal growth. Make progress through your dial dials each day by writing out a list of prioritized tasks and activities for the day and then completing them with a review process of how you did for each day compared with what you were shooting for.

Cultivating and developing the use of your powers, harnessing your inner os to make progress in every area of management in your life, microprogression is the best mindset to have in terms of making progress and overall exponential growth because it is through microprogression that satisfying progress can be made consistently that compounds in value over time.

The Abundance mindset

Abundance instead of scarcity is the dominating mindset of wealthy people.

It’s a sign of healthy, flourishing, spirit, and it’s always this attitude of mind that precedes increase of any kind.

Are you embracing an abundance mindset or do you mostly gravitate toward scarcity thinking?

The abundance mindset believes that there is more than enough love, joy, cash, opportunities to go around.

Someone with an abundance mindset always focuses on what could be. They focus on the potential, what they do want to have happen - whereas someone with a scarcity mindset tends to dwell on lack or limitation and what they don’t want.

Scarcity is the mindset or feeling of not having enough or being enough or feeling like their is enough for you to have yours.

Scarcity robs the joy of abundant thought. Scarcity robs the potential. Since imagination is infinite, so is possibility. Scarcity is that negative thought that comes up and robs the possible positive thought that could have been converted into potential.

The abundance mindset is the hallmark of a Modern Musician as they are people that contribute and generate more abundance. More love, more energy, more cash, more opportunity for more people.

Test and fail forward faster.

It’s an attitude and understanding that says hey, ya know what, the fact is that there is a lot I cannot know or account for yet. So if I just get started and make mistakes I’ll learn and grow as a result. I couldn't be who i am today without all that failure yesterday. So by getting on the journey and following the path of test, fail and eventually succeed, you can get where you are trying to go.

It’s a renewing journey and one of awakening to the greater possibilities that exist for you.

Stop fearing failure. Instead be willing to fail. See it as a process of growth. Failure is the main thing that will happen in your career… You will pitch your music to 10 bloggers and fail to reach 9 of them, but succeed at getting published on 1. The same is true with film and tv pitching. You will fail to reach the charts with 20 songs before you finally have that hit that tops the Billboard Hot 100. This is how your career will go. You will have a constant barrage of challenges that test you in different ways, but with persistence something will pay off.

You will find something that works. You want to keep doing that. That’s when you dial in. Your goal is to run profitable campaigns and launches. But you can’t be unwilling to embrace the tension or fear of failure before you do, and then test and learn and then grow and succeed.

How about you? What kind of Mindsets are you allowing to run your show? Add your voice to the conversation!