Friday, April 5, 2013

A MILLION COURAGEOUS ACTS


 

Careers are made up of a million courageous acts. We all have resistance to our forward motion though, to one degree or another, and thats what I want to discuss today. Resistance… to success, to fulfilling your dreams, to living an extraordinary life.
  You know how it feels before you go over the top of a roller coaster, it's thrilling and scary and wonderful all at the same time. We feel out of control and exhilarated. But of course we're strapped in to a moving vehicle. If we had our bodies free many of us would wriggle out and try some means of escape from the scary drop. Thats the feeling of resistance.

In an artists life the resistance can be invisible. A weird feeling of being stuck or inactive around even our most important goals. There is a natural resistance to moving forward into the scary unknown.
Most often it shows up as a batch of hard rules that keep us stuck, things we won't do, approaches we wont try no matter how much our managers, producers, co-writers, coaches etc try and encourage us. We dig our heels in and argue for the place that feels safer to us, often limiting our opportunities in the process.
           
Why do we resist what we want? Because not having what we want is familiar. We've lived with it much of our lives. Dreaming of a better situation and "making do" marks the human condition. To make a life that is extraordinary we have to experience the unexpected. The uncontrollable.The uncomfortable.
                       
                                                           SHOCK THE SYSTEM

We are scared of entering situations where there are unknown variables that may challenge us. Our hearts are already on our sleeve as singers and performers and songwriters. Why would we have to extend ourselves even further into the unknown in order to achieve the careers we want?
Because if we don't stretch and grow we are stagnating and allowing ourselves to play it safe. Thats the death of an artists career.

When coaching artists who are working on their career challenges I always suggest a doable action which will "shock the system" and change the focus from "what I want but don't have" to "what I am working towards".
Call the producer you actually want for your project, make the open mike night that scares you, record a bad demo of your new material just for your own ears, create the blog that explains clarifies your identity etc. Activity that is unfamiliar will feel like a splash of cold water and wake us up to new possibilities in ourselves.  Even if the resistance is huge…resistance is worth identifying through this kind of practical approach.

Resistance can be useful if it shows us we're scared. It allows us to identify what feels out of our comfort zone and how small we've been willing to be. Choosing to move forward into the unknown regardless of our fear is how we achieve our goals.  The first step in the million courageous acts that go into a healthy career.

CONTACT COACH MICAH BARNES

SINGERS PLAYGROUND OFFICIAL WEBSITE
                           

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