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Hi, I’m Keith Mills. And this is episode number 76 of the Finish More Music Podcast. And today we’re going to be answering a question I received via DM on Instagram. What do you do if you work hard on your music, but see other people accelerating ahead? What do you do if doubts start creeping in, how do you handle them?

Well, the choice you make here will dramatically affect your own chances of success, and it might be a bigger deal than you initially realize. So let’s get cracking with today’s show and we’ll uncover the answer.

This is the Finish More Music Podcast, a show for underground dance music producers who want to finish more and better music and share it with the world. My name’s Keith Mills, and every week we’ll dive into the mindset creative strategies that will help you to move further, faster along the music production journey.

Hello, and thank you for joining me for another episode of the Finish More Music Podcast. So I just want to kick this one off quickly for you out with a reminder to stick the 8th of October into your calendar, into your phone, whatever way you get reminders popping up, because we’ve got our brand new, completely new rewritten from the ground up being filmed in the next couple of weeks, free Finish More Music workshop.

So it’s a three part video series. That’s coming up. If you head over to finishmoremusic.com/waitlist and get your name down, we’ll let you know, as soon as it comes out and you’re going to want to jump on it. Cause we only put it up for a short period of time. And the reason for that is as well as you get in a three part video series that is easily the best training that I’ve ever produced.

So if you find yourself struggling, maybe not finishing any music at all, or your output is lower than you would like. You’re only finished in the odd track here and there. Perhaps struggling from perfectionism overwhelmed with all the options, the plugins, the sounds, the color sees the tutorials, all of the stuff that comes at you.

This training’s going to cut through all the noise and get straight to the point. So if it’s something you’re really passionate about and you’re really committed and you want to go all in with your music and you’re not getting the results that you want at the moment, get the 8th of October. And as I said, finishmoremusic.com/waitlist, and we’ll make sure you get an email the minute that it drops.

So you don’t miss any of it. Okay. So that’s what I’ve been up to loads and loads of writing of the video series. I’ve refined it so many times. I still want to make improvements to it. Um, but I’m running out of time. We’ve got the videographer coming in. We’re going to start mapping it out, storyboarding it.

So as you can tell, this is a. Way more than just a couple of YouTube tutorials. Are you seeing a DAW? It’s a really well produced video series. A lot goes into it takes months and months a month to produce this thing for you. And I want it to be as hard hitting as high impact for you as I can possibly make it.

And the other thing that I’ve been doing is just going over a master class. So I’m recording this podcast prior to jumping live inside of the Finish More Music community. And I’m going to be doing some really advanced training for the guys tonight. And it’s going to be on getting into the right Headspace, the mental battle that all creatives face, all creatives face until they’ve.

Got their head completely in the right space. And even then things still crop up. And we talk about it a lot in the podcast, right? Lots and lots of different things that imposter syndrome and fear of failure and rejection, all of these things, lots of pressures that come up when we’re creating. And as you climb up the ladder, you start releasing music.

A whole new load of stuff starts coming in as well. So it’s some advanced training for the guys tonight. And it inspired me to jump on this specific topic for you right now, which is kind of one piece of the puzzle. And it’s a particular piece that. I was asked about and asked if I could do a show in one of the DMS on Instagram.

So if you haven’t reached out to me yet, please do it. Absolutely love hearing about suggestions for the show, your thoughts on anything, cover your experiences. I get back to every single message it’s at. I am Keith meals on Instagram and the particular question that came through, and this was a belief from William, actually, a member of our community.

And he said, Can you please do a show where you talk about writing your music for a period of time and seeing other people who have accelerated faster than you and further than you, and how do you get in the right head space and not have that seeping into your music production and being one of those things that can get in the way and slow you down.

Now there’s a lot I could talk about on this, but one thing that. Has really jumped out at me as something that I know no holds back. A lot of people is resentment and comparison versus being inspired and curious. So let’s talk about those two things, because it’s natural, you will accelerate ahead of some people and some people will accelerate ahead of you.

And we talked about this in a finite and infinite games of the way to view these different things, things that are happening, but we can go a little bit deeper here. So if you didn’t catch that, that podcast, you’re going to want to go back and check after this episode as well. The deal is this. When we feel resentment towards other people, in any aspect of our lives, we create a self fulfilling prophecy.

So, what do I mean by that? What if you see somebody else doing well and you feel resentment towards them, then you are telling your subconscious mind that achieving this level of success is a bad thing to do because it creates a resentment. And if you resent that person, other people will resent you. If you’re successful.

So ultimately what happens is your subconscious is not going to be propelling you forward at light speed towards achieving the thing you want to achieve, because you view it as bad. It’s something to get you upset and annoyed and bitter about. And you think other people start thinking that view, if you do well.

And obviously then the slower you go, the more people accelerate ahead, the more resentment you get, and you can see how this thing spirals out of control. The flip side of that is celebrating people’s success. If you are really grateful for their success and you celebrate it and you’re like, wow, that is incredible.

Then you’re going to find yourself being inspired. And you’d be more likely to reach out to those people as well and say, Hey, you know, wow, you’ve done really well. What’s going on? What have you done? What are you doing that I’m not doing? I would love to learn from you, but how often you’re going to do that to people you feel reserved towards.

So it’s like a double whammy, right? And you’ve probably heard the amazing quote. Um, I think it’s attributed to Theodore Roosevelt comparison is the thief of joy. Sometimes comparing is, is not bad, but it is. If we’re looking at it through this lens of negativity, if we’re saying, look how far behind I am, look how far behind I am.

Maybe you started at the same time as someone, or maybe they started after you and you see that they are now achieving things that you want to achieve. They’ve taken several more steps up the ladder than you have. And if we’re comparing with this negative lens, then questions start coming up. Like, what’s wrong with me?

What am I doing wrong? Am I cut out for this? And that leads to feeling disheartened and demotivated, and second guessing the things that we’re doing, maybe like hit and hope, start jumping into other strategies and doubting the things that have been getting as success. But because someone else got more.

We’re going to stop them. We’re going to change to something else. And if you’ve ever jumped from thing to thing to thing, you’ll know that it’s just a whole succession of false starts rarely as a there’s. One of them suddenly magically be the answer. What we need is commitment, but that commitment is going to waiver.

If we’re comparing how far behind we are. And again, this is self fulfilling. So no resentment in this one, but this is self fulfilling because how well do you do when you feel disheartened, you ever been on fire, you ever made big steps forward with anything you’re doing when you’re feeling disheartened and down about it?

Of course not. It’s the absolute opposite of wow, my God. How did they do that? Think about it. If you were to look at someone and say, My God, they’ve really accelerated ahead there. That is incredible. I love to be able to do that. I wonder how they did it. I’ll reach out and ask them and maybe I’ll set myself a little challenge.

I wonder if by the end of the year or next year I can have got, as far as Dave. It doesn’t matter if I don’t do it, I’m not going to hang myself on it. And we’re going to make a demand that that has to happen. But I’m going to go all in. What if I put an extraordinary level of effort into catch up? How different does that feel to you?

Listening to me say that versus, Oh God, look, how far behind them, what have they got that I haven’t. Am I lacking in talent? Am I not good enough? All those times, I’ve procrastinated. All those things, I’m doing wrong. What a heavy weighty feeling who’s inspired to get in the studio, that person, or the person who celebrate in everybody else’s success. Now that is just straight up.

Negative comparison. Let’s bring the other word in now. Resentment nasty word. Right. Just listening to that one nasty word. Why? Because it includes bitterness. It includes annoyance. They’re very, very strong emotions. And whenever our thoughts are backed up by really strong emotions, it becomes a whole load, more powerful.

And this is when we start saying things like it’s not fair. They got a lucky break. They’ve got some kind of unfair advantage over me. They took some kind of shortcut. They collaborate with someone and it’s the other person who’s got all the talent they don’t, or their boyfriend or girlfriend knew someone at the label or someone in the club that got on the gig.

They don’t deserve it. It’s not light. It’s those kind of thoughts, really negative stuff. And if you are. Not if you’re looking at them right. With this self fulfilling idea and that, and it’s a situation of, well, if I’m not allowed a lucky break, if I’m not allowed to shortcut neither have they. And then of course what’s going to happen.

If you do have the opportunity for a lucky break or you do see that they’ve taken a specific shortcut. You’re probably not going to take that shortcut. You’re going to, you’ve told yourself that cheating is bad, so you’re going to miss a whole bunch of opportunities. But more than that, it just, it does so much to the subconscious.

It does it psychologically. Let me give you an example. Have you ever been walking down the street? You know, maybe it’s in a town center or something like that, and you’ve been with someone or maybe you’ve done this and it’s good. To be honest, if this is you. And somebody is driven by like, it’s a beautiful sunny day.

They’ve driven by in a top of the range sports car. Maybe it’s like a top of the range for Raleigh the Hood’s down and got the tunes going design shades, looking great in all their gear, got the tunes. Nice and loud car goes by and someone says, look at that deck. What a poser, what a flash get, what a knob, some other derogatory I’m saying, you know, that comes out of their mouth about the success of this individual.

What do you think that means their subconscious is going to do when they try to do something that’s going to make them successful. If you view people who have money with resentment, you view people who have nice things with resentment. Then you’re just telling yourself that having nice things and having money is a bad thing to have.

And so even if in your head, you’ll go, Oh, I’d love that pay rise. Or I’d, you know, I’d love to achieve this or set up my own business. Or if we’re talking about the world and music, I’d love to, you know, get the big gigs. I’d love to do all of these things. If you have got an issue with people who are successful and an issue with people that have money and an issue with people who have lucky breaks or who network and have ins with different people, if you have issues with that, your subconscious going to keep pushing back, and then you wonder why you procrastinate.

You wonder why you’re avoiding doing things. That’s because somewhere in there you’ve set up this belief that success is bad. And then if I’m successful, I’ll have money and that’s bad, or I might need to have networked and got a favor here and there, and that’s bad immediately handicapping yourself.

What you start telling yourself as well, is that success breeds, resentment. The other people will view you badly. So now you’re like a walking target. Well, if I do bad, a that’s not right. I don’t like it. And everyone’s gonna think I’m a Dick. Cause I think people are doing well, what a mess to get yourself in.

Right. And if you have an illusion that well, yeah, but you know, when I’ve got the Ferrari or when I’ve got the gigs or when I’ve got the releases or when I’m doing well with my music, then this will go away. That’s an illusion. That’s completely wrong. Here’s a great, just a real quick punchy line from an intelligent chap who, uh, put an article out, um, called the comparing trap, Harvard business review, Thomas DeLong.

And he said, no matter how successful we are and how many goals we achieve this trap causes us to recalibrate our accomplishments and reset the bar for how we define success. You can always have more, right? There’s always going to be someone who’s doing better. Always. And so you’ll always be carrying this around unless you make the choice to change your perspective and the best time to do it is right now.

So if anything that I’ve said there is, you know, resonated with you, you’re like, yeah, actually, you know what? Sometimes I do show resentment to people who are doing well in any walk of life, in any way whatsoever. You can now see, is going to hold you back because all different areas of life, LinkedIn together in the same.

If you find yourself looking at people and saying, Oh God, look how far behind I am. What’s up with me. I’m not good enough. That’s the other pitfall that you can go down. So all of this being said, it must be yeah. That seeing others succeed and celebrating. Their success, feeling grateful for them feeling inspired.

And importantly, and I want to add this one in being curious, that is the root to your success. And curious is great. Who doesn’t want to be curious. Doesn’t want to explore and find out new things. So give you an example of this. And it’s the culture that we have inside of the Finnish more music community, and st.

Very specific that we did that caught me by surprise. So we’re blessed. The community is full of amazing people. They all lift each other up. They all want to see each other succeed. And I think a big part of that is because a that’s the culture that we’ve always promoted, but B you do get this. In influence, right.

And inspiration from being around other people who are doing things that, and they’re doing well. So if you join a community and everybody there celebrate, celebrate each other’s success very quickly, you’re going to see how that’s working. You’re going to see everybody rising up together and you’re going to start doing the same.

It’s that same, right? You’re the average of the five. People you most spend time with. So if you are in a community where you spend time and actually you’ve got hundreds of people doing this, they’re successful habits and ways of being, and perspectives are going to rub off on you really quickly. So let’s talk about this surprise.

What happened? Well, We ran a survey anonymous survey, and we said to the members, please fill this out. We want to add a whole bunch of data to see how we can improve the community and how we can help them better to reach their version of success. And one of the questions was around what posts do they like the best?

What are their favorite? Simple as that there’s a whole bunch of different posts. Of course, that go on inside of a music, production, creativity based community, everything from the music business, through to the technical staff, the mix down the sound design. Um, all different things about the creative process, personal effectiveness, how to get into the right internal state to optimize your creativity.

We had an engineer ideas and just we stuff on the fly. Improvising nation. You name it. A whole bunch of really interesting and exciting topics, how to streamline your setup, how to make sure that when you go into the studio and you’ve got an, an idea, it flows through you second nature, instead of being completely overwhelmed and clogged up all of these call posts, go on.

Now, it didn’t come as a surprise that made the most of the creative based posts came higher up. Because that’s what we’re all about the creative process and optimizing it. But the number one was when members post about their breakthroughs. When they say, Hey, I’ve had this success, I’ve got this release or I’ve hit the top of the charts in beep or track source, whatever it might be.

I had some, all the breakthrough. That was the number one that was the post, the type of post that the people in our community like the most. And I was like, wow, that is absolutely amazing. And when I think about it, it’s kind of uncivil pricing then that this community in the last year have released over a thousand pieces of music, because if they are consumed with resentment and compute can consume with negative comparison, they’d all be losing hope, right?

They’d all be down. They’d all be getting in their own way. But because they all celebrate each other and lift each other up, they’re rising as a community. And that is how powerful this is to flip that perspective. So in summary, and in answer to that question, what do you do when other people are accelerating ahead of you?

Feel grateful for their success. Wish them more success, be genuine about it. Want to see them do well and succeed and be curious, ask, what are they doing? How are they doing it? Ask them one of the brilliant things about a community. Get to ask people. You get to say, wow, that’s incredible. How did you do that?

And they’ll say, look, I did this, this and this. And then you can try it. Be curious, be inspired and challenge yourself to be the best version of who you can be so important because it’s not a race. It’s not a competition. It’s not about, you know, who gets this far, the furthest it’s an infinite game. You can’t lose it.

The game of art, it keeps going. It keeps going. So it’s not a race. It’s not a competition. It’s about you. It’s not about other people, but you get to choose. Do you want to use other people’s success to help you grow and to accelerate your development toward your version of success? Or do you choose to resent other people doing well, to feel bitter, to feel annoyed and then hold your progress back as a result.

Sorry. There are my thoughts on resentment and my experiences and what I’ve seen inside of our community. Um, I hope you enjoyed the show. Please let me know your thoughts on this on Instagram. What do you tend to think when you see other people doing well? Do you know other people who are quite sort of bitter and annoyed about success in any way?

It’s important because the more you notice this, the more you’re aware of it, you can more, the more you can shut that stuff out. If you hear people saying it and the more you can catch yourself saying it. And so hang on a minute. Things aren’t going to work like that anymore. Cause that’s going to hold me back.

I’m going to flip my perspective and my way of being here. So hit me up with a DM at I am Keith Mills on Instagram. I’d love to hear from you and the show notes for this one, finishmoremusic.com/076. So I hope you enjoyed the show. Stay safe, happy music making, and I’ll catch you next time.

Book the 8th of October in your diary. Now I’ve been cooking up something really special for you. A brand new completely free Finish More Music workshop with one goal in mind to get you finishing more and better music. Even if you suffer from overwhelm perfectionism procrastination, sitting in front of your DAW, completely at a loss for where to start.

This is a three-part online video series with limited spaces. So jump over to finish more music.com forward slash wait list right now and secure your spot. The last workshop was a huge success. We have producers who. I’ll go to finish any of their tracks for years, literally hammering out tunes in just a few short days.

So if you have that voice in your head that keeps telling you, you’re not cut out for writing music or you’re too slow, or you’ll never make it as a music producer, this series will change everything for you. Let me show you how a few simple tweaks to the way you think and approach your music will completely transform your productivity in the studio.You all achieve a lot more than you can imagine in a very short space of time. Grab your spot now at finishmoremusic.com/waitlist. And I’ll see you in the next episode.