FMM090 – Why are you writing music anyway? – Transcript

Keith Mills: (00:02)
Hi, I’m Keith Mills. And this is episode number 90 of the Finish More Music Podcast. And today we’re going to be talking about your reason why. Now all of the pros are able to keep going when things get tough, when they feel like everything is going against them, when they run into creative blocks, when they feel like giving up and when they start questioning why they are actually doing what they’re doing. Now, one of the reasons they’re able to do this is that they have a strong purpose. They can tap into a deep connection to the reason why that powers their love for being a creative and a music producer. Without this, it’s easy to grind to a halt and to cave in when things aren’t going your way. So how do you create your reason? Why, how do you tap into it? What does one even look like? And what should it definitely not be in this episode? We’ll answer all of these questions are more so let’s get stuck in.

Keith Mills: (01:11)
This is the Finish More Music Podcast, a show for underground dance music producers who want to finish more and better music, and to share it with the world, my name’s Keith Mills, and every week we’ll dive into the mindset and creative strategies that will help you to move further and faster along your music production journey.

Keith Mills: (01:45)
Hello, and thank you for joining me for another episode of the Finish More Music Podcast. So I want to kick off with a big shout out, a big thank you to everyone who hit me up on Instagram with book recommendations on rest. So a couple of episodes go, we discussed rest in detail. And particularly this idea that building rest into your day into your week actually increases your productivity and makes you happier and is better for your health versus plugging away, relentlessly not taking any breaks under the illusion. That you’ll be more productive because you’re not resting. You’re filling every hour with work. And this is saying I’m really passionate about learning more about, and so at the end of the episode, I said, look, guys, can you hit me up on Instagram and, you know, fire a DM over @iamkeithmills and loads of you did.

Keith Mills: (02:43)
So thank you very much. Got a huge library of books on the topic now. And it was really fascinating hearing, similar experiences that you’d had and different sort of turning points where you had the realization that you were pushing things too hard and you weren’t getting a better outcome as a result of it. And by backing off, actually, more’s getting done in your you’re happier in the process. So thanks very much for the feedback on it. And also for everyone who reached out about last week’s episode with Matt Bushwacka and his partner, Belinda, and listen up, their new meditation and therapy offering got so much good feedback about that as well. And they’re over the moon. Of course, I pass it all on to them. So thank you.

(03:28)
This week just gone has been absolutely incredible. The standout highlight for me, and I think most people in FMM was our man, Nick Muir, who, if you haven’t heard the podcast yet, did an amazing interview with him.

Keith Mills: (03:44)
Episode number 64. So Nick is John Digweed’s producer, amazing, amazing producer. And he came in and gave a masterclass for the members of FMM. And when I say a masterclass, it’s a real one. So there are a lot of these people out there. It’s how we got our master class. And it’s more of what I would call a chit chat. And that’s cool. You know, that’s, there’s nothing wrong with that. But when we say master class, we mean it. And so he came in, I opened up two of these projects, like big projects releases, a remix with John, one of his own pieces of work and deep dived into everything about those tracks. So like all of the tips, the tricks, the mindset, and importantly, the reason why, why do I do this? Why does this work on a dance floor? Why does this evoke this emotion in people?

Keith Mills: (04:40)
How do you sort of save time here? How do you get this right? Mix it and all of these different things. And we have a big Q and A as well that when we’re there hundreds of members online and it just provided like this huge spark as if one were needed in our community, it just took things up another level. Absolutely incredible. And then we always do like a thread of takeaways and it’s pages long like pages and pages long. Now here’s the reason that I’m specifically talking about this as well. And that’s because it’s inspired this week’s podcast, because one of the things that I absolutely love about Nick, whenever I talk to him, when we add him on for the interview, had him in for a workshop where he worked really closely with the guys of FMM+ my high level mentoring group and in the master class, everyone talks about it.

Keith Mills: (05:34)
And it’s his passion for writing music and you don’t sustain a career over three decades at the top of underground electronic music as a producer and DJ, if you do not love it. And he does, and it comes through every single time. And so that got me thinking about this week’s podcast episode. And so here’s my question for you. What’s your reason why? Why does writing music light you up? Why does being involved in music production light you up? Why are you following this journey? So I’ve got a challenge for you by the end of this podcast or at the end of this podcast, write down in no more than three words, preferably one word, your reason why. And then you’re going to put this on a post-it note and you’re going to stick it on your computer monitor, where you can see every single day without fail.

Keith Mills: (06:40)
Why would you do this? Why am I setting this challenge for you and asking you these questions? Well, here’s the deal with anything in life, particularly with creativity, the going is going to get tough. There’s no good pretending don’t be under any illusion that it’s always going to be a bed of roses or that you’ll ever get to a point where it is that won’t happen. All of the world’s greatest creators, whether they be musicians, music, producers, playwrights directors, authors, choreographers, the people at the top of their game. It’s not a piece of cake every day. It gets tough. And when you’re going through a part of your creative journey, that is really, really difficult and challenging and making you doubt yourself, having a strong reason why a purpose, something that is so short, concise, punchy, and hits you like right in the soul. It’s like straight to the heart of why you do things that’s going to sustain you.

Keith Mills: (07:51)
That will carry you through every single time because this journey is difficult and you do have to have the stomach for the fight. Otherwise it will win. There’s elation and misery there’s times when it runs smoothly times when it’s rough times, when it’s all untangled times when it’s caught up in and not there are peaks, there are troughs. There are weeks where you cannot seem to get a good idea for love nor money. And yet just the week before you were on fire. And it can just turn almost to the click of a finger from feeling amazing to like, wow, what has happened here have I lost it? And of course the internal questioning and doubts can come up. There are tracks that you write and they just flow beautifully. And there are sometimes there are ones you’ve got to wrestle with and it feels like you’ll never get it over the line.

Keith Mills: (08:51)
Then of course there are rejections from labels. There’s negative feedback. If you’ve written something that really, you know, was it a level up from where you’ve been? And then some people who aren’t too great with their words, even with the best of intentions. And this is one of the reasons we teach everyone in FMM, how to give feedback, because it’s not as simple as just turning up saying what you think there is a way to encourage people and to get them to take action and to learn and to grow. And even with the best of intentions, if you don’t have that formula, if you don’t have those ingredients in that recipe, you can mean well, but completely slapped someone them. So you have the people who mean well, and then you have the trolls, right? You have the people who are out to deliberately try to hurt you, hurt people, hurt people.

Keith Mills: (09:45)
They’re the people who are really struggling. They’re the people who are feeling more pain than anyone else because they give themselves such an unbelievable hard time. And then that always mirrors outwards, but they’re out there. So creativity is difficult as a journey, there are the most amazing highs connecting with people, reaching your ambitions, accomplishment at hearing your music played out by your idols. There are so many amazing things, benchmarks, milestones, seeing your progress. But there are times when it gets rough, we live in a universe of duality and anything we do, there’s easy and there’s difficult. That’s how it, that’s how it plays out opportunity combined with difficulty. That’s the universe in a nutshell.

Keith Mills: (10:37)
And that’s why it’s so important to have a purpose, to have a reason why something that you can rely on that will keep you going. That will sustain you. And one that is always with you. So it’s something you can hold on to. It’s something that is a guiding light for you. When those doubts start creeping in, it’s the food, it’s the vitality. If you like for your inner coach to fight and to overcome the inner bully or for the light wolf to strengthen it versus the dark Wolf. So you may have heard that old, I think is an Indian proverb, but there’s a battle between all of us in all of us, sorry, between the light Wolf and the dark Wolf, which one will win the one you feed the most. And that’s what having a strong reason why does. It feeds the inner voice that you want to hear the Wolf that you want to win the fight. So it becomes your mantra. And that’s what I’m saying. Keep it super short and punchy three words maximum. If you can get it down to one word, great, this isn’t easy. It sounds easy when someone says three words or word, but we all know that getting these, when we really comes to it, boiling it down and being succinct is really challenging, but I promise you it’s so worth it.

Keith Mills: (12:03)
And this goes hand in hand with a few of the other things we’ve talked about, and I’ll just quickly sort of wrap these up into a nice bundle. We’ve talked a lot about how vital it is to be surrounded by community and peers that get you and peers that can give you feedback and know how to do it, right? It’s something that will get you through the tough times. It’s something that will accelerate your progress. Being lifted up by others. Episode eight, 92 episodes ago. Can you imagine it was called going it alone is madness. So that’s one to definitely check out another one is vision, right? This idea that if you don’t design your life, someone else will. If you don’t map out your life, as you want it, you don’t lean into that. You don’t pursue it. Other people and other things will take your time.

Keith Mills: (12:52)
So there’s an episode on that. I’m sure the guys we’ll link it in the show notes. I’ve forgotten the number of that one. And then you can add this mantra. There’s a reason why to that list. Those three things are so impactful. They’re so powerful when you’ve got them all on your side, when it’s difficult, when it’s tough, when you, the doubts start creeping in your power through. And the beauty of having the mantra is it’s a quick snapshot. It’s like an, almost an instant fix. It’s there with you all the time. It’s like the click of the fingers as it happens in a millisecond. So it is a really powerful tool to add to your kit. So I want to give you a big tip. One of my biggest tips on this and that is to make your mantra, your purpose, your reason why intrinsic.

Keith Mills: (13:38)
So what do I mean by that? Well, intrinsic is something that is an internal reason to you. It’s inside of you. Examples would be things like fulfillment, writing music fulfills me or self discovery or learning or curiosity or experimentation or personal development here. How they’re all internal to you. The opposite is extrinsic. So extrinsic reasons why? So these are things that are typically driven by external rewards, money, fame, recognition, praise, and these things aren’t necessarily bad. But the reason that I recommend keeping intrinsic is because extrinsic i.e. outside of us is also outside of our control. Even when you think about it, the quality of your music, if you were to only write music, because you want to write quality pieces of music, what happens when you’re not writing quality pieces of music? What happens if you do hit a block, if your purpose is to write quality pieces of music and that’s not happening well, there’s going to be a struggle.

Keith Mills: (14:57)
And whilst we can absolutely influence quality, we can’t control it. Nobody gets to go in the studio and say, today, I’m writing a banger. Today is the day I write my best piece of work. It doesn’t work like that. We can build the environment, the creative process and knowledge to heavily influence this, but there are always peaks and troughs. So anything extrinsic is outside of our control, which means it’s unstable, which means it’s unreliable. And often times these things that we set our way out into the future. So we may have set, you know, wanting to achieve something big and exciting. And if that’s the sole reason why that we’re writing music is often way out in the future. So again, it’s out of our control and it’s hard to bring it into the now when we need it most. So anything external is out of control is unstable is unreliable.

Keith Mills: (15:55)
And when the going gets tough, you’d of course prefer to have something that you can count on right now. Of course, now I want to be really clear. It’s not that we don’t have these beautiful extrinsic motivators. In fact, they’re amazing to build into a vision, to inspire action in us, things to look at and to project into and things to carry us in the studio. But once you get in there, I recommend keeping it intrinsic as your driving force because it’s immediate and it’s always there. Intrinsic motivation, reason why, purpose is always there. All you’ve got to do is turn up. It’s as easy as that. So let’s think of some examples. If we go to the idea of fulfillment, that means the process of writing music is feeding your soul. It’s fulfilling the process of doing it. Not the outcome. Extrinsic is going to be based always on the outcome.

Keith Mills: (16:54)
So it doesn’t matter if you write a song, a track that you’re not in love with. You love the process of it. The art of bringing something new into the world. Personal development, even if the track is something you don’t like, it will have taught you something you will have learned. You will have grown, right? So whether it’s good, bad, ugly, whether you’re going through a period where you’re blocked or whatever’s going on. The fact that you’re looking at it as an opportunity to learn and grow, you know that you’re always taking something from it. You’re always going to be better off because of the experience. Self discovery, how you react when things are going well, or when things are difficult. And when they’re tough, that in itself is a lesson for you. How you react to a rejection from a label is as important.

Keith Mills: (17:47)
Arguably more important than how you react. When a track is accepted, how you react to bad feedback versus good, or I should say negative versus positive, well delivered versus poorly delivered how you react when things are in and not the building of your character, of who you are of your identity, right? Curiosity, experimentation, and new things are always happening. No matter what the landscape is, when you’re being creative, you’re doing something new. It’s the act of using original thoughts, ideas, and actions to create an original production has always something original and new. So you bring this aura, this like ethos, like you would a kid. I wonder what happens if I wonder why this has happened? Like this almost like a scientist, the result that you don’t expect is as good as the result that you do expect because you learn from it. You discover something new.

Keith Mills: (18:48)
How exciting. So can you see are much more powerful as a reason why intrinsic is versus extrinsic, which is unstable. If a track has gotta be good, maybe it is maybe isn’t well, that support mechanism is all of a sudden ripped out from underneath us. So intrinsic is the way to go. So my big tip, right? So as a summary to this episode, one of the reasons that we have a legend, like Nick Muir, who is able to sustain a career that spans three decades is because he has a strong reason why a strong, unwavering passion for music, all of the pros do in any walk of life, any successful person couldn’t possibly have gotten to the top of where they are. If they weren’t able to tap into a burning desire, a burning passion as to why they do what they do when things aren’t working out.

Keith Mills: (19:49)
So that’s the question what’s yours. What reason is going to sustain you? What reason will make you relish and embrace challenges rather than being knocked flat by them? And when you’re really truly tapped into this, you’ll get it down to three words. You’ll get it down to a word. Maybe it’s one of the things that I’ve said, fulfillment, personal development, self discovery, curiosity, experimentation, one or two words there, right? Maybe it’s one of those. Maybe it’s something else, but it’s gotta be something that you know is always there. No matter what, when you get that dialed in, and if you want to stick vision and community on the top of it, boy, you’re going to be unstoppable or go. You’re going to be unstoppable. It was a figure of speech, but I want to be a super inclusive there for sure. Whoever you are, you’re going to be massively unstoppable.

Keith Mills: (20:44)
Right? Go it’s it’s just simple logic. Say, here’s what I want you to do. Have a good think about this. Don’t stress. If it takes a week or two weeks, cause it might, it might come to you straight away. It might take awhile. You might come up with something and then in a week go. No, that’s not it. And that’s okay. So voyage of discovery, but when you’ve got it, scribble it down, post it, note boom, on your monitor, pick up your phone and come onto Instagram and DM me with it at, @iamkeithmills. I’d love to hear what it is. It’d be one word or three words. What’s your reason why what’s the deep passion that sustains you to keep this going no matter what so hope you enjoyed that. Hope you, you found it useful. The show notes finish more music.com forward slash zero nine, zero 10 off of the big 100 like countdown now and how exciting love it. As always, if you enjoy the show, if you haven’t hit subscribe yet, do make sure you do it. So you don’t. Yeah.

Speaker 2: (21:48)
Let me say out. Sometimes we have more than one episode a week. Make sure you’re always stayed in the loop. Do take care and catch you next week.

(22:03)
If you’re serious about getting your music heard and climbing the ladder as a music producer, one of the skills you absolutely must master is remixing. That’s why I’ve put together a brand new completely free ebook for you called the art of remixing. It features the most prolific remixes from my finish more music community, sharing their strategies for creating successful remix projects, ready for you to share with the world. So jump over to www dot, finish more music.com forward slash remix and download your free copy. Now you’ll learn technical setups for creating your remix. How to add your own flair whilst respecting your original artists track how to create quickly to a tight deadline, how to extract melodies and harmonies, and so much more, as well as taking the opportunity to get more of your creative output into the world.

Speaker 2: (23:03)
Remixing is an amazing tool for building connections with other artists and strengthening your relationship with label owners in short remixing is essential. Try to think of a top level producer who doesn’t have a bunch of great remixes to their name. You can’t right? So make sure you master the art of remixing so that when your opportunity comes, you’re ready to take it with both hands and accelerate your growth in the music industry. The ebook is totally free. So dive over now to www.finishmoremusic.com/remix and grab your copy. See you in the next episode.

FMM089 – Matthew Benjamin & Belinda Matwali – Transcript

Keith Mills: (00:02)
Hi, I’m Keith Mills. And this is episode number 89 of the Finish More Music podcast. And today I’ve got a really special episode for you. I’m joined once again by Matthew Benjamin, AKA Bushwacka, and this time his partner, Belinda Matwali, joins us to share her experience in meditation and the powerful benefits it brings to us creatives.

Keith Mills: (00:08)
So in this show, we talk about a new concept that they’re releasing that harnesses the power of both therapy and meditation to help creatives step into their power, experience greater creative flow, overcome challenges and blocks that are holding them back and live more empowering and overall energetic lives. Now, personally, I learned an absolute ton from this interview and I’ll be putting the lessons into practice myself. It’s a really deep session. We go in a lot of depth into these topics. So find yourself some space get focused and let’s dive in.

Keith Mills: (01:11)
This is the Finish More Music podcast, a show for underground dance music producers who want to finish more and better music, and to 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 your music production journey.

Keith Mills: (01:48)
Hello, and thank you for joining me on another episode of the Finish More Music podcast. So I’ve got a really exciting show for you. Something that I’ve been looking forward to for some time, you will remember that I recently had a fantastic guest Bushwacka / Matt Benjamin on the show. It was one of our most popular shows. Had loads of you reaching out to me to say how refreshing it was to hear Matt talking openly and honestly about the challenges and the struggles of being a creative and being at the top of the game. And we talked during the show about something that he was working on with his partner, Belinda, that was coming up that will positively impact creatives. It’s a new offering, a new service they’ve got. Well, it’s about to drop. So I’m delighted to say that they’re joining me today and we’re going to go much deeper into it. Very profound. You’re going to absolutely love it. I’m not going to ruin it just yet. We’ll get into it throughout the show, but Matt, Belinda, thank you very much for joining me.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (02:50)
Thank you. Thanks. It’s great to see you. And then just thinking how enjoyable it was last time round. So it’s a pleasure to be back. Thanks for having me.

Keith Mills: (02:58)
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. So I’m excited to get into this, but first, like how are you guys doing at the moment and , how are you feeling about the fact that there’s this new service, this new offering that’s about to drop?

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (03:12)
Exciting, daunting. We’re still tweaking everything but we’ve put a lot of work into this for a very long time. It started almost 18 months ago, from the beginning of our conversations to finished projects. It’s like a baby that’s just started off as no idea, became an idea, and then started forming. And now it’s about to be born.

Belinda Matwali: (03:43)
, what’s interesting is that, as he said, we started the idea 18 months ago and so much has happened since that time, but this feels like the most perfect time to be launching it.

Keith Mills: (03:59)
Yeah, totally. I agree. So let’s talk about the pandemic and the things that are going on at the moment, because I think you’re right. This is, , optimal. People need what you’re offering right now, more than ever, but just in terms of creatives in general I think they face a bunch of, I’m going to say unique, I think that’s fair to say, challenges compared to a lot of other people. Creativity can be a fickle beast overall, but in both of your experiences what do you view as the key challenges and the things that people face both in terms of their creative output, but also as performers and traveling and all of those things?

Belinda Matwali: (04:46)
I feel some of the biggest pressures for creatives, one of them is that we live in a society that values constant productivity churned out the same every day. And I really believe as creative beings, we work on a more cyclical level. Like sometimes that inspiration strikes you and you’re just all day in the studio or whatever you’re doing. And time stands still and you just get so much done and that flow state or part of the flow state is really allowing yourself like rest time to kind of rejuvenate. And then another cycle of that creativity can hit. And of course we’re all extremely unique in how things work for us, but that is how my creativity works. And I find it very stressful if I have to be in an environment where I have to churn out X amount every day. And I feel that’s really strong in the fabric of our society. And it really affected my own mindset and creative levels for a long time until I gave myself permission to really tune into my own flows. And, meditation was obviously really a big part of that realization for me and giving myself a bit of slack. So that’s been probably my biggest personal experience and what I see with other people as well.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (06:09)
Yeah. And I hear what you’re saying. I mean, creatives are very renowned for having a multitude of ups and downs, even throughout the space of one day. We can go internally from feeling like that sense of achievement or that sense of accomplishment is happening in flow. And it can very quickly go to a sense of low self-esteem anxiety, a feeling of I’m not worthy, it’s not good enough. And also, feeling like we need to be on par with what other people are doing in our industry and , how social media plays into that now for creatives as well, that might be looking, especially in 2020, and they can’t really go out and tour and do anything and they’re looking online as the only way to like connect externally and seeing all this stuff that other people are doing or have done and how that’s then playing with their own creative process. How am I going to stay relevant? How am I going to get back out there again? Why didn’t I do what those people did? And so there’s, there’s all of these questions that can come up in the creative mind that can be quite damaging to our self-esteem. It can also take us away from being creative.

Belinda Matwali: (07:38)
I think when you touched on that, sorry, it was also the people pleasing factor and not everyone is going to, not every single person is going to like what you do. That’s happened a lot in my own experience, having to take on criticism sometimes from people. But I was working with a client recently who is a music producer and DJ. So I suggested that she make a track like just for herself and she’s just like, wow, that’s so alien. I’m always thinking about what are other people going to like, is this going to fit in? And I think that’s also a massive constrictive factor for creatives. So there’s just so much information that they’re trying to take in and be on that people pleasing.

Keith Mills: (08:23)
Yeah, totally. I mean, it’s, it’s interesting. You mentioned rest as well, because literally the last episode of this podcast I did was all about rest. Because I’d moved away from it. I’d moved into the kind of hamster wheel that you’re talking about, where I was all about productivity, productivity, create, create, create, create, had to get a load of stuff done, and I could feel the negative effects on me. And it was weighing me down very heavily and I had to take a breather and I wasn’t able to rest. And I didn’t realize it because every time I would do something that was rest, I’m fine if I go away on holiday obviously, I wasn’t really resting because the feeling of restlessness was there. And it was so strong that yeah, but you should be going and getting on, you should be doing this, which again, is kind of talking to what Matt was saying about giving yourself a hard time and the low self-esteem it’s like, what are you doing?

Keith Mills: (09:18)
Sitting around there doing nothing you shouldn’t be getting on, you should be doing this. So I guess this, both of these things are playing in even more heavily now that we have the pandemic, because people don’t have the connectivity that they once would have had. So there’s a lot of isolation. And as you mentioned, seeing things on social media might be for a lot of people, the only, or the main important stimulus that they’re getting, which can be pretty damaging at the best of times. But what do you view as being the, the additional challenges now that creatives the face in when already, as we said, there’s a little bit of a tight rope and it can be a bit of a roller coaster.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (09:57)
I think that human connection is a huge one. If we talk about today, things could be a lot worse. I’m thinking back to March, April, where it looked really bad with the pandemic and the lockdown was a real lockdown. , you stayed in your house, you didn’t go out and we didn’t know how many people were going to die or how quickly, , so on top of whatever else you might be going through in your life, creative or not, you had this whole huge fear and uncertainty going on, and then it’s how it’s played out throughout the year for people trying to get back out there again trying to find ways, trying to find ways to be allowed, to connect with their music in particular like performing, whether it’s live bands, whether it’s DJs, whether it’s people that want to go listen to live bands and DJs, the fans, , I mean, let’s not, let’s not completely make this all about the producers and the DJs. What about the music lovers that want to enjoy everybody else’s creativity and how that played on people and brought anger, fear and anger and more frustration.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (11:17)
And, , I think now we’re at a point where there is a bit of hope, but we’re not there yet. So it’s like, how do we navigate this period? The period where it sounds like we might all be allowed to go and connect again quite soon, but allegedly these numbers are going up and more people are getting sick so how do we navigate our way through that? And I think that those challenges, particularly for touring musicians or artists, DJs, anyone works in the industry that involved putting on these events, being part of them, staging them, like the engineers, the roadies, the bar staff, everybody, how can they navigate this period where they’re not allowed out? We don’t know when we’ll be allowed out. We think we’ll be allowed out soon, but we still don’t really know. And I think in the last couple of months, people have started to get incredibly frustrated and stressed.

Belinda Matwali: (12:27)
Yeah. I think everything you said there is true and it can be a double-edged sword. The uncertainty, it can take you down that path of doom and gloom, I don’t know what’s happening. It can also open up, well, what do I want to change in my life? Do I want to be creative in a slightly different way? So there is that energy of both the closing and an opening, depending on how you want to move through it. So I’ve seen with a lot of people, it has actually changed the direction of what they’re doing with their creativity and their music, which has also been really inspiring. I’ve seen lots of people up level with their training and doing amazing things online. So it’s, yeah, I can definitely see both sides there.

Keith Mills: (13:18)
Yeah, totally. It makes perfect sense because I think with the uncertainty we can easily fall into the problem framework of starting to make predictions about the future. And they’re predictions of doom and gloom, which is easy to do, and then ruminating on it, you can kind of get stuck in that downward spiral. And particularly then if you’re on your own, and if you start to filter out good news and see all of the bad stuff on the internet, that can be a nightmare. But as you said, Belinda, and one of the things that I talk to our community about all the time is what if we tried to shift from a problem focus to an opportunity focus. What if we said, okay, yeah this sucks and this sucks, and this sucks, but, how do you use that time to level up your skill set? What could you do differently as a creative? What avenues are there to explore? We know that things aren’t perhaps ideal and there may be not as we want them to be, but we can live in that feeling of everything is bad and difficult, or we can try and navigate a different, more empowering, more inspiring route forward, which I think is going to play nicely into what you guys are offering overall now. So kind of the big unveil, I guess, what is about to drop? How does, how does it work? Let us know, please.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (14:41)
So again, as we mentioned earlier it kind of started about 18 months ago. We’re launching a company called Listen Up Therapy and Listen Up Therapy is our offerings of meditation, meditation practices and teachings, which Belinda is an incredible master of and has been following that path for many, many years and therapeutic practices from my end, which is psychotherapeutic counseling from myself and my team. So what we’re offering is the complimentary benefits of therapy and meditation. And we are aiming them at the creative industry. We both have a lot of history in creativity and in those industries one way or another, and have both had profound experiences of how our lives can change and transform when we use both meditation regularly and some kind of therapy and how that’s just been an incredible experience. And we feel that we’ve got a lot to offer people in terms of giving them these opportunities and being able to use our own experiences and knowledge to improve people’s lives.

Keith Mills: (16:11)
Yeah, totally. Now I want to deep dive a little bit into your backgrounds because one of the things that I think is so powerful and I just want to lean on one thing here, cause you’ve mentioned listen up therapy, but I love the wording that you guys have got. Listen up and listening, listening up for the therapy, listen in for the meditation. That for me, it’s kind of genius. So I’m going to put it out there right now. It really is superb how you’ve got those two phrases and they’re both so strong. They say very succinctly what it is all about, which we’ll go into in a bit more depth in a moment. But one of the things that you guys are bringing to the table that as far as I know, nobody else is, is the background that you have and the experience you have, because yes, there’s a million meditation things out there.

Keith Mills: (17:01)
There’s loads of apps and things like that. And they’re good. I’m not going to take anything away from them, but having somebody who actually is in this world, in the music world, you understand the people who are designing courses and training that is tailored towards the very people that need it in this case, I think it’s very powerful in the same, obviously for you, Matt, with your experience in therapy. Can you both speak a little bit to your backgrounds in this area as well? Because I know you’ve both been on incredible journeys that have been benefited both from therapy, meditation and so on, but can you chart the path a little bit for everyone? Because I think it’s fascinating.

Belinda Matwali: (17:43)
Yeah sure. So meditation journey, I’ll start from where that began, because that was also my dark point and obviously all of us at some way in our past seem to have that. And it’s from that dark point that we turn around and we start looking for answers. So, 10 years ago I was here in London, working hard and partying just as hard, if not harder. And like a lot of people that just wasn’t sustainable for me, but the partying was a real escapism because I was feeling stressed about life. On paper, everything looked great, but I just felt really empty and not happy inside. And so it was from that space that I started looking for something, I didn’t know what it was, but it ended up being meditation. And I traveled for two years and met a lot of amazing people and tried lots of different things.

Belinda Matwali: (18:43)
And then when I was in India I found a really amazing ashram that just, I had this recognition when I was there. It was like, Oh wow. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, but I got this insight. And suddenly now that it’s like, okay, I needed to come here to learn these tools. And I guess when I started learning meditation, I had almost a cultural stigma of like, oh okay I need to live like a monk now and I can’t go out. But music has been a passion for me ever since I can remember, as a toddler I was playing my dad’s record player and touching all the things and I just love music. And a big part of my journey was actually being okay enough in my individuality and my confidence that I was going to still resonate with the things that lit me up and make me feel good.

Belinda Matwali: (19:37)
So that was still being able to go out in a club even though I was sober, and feeling really comfortable and confident in myself and really enjoying myself, and then equally okay when I was going into the meditation environment and this was 10 years ago, I think this is much more acceptable now, but that was a big part of the journey, just that confidence to really be in my authenticity and not feel like I have to submit to any social ideas about what a person who meditates should be your and things like that. And I think that’s really important for people. A lot of people who I work with, they have an issue. They might be, , DJing in the club and they still feel really self-conscious about not drinking, even though that’s their path. They’re like, , when someone hands me a drink, I don’t know what to do. And part of it is really building that rock solid confidence in yourself that you feel okay to say no, that things aren’t right for you. And so that’s been a big part of my journey, just the meeting of those two worlds.

Keith Mills: (20:45)
Yeah I think that’s really powerful what you’re as well, the concept of, so I used to DJ as well, and there were many times when I was like, right, I won’t drink tonight. And then I did, , I would go out and it’s, it’s just embeds you in that environment. And so having that self-belief, and I guess I always talk about awareness. I think that’s so powerful. It’s something that meditation brings you, but being able to have the awareness and not get swept up in the moment to actually come out with the outcome that you wanted at the end of the night or whatever you’re doing, I think super, super powerful. And so Matt, obviously we know a bunch of your background, I know you’ve had meditation as well as part of the therapy going on. We didn’t discuss that last time, how those two things intertwined for you.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (21:34)
Yeah. I mean, for me, my inroads into meditation began quite a long time ago. I would take a little bit of an interest. I’d meditate from reading some books. I was quite interested in Buddhism for a while which I still have a strong connection with a lot that the principles of. But I did dip in and out with various journeys with meditation, just a little bit. And then with my musical journey and as a touring DJ and my rock and roll aspect of my life that went with that, I was in and out of recovery from drink and drugs. I was trying to get clean and sober for many, many years with various degrees of success. So I would have quite long periods of clean time, but then I’d go back out and party hard again and then pick myself up and go back.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (22:37)
And in the summer of 2015, things had got pretty bad for me. So I did something I’d never done before and took myself out of the loop and went off to rehab in Thailand place, to a place that was recommended to me by a dear friend, and I stayed there for six weeks. And while I was there, there was a very strong message that connected for me counseling therapy, mindfulness and meditation, and more and it had a profound impact on my life. I’ve never looked back. So while I was there, in the first week and once the dust had settled, I started meditating every day in my room. I was also doing one-to-one counseling.I was doing the group counseling sessions, there was mindfulness and meditation teachings. And there was yoga nidra as well, which we can talk about a little bit more in a bit, but there was a combination of all these things. And what I found was that doing these things every day changed something in me.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (23:46)
I started to really feel the benefits of how the meditation is giving me more clarity. I can see things more clearly, colors are brighter, sounds are more defined. My mind has quietened down a little bit and since coming out of meditation and then doing things like counseling, I started to get more of the benefits from the counseling because I was more grounded and that really kind of sparked this interest in me in why we are the way we are, why we do the things we do, what makes us tick. And, , some of it was cognitive behavioral therapy based counseling as well. When I left that interest never left me. So I signed up online to do a psychology degree with the Open University, and I ended up changing direction and doing a master’s in psychotherapy, which I’m still doing.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (24:59)
I’ve taken a gap year to launch Listen Up Therapy with Belinda. But I’ve qualified as a psychotherapeutic counselor. And so, , the journey continues, but really coming back to Listen Up Therapy was that profound experience of a combination of meditation and therapeutic practices like counseling and then the yoga nidra as well, which was a real journey which I feel has got me to a point where I’ve been able to completely chang my life. I’ve been able to do a 180. I’ve been able to do that 180 and go in a completely different direction, but still have my roots in music and still be very passionate and very connected with that world. But before I went on that journey, I was stuck. I couldn’t see the wood through the trees. And I think one of the things we really want to be able to offer people is a solution to not being able to see the wood through the trees, a solution to being stuck. Tools that will allow you to become unstuck in a good way, ?

Keith Mills: (26:07)
Yeah, totally. And one of the things I’m picking up from both of you is, you’ve both been on this journey and one of the sayings I love is transformed people, transform people. You’ve been there. You’ve been through these things. You’re able to bring this, you understand very on a very deep level, the people that you’re working with. But the other thing that’s really jumped out to me there is that this isn’t a case of, Hey, we’ve been on this journey and now we’re going to help you. You’re both very much invested in continuing to grow and learn and deepen your practices. So you’re constantly leveling. You’re already at an amazing place to help people, but it’s like this, isn’t just a thing that we’ve learned and we’re going to teach wearing this. We live this basically. Yeah.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (26:53)
And , I have to say, Belinda is, she’s incredible. She never stops learning she’s all day, every day, at every spare moment got her head in a book, or in a talk, or a course, or podcasts, and it’s just this constant continuing personal and professional development. And it blows my mind how devoted she is to furthering her knowledge and her curiosity and her thirst for all of these things that really excite her it’s amazing.

Belinda Matwali: (27:29)
I’ve been really lucky to be able to find some amazing resources and teachers. The ashram I go to in India is basically like a university for meditation. It’s got like 30 different levels that you can do with them, but you have to wait three months minimum between each level. So they’re really encouraging you to digest and take what you’ve learnt like back out into life. And yeah after 10 years of studying it, you just find it’s infinite. There’s always more things to learn. You’re always learning more things about yourself andmeditation is such a broad topic. Often people think, Oh, it’s just one thing I’m just sitting here and breathing. But there are so many different techniques and it’s an infinite journey into yourself, even though a lot of us use it for relaxation, you can take it a lot further than that.

Keith Mills: (28:34)
Yeah, totally. So I think that kind of leads us really nicely into each of the separate disciplines, if you like. And then we can talk about the synergy of the two and obviously myself having an ongoing kind of mindset coach therapist that I work with plus meditating, I can definitely speak to this with you guys as well, but if we just focus on the meditation side of things and I know that you’ll be offering courses, there’s also a chance to work personally with you, because as you said, this, this can be nuanced. It can be, it can fit to the person if you like, it can be really bespoke. What do you feel are the main benefits that creatives take from a meditative practice?

Belinda Matwali: (29:23)
Yeah there’s a few here. I think, again, I’ll talk from my personal experience. Sometimes, for me personally, I can really overthink things. I know this is not everyone, but my I have a very busy and active mind and sometimes I have like a million ideas on the go and this really leaks out a lot of my energy. And through my meditation practice, it’s almost like I’m bringing all that energy back in, I’m resetting brain waves. We can get into that. You have quite busy brainwaves, what we call beta, and you’re not in a very good learning state when you’re in those beta brainwaves. But in meditation, you naturally drop down to an alpha or theta and it allows you to think in multiple ways. I think that’s why when I’m in meditation, it allows a lot of things to be sifted out and then I’m left with a clearer state of thinking afterwards, like okay, yeah, I’m going to pick up on this idea or this is how I’m going to continue it.

Belinda Matwali: (30:27)
So it’s a great reset when you’re in a creative process and your mind is like, okay, I don’t know what to do next, and you’re almost stuck. I definitely always take time out to meditate or go for a walk at that point just to reset my mind. And leading on from that, I get pretty much all of my creative ideas, maybe not when I’m in meditation, but afterwards as well, , they come to at different points. So again, it’s my stop gap if I’m working on a project and I feel either I’m dry for ideas. Before speaking about having too many ideas, but if I’m drafting them, I will come into that meditative state. And just coming to that rest state that you were touching on earlier as well. So it’s my source of creativity.

Belinda Matwali: (31:20)
It’s a source of quieting my mind, I guess they’re the two main things. And also when I’m in meditation, I’m kind of exercising or increasing my awareness and that can help me often connect dots between different ideas that other people might not see. So sometimes other people say my work’s a little bit eccentric or eclectic and I’m like, wow, I never would’ve thought of that. You’ve put this in this together. And I think that also can come from the increased awareness from meditation. Instead of just looking at one thing in front of you, you’ve got a 360 degrees awareness. You’re just seeing more things in life where you’re out and about. So there are a few different ways how it helps me creatively.

Keith Mills: (32:08)
Yeah. I love that. So kind of what I’m hearing is, is in many respects, it helps you to get out of your own way, which is easy to do as a creative, when the mind’s firing off and you start to try and oversolve things in your head. And it’s just, as you said, can’t see the wood for the trees. And by taking that step back, you’re clear in all of that and letting the ideas, the flow come through you. Now one of the things that I think a lot of people would have tried meditation and potentially tried something and decided it’s not for them, but as you mentioned, there are multiple strands and disciplines and things like that, which of course, when it comes to working with you in a bespoke level of course you are able to help guide people, but can you just talk a little bit to that as well, this idea that some people will just pick it up, give it a go and chuck it away because maybe that particular type didn’t work for them, but perhaps a little bit about the variety of different techniques that are available.

Belinda Matwali: (33:13)
Yeah, sure. Well, I’ll just start with very, very traditionally some of the meditations were designed for the monks that had done years of yoga and years of discipline. And this was kind of like the mountain spot experience. So that would be things like Zen meditation, or sitting and watching your breath. So they already were having quite a disciplined life. They weren’t having the challenges that we might have today. So when someone from our modern age just tries to sit down and meditate, we tend to overthink about so many things. We have so many more decisions that we can take in our life, which in one way is amazing, but also really stressful. Like people back then would just be like, okay, my dad looks after horses so that’s what I’m going to do.

Belinda Matwali: (34:08)
They weren’t sitting there thinking, Oh, which career path should I take or where should I live? So it was a much more simple time. And within recent years there has been some people create new and different meditations that techniques like active meditation, where you do movement beforehand. That is a type that I teach as well where you’re actually moving the body and movement techniques. And then when you do sit down, it’s just so much easier to connect with yourself. And also in the listening and meditation course, one of the techniques that I share is how you can come into a state of relaxation relatively quickly. So I think what’s really important is how you are priming yourself to get in what I call the meditation bandwidth. So the meditation techniques, aren’t the meditation per se.

Belinda Matwali: (35:06)
That’s just the preparation to get you into this state that I like pulling the meditation, bandits, where you feel connected and you’re just in flow and you’re there. So we need to find techniques that kind of suit where we’re at. So for example, one day, if you’re feeling angry, it might be hard to come even straight into your heart. If someone’s doing a heart focus meditation, you might need to do something to diffuse that anger first, because otherwise it’s not a vibratory match. And that vibration of anger needs to be released before you can sit and be calm. I mean, it’s the same. When people come to my active meditation classes. If they’ve been working all day and frustrated, they need to release that. And then once that’s released, it’s much easier to come into this state of balance. And then finally, I just want to share like, especially creatives will get this, so we’re all creative in different ways, but we’re very individual, we’re all very unique.

Belinda Matwali: (36:06)
And so what works, one person doesn’t work for another person. And even inside the meditation experience, how we experience our innner senses, it’s also going to be different for different people. Some people are very visual when they go into the meditation. Other people don’t see anything, but they’re very kinesthetic. They feel a lot, or they hear a lot or they have a clear knowing. And for me, I’m not so visual in meditation. So if I was starting out and I went to the meditation and they were talking about visual stuff, they’d be like, I can’t get this. I can’t do it. So when we’re nurtured just like with our creativity, that we all have these individual skills, that is a massive light bulb moment for a lot of people that I work with. And they’re like, Oh, okay. It’s been working in a different way for me, but I needed someone to shine a light on that. So I could see it for myself.

Keith Mills: (37:01)
Yeah. Wow. Basically, I’m just going to kind of leave a wow in there. So I’ve done meditation for a while. I had no idea of the depth of the things you’ve just said, I’d be like, Oh yeah, I get that. And that makes sense. Like, I’m really interested. I’m gonna say right now, I’m going to be really interested in working with you. Because what I can hear as well is that, although I love my practice, it can almost certainly be optimized and I can take more from it just from listening to what you’re talking about. So even people who already are meditating and not just people who’ve tried it and thought maybe it’s not for me, will actually be able to take a lot by going deeper and exploring different techniques. They didn’t know. Were there certainly this idea of matching a particular technique to the state that you’re in, I think is really powerful because there are certainly times when I sit and I find it really, really difficult. And now what you’re saying is making me think, Oh, wow, there are pieces to the puzzle that I’m missing here. And I’m a huge, huge advocate of meditation. It’s been huge for me. So I really want to learn more of this. And speaking from my own experience, I’ve tried various things. My first introduction to it was a book that I have.

Keith Mills: (38:23)
And I read that and I used to sit back when I worked in the city for like 20 minutes in the morning and that was kind of watching the breath, but I struggled with it. I’m not great at watching the breath it turns out. I’ve tried things like Headspace ,fantastic app, but the guided meditation thing wasn’t as great for me. And I’ve found personally the most effective thing is just having like chimes or a kind of gentle sound. And maybe it’s because in my whole job and everything I’ve ever done really is around audio, it’s where I thrive. I seem to be able to much more quickly get into the state, but the other things you’re talking about, fascinate me. So I’m dead excited to learn more on a personal level. It sounds absolutely superb.

Keith Mills: (39:11)
So Matt. Therapy. Let’s talk about another piece of the puzzle here. I think people have predetermined ideas about what therapy is. Maybe there’s some stigma attached to it as well without actually really truly understanding what it is and what the benefits are. So can you tell us a little bit about what being involved and working with a therapist is and does and I know obviously you’ve had experience from both sides of the table, so to speak.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (39:43)
Sure. Well, yeah, you’re right. There are lots of different types of therapy. There are lots of different types of counseling. And people often come in wanting to change something about themselves. There’s something they’re not happy with. If there’s something they’re struggling with or they’re stuck with, and it’s very uncomfortable, a lot of the time. And what can happen quite often is, people want a set of tools very early on. They want to know where’s the instruction manual. What can you tell me what I need to do to fix this? So there are people that offer that kind of therapy. I mean, the short term, the CBT work of cognitive behavioral therapy is very solution-based in terms of looking at your core beliefs about yourself. For example, if you believe that you’re not good enough, or the world is out to get you, that’s a core belief, how do you challenge that?

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (40:48)
And what can you tell yourself about that that counters that belief about yourself? But the thing about things like CBT is it’s a bit of a band-aid quite a lot of the time. It will kind of patch over something until the plaster falls off and then the scar is still there. So the therapy really, it can be a lot of things for different people, but first and foremost, I think it’s important to know that it’s a safe space, a neutral space, a non-judgmental space for you to be able to come and talk and talk about whatever it is that you feel you need or want to talk about. But a lot of people struggle to find someone to talk to that is neutral, non-judgmental, and is in a safe space. Because we all need relationships and friends and, and we have all have various experiences with that.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (41:47)
But when you start throwing opinions, advice-giving conditions in, that’s not the same as therapy. It can be quite helpful, but therapy is really about exploring what’s going on for you. What is it that you believe about yourself that is leaving you, seeing yourself, the world and others, the way that you see them. So what’s your story. What’s, what’s your belief around self and others? What’s your sense of safety in the world? Like where does that come from? What is it that you’ve learned or been conditioned to believe that makes you feel that all these external factors or things that are going on inside you, make you feel the way you feel. And I suppose in some ways it can be a bottomless pit, that you can spend a lifetime looking at these things.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (42:49)
And particularly when it comes to identity, if I’m not a product of my environment, if I’m not my artist persona, if I’m not my DJ persona, if I’m not my, this is who I am because of what I do persona, then who am I? And what tends to happen quite often when people are faced with the idea that they’re not the person they identify with from a couple of years ago or 10 years ago and they’re in that transitionary period where they’re ready to make a change, or they think they’re ready to make a change, but they realize that if they make that change, they don’t know who they are. That often gets people running off in the other direction. And what I feel my job is, and the job of the therapist is first and foremost, is to create a strong, solid working alliance, a therapeutic relationship with the client.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (43:42)
Somewhere the client can come and know that that relationship is based on trust. It’s based on experience and it’s based on being listened to. And I think one of the things that happens so much now in society, more than ever is people don’t really listen to each other. You might get as far as hello, and then the listening stops when you’re out in social situations. People only want to connect the way they know how. How many times have you been in a restaurant or a cafe or anywhere, and there’s people sitting together, but they’re all looking at their phones, or they might be in the middle of a conversation and a text message comes through and the conversation ends. And there’s that lack of connection. And with the therapy, it’s really about listening. And I suppose, it ties in with, listening in and Listen Up. It’s a place to come to be listened to, to be heard and to be able to help you look at how you’re experiencing yourself and others in the world and what that might look like from a different perspective, what’s stopping you from moving on in your life. Why are you getting stuck? Where are you getting stuck? Why? What’s happening for you?

Keith Mills: (45:01)
Yeah, totally. What you were talking about being heard is really powerful because there is so much noise in the world at the moment. People do need to be heard. And even if you are heard by someone that, a lot of the times they have, when I say they have an agenda, I don’t mean that necessarily as a bad thing, but if you have relationships with people and there are things that they want from their lives as well, advice may come from a slightly biased place. Whereas when you’re talking to a therapist. So when I talked to the lady that I work with as well, there is that bond of trust, but there’s all, there’s someone there who doesn’t have a hand in the game anywhere. They’re actually, they are totally neutral, as you said. And so, that the questions you’re getting asked and the place they’re coming from is very pure, which I felt I personally find to be very powerful.

Keith Mills: (45:58)
Now the other thing that I think is maybe we can go a little bit deeper with that, Matt, which you touched on at the end, which I think is really important is that people are often looking to make a change or there’s something that they really want. And they’re very passionate about achieving in their life, but no matter how hard they try, they seem to be kind of in their own way. And often what they want is totally achievable, but the beliefs and the story that they’re telling themselves is the very thing that’s stopping them from getting what they want. And it’s only really them. So for me, I found, like therapy and work of my mindset coach to be really powerful in aiding that, but perhaps you can talk to that a little bit as well in your experience on that side.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (46:46)
Yeah I can. Everyone is very unique and individual but we have a set of beliefs and those beliefs have come from, they’ve been inherited at some level from, from our caregivers. And what tends to happen is that we live out our lives in the here and now reinforcing our beliefs about ourselves, our script, we’re living out our script , we’re reinforcing our script beliefs. So out of consciousness, we will set the wheels in motion, or we will run through a series of transactions, of interactions, that will then confirm what we really believe about ourselves, which might be, I’m never going to make it, or, I should, I should be seen but not heard or, they’re a multitude of these beliefs that we pick up in early development. And this can be pre-verbal. This can be before we’re walking and talking. It doesn’t mean, and this is really important in my belief.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (47:57)
It doesn’t mean that our parents are bad people necessarily at all. This can be a product of being smothered, being loved too much of being like wrapped in cotton wool so that, you’ve been so protected that you then don’t know how to experience others in the world because you’ve always had somebody else there protecting you too much. There are lots of different factors that can play into it. But, what the point is that a lot of the things that we do are played out to confirm those beliefs.

Belinda Matwali: (48:34)
So I think what you’re saying there is like, in our conscious mind, we’re like, yes, I’m great. I’ve got all these affirmations all day long. But the conscious mind does make up 5% and the unconscious mind is the 95%. This is where, the work Matthew does, especially when you’re going into psychotherapy, is really subtle, but profound. Because that has been able to be dug up. And then I guess from the meditation perspective, it really comes into its own with this because we get out of our conscious mind when we’re doing the meditations. And this can be a really rich place to sometimes plant an affirmation at the end of a meditation, because you are in a different state of consciousness.

Belinda Matwali: (49:29)
And then there’s another more specific type of laying down meditation. That’s called Yoga Nidra, And one of the many, many kind of purposes of this practice is actually to move through self limiting beliefs, which in the yoga tradition, they call semskaras. Which is all programming, whether it’s good or bad, we all have programming to some level, as Matthew was saying, it happens at different levels of our life. But Yoga Nidra is another really big passion of mine and the science behind the practices that we do drop brainwave states. We’re able to access that state of our 95% unconscious and the part of the practices that you do drop in an affirmation. It’s an, I am statement called a sankalpa. So if your main script, to use the language Matthew was using before, Is I’m not worthy. Then you’re sankalpa might be like, I am worthy. And when you’re dropping it in at that deep subconscious, or over time, it really starts to take root. And this has been really profound for both of us. Like Matthew mentioned, he was doing this when he was in rehab as well, because as you said, it is so frustrating when you’ve got the affirmations there all day long, and you’re like, why are things not working? And that’s because this 95% of us in this unconscious state,

Keith Mills: (51:04)
I love this. So I want to kind of dig in a little bit deeper. Okay. So in which one of these, are we saying that the therapy is where you tend to bring these things from the subconscious mind into the conscious mind? And there’s a saying isn’t there, that what we can’t see or what we’re not aware of, we can’t fix basically. So is that bringing it forward? And then the yoga nidra is where you can deepen the practice by helping to overwrite or redress the balance of the limiting belief with the empowering belief, or do both of these practices bring forward these things from the subconscious mind?

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (51:46)
So just keeping a line down the middle of the practices. And the reason that I think we’ve both had a profound experience of doing meditation and yoga and counseling and how that’s ended up, it’s been very very powerful but, just talking about the therapy side of things, I don’t go into the unconscious with my client because it’s the unconscious, they’re not conscious of it. That’s one thing me as a therapeutic counselor knowing, and I think an awareness that might be what’s going on, but really, it’s about what’s happening in the room between us what’s happening in the space between us. What’s not being said is what’s being said, so there’s the verbal transaction and there’s the nonverbal transaction. There’s the alterior transactions that’s going on between you and what I look at within the therapies, where is that coming from?

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (52:48)
Is that coming from an adult place? Is it coming from, is it coming in the here and now as an adult, is it coming from a parental message that we’ve received as we’ve been growing up? Was it because it coming from a child state, , from, from a child, you go stay, where’s that coming from and how has that been experienced? And, you know that’s really where a lot of the the work happens. Is what’s happening, experientially, what’s happening, relationally, what’s going on between us? Why do I feel sad right now? What is it that what’s happening here? And, and we explore that.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (53:26)
So there’s content and content is important, but process is really, really, is really, really important. And it’s when over, and this is why, therapy is often long-term, it’s when the same things keep coming up over and over again, but you’ve been working long enough for the client and build up strong enough alliance and you know them well enough to be able to start to pull it apart and say, well, this experience you’re having right now connects to these beliefs that you have about yourself and these beliefs that you have about yourself have come, because X, Y, or Z said X, Y, and Z to you. Or this is part of your conditioning, so it’s really about untangling that and allowing someone to look at something from a different perspective. That’s the therapy side of it, the unconscious, it’s all there and it’s all happening, but that’s not where I go. Whereas, as Belinda just said, with a lot of the practices that can open that up, which is why doing both of these things can be so powerful.

Keith Mills: (54:48)
Yeah, totally. I mean, there’s a real synergy here. Now. One of the things that you’ve at you put on your website was a window of tolerance. Now, I don’t know what that is, but I was like, I’ve got to ask I’m dying to know. So it’s something that I know that the synergy between both of the different disciplines that you have feeds into this. Can you explain that a little bit for me please?

Belinda Matwali: (55:17)
So the window of tolerance is a space where we feel like we can really respond to life. Like you have energy, something bad happens in your day. And you’re like okay, I’ve got this thing, or a challenge at work and yeah, you feel like you have that energy to respond. And in the diagram that often accompanies this term underneath that window is a place where we’re feeling really low in energy. It might be depression. But where we just don’t have any energy to respond to life. Like sometimes we wake up and the alarm clock goes off for work and you’re just depressed and you just can’t get up like you don’t care. There’s a lack of energy there. So someone can be coming to you saying the house is on fire, but you just can’t respond.

Belinda Matwali: (56:07)
And then above that window, there is a hyper arousal state, which we kind of touched on earlier, the overthinking, the anxious, and again, you’ve got so much energy and you’re scattered in a way you’re not able to really get any traction or respond to life. Someone shares something with you, they need help with, and you kind of just freak out and have a melt down. So that’s kind of explaining, I guess, the spectrum. And so the window of tolerance is the kind of sweet spot in the middle where we’re like, okay, I can, I can handle what’s happening in life. So the reason why this model is kind of explained or used is that we or people want to encourage others to get into the window of tolerance. And the way to get back is generally through mindfulness, meditation, and grounding. So whether you are hyper aroused or hypo in the examples, when you come back to your breathing, you are putting more of your energy back into your body and not leaking energy out.

Belinda Matwali: (57:10)
And as you start to get more energy and breathe you’re more able to respond to, , whatever’s going on. And I think people sometimes overlook the power of breathing becausecause it happens for us all day, every day. But I wanted the free resources on the website, have a simple breathing exercise, but explain when you’re breathing into your belly, it does actually signal to your nervous system. I’m safe. I’m okay. I’m all good. So people often use this example when we talk about stress and stress response of, , the caveman and the saber tooth tiger and their stress. And so our ancient nervous system when we saw a tiger we’d be running. And when you’re running, your belly is not soft. Your diaphragm and your abs are in tight and you’re just, running for your life.

Belinda Matwali: (58:13)
So when we’re not breathing into our belly, that can be signal to our nervous system like, Oh, we’re in stress, and it actually creates those stress chemicals in the body. And it’s such a epidemic that we don’t breathe into our belly because it’s societal conditioning to look slim and a slim flat stomach or our fashion. Just so many things like, in a lot of my old jobs, I wore such tight clothes. There was no way I could breathe into my belly properly. And that in itself can put us in a state of anxiety, like all the time. So when we breathe into our belly, that can help us bring us back into this window of tolerance. We come into the rest and digest mode, our parasympathetic nervous system, and we start to have more energy rather than leaking it out. So that way we can kind of feel like we can deal more with whatever life is dishing up to us that day.

Keith Mills: (59:12)
Right. I get it. And I’m imagining that if someone is able to find themselves in that state, would that be a more ideal state to be like Matt in a therapy situation as well?

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (59:25)
Well, the window of tolerance, that that model is referred to within therapy as well. And, we think about hyper and hypo and really we want to widen that window so there’s more room to be in there without reaching those states. And that comes from a lot of exploration and over a long period of time, but it’s really about understanding where those feelings come from. When you start to be able to understand where those feelings come from and really understand that they don’t serve you in the here and now those, those defense mechanisms that you had when you were little to survive, because when you were a baby or a little kid, and if you didn’t use those defenses, you couldn’t get through, couldn’t get by in life. They won’t serve you now as an adult in the here and now, but we still hang on to them. And every situation that comes along, the brings up those same feelings is connected to that defense mechanism. And so, really when you start to understand that those feelings are not relative to what’s going on in the here and now, because you needed those defenses, then you’ve got other ways of experiencing life now, and your window of tolerance can grow, ?

Keith Mills: (01:00:46)
Yeah, totally. So what I’m really hearing here is, you can hear the benefits of therapy, the benefits of meditation when they come together, it’s super powerful, but every step of the way, I’m constantly listening to this thinking. I can totally see how this helps someone who’s a creative, who’s able to. Now we’re talking about potentially have more energy because a lot of people so have day jobs as well that are creatives or at the moment they’re just there. They are most stressed out. The world that we’re living in at the moment is stressful. You’re able to get out of your own way, have more energy, get into a better creative or a better state in order to access your creativity. And then obviously when you are creating things and that you have got the output and you’re not jammed up, it kind of feeds back into itself a little bit as a cycle, you feel better in this whole cycle, keeps going to make your, I guess, your life more relaxed, more enjoyable, and more, more energized. And all of these things are feeding into each other. Would that be a good summary?

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (01:01:52)
I’m also thinking quite broadly that the issues, the presenting issues of the individual coming into therapy, won’t always be directly related to their creativity or to them being creative. It will be a multitude of things, and that’s, that’s life. That’s how life goes. Where we’re coming from with this therarpy is our deep understanding of that world and what it’s like to be at different ends of the spectrum within that world at different times. And so this isn’t just about getting people back into their creative flow. It’s a lot, lot bigger than that really. It’s really about, giving people tools to navigate life in all walks of life. Really.

Belinda Matwali: (01:02:44)
I think when you’re feeling more balanced in all the ways, even though that’s quite a bland word, that is going to spark your creativity. Like when you feel good about things in life, when you’re mentally balanced, emotionally balanced, spiritually balanced, the creativity is like the flower that comes out of of all that work that you’re doing. So whether it’s something in the subconscious or an overthinking mind or relationship that is causing you stress, I think that all has knock on effects to creativity. And, the work that we’re doing is going to have, many, many benefits for people. But I think, for me anyway, when I’m in my creative flow, that’s when I normally feel like, okay, my self care is good and everything’s really going well, and the creativity is like the flower.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (01:03:36)
And, let’s just talk about music for a minute. And I don’t mean techno. But songs. Most songs are about love. And a lot of songs written about love are written by people who are in some pain through some kind of a relational experience, and that’s part of the amazing creativity that comes out of strong, really strong emotions, whether it’s heartbreak, sorrow, anger, in being in love, happiness, and being able to channel that that’s one thing. But the creative block can come at all different times, but really this is about how can you use these tools? How can therapy help you? How can meditation help you in your life to ground you and give you, more presence, more awareness, and allow you, I feel very strongly from personal experience that meditation, regular meditation that has been carefully put together and shown to you from Belinda who’s had a huge amount of experience in this can allow you to benefit from everything else in your life. But the therapy as well. If you’re meditating regularly and that’s helping you become more grounded and more aware, you’re going to get more from your therapy, because you’re going to be more aware. And so that’s the cycle really.

Belinda Matwali: (01:05:11)
I just want to touch on as well with the creativity thing. Because my friend sent me a post she posted the other day about a story that some creatives have that I need to be in emotional pain, or I need to have some kind of drama going on in my life and clients again, have come to me for this. They’re like, but I need that. That’s my creative source. And this particular post was talking about like a new paradigm or a new idea that we don’t have to hold onto this story that we need pain to be creative, that it can come from, the other end of the spectrum as well. And I just thought that was a really interesting point for discussion because there are so many things embedded in us that things have to be a certain way for us to be creative.

Keith Mills: (01:05:56)
Yeah, totally. And I mean, just to talk to the cycle that Matt was mentioning, that really taps into my own experience as well with this. So what I have found is that when I’ve uncovered, kind of core beliefs you talked to the idea of I’m not worthy, I’m not good enough and all of these things. And when they’re there, that’s kind of a tree, that’s got a lot of other core beliefs that can be hanging off of it. And when I’ve discovered those through reflection, for example, and then go into my meditative practice and exactly as you were mentioning, I had no idea if the yoga nidra and so on, just in my normal meditative practice, I will then be looking at the, I am, that’s reversing these things. And so that then deepens the work for me very powerfully, but then often I’ll have an insight somewhere in the meditation or just after it that I will write down and then take back into the session that I have with my coach.

Keith Mills: (01:06:57)
And we’ll talk about that. And so that cycle really resonated with me because it has and I know I’ve mentioned this to you guys before, but I once said to my to my mindset coach, I said I love the work that we’re doing, we’re addressing this inner bully, inner coach kind of balance. Because I’ve always given myself such a kicking, I used to work in the city. I was a head hunter, very competitive sales environment. And I used to think that I was successful because of the negative way that I talked to myself. Like someone constantly poking me with a stick to drive me. And I thought that that was always the key to my success. But of course it’s taken a lot of my energy and ruminating and beating myself up.

Keith Mills: (01:07:45)
It drains you. It’s not aiding you, but it was all I knew. So now that I know that actually turning up for myself as a companion is a way stronger way to do this. But as we were redressing the balance, I said to my coach, look I’m really studious. I want to do well here. How do I speed this up? And her kind of piece of wisdom was you don’t speed this up, but there are things you can do to deepen it. And it turned out that the meditation has absolutely done that. And I have so much more awareness about myself. I’ve got a long way to go. I’m not kidding anyone with this. I think you mentioned as well, it’s a never ending journey, but there’s a lot way, a long way for me to go personally.

Keith Mills: (01:08:28)
But the way that these two things have fed into each other, they are far greater than the sum of their parts has been my experience. And definitely saying, I’ll lean into. And as I mentioned, I’m definitely keen to find out more, Belinda, about the meditation side. Becuause you’ve sort of opened up a whole new world that I didn’t know existed. And there’s just me sitting here for 20 minutes listening to my chimes and that’s been awesome. But the things you’re talking about, like, wow, how exciting to get to explore this world in even more depth. So I’ll definitely be tapping you up on that front. So right now, how do people, because I’m sure loads of people would be excited to find out more about working with you guys. What will be the next steps for people now?

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (01:09:20)
Well, if anybody is interested, the next step would be to go to our website and have a good look around and they can contact us through the inquiry form. There are links into Belinda’s courses. There’s, there’s lots of information and rich content there already about the meditation. There’s lots of information about the team of therapists and we will take it from there or we’ll come back to people and arrange consultation calls and talk about what they’re looking for. What they’re hoping to get from whichever services that they would like to get involved in, whether it’s therapy or meditation or both. And we we’ll then put them in touch with the right therapist or into Belinda’s meditation course and also who will be in the very near future.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (01:10:18)
We’ll be doing some group work as well, which I’m not going talk to you much about now, but we’re going to be offering group support, wellbeing, mindset courses for people that are going to be very, very useful, there will be a lot of shared experience. A lot of connectivity. Because I think one of the things that we are aware of that has been the most challenging for people right across the board has been a lack of connectivity because of everything that’s happened this year as well. And so getting like-minded people together in a group and us faciliatating it and bringing in both of our shared experiences and allowing that to kind of help people to find their way a little bit is something that we’re working very hard on. So that’s coming soon as well.

Keith Mills: (01:11:08)
Yeah. Also I love the way you’re both kind of constantly innovating and coming with new ideas. And certainly from, I can definitely say how powerful this online connectivity is because obviously Finish More Music is a community and the community have come together more than ever this year because of what’s going on externally, people leaning into it. It’s a safe space, which exactly what you guys have already spoken about with what you’re offering as well. But it is a safe space. We don’t have any egos, nobody flies around belittling. Anyone else, even though some of them are really far on their journeys. Some people are professionals in the electronic music industry now, and everyone is really supportive and it’s made a hell of a difference even when we just jump on live to hang out just that connectivity is so important.

Keith Mills: (01:12:02)
So again, , I mentioned last time when you’re on Matt that I thought you were on to something with this, which you definitely are. And I have absolutely every confidence that what you’re going to do from a group angle is going to be a success as well. I think it’s amazing. So I wish you guys, every success with this, we’ll put all of the details in the show notes for this podcast as well. So everybody can instantly dive in and see anything. Is there anything you feel that we’ve missed that you’d like to cover? I know we’ve, we’ve covered a bunch of stuff. It’s been awesome. Thank you. I just want to make sure there may anything that I may have missed, you may have missed along the way we get covered off because it’s such an important topic.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (01:12:38)
Yes. One thing for me, and that is if anybody’s struggling and is a bit hesitant to reach out, just reach out. We’re going to be available to have a consultation, to have a chat, and if you’re feeling it, you’re feeling it, but if you’re struggling and you’re a bit stuck or you’ve got stuff going on, reach out to us. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone. Don’t be shy. Don’t be nervous to send us an inquiry form and tell us a little bit about yourself. We’re doing this to help people. We’re doing this to help as many people as we can. We know what it’s like to be stuck in so many different ways and we want to help people. So don’t be shy.

Keith Mills: (01:13:27)
Yeah. Awesome. One of the things that always comes across when I’m talking to you is how authentic you are as well. So as you said, people don’t have anything to lose. They’re not going to be judged in any way. It’s obviously completely anonymous. If people just want to have that initial conversation, I think it’s such a powerful thing to do. So I’ll echo that, you guys are awesome unquestionably.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (01:13:50)
And just to follow that on if someone wants to come and talk to us because they’ve got problems with being shy, then maybe they can get of their friends to apply for them.

Keith Mills: (01:14:02)
Awesome stuff. Well, listen, thank you. I had a feeling this was going to be insightful. I didn’t realize how much, I mean, I’ve learned an absolute bunch and I know that everyone’s going to love this. As I say the last time you were on it was such a popular episode and I would love to catch up with you again, to see how this is going at some point in the future as well. And particularly as I mentioned, I know you’re both really innovative in your thinking of new ideas. So what we have now is awesome, but the things that you learn, I instinctively know you’re going to develop this to help more and more people, and this is going to grow. So I definitely am going to touch base and drag you by even if it’s screaming and kicking on for an episode in the future, but you’ve been awesome.

Matthew Benjamin / Bushwacka: (01:14:46)
Thank you very much,

Keith Mills: (01:14:50)
Guys, take care and best of luck with that.

Keith Mills: (01:14:53)
Okay. So a huge thank you to Matt and Belinda for sharing so much knowledge. Some of the things we discussed here really opened up new and exciting areas for me to explore. I’ve already experienced as you heard the power of therapy and coaching combined with meditation, but hearing about even more synergistic ways to take advantage of both of these areas has certainly sparked a lot of curiosity in me and I’m excited to dive in even more deeply. So I hope you felt the same. I hope you enjoyed the episode. The full details for Listen Up Therapy are included in the show notes, finishmoremusic.com/089. And I’d love to hear from you on Instagram. Hit me up with a DM at @iamkeithmills. What most resonated for you in this episode?

Keith Mills: (01:15:44)
What did you connect to the most that Matt and Belinda shared? I’d love to hear your perspectives on this one and be sure to subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out and do leave a review. Let me know your thoughts. And as I’ve mentioned before, if there’s any areas you’d like me to cover in the in the podcast, any questions you’ve got that you’d like me to tackle, please do hit me up. I’ll stick them on the list. And if it’s something I think I can help with, I’ll absolutely direct an episode in that direction for ya. So all the best do take care and I’ll catch it in the next episode.

Keith Mills: (01:16:16)
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FMM0087 – The Curse of Overthinking – Transcript

This is an automated transcription which may have some occasional errors in spelling and grammar.

Keith Mills: (00:01)
Hi, I’m Keith Mills. And this is episode number 87 of the Finish More Music Podcast. And today we’re talking about the curse of getting stuck in your head, over thinking, dragging yourself down mentally and seeing no progress with your art. Now, if that sounds menacing well, it really is because the lack of progress and constant exhaustion that’s caused by the never ending mental gymnastics will start to affect all areas of your life. And that makes sense, right? If you’re tired and unhappy with your progress, that’s going to affect your day-to-day life and the people in it. So in this episode, I’m going to deep dive into the causes of overthinking. I’ll share an experience with you that I had recently that really dragged me down. And I’ll give you my own recipe for how you can overcome it, because it’s a trap that so many of us find ourselves falling into. And sometimes we’re not even aware of it. So we’ve got a lot to get into. Let’s go.

Keith Mills: (01:11)
This is the Finish More Music Podcast, a show for underground dance music, producers who want to finish more and better music, and to share it with the world. My name’s Keith Mills. And every week we’ll dive into the mindset and creative strategies that will help you to move further, faster along your music production journey.

Keith Mills: (01:47)
So I want to start out with a few extensions of gratitude, really. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. And first of all, if you watched the video series, if you commented underneath the videos, if you reached out to me and this is the free Finish More Music workshop, I do thank you. It meant the world to hear all of your thoughts and how it affected people for the best. It was absolutely amazing, of course, a warm welcome to all of our new members inside of Finish More Music. But also if you watched the series or you’re on our mailing list and you watch our your tutorials and you listen to the podcast and you weren’t able to join us this time in FMM, obviously this was a busy time in terms of emails coming out, because we wanted to let people know about the video series.

Keith Mills: (02:36)
And of course we wanted to let people know that there was an opportunity to join FMM. We’re only open for five days. It’s a long time until we next open, deep into next year. So we want to make sure that everyone who does want to jump in and have a positive impact on their music gets the chance and they don’t miss it. So if you didn’t join, of course, you’d have still received a lot of notifications and emails and so on. So I do thank you for bearing with us, but everything is returning to normal now. And my team and I are a hundred percent focused inwards, working with the new members of FMM. It’s incredibly exciting, both for existing members and our new members, because there’s a real buzz. When new people join, there’s a whole new bunch of perspectives and ideas and journeys, and just excitement that kind of gets injected into the community, which is fantastic, the breakthroughs.

Keith Mills: (03:31)
And we’re only like just over a week in now. Absolutely incredible people talking about how they’ve gone from a place where life was pretty dark and heavy. They weren’t making any progress with their music, they’re now positive. They’re upbeat. It’s affecting their family, affecting their work life. People who are finishing tracks, particularly those who thought that they didn’t have enough time. They were too busy, too many commitments in their life to be able to do it, that they couldn’t achieve much with smaller pockets of time. Now they’re already finishing tracks and saying things like, you know, I’ve learned to fill every second in the studio productively, I’ve learned how to make meaningful progress with short periods of time. And those breakthroughs are worth their weight in gold, because if you’re a long-term listener to the show, you’ll know that I talk a lot about beliefs, beliefs being lies that we hold to be true.

Keith Mills: (04:29)
And we all have them, every single one of us. And often times they’re invisible to us. So we don’t know that we’re holding onto something, some sort of belief that’s actually holding us back. It’s a limiting belief. That’s why we call them limiting beliefs. They’re limiting us from achieving what we want to achieve, and we’re often unaware of them. And if you think I’m too busy to fit music in, then that becomes your reality. If you think, well, if I just add 15 minutes here and there, and then I can do an hour over here, the 15 minutes don’t really count for much. That’s a belief. It’s a lie. And we know it’s a lie because there are so many people in FMM who with 15 minute chunks of time. And if you listened a few weeks back to Justin Hancock’s amazing interview.

Keith Mills: (05:18)
And if you didn’t check all of those five interviews out with members of FMM, I do recommend that you go and listen to them because there’s so many amazing breakthroughs and they bust through so many of these limiting beliefs, but we know if other people are doing it, it must be possible. And it’s a lie to think that we can’t fill the time. And it’s a lie to say that we’re too busy. We’re very rarely too busy, marriages, birth of a child, unfortunate circumstances, illnesses, change of jobs, may be for a short period of time. But the members of FMM are flat out busy, full-time jobs, often careers, not just jobs, but like real careers, young families, other hobbies and they still smash it with their music. So it’s been an incredible week already in the community. I’m really excited tonight. I’m going to be jumping in doing a training session like we did last week, absolutely buzzing.

Keith Mills: (06:17)
I like to get really hands-on and help people to progress as quickly as possible. Because once you start making the breakthroughs and you bust through the beliefs, then you put more time, energy, and effort into your music because you can now see the possibilities. And that’s when things really, really start to move forward at a hell of a late.

Keith Mills: (06:37)
So what are we talking about in this episode? What we’re talking about, the curse of over thinking. This really came to my mind a lot in the last couple of months when it was really nitty gritty time on writing the video series, I’d done loads of research. There were a few false starts. As there often are in very, very large creative projects like this one.

Keith Mills: (07:09)
And I caught myself on a number of occasions falling into the trap of over thinking. So this is the act of trying to solve problems, trying to solve difficult, trying to think your way to the best possible solutions and outcomes and ideas, and trying to do it all in your head instead of actually taking action. So in my case, instead of actually getting the words out onto paper or word processing, whatever it might be, and that’s the same is absolutely true of music and any other art form. In fact, most things that we do in life, this is true. We can fall into a trap of trying to think ahead in the music.

Keith Mills: (07:50)
Trying to think of what, or how this piece of music might be perceived and how this might work out further down the line. And if I start working on this now, how would that affect something else? And isn’t there a more efficient way of doing this and all of these things start flying around in your head.

Keith Mills: (08:08)
And the art form is to be able to kind of bring yourself away from this to be able to get on and do the work. And so I had to take a step back and sort of revisit some of the lessons, the very things I teach, interestingly, but applied to a different art form because I obviously teach music. Writing a script is something totally different from an artistic perspective, but it’s still creativity. And the creative process remains the same. So I created a little recipe and I’m going to give that to you a little bit later on in the episode. But first I just want to talk about, I guess, the juxtaposition of taking action versus staying in your head.

Keith Mills: (08:52)
You would have heard me say this before. Action creates clarity. If you take action, then you learn. Then you discover, you get direction, you get hints tips, clues about the piece of art that you are working on about the options, the path to take new ideas, fire up in your mind, you build and create your own inspiration. And that ties in really nicely to one of my favorite quotes. Chuck Close, prolific creative. He said inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us, just show up and get to work. And you’ve probably heard that before, but there’s a little bit more to the quote. He goes on to say a few more things. And one of them is all of the best ideas come out of the process. They come out of the work itself. So let’s just ruminate on that for a second. Roll that around in our minds for a second, all of the best ideas come out of the process. They come out of the work itself.

Keith Mills: (09:59)
They don’t come out of trying to roll things around in your head, trying to fix stuff. They come from just getting on inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us show up and get to work. The rest of us show up and take action. Action creates clarity. And one of the biggest enemies of taking action is overthinking. I love this quote, the art of creating problems that aren’t even there. Overthinking is the art of creating problems that aren’t even there. Now, if I dare to enhance such a great quote, I would say it’s the art of creating problems that aren’t even there whilst missing the opportunities that are. Because by not taking action, we don’t learn. We don’t grow. We don’t discover new things in our art, new ideas. Won’t come to us. We won’t get the context. We won’t make the connections in our brain because we’re just sitting there going around in circles.

Keith Mills: (10:59)
And here’s the rub. Overthinking is fear of failure in disguise. That’s all it is. It’s a fear of failure. We say things like if I, if I just get started now, you know, if I do take action, then I’ll be too slow. You know, if I think about this, I could be more efficient. I’ll be wasting time if I get started. Whereas if I think this through and come up with a great plan, then I’ll take all of the right steps. I’ll be really efficient. Then the question becomes, but what is overthinking actually doing? What’s slowing you down. Isn’t it is the actual thing that’s creating the problem. Or if I just get started, if I just take action, then I’ll get stuck. I’ll get stuck somewhere along the way. Cause I haven’t thought this out thoroughly. So like you can see these are solving problems that aren’t there. Like I’ll be too slow. I’ll be stuck, stuck with what we don’t know. We haven’t started. And again, what is overthinking doing? It’s keeping you stuck.

Keith Mills: (12:07)
So again it’s creating the problem that you’re trying to solve. It’s creating a problem that isn’t there for you to solve. If I just get started, if I just take action, then I’ll be disappointed with the results, which means I’ll be disappointed with me, whatever those results are. The quality of the music, the speed that I took to get the music finished.

Keith Mills: (12:27)
The fact that I thought I knew more than I really do, and that’s been highlighted, you know, I’ve got taught, shining on me. I thought I had the solutions. I thought I’d watched enough tutorials. And ah, turns out I’ve been wasting some time along the way. And we can choose to keep wasting time by watching Loads of tutorials or we can choose to get started and discover that some of that was wasted time and that’s alright and I’ll get on now and I’ll make meaningful progress.

Keith Mills: (12:55)
But it’s the same thing, right? If I just get started, I’ll be disappointed with the results. If the result you want is finishing music, writing great music, what overthinking is doing is stopping you from doing that. So it’s this classic example of something that we do that creates the problem that we’re trying to avoid. Worth thinking about overthinking is creating the problem that you’re trying to avoid. Staying in your head is never the answer, getting started is.

Keith Mills: (13:34)
And here’s the killer with overthinking. And I totally caught myself doing this. You just go in endless cycles, there is never a solution. We don’t really learn new things. We just overwhelm ourselves with more and more ideas and it’s utterly draining and it consumes all your bandwidth. And this is the mad thing about it. The more you think about it, the more exhausted you become, the less chance you’ve got of getting started.

Keith Mills: (13:57)
Another great quote. I feel like it’s a bit of an episode of quotes, but they’re just coming at me now. Tiredness makes cowards of us all. So this was Cain Velasquez I first heard say this. I don’t know whether he’s the originator of the quote. He was a UFC heavyweight champion, cage fighting, absolute beast of a guy, Mexican chap. And he trained like an animal. The reason that he did it was because he said tiredness makes cowards of us all. If my enemy tires, before I do in the octagon, I’m going to win. So I better make sure my stamina’s there.

Keith Mills: (14:43)
And it’s the same deal with this. If we’re putting off starting something, it takes some courage and some bravery to get going. But if we exhaust ourselves with overthinking, tiredness makes cowards of us all. We won’t have the energy and the courage to get started. So it’s this kind of endless cycle of exhaustion, frustration, drain on our capabilities, in short it’s self-abuse. It really is.

Keith Mills: (15:15)
Sometimes you have to talk in those terms and wake up to how you’re treating yourself in order to move forward. Because that is really all it is. If you think about the outcome of this, you’re not getting the result you want. And instead you’re crushing yourself by trying to figure it out in your head and tiring yourself out. And here’s the rub. If you just stay stuck in this one place with anything, not just your music, but we’ll stick on art and music now. But if you stay stuck in one place and you don’t make progress, what happens?

Keith Mills: (15:51)
Start to get down, right? Start to beat yourself up. Negative self-talk comes in. Demeanor goes down that then affects other people. It affects your day-to-day life affects all the different things you do because something is weighing heavily on you. You’re tired from it. You’re not seeing any progress. You’re giving yourself a hard time. It’s a big deal to be aware of this too, to get out of our own way out of our head and into taking action.

Keith Mills: (16:20)
The long and short of overthinking is it’s worrying about the future, trying to solve problems in advance. When you simply don’t have the data, you simply do not have the information to process because you’re not doing the thing. You’re trying to figure it out. And you’re missing all of the clues and the hints and the tips because you’re not doing it. And you’re figuring out problems that aren’t there. You know, there’s that saying? We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, it’s a brilliant saying. Let’s not worry about it, let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.

Keith Mills: (16:53)
Because here’s the deal. Sometimes we take a different route and we don’t even reach that bridge. And sometimes we reach the bridge and it’s perfectly fine. There isn’t even a problem with it. It’s just a bridge. That’s easy to go over. And sometimes there is a problem with it, but we’re now more equipped to get over the bridge because we’ve learned, we’ve learned and we’ve grown as an individual stuff that isn’t happening when you’re overthinking, no one ever progressed and built their skill set by staying in their head. Nobody.

Keith Mills: (17:28)
Taking action is the only way to get the clarity, reduce the overwhelm. The thing feels overwhelming because we’re not starting. So again, we go back to that idea. I was talking about a problem of our own making. So how this looks too big. There’s too much. I’m overwhelmed by this. I’ll just try and figure this thing out. And then I’ll get started.

Keith Mills: (17:52)
And the very act of trying to figure it out is building in problems that aren’t there and increasing the overwhelm. The only way to become a great artist producer musician is to take action and to do it regularly, right? And this is one of the first things that we teach the new members when they join FMM is surrender to the process because that’s really what it takes. It takes letting go. Don’t think about it. Just let go take action. And of course your mind will kick off. And awareness is, you’re going to see from my recipe, is a big piece of this is to be aware that our mind will kick off. Particularly if it’s something new is something different. And in art, it’s always something new. You get used to the process. You get used to the workflow, but if you’re being original, it’s always something new.

Keith Mills: (18:44)
So there will always be a little bit of kicking off, right? And in the FFM the process and the system we teach is unique. It’s very different to what most people have seen before. And a lot of it is counter intuitive. So people are like, God, well, what happens if I do this now, what will happen in the future? How will this technique work later on in the track? I mean, if I do this now, I’m not used to doing that. Am I wasting my time doing this? Would it be more efficient to do that? Should I be learning this? Do I need a new tutorial? Won’t it be more efficient if I do this thing first or do it in that order instead? Boom. Your mind explodes. That’s overthinking for you. How on earth do you keep up with that? And can you remember all of those things I just said? No, of course not. That’s why you go around in circles. You can’t remember it. You’re not sure. You solve a problem that didn’t exist. Forget how you solved it. And then you think what is going on? It’s absolute madness. It’s an exhausting, scatterbrained approach.

Keith Mills: (19:47)
So whenever you’re doing something new where it feels like you’re stepping off of the cliff, you’re going to get that pushback. And so that’s why it’s one of the things that I always bring into the awareness of new members. This is going to happen. So be aware of it, know that these things are going to be flying around in your head and just like meditation, we’ll just let them pass and just trust the process.

Keith Mills: (20:15)
And I guess the great thing for members of a community, any community is that you have other people to lean on. And when you see that they followed the process and it’s worked and they say, I feel, or I felt rather like you feel now, then you can believe because you see other people doing it. We go back to this belief thing. Oh I do. I dunno, can I do this? This isn’t going to work for me. Someone else said, look, I was in exactly the same boat as you and this totally worked for me. Just trust the process. And then you have that belief to take the step forward, see other people succeed in and have their support is huge.

Keith Mills: (20:53)
So let’s move into the recipe. I’ve kind of alluded to a few bits here when I caught myself overthinking and it took a few goes because I was kind of up against it. We had so much going on. I kind of lost awareness of it. And these things sneak up on you. Right? And then I caught myself doing it and I was like, I’ve been doing this a lot in the last, probably couple of weeks. This isn’t doing me any good. I’m feeling run down here. And it’s of my own doing. And guess what? The script isn’t moving forward. How am I going to fix this? So I just came up with a little kind of plan.

Keith Mills: (21:30)
Step one, as I mentioned is being aware. So awareness is the key to everything. What we can’t see, we can’t solve what we can’t see. We can’t solve. And as I said, a lot of our beliefs and a lot of the things we do are on autopilot, we’re not even aware of the way that we steer our own lives and the limitations that we put up. So the first thing is to become really aware. If you’re someone who’s listening to this podcast right now going yeah, I do overthink quite a lot. Get close to what that feels like. When does it happen the most often for you?

Keith Mills: (22:10)
If you don’t meditate, I really recommend it. Even if it’s like 10 minutes a day, the Headspace app is perfect if you’ve never done it before, because it teaches you awareness and it teaches you how to recognize when you’re doing something, just let it pass. So become aware so you can catch yourself doing it.

Keith Mills: (22:29)
And then here’s what I did. And I think this works so well. You give yourself permission to think, but you set a timer on it. So think how that feels. On the one hand we could say, well I’ve done this. I’m doing this again. Oh my God. And the friction or the other one is, Oh, I’ve noticed myself doing this. I do feel that I need to think about this. Maybe how I’m going to get started. I give myself permission to think there’s 10 minutes on the clock. How much more relaxing is that? And when the 10 minutes is up, I’ll be as ready as I can be. And I’m just going to get going. And some good questions are, what steps do I need to take to get started here? Or even better? What’s the minimum number of steps I can take to get started? How can I simplify this to make it as easy as possible to get started?

Keith Mills: (23:30)
And what do I want to achieve in this session? So this is the old divide and conquer. This is the take the overwhelm of doing something massive and writing a piece of music is a big deal. If you particularly, if you haven’t done regularly, there’s a lot going on. So what do I want to achieve? I’ve got 30 minutes. What am I going to aim to get done in 30 minutes? But forget about quality. Just what is the process? What steps am I going to go through here? What is it that I want to get done? Oh, I just want to finish this session with a loop, a drum, drums, and bass in it. Or I just want to write some melodies. What is it that you’re going to do? And that’s like your little target and straight away, you can feel of the heaviness of this starts to go away.

Keith Mills: (24:21)
Now the voice might still come up. Yeah. But shouldn’t you learn this? Isn’t it more efficient to do that. And that’s where it’s really important to just go back to the fact that the answers lie in the process. Let’s go back to Chuck Close. Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us, just show up and get to work. All of the best ideas come out of the process. They come out of the work itself. So it’s realizing that the overthinking isn’t where the answers lie, that just doing this one other thing is not where the answers lie, getting started is. That’s where all of the truths and you’ll get close to the what is, and not the beliefs will come from and focus on the positives. Not all the things that might go wrong. Like that’s a choice you can choose to think, Oh, I might fail here.

Keith Mills: (25:13)
It might be too slow. It might be this. Or you can choose to say, I know I’m going to learn from this and I’m going to grow. I’m going to discover new things. I know that by chipping away at this bit by bit, I will reduce the overwhelm. I know I’m going to gain clarity. Okay. That’s good enough. It may not be the best possible thing I could do right now, but it’s a sight better than doing nothing. So I’m going to begin and I will learn what the best thing to do is by keep getting on, keep following my creative process, keep finishing pieces of music. And if the resistance is still there, I love this quote. I’m not sure who said this. The hardest part is just before you start. I love that because it really puts it into perspective. You’ve got up, right?

Keith Mills: (25:59)
So all I’ve got to do is just get over this one second gap between me not starting and me starting. And it is as simple as that. I’m either sitting here thinking about it or I’ve started. It’s like one second. It’s a one second moment. And that’s the hardest one second to do so the recipe awareness, permission to think in a short space of time, if you need it, of course, if you catch yourself and you know, I don’t need to think about this. I know exactly what I’m doing. I don’t need a tutorial. I don’t need more gear. I don’t need to read this review. I can just start then. That’s fine. But if you do think are not, I’m a little bit overwhelmed and not sure what to do. Take a breath, stick five minutes, 10 minutes on a timer and then take action and get started.

Keith Mills: (26:47)
Having faith that the answer will come from the process. So in summary, action creates clarity. If you take action, then you learn. You discover, you build and create your own inspiration. You learn about your music. You build yourself up, you grow, you develop as an artist. Overthinking is the enemy of this, it’s the art of creating problems that aren’t there whilst missing the opportunities that are and think about this just for a second. Like so many of these crazy things we do like perfectionism overthinking is trying to predict the future. Can you do that? Do you have that in you? You don’t, you wouldn’t be listening to this podcast. You’d have won the lottery for the 10th time running and be in the middle of the ocean on your mega yacht, of course you would.

Keith Mills: (27:43)
It’s impossible to predict the future. So it’s pointless. Overthinking is trying to predict the future, which is impossible. Therefore it’s pointless. And as we discussed, it’s worse than that, it’s self abuse. It is exhausting, frustrating, draining. You make no progress and you drag yourself down into the ground instead.

Speaker 3: (28:07)
So if this episode has resonated with you, it’s s not you, it’s not a hopeless thing. It’s not, this is you and you’re fixed forever. Brains have plasticity. We can change. We can develop. As you know, I’m a perfectionist. And I feel like that never quite goes away. But I have strategies for beating it. The same thing with overthinking. If something big comes up, there’s a strategy. There’s just a process to follow and anyone can follow it. But you’ve got to give it a try. Whether you try my recipe or you do something else, just know that you absolutely can overcome it. The secret is to get started. This particular recipe that I’ve given you worked for me every single time. I got a lot more done in a lot less time. I had a lot more energy and I was a much more positive person as a result when I caught myself doing it.

Keith Mills: (28:58)
So I hope you enjoyed the episode. Please do ping me. Reach out, DM on Instagram @iamkeithmills. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Are you an overthinker or a perfectionist? What gets in your way the most when you’re writing music and do you have any ideas of what you’d like me to discuss in the show? So a couple of the episodes I’ve talked about things that have been inspired by people reaching out, including some questions that I’ve directly addressed. Maybe there’s something that you’d like me to cover if I’m able. Absolutely. We’ll stick it on the list for you. So it’s @iamkeithmills on Instagram. I hope you enjoyed the show. Show notes are at finishmoremusic.com/087

Keith Mills: (29:42)
Do take care, happy music making, and I’ll see you next time.

Keith Mills: (29:56)
If you’re serious about getting your music heard and climbing the ladder as a music producer, one of the skills you absolutely must master is remixing. That’s why I put together a brand new completely free ebook for you called the art of remixing. It features the most prolific remixers from my Finish More Music community, sharing their strategies for creating successful remix projects, ready for you to share with the world. So jump over to www.finishmoremusic.com/remix and download your free copy. Now you’ll learn technical setups for creating your remix, how to add your own flair whilst respecting your original artists track, how to create quickly to a tight deadline, how to extract melodies and harmonies, and so much more, as well as taking the opportunity to get more of your creative output into the world.

Keith Mills: (30:56)
Remixing is an amazing tool for building connections with other artists and strengthening your relationship with label owners. In short remixing is essential. Try to think of a top level producer who doesn’t have a bunch of great remixes to their name. You can’t right? So make sure you master the art of remixing so that when your opportunity comes, you’re ready to take it with both hands and accelerate your growth in the music industry. The ebook is totally free. So dive over now to www.finishmoremusic.com/remix and grab your copy. See you in the next episode.