Transcripts

FMM092 – Are the odds stacked against you or for you? – Transcript

Keith Mills: (00:02)
Hi, I’m Keith Mills. And this is episode number 92 of the Finish More Music Podcast. And today we’re going to be talking about one simple technique that can make a huge difference towards whether you succeed in music or whether you fall short. Now it’s so simple that you can practice it in just a few minutes, every single day, and the impact it has on your creative journey will be profound. So you get to choose whether the odds are stacked in your favor, or whether you face a constant uphill battle. Curious to know what this is you should be. Let’s get stuck in.

Keith Mills: (00:49)
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, every week, we’ll dive into the mindset creative strategies that will help you to move further, faster along the music production journey. Hello, and thank you for joining me for another episode of the Finish More Music Podcast. So I hope you’re well, hope you’ve been

Keith Mills: (01:27)
Having a great week. You got a lot lined up. We’re smashing it out. The park, this coming week in FMM, we’ve got Jody Wisternoff coming in, which we’re all super excited about for a live master class for the community. So we had Nick Muir last month opened up a couple of these projects, one with the mighty John Digweed, and one of his solo tracks that was absolutely blowing it up. And the community loved it like a complete open book. And we’ve got the same now with Jody Wisternoff. So one half a way out Western, you know, a guy is absolutely smashing. It got loads of tracks out on a junior at the moment is going to be doing the same opening up his music and sort of given an x-ray vision of how his music works. And I think more importantly, a lot of the time he’s creative process, how he thinks about music, all of this good stuff.

Keith Mills: (02:17)
So that’s super exciting. And then on the Monday and Tuesday of next week, we’ve got our accelerator days for my high level coaching program, FMM Plus. So that’s two full days online doing a lot of kind of teaching skill development level in the guys up massively as a great runway into 2021 for them. And then there’ll be joined by the new members because we just finished assessing and offering places from the applications for joining my mentoring program for next year. And I’m absolutely delighted by the people that we’re going to be working with next year, who had joined in the group, really intimate group of music, producers, who I worked very closely with and the results that the guys got this year were literally off the charts. So describing them as you know, couldn’t have dreamed of this kind of progress a hundred times the progress I expected, all of those things.

Keith Mills: (03:12)
So it’s mega exciting age to have a bunch of those guys staying on to go again next year, where they’re going to end up, you know, so exciting, but also to be taken on some new guys as well. Absolutely fantastic. So as you can tell, I’m absolutely buzzing with everything that’s going on at the moment. And that’s going to inform this podcast and the episode along with the fact that last week’s episode, if you didn’t check it out, kind of on the social media dilemma was a bit heavy on the doom and gloom side. No doubt about it was a very serious podcast, a little bit controversial, I think as well, if you haven’t checked that out and you are a social media user, I do recommend it because there’s a lot of lessons in there that can be impacting you without even realizing it and kind of messing up career opportunities, collaboration opportunities, and so on in music for you.

Keith Mills: (04:09)
But anyway, let’s keep this focused on this episode and we are going to be talking about something that if you spend just a few minutes every day, doing it on this small task, it’s going to make you happier, more optimistic, more likely to set goals and follow through with them more resilient against setbacks. So if I told you that this just took a few minutes a day, you’d be interested, right? Well, it does. It’s super, super cool. And it’s not just about creativity. It certainly can be applied to that. And I thoroughly recommend applying it to your music outlook and your creativity, but like so many things that we talk about on this show, creativity is a part of everything that you do. Great, great quote for you, how you do anything is how you do everything. So we talk about this a lot. If you drop the ball in looking after your health, that’s going to affect your creativity.

Keith Mills: (05:10)
If you’re not leaning into your creativity and feeding your soul, if it’s a part of who you are, it will affect all the other areas of your life. You know, it affects how you show up in your relationships. It affects how you go to work and how you feel about yourself. Everything is interlinked in our lives and this particular thing, which is showing gratitude. Sounds really simple, but I’m going to talk to you about how powerful it is. This permeates through every single aspect of your life and your being, and will massively lift up your creativity as a result, because it’s not just focused on this one thing. It’s focused on everything. So it’s greater than the sum of its parts. So here’s the main point. The bottom line, the thing to away from this episode, if you regularly show gratitude for everything, everything in your life, then you cultivate optimism and resilience, optimism, and resilience, because gratitude helps us to take action.

Keith Mills: (06:18)
Because when we’re optimistic, we’re likely to believe that we can achieve more. We’re likely to follow through. We’re likely to set more goals. Think about it. If you have a positive outlook, you’re likely to set more goals and take action towards them. And when there are inevitable setbacks, because remember the universe is a place of duality. Sometimes things go smoothly. Sometimes they get an a, not when things are in a knot, then you’re likely to see the way forward. More quickly, bounce back more quickly. You don’t just see the cloud, the darkness, the problems, and sit there and soak. You see the silver lining. You see the opportunity in it. You have positivity. You infused with energy to move forward and gratitude will give you so much of this. The more you practice noting the good things in your life, the more you notice, the good things in your life. Tony Robbins, great quote for you. Scribble this one down for sure where attention goes, energy flows.

Keith Mills: (07:31)
The more you see opportunities, the more you look for opportunities, sorry, the more you see opportunities. So it’s a choice you choose. Do you want to be a glass is half full kind of a person or a glass is half empty. Do you want to be a person where life happens to you or a person where life happens for you? Now notice the difference in how this makes you feel, whether you feel lighter or heavier, depending on how you look at this. If you say, Oh, this thing’s happened to me today, how does that feel versus, wow, this thing happened for me today. Now your use of language and how you think about these things is your choice may not happen immediately. You know, sometimes things happen and we’re like overwhelmed by it. But very quickly, we get to a choice point of how we’re going to look at this.

Keith Mills: (08:32)
We can be grateful or we can operate from the reverse of that, which I think is entitlement. It’s life owes us something. It’s the reverse of being thankful, right? It’s like getting a gift when you get a gift from someone. I imagine. Imagine you say, wow, thank you. Maybe even if it’s a gift that you weren’t mad or thank you so much for this. Imagine if instead you were like, well, you know, I’m your son or your daughter or your brother or whatever it might be. I’m your partner. So you should have bought me a gift. Of course you should imagine operating from that place. Well, that’s what we have the choice to do with everything in our life. Be grateful for it. See the opportunity in it or feel that it should have gone my way. Everything should go my way. And as we know, when we think, when we operate from a place of life, owes us something, people are something the world owes us something. We don’t take responsibility. The government owes me something. This owes me something that owes me saying, we give our power away. We give our responsibility to it. So you can absolutely think of a time that this has happened to you, right? Life’s not fair. This should have gone my way guaranteed. And when that happened, did you spring into action and fix it? Or did you ruminate and soak and waste time? This should have gone my way. Life’s not fair. This happened to me.

Keith Mills: (10:15)
What happened? Did you spring into action? Did you fix it? Did you feel good? Did you feel strong, empowered, or when you act like that, do you feel weak, upset, stagnant? You don’t move forward. You ruminate, you roll about in it for a while. When you operate from this place of like, everything happens to me. Oh God, I can’t believe this has happened to me again. What else? Crops up. What’s the point? What is the point of me doing this? Self-Sabotage and do you blow it out of proportion? Do you try and make it as big as possible to justify it? Classic example of this? And I guarantee this has happened to everyone. My mum is the master of this. Like you’re in the kitchen. You think you’re having a bit of a bad day, everything’s happening to you and you spill something. I don’t know.

Keith Mills: (11:10)
Maybe the coffee granules go over that, that sort of things, a classic, right? And you rage about it. Oh, dang. You blow it all out of proportion. You make it a huge deal. And then incomes you your partner or more likely, it’s a mum thing. A mum comes in, you’re looking at the carnage, making out like it’s world war three. It’s the worst thing that ever happened and incomes your mum. And they see the opportunity to spring into action and not just clean it up, but clean it out faster and make the kitchen look even better and do it in like two minutes. And you stand back watching it, realizing that you are blowing this thing up. That was just nothing you just made to realize how silly and daft the whole thing has been because they just come in and pop up, leave it to me and look at that.

Keith Mills: (11:55)
See what you’re worrying about when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change, right? One person just sees an opportunity to get that fixed. No problem at all. And another person who’s caught in it and having one of those days, one of those wards, that point nothing ever goes my way, life happens to me. Days makes out like it’s a huge deal. So if you’re having one of those days, you might say, there’s no point going into the studio. Nothing goes my way. So why put the effort in, and you expose yourself doing this by generalizations. This always happens to me. Nothing goes my way. These are called generalizations, right? They’re everything. They’re all encompassing. They’re not just this single isolated event they’re blown up into the world is against me, the whole world. Everything always, nothing goes my way. So these are the things for us to watch out for. And you can see how, when we’re operating from this in place, this place of entitlement and not gratitude, how it throws a cloud over everything that we do, including our creative work, including the things that support our creative work may be our relationships. So this is a brilliant opportunity to take a long, hard look in the mirror. Are you a Moana, a complainer? Are you a glass is half empty kind of a person?

Keith Mills: (13:31)
Or are you that sometimes, maybe you that more than you would like to be that, does it create arguments in your life when you behave like that? Do you want to stay like it? Or do you want to improve it? Good questions to us. Self-Reflection it’s okay if you think. Yeah. You know what? I have a bit of ammonia gear. That’s all right. If you want to change it, that’s all right, too. We don’t need to beat ourselves up about it. We just say, wow, look, I’ve brought that into my awareness. There’s an opportunity to change. And in my experience, gratitude falls into your 80 20, the 20% of things that we’ll get 80% of the results. And the fact that actually only takes a few minutes a day. I think we can, 80 20, the 80 20 and safely say, this is in the 4% of things that will get you 64% of results in your life.

Keith Mills: (14:24)
It’s gotta be worth looking at right. Gotta be worth pursuing. So let’s look at some of the benefits of practicing gratitude as I see them. I’m sure there’s a great many more than this. First of all, it makes us notice more of the things we already have and that’s worth thinking about because when we show gratitude, we just see so many of the great things that are already around us, that we take for granted. That may be, we just think we’re entitled to on a daily basis, but there are just so many incredible things that you have so many resources that are around you light now to get you from where you are, to where you want to be. Black Friday is classic for this stuff, right? We’re always looking at what else do I need? What else do I need? If you are practicing gratitude regularly, you’d probably see more of the things you’ve already got. I bet you bought stuff. And then realize not too long after having it, you’ve already got something that does a job. Now, if you were paying a lot of attention to all the amazing things you already have, you might not need to go out hunting for anything new quite so frequently.

Keith Mills: (15:31)
The second thing is it fills us full of energy to take on the day. I mean, who wouldn’t be energized, looking at all the great things in their life. And if you do it early in the morning, boom, you’re full of energy and optimism to take on the day. And then I mentioned this thing about resilience and turning negatives into positives. And this idea that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. So when we have something that’s a setback, we can look at it and ask yourself, well, is it really because two different people will look at this through a different lens. One person will look at this as a setback, another, an opportunity to grow one person, a set back another, an opportunity to create a process. So this is a great thing. Ray Dalio, billionaire talks about this a lot, like fantastic, fantastic book.

Keith Mills: (16:28)
I can’t remember the name of his book now, but it’s a bit of a heavy read. As in it’s densely populated with great stuff. So it’s quite a lot to get through, but he talks a lot about embracing problems and challenges. And as long as you see them as an opportunity to create a process in which to overcome them again in the future, you’re onto a winner. And so we do that a lot, but FMM, you know, things crop up that we don’t expect. And we say, well, okay, how do we turn it into an opportunity to learn, to grow maybe to actually get something better out of this than we ever thought we would. So let’s be grateful that this opportunity has come up. And then how do we turn this into a process so that when this comes up again in the future, we’ve documented how to easily overcome it, how to just move past it, no problem at all.

Keith Mills: (17:20)
So is it a setback or an opportunity, a setback or the, the the opportunity to create a process to grow? Is it a failure or an opportunity to learn? Is it something that SAPs energy for me or something you gain energy from, but think about it. If you go into same thing in our heavy is, and it’s a chore, it will SAP your energy, right? Just by the way you’re looking at it. But if you look at it as a great thing to do, you’re going to gain or at least sustain yourself. So a good example of this is the member’s event that we have inside of FMM. So this is an opportunity for our members to upload their music. And when they upload their music, they give feedback. It’s one of the requirements to their fellow members and it is not throw away, nice tune, brave stuff.

Keith Mills: (18:10)
It’s something that takes awhile. You know, we provide full training on it. It’s going to take 30 minutes an hour, sometimes even more to write in depth, positive, actionable feedback that really boosts a fellow member. And they really grow from it. And people love the members event, but there’s two ways of looking at this. You can look at this and go like I’m going to upload my music. Cause I want some feedback what’s in it for me. Or you can look at it and go in and go like upload my music and I get to help people gratitude. I get to help other people. So imagine sitting down saying, Oh, I’ve got to get through this feedback now. How does that feel versus, Oh, I get to help somebody else grow, man. I get to boost somebody up today in the next hour, I’m going to listen to some cool music.

Keith Mills: (19:04)
I’m going to pick somebody’s track. And I get to really think about how I can help this person. Notice how that feels. One takes your energy, right? One boosts it, same thing, same thing is going to happen, but one is going to boost and one is going to SAP energy. And guess what? The quality of that feedback will be like if you’d go at it from a place of being lit up. So one of the things I show gratitude for every single day is that I’m grateful because I have an opportunity to make people feel special. So most of us do my role in particular as a coach and a mentor with a community of people that I get to work with is I have an abundance of opportunities to make people feel special. So when I approach the day like that, imagine how I feel.

Keith Mills: (19:57)
Do you think I go into interactions with people looking to go the extra mile? Like how can I really make this person feel good and make them feel special and help them to grow instead of doing just enough to tick helping that person off of my list? What, what a different kind of outlook, and that all comes from just a few minutes of gratitude every day. And the final thing is it dissolves anger, anxiety, depression, and not talking about clinical depression, just, you know, feeling down, feeling like there’s a bit of a cloud over that stuff dissolves. And I first read this in a book by a guy called Michael Hyatt. And he was talking about the fact that you can’t possibly feel like anxious and down and worrisome. If you truly are feeling grateful for the things that you have. And I’ve found that to be true, but you do have to really feel it as I’ll touch on in a second.

Keith Mills: (21:00)
Here’s the deal with this stuff? Like so many things we talk about it’s self-fulfilling and it’s backed by science. So your RAs reticular activating system, this is a part of your brain that notices things. It’s a part of your brain. If you’re walking along the road, reading a greeting, your phone, and you got to step out in the road, it spots the dangerous spots, the car, even though you didn’t see it is in the periphery of your vision or the faint sound of it, whatever it might be, boom, it’s on it for you. And it’s also the bit that matches up with a Tony Robbins quote, where attention goes, energy flows. The more you look for opportunities, the more you see opportunities, the more you look for problems, the more you see problems. That’s why we say someone’s our glass is half full kind of person.

Keith Mills: (21:52)
We don’t say sometimes they are. We say, Bob is a glass is half full kind of person. Why? Because the person who looks for opportunities consistently seized them. The person who looks for problems consistently sees problems. You either look for the cloud or you look for the silver lining and here’s this inaction, this RAs in action in a non fight or flight kind of moment ever gone to buy something like a car. And you decide, this is a car. I want you start looking at it everywhere. Right? You’re on all the websites. You’re looking at the car looking at, Oh, wow, how much will it cost? And dah, dah, dah. And you start feeding it into your mind. Then you go out and you notice that car everywhere. There’s more of them on the road than you’ve ever seen before. They’re like everywhere. Well, that’s this RAs in action, right?

Keith Mills: (22:50)
That’s this part of your brain that is now like totally zoomed in on this thing. Can’t stop thinking about it, seeing everywhere, noticing it absolutely everywhere. And that’s what gratitude will do for you. You’ll notice the things that are good in your life and the opportunities. Now, in case you haven’t guessed, I’m huge on gratitude. I fill out a journal every morning. I write down things I’m grateful for. I bring it into my team. In fact, when I stopped recording this podcast, we’ll start our Monday morning meeting. And yes, I am doing this on a wing and a prayer. And again, because we’ve been so busy getting it done at the last minute, but the first thing we start our Monday morning meeting within the team is gratitudes. We go around, everyone says what? They’re grateful for. It lifts up the meat in it lifts up the week.

Keith Mills: (23:38)
What a beautiful way to start the week. We do it every week. And then Mrs. ML saying that I think is amazing. When she’s not in often going asleep at night, she picks three things she’s grateful for just before she goes to sleep. And what a brilliant way to put that in your subconscious as well, really, really powerful things to do. Now, if you’re going to go for one of these things, if you were to pick anything, I recommend the journal. You don’t have to buy one. You can there’s loads of them online. You could just write this down, like one piece of paper, three things in the morning before you kick the day off, you will bounce into the studio. If you do morning sessions, you will tackle the day so much more alive. Brilliant quote for you. I know we’ve, we’ve got heavy on the quotes again, right?

Keith Mills: (24:24)
This one’s from Jim Roan. Awesome dude. The morning is the rudder of the day. Yeah. Your morning is the rudder of your dates. Steers your day. What you do in the morning sets you up for the rest of the day, but here’s the deal. It’s no good. Just saying what you’re grateful for. You got to feel it in every ounce of your being, you got to really feel grateful for it. Just let it seep into you. That is the way for it to work. People who just write stuff down, go well, do, but gratitude for the day doesn’t work. We’ve got to really feel, it really like drink it in. And what I like to do is not just sort of have it in a, in a journal, but have a full list. So you can do a list or you can have a journal, but I kinda like to transfer stuff over to one big list. And then every now and again, reflect on that. Imagine opening up a book. That’s just full of great stuff in your life. Great stuff about your relationships and your family and your work and your health and

Speaker 3: (25:26)
The world around you and your environment,

Keith Mills: (25:29)
All of these things. In fact, there might be a bunch of things you moan about. Look for the things you’re grateful for in those and see how your attitude changes to them. There’s always an opportunity. In fact, I’ve found there to always be one, of course, there’ll be the odd thing that goes on. That’s a catastrophe in life. But even in that, our approach to it will have opportunities. You know, now I’m going to end on a little bit of a warning with this, and that’s been mindful not to come from a place of lacking. When you live life from abundance, everything is happening for me, that’s really empowered. That’s really empowering, but we can nest gratitude in a negative lacking way of everything’s happening to me because we do it in a way that says this thing sucks, but at least I’ve got acts.

Keith Mills: (26:15)
The clue is the word list. I have less, but at least this thing is okay. I don’t have any friends. So it’s great that my wife loves me. Oh my dear. The world is awful, but I’ve got these one beacon of hope. I usually like crap. Music’s on grateful. This one turned out well ever catch yourself saying things like that or hear people caveating. What’s good in amongst a sea of crap. Well, that’s the thing to remember where attention goes, energy flows. So be mindful to be truly honestly grateful and not be couching it in my lives always rubbish, but this thing’s good cause you’ll focus on the rubbish. So there we go. I hope this was more of an upbeat uplifted episode than that. Then last week.

Keith Mills: (27:03)
To summarize, if you’re grateful, then you will notice more opportunities. Be more optimistic, set, more goals, go all in on those goals because you’ll see the good you’ll believe the good will come from it and bounce back from any setbacks or challenges really quickly. It’s all right to get knocked down that’s life. But the quicker you get back up, the quicker you get on the horse, the more successful you’re going to be, right? And the reverse of that is living from a place of lack. Then you’re going to be miserable. The world is against you. What’s the point? Why get started less likely to go all in and less likely to achieve the things you want in your life. This is a choice. So which one will you take?

Keith Mills: (27:47)
It’s a choice. So I’m going to give you one more choice. You can hit me up on Instagram at I am Keith Mills and let me know three things that you’re super grateful for. Start this journey, get that out, put it out into the universe, make it happen. Or you can not interesting thing I read many years ago when people learn stuff like this, a real opportunity, only 3% of them act on it. 97%. Don’t so that’s another choice. Do you want to be in the 3% who hits me up on Instagram and lets me know what you’re grateful for. Put your gratitude out into the world, make a commitment. Now be held accountable to it or in the 97% of people who go, Oh, that was awesome. I liked that. I enjoyed that and do nothing with it. Your choice, the 3% of achievers, the 97% just listen and let it.

Keith Mills: (28:34)
I pass by without taking action. So show notes, finishmoremusic.com/092 number 92. If you want to grab all the quotes or the bits and pieces that are in here, maybe you’re in the gym or driving. When the train didn’t have a chance to write it down, it’s all there for you. Do hit subscribe to make sure you don’t miss out on a future episode. Sometimes we do a couple of week and people have missed them. So hit the subscribe button and do stay safe. We’re coming up to Christmas now. So stay lit up. Be excited, have a runway into the next year, rather than a kind of flopping, letting it all go down the drain kind of last few months that you need to pick up strongly recommend you look at it as your launch into 2021. So yeah. Hope you enjoyed the show to stay safe and

Keith Mills: (29:25)
We’ll catch you next week. 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 his remixes. 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 finished 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. 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.

FMM091 – Social Media: Are you damaging your career?- Transcript

Keith Mills: (16:23)
And they talk about the algorithm and what the algorithm does is it shows you what it thinks you want to see. Now, this was invented with perfectly good intent, at least so we’re led to believe. And I see no reason to think otherwise, but the idea is, look, we want to keep you on this platform because there’s marketing on here and that’s how we make money. And the more we’ve got your attention, the more we keep you glued to Facebook or glued to Instagram or glued to Twitter, the more adverts you see, the more money we make, how do we keep you glued there? We show you the things you’re interested in. How do we know you’re interested in them? Because you’ve looked at something related to it. You only have to have a quick look in your profile on Facebook. If you’re interested to dig in there and you’ll see the data they’ve got about you and all the things you like, and that determines all the ads, you see all the posts that you see on your timeline and so on and so forth.

Keith Mills: (17:21)
And what does this actually mean? It means that you receive a one sided stream of information. So let’s say you’re a Trump supporter and you’ve gone and looked at some Trump related stuff. Some people were talking about right wing policies. Facebook will only show you stuff to do with that. If you clicked on something that was conspiracy theory, based on a conspiracy theory group, Facebook will show you more of that. See, you only get to see one side of the coin. It’s all you see. And you come across people who are ranting and raving, right as well on there talking about stuff. And there’ll be zero fact checking Facebook doesn’t fact, check this person who’s renting and telling you stuff and showing you graphs and giving you opinions. They have not been fact checked in any way, shape or form. And here’s a brilliant quote, Daniel, Patrick Moynihan.

Keith Mills: (18:22)
You can have your own opinions, but not your own facts, right? You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. Well that doesn’t actually fly on social media at all. People do have their own facts. And in fact, many of the things that you may believe to be true based on things you’ve seen or heard on social media may in fact be completely flawed because nobody’s going through that stuff, determining what is right and what is wrong. And it, because it’s backed by opinions and now there’s black and white sides of the coin, you know, with no gray scale, there’s no gray scale anymore between the black and white. Because if you’re only seeing one stream of information, you’re not having intelligent discourse with people who believe and see things differently from you. So when Brexit blew up, there was a huge rift, the remainers, the stuff, the quite frankly, violin of Horan stuff, they were posting against the people that were for Brexit and leaving the EU was disgusting.

Keith Mills: (19:28)
And it was all based on nonsense, all of it. And that went the other way. I gotta be really clear on this, but obviously because the remainers lost, they were more riled up. So they were exploding out with all these facts and stuff that had no basis behind it whatsoever, but there was a huge amount of hatred and each side thinks the other is completely wrong. And it creates this mob mentality where all together over here, we believe this and where, right? And you on the other side are bad, evil, you are wrong. And we’ve drawn a whole bunch of negative conclusions about you. And it doesn’t matter. You might share the same family values, religion career, many of the same political views, the same sense of humor, support the same team, our views on social, environmental, economic issues that all correlate with one another.

Keith Mills: (20:24)
If you were to meet each other on the street, you’d be best buddies, but based on one opinion about one single thing, this person is wrong. Evil, terrible is against you, is the enemy that’s what’s going on at the moment. I strongly recommend out this show. It’s really, really clear. And one of the guys they asked and here’s a scary thing that a number of guests on there, and there was this guy, and I forget exactly what his experience and position was, but it was something huge. Like he’d been the CEO of Twitter and instrumental in Instagram and all of these things. And they said, well, what do you see the conclusion of this? What could be like worst case scenario? And he certainly pondered on it for a second. And he said, I think this could lead to civil war in the U S and you know, we’ve seen, have we, not at these ones, militia on either side in the U S which is somewhat terror, terror, terrifying.

Keith Mills: (21:28)
There’s the word for ya? Easy for you to say like big groups of people wandering around with automatic weapons, like protecting what they believe is right. And a lot of it, this is fed by social media and the lack of fact checking. So you may go on there and rant and rave about something and you may be talking utter nonsense. And it’s just important to be aware of this, that the information streams are not necessarily fact-checked. And so I think there is value, and this is just my opinion, but there is value in being very skeptical about anything that you’re picking up online and particularly passing that on. And of course, when you do say something, even if it may be something small to now be aware that there are people who don’t even see a percentage of what you see, they see completely everything else, because that’s what they’ve been fed.

Keith Mills: (22:23)
They see the other side of the coin. You see black, they see white, they don’t see a gray scale, neither of you potentially do. And so Pete and people will twist stuff more than ever. We know we’ve got a strange culture now where people are just looking to get their kind of aggression out. So I think it’s quite dangerous landscape. Now, I am aware that I’ve spent most of this episode painting a very bleak, negative picture. Okay. I’m totally aware of that. And I think, you know, from what I’ve seen, it’s true from what I’ve seen. A lot of this is true, how you choose to work with it and take it on is entirely up to you. I just want to get as close to the, what is the reality is, is possible.

Keith Mills: (23:11)
And here’s the other side of that reality. Social media can also be utterly incredible. It’s an amazing tool for you to connect, to market your music, to find fans, to sell your products, to generate alternative income streams, to support your music, to discover new music, labels, new opportunities. It can be absolutely incredible, but it’s so important that we look at the duality, right, for every right. There’s a wrong up. There’s a down left, there’s a right. The entire universe is based on duality. And so for the good and the great and the opportunities. So there are the things that it’s important we’re aware of that could negatively affect us the risks that we may want to choose to mitigate the negative consequences that we may want to plan how to overcome it. This doesn’t quite go our way. And to just be aware that what might seem like a perfectly innocent in not curious comment, if made about one of the many, many, many sensitive subjects, there are right now on social media that could have a negative effect on your career.

Keith Mills: (24:25)
One, you may not even be able to see. So to wrap this up, I want to be really, really clear. I’m literally sharing what I’m seeing, the things that I’m noticing. I’m not an authority on this, and it is not for me to tell you what to, and what not to do with how you intend to show up. You have every right to your own free speech. And I wouldn’t dream of trying to clamp that down, just sharing what I’ve seen, what I do hope, however, is that I’ve bought something worth thinking about something worth bringing to your attention and perhaps giving you cause to exercise caution, and to take care before you take any action on social media. Maybe just to think twice, maybe that’s all. And that would be fantastic if I’ve managed to bring that into your world a little bit, because the division, the mob mentality, the viciousness, the aggression with which people defend and attack based on what they believe to be true, I think right now is a cause for concern and something worth having a conversation about.

Keith Mills: (25:36)
So when you consider posting, be mindful of protecting your own self-interests, but I actually think on a deeper level for society in general, it’s worth considering whether you are contributing to the problem of division and mob mentality and aggression, whether you’re firing these things up in people and bringing forth negative emotions, when you put your point across, I just think it’s worth considering that before you post or comment about anything to do with these sensitive topics online and the side with which you do or don’t fall. So there you go. Hope they’ve taught the, the line with due caution there and got a point eloquently got across, sorry, eloquently the point that I, I want to make and not falling on any side of any debate, it’s purely around the potential implications that you might experience or might not even know are affecting you online.

Keith Mills: (26:39)
It goes without saying, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. I think it’s a huge subject. As I said, I really think this is worth having a conversation about, so please do hit me up on Instagram with the DM at, I am Keith Mills. If you’ve done it before, you’ll know that I get back to you every single time. And if you haven’t done it and you think, Oh, maybe I’ll send him something and it just gets lost in the noise. I promise you it doesn’t, I’m not judgmental. I’m, I’m, I’m genuinely curious and interested. That’s kind of the stance I take in a lot of areas in this world, including creativity. I’m a scientist. I like to discover the, what is as much as I can and understand people and what they’re all about. And I’d love to hear from you. Show notes, finish more music.com forward slash zero nine one. Whatever you choose to do, stay safe. Keep a smile on your face. As much as you can be a positive force for good enough.

Keith Mills: (27:37)
And I’ll catch you in the next episode. [inaudible] 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 remixes. 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 finished 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.

Keith Mills: (28:46)
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 EBIT is totally free. So dive over now to www dot, finish more music.com forward slash remix and grab your copy. See you in the next episode.

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.

FMM079 – Letting your chance slip through your fingers – Transcript

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

Hi, I’m Keith Mills. And this is episode number 79 of the Finish More Music Podcast. And today we’re going to be talking about time now, beliefs about time, hold back. So many producers, and that actually stopped them from taking action. They stop them from taking the most effective course of action. So by thinking that they don’t have enough time to start, then they tend to start taking shortcuts. They try and fudge the system and these things, of course don’t work. And as a result, they end up wasting time and actually their beliefs about running out of time, start to become true. So in this episode, I’m going to uncover all of the hidden beliefs that surround this subject. We’re going to Chuck them out. And then I’m going to share with you the one simple solution that is guaranteed to make sure you don’t run out of time and is guaranteed to make sure that you get fast results. So let’s get stuck here.

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, every week, we’ll dive into the mindset creative strategies that will help you to move further, faster along the music production journey. Hello, and thank you for joining me on another episode of the Finish More Music podcast. So crazy, crazy busy week for me is filming week for a brand new training series that’s coming out and literally we’re going to start filming probably in about 30 minutes, maybe an hour. And here I am recording the podcast because I just wanted to get this script for this thing. I wanted to get this training as good as I could get it. And I’ve just been 24 seven. And so podcast days today. So if you’re someone who’s really on top of the podcast, if you’re a subscriber and you listen to it, as soon as it comes out, you are listening to it on the day that I’ve recorded it.

And on the day that our filming starts for the series. Now, if you’re interested in how series like this gets put together, cause it’s not the classic set in, you know, see my screen, what you mean, teaching techniques and mixed down and all of these cool things. On Ableton, it’s a properly produced series. We’re going to be filming it here in my studio. We’re going to studios in London, again to a club in London. If you want to see how something like this is put together a real sort of sneak peek behind the scenes. Then follow me on Instagram at I am Keith Mills. I’m going to be putting stories up and you’ll see exactly what it takes to put a series like this together. If you’ve been living under a rock and you don’t know what I’m talking about, this series is a three part training series.

It’s a workshop I’m going to be doing live training with it. And it goes live on the 8th of October. That’s going to be the first episode. So if you want to make sure that your catch that is FinishMoreMusic.com/waitlist. Now some people kind of go, Oh, I’ll remember that. Or, you know, our hope to find out about it. That is going to be a mistake because it’s only up for a short period of time and you want to get notified as soon as it drops so you can get in and you can get started. So it’s the 8th of October, finishmoremusic.com/waitlist. And it’s all about the creative process. I’m diving deep into what the pros do to succeed. We’ll be looking at a lot of the common mistakes that get made, how to finish more of your music, how to finish better music, how to get it released.

So it’s a super cool series to check out. And it’s a crazy crazy week. This evening that I’ve got our high level master in high level mentoring groups, sorry, and mastermind FMM+. So I’ll be jumping on with them, checking out their music, feeding back on it for them and helping them to take the next step. Then tomorrow wear off into London. I think it’s the club then it’s the other studio then back here filming. So it’s going to be a hectic, hectic week, but long story short, I absolutely refuse to drop the ball on this podcast. A I would show up and I’m showing up. It would have been so easy to say, look, I’m tired. I haven’t had much sleep. I’m going to stay in bed. But everything I talk about is discipline and commitment. And it’s something that I firmly believe in how you do.

Anything is how you do everything. You prepared to start dropping the ball in one area of your life, or you’re lackadaisical. You’re lazy. You don’t get started. You don’t make that commitment or that intention, it floods into everything you do. So there is no way as dropping the ball. And of course, I’m not letting you down either. Said I’ll be here and I am here. So what are we talking about today? We’re talking about a big one. We are talking about a word that holds so many producers back and just people in general, in their lives from hunting and chasing down. What’s really important to them. It’s one of the things that they, so that lay on the death bed and say, I wish I would have done this. I wish I would have tried that. And when you look back, one of the biggest things that held them back was their beliefs about time. I’m too old. I don’t have enough time. I’m running out of time, real hardcore self fulfilling prophecy beliefs. So let me kick this off with a beautiful quote from a guy called Earl Nightingale. Never give up on a dream just because of the time. It will take you to accomplish it. That time will pass anyway.

So let me drop that again. Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. That time will pass. Anyway. Now I’m not going to dive into the, you know, I’m too old. Subject. The reason for that is I’ve already covered that in a podcast. I’m not sure off the top of my head, which episode it was. But the guys will certainly be putting it in the show notes. So check that out. If that’s one that’s buzzing around in your mind, I’m getting too old, then check out the podcast. What I can say for you is that we have a bunch of members in FMM who I’m absolutely sure. And I know we’ve talked about it a lot with the guys who thought they were too old. They had exactly those thoughts. I’m too old. And what are they doing now?

Regularly releasing music in the studio every day lit up right in amazing tracks, having the gift of their creativity, being able to set in wonder as they build whatever it might be. Techno tracks, house, you name it. And basically being fulfilled in their life, following their passion. It’s who they are. They’re music producers now. So that is utter nonsense. The age one, it’s something from the dark ages. When you think about it, once upon a time, yes, people were lucky to live past the age of 30. And it’s not that long ago that people were lucky enough if they live past the age of 40, but that ain’t the case anymore, right? It’s such an outdated way of thinking. And we’re talking about music production here, or even DJing Sasha Cole, Cox, John dig, weed, Fatboy, slim, David Getter. All of these guys are over 50 and touring the world.

We’re not talking about, I don’t know, playing football for Liverpool or arsenal or whoever your team is. We’re not talking about saying we have bonkers physical constraints. We’re not talking about that at all. And a lot of people say things like, you know, DJ is like a fine wine. The older you get, the better you become. And I think a lot of people can argue that about production as well. Certainly there’s a whole group of up and coming people who are doing amazing. And maybe you don’t get better as you get older. You know, you don’t magically be a better music producer when you’re older, but you’re certainly not hampered. There’s nothing holding you back from doing exactly the same as everyone else. So let’s just park that because we know that that’s not true, but if it is on your mind, then please do go back and check the other podcasts.

Cause I really break it down for you and help you to shift that belief and get it out of your way. Let’s stay with this concept of not giving up on a dream because of the time it will take to accomplish it. So this is, I think is gonna take too long. Now what happens when we think that, well, maybe we don’t get started. So if you’re thinking, Oh, this is, this is going to take me too long. I’m not going to get started with it. I won’t do it. Therefore I won’t get started. Well, what happens the time passes, right? And then it really truly does take too long to accomplish. And maybe something happens in your life that takes over for you. Remember if you don’t design your life, somebody or something else will something always crops up, right? You know, best laid plans.

I can’t remember what the saying is you plan and plan. You think about it. You think about it. And then eventually something’s going to come and fill that void because you didn’t already fill it. You didn’t already put your flag in the ground and say, this is what I want to do. You didn’t show the commitment and the intention. So if we think it’s going to take too long to accomplish it, we might just not get started. But here’s what I see a lot of struggling producers doing. Instead, let’s say it’s going to take too long to accomplish it. And I try and look for shortcuts. So they start flipping around on YouTube, trying to find the magic bullet as though one tutorial on YouTube is going to unlock the door. And now they’re a kick ass music producer. Now we know, even when you hear that, when that comes out of my mouth, of course not, of course not.

But what happens if we’re doing that? If we’re flitting around and looking for the master fix so to speak well, we’re not really truly honestly getting started. And so the time is passed in anyway and eventually it will take too long to accomplish it. You see the cycle that we always get stuck in with these horrible limiting beliefs or another thing is perfectionism trying to create a masterpiece like I’ll try and shortcut the system. I know that every top con every top producer has finished an abundance of music. And by finishing loads of music, they’ve leveled up their skill in every area of music production. And that’s why they’re great music producers. I know that to be true, but I think it’s going to take too long to do that. And therefore I’ll just try and make this track. Absolutely perfect as though if I can make one track. Perfect, that’s it? Oh, we’ll have again, unlock the key. I would have figured it out. And therefore all of my tracks from here on, in are going to be amazing.

And of course we know that perfectionism, that all perfect is impossible. We know we’re never going to hit that ideal for a start. So we’re setting ourselves up for failure. We’re setting ourself up for wasting time where focusing on one track, trying to make it something is never going to be because we don’t have the experience. And as a result, time is passing. And I guess you can liken this a little bit. Like let’s say you were playing tennis and you were like, okay, I want to become a great tennis player. And yeah, sure. I see Roger Federer and Rafa Dow and Andy Murray and all of these top guys on the court day in, day out playing, they’ve played all the different matches, all the small tournament’s all the way up to get to where they are in their career. But not me. I’m going to get my tactics just right. I’m going to find that magic coach. I’m going to stay on this court and practice. And then I’m going to walk onto Wimbledon and I’m going to win it on my first go.

Not going to happen. Right? Of course not. So there’s a choice point here. You can either choose to stay in perfectionism or looking for the master fix in the belief that that’s how you’re going to get to your dream and that’s going to shortcut it. That’s going to mean that all of a sudden, it’s not going to take very long to accomplish it. Knowing that that time is definitely passing. And actually it’s the it’s taking you longer. You can stay stuck. You can stay in the anxiety and the discomfort and the angst that it creates because you’re not seeing the progress you want, or you can choose to get started and actually start making music and actually start finishing your tracks and going forward. And here’s the deal. And this is the magic of this. When you do it, you discover the truth. You discover that it takes less time than you think, because a belief is a lie, right?

It’s even got the word lie in it. A belief is something that isn’t true, but we hold it to be true in our world. It is true. So if you say, Oh, it’s gonna take really long to accomplish this and you don’t get started. How do you know you haven’t really truly gotten started, but when you start, it takes muscle much less time than you think. Inside of FMM. We have got producers who are releasing on like mega labels, Hot Creations, Ruckus, Switches, Matador Records, Defected, Toolroom, Swara ,Viva, Affin, Analytic Trail Lost, Get Physical Voltaire, Magician On Duty. I mean the list the list goes on. I can just keep tripping them off my tongue. Right?

And all of these people did this in way less time than you would think. In fact, most of them accomplished it in under two years or around the two year Mark. When I think of people like Sorley who you probably know from his track Deadeye, that was top of the beat port charts on defective. He’s now got a track out on Warner. There’s another label for ya. Like once he dialed in and really started and started following a process, it took him, I think less than two years, Mha Iri, another artist, who’s killing it on the techno scene. She’s been touring around the world. She’s DJing like a huge name now out in Australia with our nights, I’m headlining everywhere, releasing on all the big techno labels, getting same kind of turnaround, Mark Jenkyns, Doug Young who’s part of then. Paul Locke who’s like huge in deep disco.

And here’s the thing. This triggers that other belief, right? Yeah. But they’ve got more time than me. I’m busy. I’m like, I’ve got all the commitments and they don’t, it’s just another excuse. Right? You can either have results or excuses, not both what a beautiful quote that is as well. You can either have results or excuses. Not both say is the, is the bomb foyer? Not one of those people were full time music when they got to that level. Now some of them are now they’ve transitioned. They’re following their dream, but they all have jobs. You look at Paul Locke had twins unexpectedly full time job still did it. They’re just excuses or crazy beliefs that we have. The secret is, is getting started. Most members of FMM will have their first release in months, not years. A great many of them think about that.

If you’re thinking how long this is going to take to get you places. And if you look into the history of a lot of the big acts that are out there, you’ll find that actually it didn’t take them decades. They did some of this stuff in three, four, five years. They went from their first release to being in, for example, the top 100 DJ chart. That’s not uncommon. Jamie Jones, Seth Traxler all under 10 years and tail of us. In fact, I think most of those run disorder, the six year Mark of the top of my head. So you can achieve amazing things, but you’ve got to get started now in full transparency. And I want to be really, really clear here. All of the people I’ve just talked about in FMM, they have a proven process to follow. So I guess it’s get started plus follow a proven process, follow creative process that you know, for sure works because we both know there is a huge difference between trying to get to a destination without a map and trying to get there with one, if I drop you into the middle of a jungle, you’ve got no idea where you are.

You’ve got no compass and you’ve got no map then sure. You’ll get started. And that’s definitely better than sitting still or trying to think, well, I’ll sit here and figure it out in the middle of it. Getting started is still better. But of course, knowing where you’re going, what you’re doing and having tools to get there is what’s really gonna make the difference. So really to add one more point to this, it’s getting started. It’s having the intention, but it’s also having the commitment. It’s not sitting around waiting for it to happen because it’s not going to magically happen either. Right? We can’t make excuses. We have to get started. And it’s about putting your flag in the sand and saying, no, I’m not having this anymore. I can see all these other people are able to do this. They’re managing to do it quickly.

I can do it. Nobody has anything else that you don’t. I can assure you. It’s not a matter of talent. It’s not a matter of the gear. It’s not a matter of the time. It’s not a matter of having some kind of formal education because not one of the people that I’ve just talked about to you had any of those things, not one of them. It’s not about that. It’s just about getting started drawing your line in the sand and saying today is when this starts for real. I’m going to make this happen. So let’s wrap this up. There are no shortcuts, okay? That is an absolute illusion. And by trying to fudge the system, thinking that it’s going to save time, it’s actually going to waste time and it’s going to make that real, that it takes too long to accomplish this. You really will run out of time.

If you continue to try and fudge this and not get committed and get started, it is dedication. It is commitment that is required. Anybody who joins FMM, I hand them the process, right? I hand them the map here is the proven process. We know it works. Thousands of people have followed it. Thousands of people have got results, but if I hand you the process and you don’t follow it, what’s going to happen. The same thing as trying to shortcut it. So it’s dedication, it’s commitment. It’s getting started is taking action. Those are the things. And then you’ll get the results far, far, faster than I think you can imagine. Long story short commit a long story. Short story is a choice for you. It really always down to a choice point commit get started and start seeing the results that you really want. Stop being a creative start, living that life that you really want or let the time pass anyway.

And during that time be anxious, be unsettled, be uncomfortable and tell the day that comes where you really kick yourself because you blew it. So you either get started or you stay stuck in this belief. It’s going to take too long and actually make that your reality. So little bit of tough love, love, sorry. But sometimes it takes a little bit of kick in the pants to, to get things going. The world’s your oyster. We live in an amazing time. We’ve got all the gear, all the communication you can learn from people. You can be around people. You’re not stuck on your own in a studio anymore. The whole world is available to you online. All the tools, all the gear or the opportunities or the labels, incredible time to get started, just make it happen. So how do you feel about that? Let me know.

I am Keith Mills hit me up with a DM. What thoughts about time? Hold you back. Did you have thoughts about time and you’ve managed to overcome them? I’d absolutely love to hear from you. I promise you I’ll read it. I’ll get back. Even though it’s a busy week, I will be on top of this and I will get back to you. Show notes, finishmoremusic.com/079. Take care, check out the old stories on Insatgram as well. Cause it’s all going off. It’s going to be a mad week and I’ll speak to you very soon. Book the 8th of October in your diary. Now I’ve been cooking up something really special for you. A brand new completely free, Finish More Music workshop with one goal in mind to get you finishing more and better music. Even if you suffer from overwhelm perfectionism procrastination, sitting in front of your DAW, completely at a loss for where to start.

This is a three-part online video series with limited spaces. So jump over to finishmoremusic.com/waitlist right now and secure your spot. The last workshop was a huge success. We have producers. Who’d struggled to finish any of their tracks for years, literally hammering out tunes in just a few short days. So if you have that voice in your head that keeps telling you you’re not cut out for writing music or you’re too slow, or you’ll never make it as a music producer. This series will change everything for you. Let me show you how a few simple tweaks to the way you think and approach your music will completely transform your productivity in the studio. You’ll achieve a lot more than you can imagine in a very short space of time. Grab your spot now at finishmoremusic.com/waitlist. And I’ll see you in the next episode.

FMM078 – Tenerfuse: Backing Yourself To Go All In -Transcript

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

Hi, I’m Keith Mills. And this is episode number 78 of the Finish More Music podcast. And today is the start of a very special series in which we’re going to be hearing about the journeys and lessons from a number of the producers inside of the Finish More Music community. Now I’m super excited for these case studies, because they’ll give you the opportunity to learn from producers, just like you, people who have huge ambitions and who have also wrestled and overcome a variety of challenges and blocks along the way to see the awesome results that they’re achieving today. Now, I think stories like these are incredibly powerful because so often it is just one piece of information that is all that it takes for you to flick a switch and see huge change for yourself. So today’s episode none other than my main man, Chris Forsyth, AKA Tenerfuse.

And I know that this session is going to resonate with so many people because Chris recently backed himself to make a move that most creatives dream of. He left his day job to go full time with his music. So in this episode, we’re going to talk about the risks, the rewards, the lessons Chris has learned, as well as the power of investing in yourself, personal development, and the key characteristics you require to make such a move. And also Chris shares a really emotional journey of his own personal battle with addiction and how with dedication, with commitment, you can achieve anything, literally anything you put your mind to incredibly powerful episode. Now, before we dive into the full show, I want to give you a quick reminder that the new Finish More Music workshop is going live for you on the eighth. Okay, October. So yeah, jump over, finishmoremusic.com/waitlist it’s completely free.

It’s a three part video series and it is designed to fast track you from finishing little or no music all the way to consistently finishing tracks. You’re proud of it’s all about getting your music out there about getting releases about seeing constant upwards growth as a music producer. Now, fair warning. I only put it up for a short period of time because I do live training with it. So you’re going to want to make sure you don’t miss out by heading over to finishmoremusic.com/waitlist. If you’re someone who find yourself procrastinating, wasting your valuable studio time, and maybe try course after course, all the YouTube tutorials, bits of gear, loads of the latest software. And none of it seems to work. Then jump on this video series it’s for you. I’m going to shine a light on the real changes that will make a difference and get you accelerating towards your version of success. Yes. Okay. So that’s finishmoremusic.com/waitlist.

Let’s get stuck into today’s session is to Finish More Music 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, every week, we’ll dive into the mindset creative strategies that will help you to move further, faster music production, Jen. Hello, and thank you for joining me on another episode of the Finish More Music podcast. So absolutely delighted to be joined by the main man, Chris Forsyth, a K a Tenerfuse and Epic member of the community. And it’s got so much to talk about really, really excited about this episode. So Chris, thank you very much for joining me. How are you man? Doing great. Thanks for having me, Keith really appreciate it. Yeah. And I absolute pleasure be wanting to get you on the show for a while, because I know you’ve got a fascinating journey.

You’re doing amazing things at the moment as well. And what have you been up to lately? Jeez, a lot. I, you know, spending my days pretty much working on music from sunup to sundown with some breaks in between. You know, and then also looking into exploring a kind of a secondary career, especially given times in, you know, with Colvin and everything and not having any live shows at the moment, you know, exploring a secondary kind of side gig with coaching life coaching and trying to use my experience with you know, some of the things I’ve been through in my life to, to help other people, you know, achieve their goals and things like that. But I, I would say that most of my time is spent working on music. You know, I try to wake up pretty early and put in a few hours in the studio and then hit the gym, you know, come home do a little reading and rest kind of recharge a little bit and then, you know, try to get another couple hours, few hours in, in the afternoon and evening.

But yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s really all the bulk of my time is being spent. And that kind of speaks, I guess, to something that’s happened in the last 12 months, which is you moving full time into this, but I think really the last kind of 12 month period is pretty fascinating across the board. So what is that book for you and what’s been happening? Yeah, it’s been it’s been crazy. I mean, if I, if I look back to, I mean, you know, a year ago I was, you know, for a long time I had been thinking about, you know, music is all all that I like think about from sunup to sundown, even if I’m at my job, you know, I’m

Thinking about what I’m going to do with my music when I get home. And unfortunately, you know, I would get home and I would be tired and I wouldn’t be as productive. And I felt like I was just leaving a lot on the table. So since I had been thinking about it for years and years, I felt, you know what, I’m going to give myself this chance. I’m in my early forties and I’m just going to give it a shot. And, you know, I had faith in myself that I would land on my feet if something were to happen, you know, I can always go back to work. You know, I built a pretty successful career in the finance industry. And you know, I just, I felt like I needed to give it a shot or else I would potentially look back several years down the line with some regret that I didn’t just at least try, you know, so I I’m kinda made a deal with myself that I would give it all of 2020 to to just commit to my music and also like explore some personal development, kind of just see where things sort of take me over the course of the year.

And yeah, it’s obviously been a wild year given all of the, you know, extenuating circumstances that are going on around us, but it’s you know, I dove right in, I joined FMM plus it was it was something that I knew I was going to have the time for the energy, for and commitment for to really dive into the community and the process and you know, doing that has been huge. And it’s, I, I would have never guessed that I would have achieved what I have by now. Not that it’s like amazing. And then I’m like living off of my music and like making an income from it. It’s like sustainable, cause that’s not happened yet, but you know, it’s been an amazing journey and I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’m, I’ve established some new relationships that have just been incredible new friendships that I think are going to last year. So yeah. I mean, it’s just, it’s been a lie. It’s been a whirlwind, but it’s been quite the experience.

Yeah. So I think a good thing to get into. That’s interesting, as you mentioned, obviously, the personal development side of things, what happened from a musical perspective as well. And because I know that loads of people are really keen to step out of a nine to five something that perhaps they’re not that lit up by and they, you know, I love how you put it, you know, you’re going to back yourself, you’re going to give it a shot. What’s been the effect of that on your music? Well

Personally, it’s, I’ve had the creative energy and focus at the beginning of the day, which is when I am most creative and most focused like in the morning where I was spending that time in an office environment you know, over the course of 10 hours, Monday through Friday and now like I wake up and I treat that I treat music like my full time job. Like I, I clock in basically in the studio every morning and regardless of how I feel you know, I make sure that I just put myself in the chair and start working. And it’s been, obviously my output has, has went up tremendously. I’ve I think I’ve finished since January, you know, over the past, like what nine months or so I’ve finished somewhere around like 50 or 60 tracks. Maybe a few more.

But like the quote not only is my output as far as quantity increasing, but the quality is increasing as well. And I’ve had time to, you know, making music is obviously the core of my job, just like when I was in finance underwriting and looking at financials was the core of my job. But there’s other ancillary parts of your job, like networking and building relationships and then like trying to learn the social media and all of that stuff and just kind of, you know, exploring all of those different parts of the career, I suppose. But yeah, I mean, as far as, as far as the music, it’s just been you know, quantity and quality is increasing because I’ve been dedicating more of like my high energy times of the day to doing what I love most

Sure. And I mean, you’ve got the payoff and the validation as well, I guess, releasing on iconic is no mean feat and you’ve got a bunch of other releases, but you know, you’re hitting labels now that, you know, for sure, you know, there’s, it’s all well and good, you know, you’re going like, okay, the quality is going up and I’m saying, okay, I’m your mentor. I can hear that Chris, the quality is going up. And then you get like that extra layer of validation where somebody else is saying, no, listen, we want that track. And that is a tough label to get on as well. How did it feel when you got the notification come through that they they wanted you to sign on the dotted line for that?

Honestly, I was, I was shocked. I, you know I’ve always thought less of my music than what I typically get feedback at, you know, at the level I get feedback of at the same was the case when I sent off my first three tracks to a label H digital and the label affiliation before when I started at FMM I was like, well, you know what, I don’t know. I’m going to just give it a shot, see what these guys think. If nothing else I’ll get some feedback far as like,

You know, your low end is shit or whatever. And and I can, you know, build and try to get better from there. Well, you know, they came back and they were like, no, we like all three of them. We’re going to release them. And it was the same thing with, with iconic. I was just like, I think these are good tracks, but you know, my opinion of myself as much lower than I guess, reality is, you know, since it’s been proven. So so yeah, it was, it was, it was amazing. And it’s, it’s been a, it’s been a great experience, you know, just getting that message and like the support and encouragement from, from the FMM staff and the people and, and members in FMM. So it’s yeah. And iconics an awesome label. And John is a great guy to work with and, you know, so, so that’s been great too, so

Totally. And it’s like I say to you, of course, we all know you’re your own worst enemy. All of us are. That’s kind of how it is when it were your own worst critic as a, is a better way of putting it when it comes to the music. But it’s not a one off. Sometimes people have a peak where like the one hit wonder syndrome where people are a much lower level. Skill-Wise, they’re not able to consistently write that music, but sometimes the muse hands, us that magic moment and attract comes out and then they get that track signed on a bigger label, and then they can’t back it up. And then the labels ask him for music and other people are in the pressure’s too much and they can’t handle it. It becomes really sort of a big difficulty and a big weight to carry in the studio, but you’re consistently writing at this level unquestionably. And I mean, you must be able to see that even if you were surprised that they were going to do it I think I’d be really interested to hear, you know, about how you feel that you’ve got to that level of consistency. What are the biggest factors for you? That’s got you from that stage perhaps to compare to where you were a year ago.

Not a good question. I think, you know, it’s a, it’s a few things. One is just hours in the studio. It’s, like I said, regardless of how I might feel, I know that I just need to put my ass in the chair and start writing open up Ableton and just start cracking away. And just doing that and continue like repeatedly going through the process has been, you know, it just kind of strengthen those muscles. Like, it’s just like kind of going to the gym, you do it repeatedly and you just, it gets, it gets easier. There’s still things that are, you know, really hard for me to this, to this day. I mean, as of today, I’m like trying to work on making my transitions better and like, it’s really hard. It’s like, it’s like doing a squat for the first time.

And after I do it, I’m like so sore from doing it and like just mentally exhausting from working on, you know, two or three transitions. But over time, you know, that’s how it was before with my drum programming and over time, like it just gets easier. And now I have you know, go to sounds that I use go to kind of channel strips that I’ll use to like, make my drum sound a certain way or make my bass sound a certain way. So, so that has helped just like the repetition collaborating has helped a lot collaborating with a couple of guys through, you know, events in the community. And also just like, you know, on the side with you know, guys like Juris who goes by from one of my favorite CoLab partners and I’ve learned a ton from him.

I mean, the guy’s, he’s just a wizard. He’s got like 95 tracks in his, in his, in his projects. And it’s like, I just, I’ve learned a ton from just working and sharing projects, going back and forth with, with him. And there’s others as well. You know, that in the community, there’s another guy Brian, that he you know, makes a genre completely different than mine completely. It’s like, I make stuff around like one 22, one 24, and his stuff’s like one 12 BPM, one 14. So like learning from him and like developing a happy medium from him has been, has been huge as well. As far as just like strategies that I use to improve my own sound reference tracks have just have been huge metric AB that’s. That’s like one of my GoTo plugins just for like track analysis.

It just does so many things for, for AB in your tracks. And yeah, so you don’t want to, one of my recent struggles, for instance is I was having trouble with really getting more definition and clarity in like my one K to five K region where like, you know, a clap might hit and I just didn’t have a lot of action there. So I just like brought up some reference tracks. I, I isolated that frequency band identified, like what was going on there and then just practiced and tried to replicate it. And then once I thought I had it replicated, I sent a track out to a label that I was kind of targeting and was like, Hey, you know, what do you think of this track? Thinking that, you know, if he did again, if he didn’t like it, he would tell me he didn’t like, it didn’t want it. And he was like, I’ll take it. You know? So I, I didn’t have to ask for feedback specifically on that one K to five K region. But I was hoping that I might get that feedback if he didn’t like it, but he liked it. So I’m like, it must be doing something right. You know, targeted me. And

I think there’s already a kind of thing developing through this, in that a lot of times you’re saying, I wasn’t really sure about it, but you did it anyway. You actually took the steps. So with like, when we look at this, you’re saying, okay, so I knew there’s a leap to say, okay, I’m going to share with my day job and I’m going to go for this. Okay. There’s iconic. I wasn’t sure I went for it. No other label. Wasn’t sure. Went for it. And you get them results off the back of it by backing yourself. And it’s kind of, as we say, magic happens outside your comfort zone.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, that’s a, that’s a really good observation actually. And it’s something important too to know is that, you know, there’s a lot of fear in sending something that could be criticized or judged or rejected or whatever, in any case, no matter what you’re doing in life and what the thing is, is like, until, you know, like you don’t know, and you can’t make adjustments to change direction or choose an alternative path or, you know, or, you know, whatever. I have the, I have another body in the, in the, in the program here that he’s been wanting to send his tracks out for awhile. And, and me and another guy are just like, dude, you gotta send, just send it out because at least then, you know, and you’re just going to stop talking about, well, what if, what if, what if, because one door closes another one opens it’s cliche, but it’s so true. And in my experience, I really do just believe that everything kind of works out. If you, if you treat yourself right, and you treat other people, right. Respectfully it’s things just kinda like work out for you and maybe I’m privileged. And, and I, you know, I feel very grateful and fortunate to be able to say that, cause it’s probably, maybe not the case for everyone, but you know, in, in my case that’s been my experience, so,

Well, I mean, we’ll, we’ll jump back to an earlier time in a moment because obviously there’s probably a time in your life when you weren’t thinking like this, which we’ll get to in a second. And I think that that’s probably, I’m gonna balance that out, but just getting to that idea of even you talking to this guy and saying, you know, the, the what F I think one of the important things for everybody to absorb here is that the same level of thinking that got us to wherever we are now in our life is not the level of thinking that’s going to get us to the next step. If we don’t do something different, if we don’t try something different, if we don’t roll the dice, we’re never going to progress to that next level. It’s something that I do with a team all the time.

It’s like a, it’s one of our big things in our meetings is okay. We want to get to here. We’re here at the moment where like further down the ladder, we want to climb higher. We want to get these results for our members. There’s no point us just saying, Oh, well, we’ll keep doing what we’re doing. Weeds. Let’s bring new ideas. Let’s come with saying crazy. Let’s think of saying risky and then take the step. And like you said, that’s when you get the feedback, that’s when you’ll learn or recently for you, not when you get the feedback just on the sale. Yeah. Lovely. Chris, we’ll take that track, but you now know, notice, step up another level and another level and another level. And you know, it’s brilliant that you’re doing that. So I want to kind of jump backwards here, but I, I want to segue into it a little bit because you’ve written, is it two, two blog posts now I’m calling them blog posts to kind of more like articles.

Yeah. There’s, there’s, there’s three, three out there on medium. And then I dunno, like three or five on my website, but yeah.

Yeah. Right. So, I mean, we certainly, so website is what, Tenerfuse.com. So people want to check that out. And then on medium, who do they search for to get to the, these options?

It’s medium.com and then Chris Forsyth,

Right? So it’s like slash press Forsyth, any hyphens in there or anything funky.

You know what, I don’t actually know what the URL is. If you just go medium,

We’ll find it. Don’t worry about it. We’ll find it and get it in the show notes. I want to specifically point out to them. And it’s not just the like, Ooh, promo for Chris type thing, because they’re really insightful. You thought a lot about them. They’re beautifully written. I said this to you, you know, they’re a joy to read when you share something like that. And it’s like a, it’s a big amount of your thoughts and experience. Most people wouldn’t get to the end of it, but they do because you’ve shared it. And you’ve had so much great feedback because it’s so well written and comes from the heart. And that tells a lot about your story. So people definitely want to go and check that if you’re listening to this, make a note of it, for sure. But I think it’d be great to explore some of it now. And I’ve just alluded to the fact that at the moment, you’re saying I’m super, super privileged. You make your own luck. And there was a time when that wasn’t the case. So if it’s cool, let’s kind of jump back to them and paint that picture for me. Cause I think it’s a really inspiring story for people. Yeah,

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, first I just want to touch on, I, you know, I, I’ve shared these stories about sending out tracks to labels and getting these surprisingly wonderful results. But I have had tracks be rejected by labels. I’ve had tracks not even listened to by labels. That’s just the way it goes. You know what I mean? It’s kind of like, I look at it like baseball or any other sport, you have an average and you’re not going to bat a thousand. It’s just, it’s just the way it goes. And I, I think that, you know, I’ve kind of accepted that and that’s been helpful for me. So just, yeah, one kind of point of clarification there, but yeah. So you were, you were asking like as far as like stepping back a little bit. I,

Yeah, so kind of the journey, so you talking about being privileged now, but obviously you’ve had your battles and struggles and you’ve had your music and the life and how that’s all kind of intertwined. And I think it’s always really great to hear the story behind

The success that you’ll get into. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s kind of like where to start with this. It’s like you know, as, as a, as a kid, I suppose I had sort of a tough childhood, not in that, like I had a tough family or background or anything like that. I was very blessed in that regard, but I was a little guy. So I was sort of an easy target. And so I took my share of like beatings and bullying, you know, as I, as I grew up in, in you know, it it just kind of shaped me in a way, I feel like where I had to discover coping skills or coping mechanisms that worked for me. And, you know I think that one of those that I went to was in the primary one that I went to was, you know, drinking and drugs.

And, you know, it started with drinking started with soft drugs and just kind of like evolved over time. And you know, not to say that like, it’s completely at fault of like what I experienced as a kid, but you know, it kind of went, it kind of went into it and you know, eventually it just, it, it overtook me you know, I guess backing up a little bit, like I didn’t grow up in a musical household or anything like that, but I loved music. I just always, always playing music in my room and you know, always had headphones on and listen to all different genres of music. I think my first taste of like electronic music was listening to like pink Floyd. You know, you might not think of it as electronic, but they had a lot of synthesizers and it was like dreamy.

And I just, I really loved that vibe you know, naturally and probably because of like some artificial assistance as well there, but but yeah, it was you know, I, I liked that, but my first taste of like dance music was probably prodigy. And then nice first tie. Yeah. Yeah. And like that, it just like lit me up. I mean, the intensity of the, just, I just remember like the intensity of the snare drum in Firestarter, like was just like, so just smacks you in the face so hard. And I, yeah, so, so that was like one of my first taste of dance music or electronic music along that genre. But what really lit me up was Oakenfold transport. That was, that was like where it all started as far as like, I want to be a DJ kind of thing. So I started DJ and when I was probably 23, which is a little bit late in the game at least what I was thinking back then. But I remember

When I was DJ-ing one night and opening up for max Graham. And he, I told him, yeah, I didn’t start till I was 23 and I’ll never forget it. He was like, well, DJ. And it seems like it’s like a fine wine. You get better with age and I’ll never forget that call from him. It was really inspiring. You know, he was kind of one of my idols when I was opening up for him still is. And so yeah, so that was cool, but, but but yeah, I mean, I was very much tied in with the music or the music and the partying we’re, we’re joined at the hip. And I couldn’t go out and just like DJ and go home and have a beer too. You know, I, it was, it was multiple drinks and then other substances and it just like over time continued to get worse.

And I thought, I always thought to myself when I, when, when I see that this is good. Yeah, bad, I’ll just stop. And I thought that I had that ability to just kind of put the brakes on. But you know, it’s proof game that when that time came and I realized it, like I might be able to stop for a weekend. But you know, I think, all right, I’ll try it again next weekend. And I’ll go out and I’ll have a gig or whatever. And, you know, I just was never comfortable in my own skin. And, you know, that was just the way that I got comfortable in the DJ booth. Not only when I was DJ-ing, but just being out around people. So it was the way that I socialized it you know, it obviously affected my producing, which I started with Ableton.

I think it was like in 2005. And like, my DJ-ing was taken off at that point. I was living in Arizona and Arizona at that time. And I was opening up for guys, you know the idolize and you know, I, don’t not here to like name drop, but just to like, for perspective, like I was opening up for guys like Nick Warren and on bills with dig weed and dead mouse who was coming on at the time Armin van Buren, you know, a lot of like good names. So I was like having success, but I could not like keep clean, you know, I just in, yeah, it affected my development as an artist. It affected my ability for like to have output and from a producing perspective, I’m sure it affected my DJ and skills. I’ll be it. I thought I, they didn’t at the time, but I’m sure that they, that it did.

But I think what it affected more is my relationships. In fact, I know that it reflected that more. I started losing friendships. I became more isolated no longer was I going out and partying to be social. It was like, you know, just for the high and then I would end up like alone. So it was just, it became very dark. You know, so needless to say like, kind of all just fizzled out over time. And fortunately I was able to maintain my professional career over this, this whole period. I think that that is where all my energy went. So when I would be hung over, like my energy would be completely focused on keep my fucking job, you know, keep my job at all costs. So like music took a back seat and same with the relationships.

Well, you know, whatever long story short, like I tried a lot of times to get help. And I went to rehab several times with some success, you know, some periods of sobriety, but you know, it wasn’t until 2016 when pretty much I set myself away for six months and really just committed to do everything that they said to do that I started to gain some traction. And at that point is when kind of my music interest in music and momentum with music was sorta like rekindled, you know? So rambling a little bit there. I apologize for that.

No, it’s a thing, you know, it’s wonderful that you’re being so candid and so open, you know, I think it’s, it’s really nice to, you know, be able to have an interview with you and you’re just literally laying it on the line. Like this is the deal, this is where I’ve come from. And, you know, these are the, some of the dangers and the risks because in most of us who are into electronic music either are still into the party scene. Granted it’s on hold at the minute, but I’m sure it’s going to come back, you know, tenfold or have been in the party scene. And certainly, you know, I did more than my fair share of bits pills and potions as we call it in the UK. That’s kind of a, the name for it. I did more than my fair share of that stuff as well.

And I’ll be the first to put my hand up and say that, you know, granted when it was time to, well, I say when it was time to stop, I probably should have stopped many, many years earlier when I look back on it, the real fun and the enjoyment and, you know, I had a great time of it. I wouldn’t take it back for shit, basically. I loved it, but there was probably if I’d have had a bit more clarity, a good number of years earlier, I dunno where I would be in life now, you know, where the writer at that, those extra years of a head start for sure. And I’m sure loads of people can relate to this. So I don’t think, you know, there’s even a mere rambling, I think there’s so much value in it. So thank you. So when the music starts coming back into things, how is that like, does it work as a crutch for you and it’s a help? What was the impact overall? I’m really kind of curious because obviously the, the addiction swamps out the music, which was great. And then it starts coming out the other side. I’d love to kind of understand more the interplay then.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I think you know, it was something that I needed to be hyper aware of. You know, like the last thing that I wanted to do well, I may have wanted to do it, but I knew that I shouldn’t do it and I didn’t do it was to like hop back into going out to clubs so four in the morning and thinking that I could just like deal with it and, and avoid participating in that stuff. Cause I just wasn’t, I wasn’t strong enough at that point, you know? So I, I had to separate myself from this scene for, you know, several years. And I actually moved at the time I was living in Northern California, kind of near Tahoe. And there wasn’t much of a scene in that particular area. But before that I was in Chicago, which is, you know, it’s a hop out and it was, you know, there was always something going on.

So I didn’t have the temptation in Northern California, but at that time after rehab, I decided that I needed to move home and be closer to family just to kind of get my feet under me for a little while. And I left the corporation I was with for 15 years to come home and just kind of refocus and get myself centered. And you know, where I live, there’s not really much of a scene either. So I wasn’t, you know, putting myself in the midst of it. I knew I couldn’t. But like the producing was always sort of separate than the scene. Like I could, I could separate the two. So like the producing has always been more meditative for me, even if I’m feeling like anxiety or maybe a little bit down, I can open up the VAW and get stuck in.

And next thing I know, three hours pass and I’m like relaxed and I feel, you know, good maybe frustrated at a tune or something like that, but, you know, but overall, you know, I feel, feel a little bit more docile. So it was a, it was a kind of a coping strategy in a way. And then like music has kind of turned into more of like my addiction. Whereas like if I don’t do it, like then I just, I feel off, you know? So now it’s, it’s turned into it’s. I realized through the whole process and like going through like recovery and the general sense that I needed, I needed to be doing something that engages my heart and you know, and I need to spend the majority of my time, my waking hours while I’m alive doing that. If I’m doing something that is not feeding me like that, then I feel at odds.

And I learned that because I went back into the corporate world which is where I was before. And it was a great job, a great company, great people. But I was just, I just felt at odds. And so the music one, the biggest reason really that I took the choice of like giving this a shot is that like, it fills me up more than anything and there’s gotta be something to that, even if it’s not in the long run that I’m meant to be like, you know, a producer DJ for my life. It’s going to kind of like I hinted at before, it’s going to open up some other door. This, this step along the way is going to open up some other door along the journey. That’s going to show me where I need to be. And maybe that’s fluffy, but it works. I swear by it. So it’s my story. I’m sticking to it.

Well, if it’s fluffy, that’s going to be okay. Cause listeners of the podcast are used to me talking about this stuff. So if we’re fluffy, we’re fluffy again. And so I think there’s a couple of things that I really picked up on there. First of all, really what you’re describing is music is food for yourself. And it’s, it’s part of who you are and that you’ve then taken that. And there’s a really interesting thing here, which is that a lot of anxiety and discomfort and issues that we face is when our internal world doesn’t, isn’t mirrored by our external world. So internal reality and external reality, and you know how you are, you’re in a world shapes your outer world. So if inside you have dreams and beliefs, but you’re not acting on it and you’re not doing the things that are congruent with it.

There’s always going to be a friction and this underlying discomfort that’s in your life. And it’s amazing because you’re aware of it and you’ve seen it and you’ve adjusted course. So that’s the first thing is like, if there’s something that we really want to do in our life is to make it happen. And as you will know you know, for us working together, I’m a firm believer in that you are in control of your own destiny. You design your own life. It is on you. You’re responsible for it. And it might not be so a life you can step into it, the click of a finger. And that this will be interesting for us to talk about as well. I think, which is the, and we’ll get to this in a minute, which is kind of your advice about taking the leap into full time music.

I’m sure you thought about it some time before it happened. You prepared for it. You didn’t just click your finger, but you didn’t say, well, this is me and I’m stuck. You said, there’s a way I moved from a focus to an opportunity focus. So I think number one, that’s super powerful. And I picked up on that and the other one is the idea of the vision. You know, what you want to get and where you want to go with this. But you also know that the vision’s flexible because we don’t know. What’s just, it’s kinda like, it’s almost like having a map and saying, right, my destination is there and it’s five years away. And if you set out somewhere and you planned into your GPS or whatever it was, and you’re going to drive for five years or even three years to a location, there absolutely will be road works.

And there will be things that you discover along the way that may be make you say, you know what actually prefer that destination over there? Well, the roots will change or all kinds of things will change. So it’s not really fluffy. It’s a case of, if you sit where you are now, no new doors will open because you’re stuck in a problem focus. And if, instead you say, look, I see an opportunity. I’m going to go for it. Then other doors might open and you get to choose what you’re, you’re stepping into. You know? So I I’m, I’m picking up loads of great stuff. Just listening to your, I love

One thing just to kind of like jump in on that. I think that’s a great point is, you know, my mindset today. And this is stuff that I learn every day, like this, this, this I’m always learning. And I like to just maintain an open mind at all times to like new bits and bobs of information. But like to your point, life is life is, you know, we only have like right now in this moment. So what I’ve tried to focus on is like being in love with like the process, because we can think about the future about like, this is where we want to be. This is like what I want this check to sound like, and I want to be on this label and I want to DJ this show and, and all that stuff. But like, it’s, what’s happening right now. Like we live in this moment. So like really focusing on like, do I really like what I’m doing in this moment? And if, if I do, then I feel like that momentum is just going to continuously build. And I, yeah, I have a vision, but like you said, like it’s about building the momentum of the process and where that takes me could be even better than what my vision is, you know?

Yeah, totally. It could end up to be wildly different. Normally isn’t from what I’ve seen, you know, from, because obviously you, you reach three years and three years and three years. So although our vision is always out in front of us, we get to where we thought we would be. And certainly in my experience of having these visions, I normally haven’t deviated massively from where I hoped I would be. There would just be kind of tweaks and things that you bit like when you’re writing your music and it really gets brilliant, an apt talking to you because you were like, okay, I think I want to write this music and you stared it off for a bit. And then you came back. So the even genre moves and the only way you’re going to find out is by keep writing the music and keep trying.

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s mirrored all the time. If we, if we see something and we want to go for it and we want to do something, we’ve got to do something different and we got to try it and we’ve got to find out. And I think this matches up really brilliantly with what I also wanted to discuss with you, which is that you’ve made these changes and you’ve made these leaps. And one of the things I always observe about you is how much you’re prepared to invest in yourself, always. So what are the biggest things or the maybe the most impactful things that you’ve invested in that have helped you with your music journey and to get you following your vision?

First of all, is my health and wellbeing and mental, my wellness, you know if I see that something is off about how I’m feeling, you know, it could be, it could be physical. Like I’m, I’m the type of person that like goes to the doctor quickly, you know? Like if I don’t feel good or like something is off about how I’m thinking, like I’ll talk to someone about it, you know? So I think that in investing my time and, you know, taking the time to, to uncover what’s going on with me is my number one way of investing in myself. I don’t, I, I, I try my best not to let things faster and, and bubble because that’s sort of what I did for a long time. And I saw with that resulted in me coping and other ways.

So what I try to do now is just face my face, whatever I have going on had on personally. And and that’s been huge. So that’s been a big investment in myself. And then through that you know, just, I do a lot of journaling and journaling just opens up a lot of just like perspectives that I may not think of. If things are just kinda like stocking, you know, bouncing around in my head, like putting it down on paper helps a lot. So investing that time in journaling and like making lists and like just staying organized in that way has helped me to choose where to invest in formal training or in, you know, even like plugins and like to level up sound or something like that, you know, and I, I try to be very intentional with my my choices nowadays. It’s not, it hasn’t always been the case and I still struggle with it, you know, but just having that awareness of this is why I’m doing it, and this is what it’s going to cost me because there’s a sacrifice

Involved in, in making a choice you know, and just kind of weighing what feels best to me. And a lot of times it may not be the most logical decision, but I do tend to trust my gut and my heart when I’m making, making decisions and things like that. As far as like you know, one of the very important things with FMM is I, I definitely want to call out is just the community and investing in having a group of people, hundreds that are likeminded trying to do the same thing. And, and it’s been proven time and time again, that like the community as a whole is very open and invested in trying to help one another. And that’s something that I’ll like I want to continue to invest in, you know, because I live in an area where I don’t have, there’s not a lot of people here that do what I do.

And so, you know, in-person relationships are ideal, but if it’s not possible, then you know, online is good too. And with zoom and everything, like I’ve developed friendships with guys in London and Copenhagen and Amsterdam, and we talk weekly on zoom and it’s, it’s cool. So, so in that regard, and then really it, once I identified like, listen, like this is really something that I want to level up, I’m going to try to do this full time. And I really want to level up my production and my mindset and my whole like career perspective on this, getting like a mentor has been huge and like working with you directly in the program has been, has been awesome. And I actually just invested in formal training for my coaching certification because I determined this is something I definitely want to do. And it was worthwhile for me to invest in, in in that.

So one of the things I, I had mentioned to you before is that like, I’m spending some, some of my savings right now to finance this whole venture for myself and, and it could be looked at as being careless. And I understand that perspective for sure. But I see investing in myself longterm as being a more worthwhile and less risky with a higher potential for return investment than I do a 401k or the stock market. It’s just like how I view things right now. Now I could be slapped in the face with reality in 10 years, and that may not be the case, but I don’t think I, I believe that. And I, I’m determined to prove that that’s the case,

You know, so yeah, I agreed. Yeah. And I’m very much in that, that kind of area as well. And it’s, it is this fascinating kind of thing. And I guess I can speak to this as being an entrepreneur, which is a world that you’re stepping into as well now with your coaching, you know, it’s something that you’re going to start taking on clients and your being your own boss, living your own life, and with it comes higher risk. And as we know comes higher reward, but here’s one of the fascinating things about this. As you go along that journey, the more you’re going to learn about all different aspects of entrepreneurship, just in the exact same world thing that you are in the music. And if an idea goes bad, or if a label goes bad, or if any of these things goes bad and it all drops back down, people think, well, how am I going to get that back?

Well, it’s really, really simple how you’re going to get it back. You’ve built yourself up to be the person you can get it back. If my entire world dissolved pretty much tomorrow, how long would it take me to get it back? Not that long, cause I know exactly how to do it. And so, you know, I’m certainly not going to sit here and give financial advice, you know, as to whether people should, what they should invest in pensions and all of those things. But I agree with you and investment in yourself and in learning and in getting around the right people, you build yourself up and you can always get back to where you were much more easily than I think most people would imagine, you know, bar catastrophes and things like that. But if we’re talking about in the normal realms of life and even how you handle yourself or the lessons that you’re learning or the investment you’re putting in yourself, and I guess it kind of talks to what we do in FM and plus as well, right?

We talk about an 90 day goals and you really put in an extraordinary level of effort into him because of who you’re going to become in 90 days time, whether we hit the goals or we don’t, whether we get the vision or we don’t, who we become is a very different animal to who we were before and what can that person now achieve. And so I really agree with you when you talk about investing in yourself, it’s the fastest way to become a much better version of you and a much better version of you can achieve so much more than you would have done a year ago, for example. Yep, yep. Yeah, for sure. Well said. So what about other lessons? I mean, we’ve been through a load here, so you might just say good, good God, man. I’m out, but are there any other big lessons that you’ve kind of learned maybe in the last year? Yeah. Yeah. I think number one lesson for me has been to you know, live by the whole acting breeds motivation, and it’s not the other way around, like a lot of times I’m just not feeling like it in the studio, but I

Know what I need to do in order to give myself the best shot to reach my goal. So just put my butt in the chair and getting to work. Usually once I start doing that, the motivation starts to come in. I would say that’s one two is develop a sense of like, self-awareness this may not be for everybody. I understand some people, you know, don’t necessarily need to do this level of self, self exploration and that’s, that’s fine. But for me, like I’ve, I realized that you know, I need to understand why I’m making the decisions that I’m making. And I need to live intentionally. So it’s not, so I’m not left like second guessing and making like impulsive or compulsive decisions. So that would be another one. Another would be to regardless of where you are, like try to build some type of, or be part of some type of like community, even if it’s just a handful of people.

And if you are in part of like a big community, try to find a couple people within that huge community to be really close with. That has been huge for me. And you know, having those like friendships and that support and encouragement to just kinda like bounce things off of musically and otherwise has been huge. And then, you know, just put in the time it’s it will come and doing so with a clear mind. So like you remember what you’re doing has been more successful for me than, you know, otherwise, like, you know, doing it with a clouded mind or, you know, with six beers in near whatever. So, I mean, I do, I do just want to say like, this is, you know, this is totally just my story. And like, you know, not everybody is, is you know, is, is like me. And I don’t think that anybody should should or shouldn’t act or behave in a certain way. You know, this is just my story and that if it can help anybody, you know, that would be like the biggest reward possible. So

Yeah, man, I’m totally sure that it will. I really am. One of the things that you were kind of talking to in there that I thought was great as well, when you’re talking about it being intentional versus the cloudy mind for most people and it, granted there will be, some people are like just somehow tuned in all the time, but it’s more and more difficult to be that way now because social media is, is a weapon effectively. You know, you’ve got the marketing minds, psychologists, you know, Facebook, Twitter, these people, they, you know, they employ YouTube geniuses in the field to put stuffing your head and to make you get sucked down into rabbit holes and to effectively for large parts of our lives, living in a bit of a trance and that, so I actually, you know, I’m, I’m really behind what you’re saying in terms of, I think now more importantly, I’m sure than ever having awareness versus living in a trance is so important and being intentional and saying, you know, I don’t want my life to just keep going this way to be on this hamster wheel for it to be Groundhog day all the way all the time.

So I want to make that change, which is kind of the theme I think of this podcast, which has been great about making a change and investing in yourself that requires a deliberate effort to be aware and to make changes and to make choices and not to be lost in the, Oh, I’ll do it next Monday. Oh, I’ll do it in a month for the first of the month. Why is the first of them up so magical? What happens by then? You’re still at your in Groundhog day, you’ve kind of got sucked back under the water again, and the first has gone. So what we go, wait another month till the first, you know, so I think totally, it goes hand in hand, right there being intentional aware and getting out of the trance to make the changes in your life, which is cool. So let’s end up just with going back to st. We discussed earlier that I promised that I would touch on like the big change in your life of going full time in music. And that is a dream for a lot of people to be able to in whatever guys have their creative passion actually be their day job. When you made that change, what would be the biggest piece of advice that you could give to someone to think about if that’s something that they want to do

Go into it with out expectations to you know, don’t, you’re, I knew that I knew going into it, I wasn’t doing this for the money. You know, I wasn’t, I’m not doing it for like fame or like anything like that. And if you are, that’s fine. The money, I would say probably may not be the best, like reason to do it because especially now without live gigs, it’s really hard to like make income from, you know, you’re not making a lot of money from streams and sales on be poor and things like that. You know, so just, I would say that no, no, your why is as most important. And I, you know, to, to that point, I guess I don’t want to backpedal a little, but if, if you’re, why is the money if your, why is the fame then make sure that the steps that you’re taking when you make the decision consistently are feeding into that motivation.

So like, if it’s about the money, then you’re going to want to like, you know, have an incredible volume of releases. You’re going to want your social media to be like crazy, because it’s all about like promo and marketing nowadays. And you know, like your strategies is going to be different. So so really just understanding your why, and going into it with low expectations. And then it’s really just like anything else in the business or career world. Like, I think that it’s about like the connections in the relationships that you build and foster. And, and, and again, also just like the business and career or any other career is like, you’re going to continuously have to like do development and training to stay, not up to speed with everything that’s going on in the industry, but if you want to separate yourself, it’s an extra level. So, so yeah, I would say those are the main things.

Yeah, sure. I know Chuck quantum from my experience as well, which I’d say preparation is everything. One of the things that comes up in the community quite a bit will be a question around like, I really want to go full time, but I think it’s super, super risky. And actually it’s super risky if you make it super risky. It doesn’t have to be that way. So like, you spoke to the idea of, well, you’ve got a career you could go back into. And certainly that’s what I built. I was like, okay, I want to do this full time. I’m going to make sure that my CVS such that if this doesn’t work out and if I can’t do this and I can’t, you know, follow my vision, it doesn’t pan out. As I hoped I can go back into a career without too many problems.

The other thing that I did was say, okay, well, let’s make sure I save up enough money to act as a buffer so that that’s not going to be a risk because the minute that we were freaking out about money and we’re trying to be full time, it’s pretty difficult not to have that as a distraction if it’s weighing you down within the first couple of weeks. So, and there’s a whole bunch of other things that people can do, but I think that you can prepare. So you were talking about if your goal was to make money from it then, okay. If you know, I’ve only got this amount of money to see me through, we’ll make sure your music is good enough before you then got to take the leap. You know, we’ll make sure that you’ve, you’ve got a schedule and you’ve got mentors and like, you’ve say, peers, what is it that I’ve actually got this going to prepare me towards why?

So I think there’s the, like you say, there’s having that clarity around it. And for me, there’s like so in the case, what’s the run up. What’s actually going to put me in the position to give me the best shot of doing this rather than just floundering around. And I, and I personally don’t think the risk is anywhere near as huge as people think it is if they strategize and they plan a little bit like just a as a complete offshoot, one of the things that the British special forces, like the SAS who dares wins these guys, whenever you watch anything about them, they say, you know, yeah, fine. They’re all super trained, but they’re more prepared than anybody else to bring the risk down. And I kind of think it’s that. So. Alright, man, absolutely amazing. Thank you very much for jumping on. I do want to find out what’s next for you though. You’ve kind of alluded a little bit to the coaching. Maybe you want to talk about that and your music, what’s that? What are the next steps? Yeah. So

Working right now on getting a certification to become a life coach or, you know, what I’m going to probably work in or focus on is, you know, life transitions, career coaching. Really just if, if someone might be feeling stuck in an area of their life, you know, just trying to help them navigate through that because I’ve had help doing it. So I, I kind of want to just give back and I, I, I have a psychology degree, so it sorta just fits in with like with with my with my background musically I have several remixes that are going to be coming out here shortly on another life music which is a label run by a former member of FMM that I was put into contact because of FMM and like, he’s become one of my best friends now Patrick Suna and he DJs under the name by NAMEC great guy.

And I’ve through him established connections with another label that I’m doing a remix on through groove nine. Then I have another remix coming out on massive harmony the release coming out on iconic, and then I’m also going to be working with third Avenue which is really exciting for me as well. That’s still kind of in the works, but yeah, and then I have some, some some collabs that I have that I’m working on with with another guy from the community architect. So it’s, yeah, I’m very busy with with the music projects right now, which is fantastic. And that’s kind of one of the things that I never would have imagined. Like I knew that I would be making music, but I didn’t ever imagine that I would have these relationships in place. It’s such a broad scope at this point in the game. So that’s been, that’s been, but thank

You very much for having me on man. It’s been, been awesome. Listen, you’ve been absolutely awesome. Really honest, candid felt like I was kinda on the journey with you. And I say that as well. You know, when I read your blog post and stuff as well there is a real authenticity and honesty that you speak with, and it’s fantastic to hear. And I think it’s going to be helpful for so many people listening to this. And just from my own personal perspective as well, having worked really closely with you this year, you’re an absolute star. You’re a fantastic person to work with your studious, committed, dedicated you invest in yourself. And you’ve just got such a wonderful kind of outlook on how you’re going about achieving the things that you’re achieving. So I actually just want to extend my thanks to you for being who you are, because it’s a pleasure to work with you.

That means a lot to you. Thank you, man. Thanks very much for being on the show. I got a feeling that this time, probably even earlier than this next year, I’m going to have you on a game because you’re achieving so much and I reckon you’re going to have even more to share. I hope you’re right. I’m banking on it. May if I was a betting man, I’d bet on it. Brilliant stuff. Thanks very much, Chris. Thank you. Okay. What an awesome episode to kick this series off with? I hope you enjoyed it now before your head off, I want to play you. One of Chrissy’s releases. He’s a kick ass producer. So you’re going to love this track is called awaken. It’s out now on an awesome label. Iconic. You’re going to love this piece of music as always show notes, finishmoremusic.com/078. So check those out, stay safe. I hope you enjoyed the show. Check out this tune!

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FMM077- Stealing like an artist or like thief? – Transcript

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

Hi, I’m Keith Mills, and this is episode number 77 of the Finish More Music podcast. And today we’re going to be talking about stealing. Artists throughout history have been inspired and influenced by one another, but when does this cross the line? When does stealing like an artist become stealing like a thief? So in this episode I’m going to share some of my personal experiences on this topic with you, and it’s going to include something that happened very recently that went the entire way through to legal proceedings. So we’ve got a lot to get through. Let’s get started.

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.

A pretty dark topic, and I’m particularly interested in getting to the bottom of the difference between stealing like an artist and just flat out stealing, just ripping people off. So, steal like an artist, this term came from the book by the same name from Austin Kleon. Absolutely amazing book. If you haven’t read it, some really interesting concepts in there for creatives. And I totally resonate with what he talks about, and we’re going to get into that in a little bit more detail as we go along.

But the reason why I’m doing this podcast now is actually not because of this book. It’s something I read ages ago and regularly returned to, because it’s got some great lessons in it. But it’s actually, unfortunately, because we have experienced recently, and we do quite a lot, but recently on a large scale, somebody completely ripping off Finish More Music. And I’m delighted to say that we went the full hog with the legal proceedings and we got the result we wanted, which was absolutely fantastic. But nevertheless, it’s a lot of time, energy, and effort having to go around, and when you spot people who are taking your stuff, deal with them. It’s pretty unpleasant, and nobody wants or needs, or I would concur really should have to go through this.

So it’s kind of a natural byproduct of your success in this day and age, and probably going back pre-internet era, I’m sure, but now it becomes more and more obvious, with the internet. And so in our situation, we teach people and we get them to release and we help them to reach their version of success, and as a result, we’re very visible now. And so when we’ve got people in our community who are posting all over their socials their delight and joy at the different milestones and benchmarks they’ve hit, and we’ve got incredible producers, people who have been absolute the top, number one position in the Beatport track charts, which is with all the top producers, everyone you’ve ever heard of. They’re there at the pinnacle of that pile of individuals. And we have people releasing on all the big labels, Suara, Microphone, Affin, Viva, Analytic Trail, Defected, Toolroom, so many of the big labels that you’ve heard of. So it brings a lot of visibility.

And so then other people see what we’re doing. And naturally they’re like, what are they up to? We’ll have a bit of that. And it’s at that point that some people decide that having a bit of that means not that I’ll get inspired, or I’ll take some ideas, or I’ll learn and create something new myself, I’ll innovate, but actually is literally I’ll have some of that and I’ll take it. And so we find this all over the internet. There are people who, for example, steal parts of the system that I designed and they go out into the world and pretend that’s their own. And that’s really obvious, because it’s unique. I made it. You can’t get this anywhere else. So when we see that happening, we’re straight away on that. And again, it’s time, energy, and effort that we don’t want to put in. But it’s really obvious when people are taking our content, because it’s unique.

But also, it’ll be websites. We’ve had people pretty much lift our entire website and then change some of the words to make it look like their own. Designs, all of these different things, taking things that I say and saying it again and pretending it’s theirs. So that goes on a lot. This particular individual, though, was going the whole hog and actually completely stealing the brand name, as well. And we received so many messages about it, and they range from people saying, “This guy’s an X, Y, Z,” in some pretty strong kind of language, to, “He’s stealing from you. He’s ripping you off.” And perhaps the ones that irk me the most were when people would say, “Hey, are you affiliated with this person? Because I’ve taken their course,” and it was awful, was one of the words. Disorganized was another one. And if you’re affiliated with them, then I’m not going to come to you kind of thing. I’m not going to come and get help from you.

And that’s a real kicker, because everything we do is about helping people and lifting them up. And let’s be honest, if you’re creatively stuck and you’ve got a massive passion for music, and it drives you and you’ve got these goals and ambitions, and you’ve got something to say, and you want the accomplishment, you want the validation, you want to get out, you want to see your music played, you want to see it in the clubs, maybe your favorite DJ playing it. And you want the feelings that you get when you’re on the dance floor. You want to share those with people. You always want to share your music, your passion. Music makes people buzz.

And when somebody is coming along and confusing the marketplace deliberately by copying your stuff and our name, in this instance, that is stealing the opportunity from someone who we could potentially help. Because if they think we’re one in the same, and they’ve had an awful experience with this individual, then they’re just going to go past possibly the chance, the moment, the thing that would change everything for them. So that stung, when we were getting messages like that, as well. And I think there’s a real irony in this. And this is not just this story that I’m telling you now, but we’re going to of course carry this into the world of music and the wider learning point. There’s a real irony in this, that somebody would go out into the world and say, “I’ll teach you to create stuff,” and they are not creating. What they’re doing is faking it. They are copying, point blank just copying. That’s all they’re doing. I just want to be clear, when I say point blank there, it’s got nothing to do with Point Blank Music School, in case anyone thinks there’s a weird reference in there. Absolutely not in the slightest.

So it was someone who’s stealing our exact name for their course. And I do get why people would do this, because as you all know, creating stuff can be challenging. You’re bringing something original into the world. That’s what creativity is. And sometimes it can be uncomfortable, and it can shine a bit of a mirror up to us. And it’s quicker, it’s quicker to steal it than the longer game of making things yourself. But the reality is that when you just copy and steal point blank somebody’s stuff, then you’re starving yourself of all of that amazing accomplishment and validation of bringing something new into the world. And it feels magical. It’s incredible. Sometimes when it’s a grind, to come out with that euphoric feeling of solving it, of designing it, of inventing it, is amazing.

But more than that, when people go around stealing from other people, and perhaps a good example here is to talk about some of the things I’ve seen in the music scene. But when you do that, you are starving other people of your innovation and your creativity. So I’ll give you a classic example of this, my good friend, Chris Page, who I used to make tracks with, we used to release together. Chris had a piece of music that he uploaded, I think it was at Christmas time, onto his SoundCloud page as a gift for everybody. So everyone who followed him, it was like, “Hey, I’ve just created this new piece of music, and rather than release it, it’s yours for free. Just hit the download button and take it. Hope you enjoy it.” A couple of months later, we discovered that somebody had downloaded it and released it under their own name. Can you imagine? So with a record label, as well. So the record label had the hump when they found out what had happened, because they’d already promoted it and put their time, energy, and effort into it. But someone was going around just downloading other people’s music from Beatport and releasing it as their own tracks.

And the point with this is that if everyone was to do stuff like this, how boring would the scene be? I mean, you are starving people of your creativity. And we see this a lot, as well, in kind of vanilla dance music, and that often comes about because, I’m sure you can resonate with this, somebody will come out and they’ll write a track, and it’s not that it’s groundbreaking or it’s outside of the genre. It could be techno or house or trance or whatever it might be, but they’ve used some different sounds. And maybe they’ve brought like a new flavor to proceedings, that you’re like, wow, that sounds fresh. And then what happens in the preceding months? A bunch of music comes out with the exact same sounds, and that fresh and unique and cool idea is now just vanilla, because everyone’s done it, rather than people saying, “Hey, you know what? That sounds really cool. That’s sparked some creative ideas in me. I’ll go and see what I come up with. I don’t want to sound too similar. I’ll be influenced by, but I don’t want to sound too similar to that.”

And the same deal with this guy who ripped us off. Had he have done the hard yards himself, not only would he have grown as a person, because you grow so much creativity, it’s so powerful for self discovery and your journey as a human being, it’s magical. It really is in that respect. As well as growing himself, he may well have brought something interesting and unique and some new ideas for everybody to learn about, rather than stealing. Now, I don’t know about the course itself, but my gut feel is if you’re going out nicking people’s brand name, and you’re going out nicking their copy, and similar designs and colors on the website and all of that stuff, you’re probably going out, grabbing and stealing bits of courses, as well, and either gluing them together or just nicking somebody else’s stuff entirely.

And here’s the deal with that. That would be the reason. And that’s why I’m drawing this conclusion that people would say, “Well, this thing is awful,” because you don’t understand all the underlying reasons why. Only the person who made it or created it understands it well enough to teach it in that level of detail, unless they’ve coached you on it, unless they’ve taught their own coaches, for example. So if you start grabbing bits from here, here, and here, you don’t really know. You think you know, you’ve got the surface level understanding, but it’s not enough for that course to really, truly be effective in the real world.

So getting back onto the music side of things, we talked about this idea in a previous podcast of how to make original sounding music. And you remember the general concept was is if we force it, it’s not original. And I gave you the equation, which was being prolific plus authenticity, being true to yourself, that is what creates your own sound. And authenticity is vital for being creative, being true to yourself, and what’s true to you, and not copying stuff from other people. And so that’s really the distinction for me, and I think this is what Austin Kleon in his book leans towards, as well, is when he says steal like an artist, it’s really be influenced by.

And absolutely do be influenced by. Bring all of the things that light you up from multiple different genres together. It’s a melting pot of who you are, and what you’re interested in, and what sparks you. But also, learn from other people’s music. There’s nothing wrong with recreating things to learn from it, or from taking concepts and ideas and using them as a framework or boundaries within which to innovate yourself, within which to bring your own sense of play and fun and exploration, and reinvent stuff. That’s amazing. So we see there’s absolutely loads on YouTube. There’s a lot of things I’ve come up with that people have come along and taken the idea and reinvented it in something cool.

And of course I do the same. It would be wrong of me to say every single thing that I talk about I’ve just magically come up with. I’m studious. I read loads of books, I’ve taken loads of courses. And I pick the bits that align with what I believe to be true, and experiment with them and play with them like a scientist. And when things work, modify them, refine it. The Finish More Music system has been through so many iterations. It started out life as a workshop that people would come to my studio, four or five people for a weekend, and I would teach this and it was hugely effective straight off the bat. But by teaching it, I got a deeper understanding. I saw what was working, what wasn’t. Modify, change.

Then it came as an online course in our membership. This is the creative process that gets people loads and loads of results. But then that came again. I did a whole new version of that. So the members will know, updated the entire thing to 2.0. I’ve got more ideas. I’m constantly changing and adding things, and that’s sort of the pathway and the fun of creating stuff yourself. But of course, when you’ve got that, you take influences and ideas from other people, but innovating and reinventing, that’s awesome. That’s magical, and people say things like, “Oh, I better not use a loop from a pack.” No, rubbish. That’s totally fine. For a start, it’s been made available for you. But it’s one little piece. It’s one ingredient. And to say you can’t use things like that would be like saying, oh, whoever the individual was who invented the, I don’t know, the beef bourguignon, for example, having someone knock on the door and say, “Now, hang on a minute. I’ve cooked beef before. You’re a thief,” that would be insane.

So taking ideas and putting them in a melting pot, great word, right? Pun not intended, but that works really well here. Putting them into the pot and mixing up these new ingredients and coming up with something new is the name of the game. Everybody’s done pretty much everything there is to do. It’s about bringing our own unique and individual take to things. And that’s why we have things like remixes. Someone can take someone else’s track and doing it like an official remix, for example. So it’s contractually nailed down, and it can sound very different or you can hear the core theme running through the track. There’s lots of things that can be done with it, but it’s something very unique. It’s rare you hear a remix and go, “God, I can barely tell the difference between those.” And that’s where it’s just plain copying that’s coming into play.

And I’ll give you another example of this. Actually, it’s just come to mind. I know of a top, or a well known is a better way of putting this, DJ and producer. And I’m talking very, very well known. Three of my friends who are all producers and who write great music have had to contact this individual for stealing their tracks. And what he does is he takes their tune, sometimes as it is, sometimes chops it up into another arrangement, and then just puts a couple of sounds on the top of it and releases it as his better music. So what he’s doing, he’s looking for people who aren’t like the super, super big names. It sort of goes down to a few tiers below that, people who are on their way up, and goes, that’s a great tune, I’ll have that, and puts that out into the world.

And I guess there’s the question here about people’s moral compass. Because some people are happy to copy, and let’s be really clear. Copying is not being creative. Copying is faking it, if you’re pretending that you are a creative and you’ve just taken somebody else’s stuff and barely done anything with it, or just completely ripped it off. And that really is starving an individual of so much benefit. As I said, it starves the wider world of your creativity and what you have to offer. And if you go in there, everyone is creative. Everyone can have amazing ideas. Every single person who comes through Finish More Music, they learn the creative process and they come up with cool stuff. They write interesting music. It might seem difficult if you’re struggling to write music now, but when you’ve got a creative process to follow, you absolutely will come out with cool individual music, some stuff that will maybe even surprise you, which is great.

And it’s a buzz. It’s absolutely incredible to feel like that. And as I mentioned before, it’s a path to self discovery. It’s a path to fulfillment. It’s a personal journey. There’s so much value from it.

So in summary, what I would say here is, although it may be tempting to copy other people’s stuff, and I don’t think you would, you listen to this show, and I don’t think you’re the kind of person who would, but the bottom line of this is it can be tempting just to lift out other people’s stuff. But it really does whoever’s doing the stealing, and the wider world, a disservice, because it’s very different. And if your moral compass is that, you know, like these individuals that we’ve been talking about, is that they can suck this up, then so be it. But they still are missing the wider picture. And the stone cold reality of this is, you take so much. Creativity is incredible. And I wrote down this quote from a guy, and I’m probably going to murder his second name, so I apologize. Dieter Uchtdorf, I believe it’s pronounced. Just so there’s no confusion here, U-C-H-T-D-O-R-F, who said, “The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.” What a beautiful quote. It’s worth saying again, right? The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.

And to not follow that, to shirk that, to avoid that, to give into the fear, to give into the resistance, is to miss out massively on all of the huge benefits that come with being a creative. So there we go. That’s the story and the vibe of this one. Another shout out to Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, because it’s a great book, if you haven’t read that. It’s really the difference between flat out copying and faking it, and using other people’s music, in this case, to learn as an influence, as inspiration, as something to reinvent and to innovate. All of those things will light you up. Flat out copying will starve you and the world of some real magic that comes from pursuing this art form.

So hope you enjoyed the show. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you have any experiences of people taking your stuff or have you seen it? How do you feel about this topic overall? How does it make you feel? Please do hit me up on Instagram. I think this is a really deep subject. I’d love to hear from you. I am Keith Mills on Instagram. Ping me a DM. I know I sound like a broken record saying this, but I’m still getting people saying, “I didn’t think you’d come back to me.” I absolutely reply and read every single message. I’d love to hear from you. So show notes, finishmoremusic.com, 077, and a quick reminder for you. It’s coming in the outro, as well.

But 8th of October is our brand new three part video series. We’re going to be filming that bad boy very soon, as well. It’s coming up next week. I’m going to be filming. I still haven’t finished the script. I keep wanting to change things and tweak things and invent new stuff. And I’m like, Oh God, this would be more helpful for people if we go down this road. So I think I’ll probably take it right up to the wire. There’s always that last minute tweak that I try and put in there. Put your name down if you haven’t already, so you grab your spot on that. It’s finishemoremusic.com/waitlist.

So hope you enjoyed the show. Do stay safe. Happy music making. Until next time. Book the 8th of October in your diary now. I’ve been cooking up something really special for you, a brand new, completely free Finish More Music workshop, with one goal in mind, to get you finishing more and better music, even if you suffer from overwhelm, perfectionism, procrastination, sitting in front of your DAW completely at a loss for where to start. This is a three-part online video series with limited spaces. So jump over to finishmoremusic.com/waitlist right now, and secure your spot. The last workshop was a huge success. We had producers who’d struggled to finish any of their tracks for years literally hammering out tunes in just a few short days.

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

FMM076- What happens when you get left behind? – Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FMM075- Don’t Wait for Motivation… Create It – Transcript

Hi, I’m Keith Mills, and this is episode number 75 of the Finish More Music podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about building motivation. Now, one of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of struggling bedroom producers making is that they wait for motivation. They wait for that perfect mental state and perfect conditions before getting started. Now, as a result, they often put making music off, and when they do get started, it only lasts for a short period of time before they’re back to procrastinating, back to buying gear, watching tutorials, and anything else in the hope that something sparks some motivation in them to get going again. So in this episode, we’re going to discuss what the pros do, in fact, what all successful people do. They create their own motivation, and it’s something that anybody can replicate.

So, let’s get started.

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.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Finish More Music podcast. Thank you for joining me once again. It’s been a pretty full-on couple of weeks for me, because I’m currently in the absolute thickof writing the new Finish More Music workshop. So if you haven’t seen the one that we’ve put out previously, it’s a three-part video series, super highly-produced, we had a videographer, it’s kind of like a movie in a way that’s in three parts, but it’s really powerful training. And it’s completely free. It’s coming out on the 8th of October this year. We’re all hands on deck getting it done and super, super exciting stuff.

If you want to check it out, finishmoremusic.com/waitlist. Just stick your details in there, and we’ll let you know as soon as it comes out. It’s across three parts, incredibly powerful training. The last one that we put out was by far the best piece of training I’ve ever created, and I’m going all in to top it, like giving it everything I can. We’ve got the filming coming up really soon, so I’ve got so much to do to create this thing. It’s late nights, it’s weekends, it’s training, it’s reaching out to people to get help because it’s not what I do. I’m not somebody who writes what is effectively a movie. It’s a big script for something. It’s not just the stuff that you see on YouTube, which is super cool. We put lots of great videos out or it’s screen capture. But it’s actually me presenting, and it’s talking in depth about creativity and music production.

If that’s stuff that’s really important to you, it’s your passion, it’s something that you want to succeed at, then 8th of October, definitely stick that into your diary. Unquestionably, the last one and this one is proving to be exactly the same, they are the most creatively challenging projects I have ever been involved in. For sure. I create loads of stuff. It makes up the bulk of what I do. I’m the visionary at FMM, so I plot the course of where we’re going. It’s my vision, my creative vision of where we go. And there’s obviously the podcasts that you’re listening to right now, everything from that and music for tutorials and masterclasses that I teach inside of FMM and the creation of courses and content and you name it. This thing out of everything that I create is the big daddy.

That got me to thinking about how I’m showing up to it and what lessons I’ve got to share. There were two big things that I’m noticing about this characteristics that I’m bringing to the table that is helping me a great deal. The first one is discipline. And the second one, which isn’t a characteristic, but is really high for me at the moment is motivation. They’re two very, very different things, and I think there are things that people get a little bit back to front. It’s a big mistake I see a lot of people making. So I thought it’d be really powerful to talk about that.

First of all, I’m not going to get massively into discipline because episode number 32 was called No Discipline, No Success, and I go into it in some depth. So if you haven’t seen it yet, I strongly recommend… or seen it, heard it, I should say, I strongly recommend that you check that out.

Discipline is one of the most important characteristics that anyone can build. If you’ve listened to the show for a long time, you’ll know that that’s exactly the deal you get to create yourself. You get to design and build your life how you want it to be, and you get to build your own characteristics. Things don’t happen by accident. It’s not by magic. It’s all in your control. The creation and the building of discipline is vital because can you think of any successful person in any walk of life that isn’t highly disciplined? How are you supposed to show up and get stuff done on a regular basis and do new things and challenging things if you’re not a disciplined person? So No Discipline, No Success, episode number 32, scribble it down there if you haven’t given that one a listen, one of the most powerful podcast episodes, for sure.

So here’s how I’m going to split this up, here’s a little definition for you. Discipline is what gets you started, motivation is what keeps you going. So great note for you to take down. Discipline is what gets you started, motivation is what keeps you going. This is where I see a lot of people making mistakes, and maybe you’ve fallen into this trap as well. Certainly I have in the past, and I still do sometimes catch myself with it, and that’s waiting for motivation, waiting for the motivation to get started. Say, “Oh, I’m not feeling it today. I’ll get started tomorrow.” We put this thing in our heads that tomorrow magically I’ll be motivated to do this. The first day of the week, Monday, motivation Monday, right? “Monday, I’ll be motivated to do this.” Or, “The first of the month or the 1st of January, I’ll be motivated to do it.

“But we all experience the same thing, I’m sure, and that’s if you wait for motivation, you’re going to be waiting a very long time. Because we don’t get to say,”Tomorrow, I’ll be motivated.” It doesn’t work like that. But, we do get to create our own motivation, and here’s how this goes down. So rather than waiting for it, you can build it and create it. Discipline creates action. If you’re disciplined, then you can act. You will choose to act, let’s put it that way. A disciplined person will choose the action that’s in alignment with their vision. Action creates motivation, and motivation makes discipline easier. It makes the choice.

But is being a discipline person easier? It creates a cycle, what we commonly refer to as momentum. We talk about building momentum. It’s difficult to get started, but once we’ve got that rock, that boulder moving, it goes easier and easier and easier. So if you take action, if you make the choice, if you’re disciplined and you take action and you get into the studio, if that’s something that you’re not doing at the moment or any project that you might have in your life, but you’re really passionate about your music, you’re not doing it at the moment, if you take action, if you’re disciplined, and you get in the studio, and you continue to make that disciplined choice, then you’re naturally going to build motivation. You are the architect of your own motivation. And then, of course, you’re going to make more music. You’re going to make better music. You’re going to get to share that music and get it out into the world, get to connect with people, that positive vibe, the buzz of impacting and influencing other people. All of that, our vision in getting towards it, comes from lighting the touch paper, keeping that lit, and then it just goes a blaze. That’s a really powerful way of thinking about it. Once it catches fire, it’s then really difficult to put it out, right? Once we’re motivated, we tend to stay motivated.

But the mistake a lot of people are making is doing this the other way round. It’s, “I need to feel motivated to get started, to scrape myself up off of the sofa, to abandon the latest Netflix series, whatever it might be, or that YouTube videos or all of those things. I need the motivation. And if I don’t have it right now, then I’ll project into the future some magical time when it will happen.” As I said, like Monday, for some reason, Monday would be a good day to start. Some people are a Saturday, but mine is Monday. The first of some things seems like a day that’s good to start, as though that magically corresponds with the day that we’ll actually feel like it. As though on the first of every single month you’re brimming full of energy and motivation. Is that true? Of course not, right? Of course not.

The other thing that we tend to do, a trap, and maybe you can relate to this, is say something like, “I’ll get started on this, I’ll be motivated to do this when I’ve got all this stuff off my plate. When I’ve got rid of all these commitments, when I’ve got through this to-do list of stuff, I’ll be able to focus. Then I’ll be full of motivation to get started.” But again, if we think about it, when do you ever reach that perfect nirvana where you’ve got nothing to do, where your plate is absolutely clear? Sometimes. Sometimes it’s perhaps the answer. Occasionally we get that little break in the clouds, if you like, that little beam of sunshine that comes down that’s like, “Oh my word, I’ve got a long weekend, and I’ve literally got nothing to do. Nobody’s managed to fill this for me. Nothing’s on my plate. No emergencies come up. It’s my time.”

Now, question for you on that. When those moments crop up, how often do you feel motivated in them to take action? Does your motivation align perfectly with those moments of time or often do you let that time fritter away instead of getting started on something that’s important to you? Motivation isn’t something that just magically appears and aligns perfectly with our calendar. Sometimes you get a blast of motivation, but does it fit perfectly with the calendar? Probably not. So it’s something that we want to be able to generate, to build, to create on demand. And the way that we’re going to do that is by starting with discipline.

Here’s the thing with this idea of putting it off, and maybe this is something you’ve experienced as well. Particularly when things are important to us, we can tend to put them off. I’ve spoken about this before, it’s often this fear of failure that’s driving that. “It’s important. This is really important to me, and if I start it, I might fail. So I’ll just keep nudging it off.” Which when you think about it is madness because all the time, you’re not starting it, you’re guaranteeing that you fail at it. But nevertheless, we put something off. And when we put something off, when we say, “When I’ve got a clear schedule, then I’ll do this thing, or a Monday I’ll do it, on the first of the month,” more things tend to crop up, right, more distractions, more people vying for our time, more commitments in our life, more emergencies, more stuff on the to-do list. That tomorrow never comes, that first of the month that it was all going to be magic doesn’t happen and it becomes the first of next month. It’s that saying like, “Someday becomes never.” Is it? I’ve probably butchered that, right? But tomorrow becomes never, whatever it is. It just never actually gets done.

A dream and a passion or a big project or something that I’ve literally just defined as being important to us is the thing that never actually gets done, until such a point as maybe it becomes impossible to do it. When it comes to something like music, it can become even more difficult to get started. Because a lot of people get all the gear, and they spend loads and loads of time in the studio, and they don’t have any output. Because they’re not really getting started, because buying gear isn’t writing music. We know that. Watching tutorials isn’t writing music. Practicing tutorials isn’t writing music. It may feel like tinkering with a drum loop is improving production skills but unless it’s in the context of a continued stream of finished pieces of music, actually is that classic situation is you forget more than you learn.

That in itself then starts to create pressure because people start to think, “Well, I’ve been at this for a long time, and I’ve got no results, and now the results should be even better.” I’m comparing myself to someone who’s been doing it for years. Although the reality is by not finishing music, I haven’t actually been doing it at all. But that doesn’t stop the voice in the head putting the pressure on. Friends start asking, classic example, “You’ve been at this for months, for years, whatever it might be. Let’s have a listen to one of your tunes.” And it’s not there. The pressure mounts up, and the importance of it becomes so big that it becomes even more of an issue to get started for fear of failure.

It’s this cause, this thing that kicks it off is the belief that the perfect conditions, the perfect mental state to get started exists at some point in the future as opposed to making it happen right now. I’m going to give you a few tips and some ideas on how to make it happen. This is really true, because the script that I’m writing, this video series, for me it’s huge. It’s big. It’s a big deal. It’s important. I want to get it right, but it was overwhelming to look at it at the start. I knew it would be overwhelming, and I knew it would be difficult, and I knew it would be confusing. But I also knew, unquestionably, that if I wasn’t disciplined enough to show up today, right now, not leave it till tomorrow, today, because tomorrow never comes, right? Tomorrow I’ll have the same discussion with myself. And the next day, the same discussion. I knew that the only way to make it easier and the only way to succeed would be to be disciplined. It’s something that I’m really working hard on cultivating, because there’s always someone more disciplined, right?

So, how do I get to that level of discipline and that level of discipline? But by putting one foot in front of the other, of the other, of the other, now I’m regularly showing up, working on this, making breakthroughs. Sometimes it’s tough. Sometimes it gets in a knot. Sometimes it’s easy. But getting started and actually doing the thing is way, way easier now than it was at the beginning, because I’m motivated to get cracking. Let me break this down and really explain this because I think that the deeper a level that we understand things, the more it can become part of our being, when we really, really get it. And I’ve spoken to this before, you can listen to something and you can understand something, but it doesn’t mean you completely get it. And there’s loads of things, we’ve all experienced this where we’ve understood it, but then at some point in the future, whether someone puts it in a different way or we visit again or via the process of doing the thing, there’s that light bulb moment. We’re like, “Ah, yes, now I’ve got it.” That is when it becomes a part of who we are. Okay?

Discipline and creating motivation is vital for success. Every top producer, every prolific artist creates their own motivation, and they are all disciplined people. Because when you think about it, it’s not just the start of the thing, there are often breaks. If you’re a top producer, you’re a DJ, and you’re touring all over the world, there might be big chunks of time where it’s difficult to sit down and write music. So you need the discipline to be able to turn that back on in the windows. And it’d be the same for you. Maybe you’re someone who does get a load of music finished, maybe you’re a member of FMM, and you’re smashing out the tunes. You go away for a couple of weeks on holiday. Your other half says, “Love you to bits, love your passion for music, but let’s just leave that laptop back where it is, and let’s just have a little bit of family time, a little bit of us time.”

And then that means that when you get back into the studio, the motivation may not be there. It might be, but it might not. You might get back and feel a little bit disconnected from it all, and that’s going to require the discipline to get going. It could be anything, right? It could be weddings. It could be the birth of a child. It could be an illness. There are so many different things that create breaks in stuff and require discipline to get us started and to rebuild the motivation.

So here’s the relationship between discipline and motivation, here’s how you can think of this to really let this seep into who you are. Discipline, and again, episode 32, I go into this in detail, so double, double, double make sure that you scribble that down to check it out. Even if you’ve seen it already, I strongly recommend going back to it. But here’s the overview, discipline is doing what you want and not what you feel like. So let’s think of an example here. You’re getting healthy, losing weight, whatever it is, getting ripped for the summer, getting buff, whatever’s going on. That’s what you want to do, you predetermine that. Then normally the things we want are predetermined, like our vision. We create a vision of the future. It’s predetermined. We create our goals. We create a schedule for the week, for tomorrow, whatever it might be. And what’s in there, as much as possible, are the things that we want to do, are the things that are going to move us forward.

Feeling is instinctive, it’s in the moment. So do what you want, not what you feel like. You can’t feel, you can’t touch something tomorrow. You can’t smell something tomorrow. You can’t smell something in the future. There’s an easier way of saying, you can’t hear something in the future. You can’t hear something in the past. You remember it, but you can’t hear it. Feeling is right now. What we want to do tends to be something planned in the future. And if we’re not planning it, well, you don’t design your life, somebody else will. So super, super important to get it mapped out what you want to do. So discipline, do what you want, not what you feel like. So you are losing weight, let’s say. You’re getting healthy. In fact, let’s go with one even better than this. This is a classic example. Tomorrow is Saturday, and you have got some time to get in the studio. You’ve had a busy couple of weeks. You’ve been getting some time in every day, but there’s a big chunk tomorrow, there’s a track you want to finish, some stuff you want to learn. You’re really totally focused and want to do it.

But tonight, it’s your best friend’s birthday. Everyone’s going out, and they’re hitting the beers or thewines, whatever your weapon of choice is when you go out. You know that if you have more than a couple of drinks, you’re going to wake up a little bit jaded, bit shaky in the morning, and when you go in the studio, you ain’t going to perform, whatever your cut off is. Maybe you’re a five-beer person, which would mean you’re considerably younger than me, that’s for sure. A couple of beers, and that’s it. Tomorrow’s is not going to go as well, that’s for sure… Any more than, I should say. But when you get out, everyone’s hitting the drinks. If you’re like most people, you’re going to feel like having drinks. Rather than pacing yourself, you’re going to feel like getting involved in it all. There’ll be multiple points where discipline is needed in amongst that to do what you want and not what you feel like. I’m going to pass on this round. I’m going to have a glass of water instead. I’m going to do whatever.

They’ll meet that magical tipping point in the evening, and if you’ve done this you’ll know, where you look at everybody else, and they’re starting to get wasted. All of a sudden you’re like, “Oh man, I feel amazing. Everyone else is getting trolleyed. I feel great. I’m going to go on to bed. I’m going to sleep like a champion and wake up feeling super fresh and energized in the morning.” But until you get there, there will be moments to exercise your characteristic of discipline. Discipline, do what you want and not what you feel like.

So where does motivation come into this? Motivation is the feel like side, right? So do what you want, not what you feel like. What if what you feel like and what you want are the same thing? That’s when we’re motivated to do it, and we want to do it, right? And that’s this nirvana, the thing that people are waiting for, but you get to build. When that happens, it becomes easier and easier and easier to do it because the more you do it, the more you become motivated to do it. And so this exercising of discipline, well, you don’t even need to really exercise that much willpower and that much strength behind your discipline, because it becomes super, super easy. Back to that idea of momentum, hard to push the boulder to start with but once it starts rolling, easier. Motivation is what makes your choice to do the thing you want easier. The way to get there is to exercise discipline, as I say, I’ll give you a few different ways of doing this in a second, but to do that consistently enough, that it becomes easier.

Here’s a great word for this. The members inside of FMM, inside of the community often describe a feeling of being addicted to writing music. So right now, if you’re someone who feels quite a lot of resistance, and that’s natural, I totally get that, you go in the studio and you want to get on, but you end up just procrastinating, avoiding getting into YouTube and all of those things, there’s a resistance to writing. The flip side of that, once you become disciplined and motivated, and you follow a system is you become addicted to it. If you’ve ever tried to break a habit, you will know how difficult that is. And when you think of the word addiction, that’s like the habit of all habits, right? I know I’m smashing two words together there. But people with an addiction, well, that’s hard to break. Imagine being addicted to doing the thing that’s going to get you your version of success in life, how powerful that is.

Now, I’m going to explain this in a slightly funky way for you now, will just literally say what I’ve just said but ram the point home. We’re going from my man Newton and his first law, but it’s going to be applied to productivity. An object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity unless acted on by an external force. So objects in motion tend to stay in motion. If you’re writing lots and lots of music, you’ll tend to continue writing lots and lots of music. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. If you haven’t been doing this regularly, if you haven’t built up the momentum and the motivation, then it’s going to stay there unless you exercise the discipline, which is your choice, let’s be really clear on this, and you take action. Another way of putting it, busy people stay busy. People that procrastinate keep procrastinating. I’ll say that again. Busy people stay busy. Well, let’s even change that up, productive people stay productive, procrastinators keep procrastinating.

Here’s a few steps that you can take. Maybe it’s your music. Maybe it’s another project in your life. As I always mention, everything is holistic, right? Everything you do links to everything else. If you put off a project over here, you’re likely to put your music off. If you put your music off, you’re likely to drop the ball somewhere else. Every single thing that we do affects every single thing that we do. So here’s how you can get things going. First of all, to help with the discipline if you’re finding it hard, start with the small stuff first. Here is a cracking little technique, just say to yourself, and this is like a short circuit for you, “I’m just going to do five minutes. I’m just going to go in the studio, turn the DAW on and just start making a drum loop. Five minutes, that’s it. At the end of it, I’m going to give myself a free choice, free will. I will choose, and I’m giving myself permission to choose to get back on the sofa, watching Netflix, or to choose to go down the pub or to choose to carry on. It’d be free will, I’m just going to do five minutes.” Way easier to be disciplined on something like that, right? Because that resistance to it is much lower, it’s just five minutes, just getting started.

Another great technique for you is to count down from five. Another way, this one completely shortcircuits everything for you. If you’re sitting on the sofa, hard day at work, really wanting to get in the studio. You’re just crashed on the sofa, a big comfortable sofa, you’re sinking into it, you’re like, “Ah, man, I can’t be bothered to get up right now.” But you know you really want to do it. And that will be nagging you, right? That will be like, “I really want to get up and do this.” Count down from five to zero. So countdown from five, countdown backwards. And as you start counting, do it in your head, you don’t have to be a lunatic if your family’s there. As you start counting, immediately start moving to get up from the sofa and finish the count to zero. I guarantee you’ll be out of the sofa walking towards your studio, and you won’t stop. Mad, mad way of short circuiting your mind, but it absolutely works. Make the intention to get up, start counting down, just move anything towards getting up, even just your arm. You find the rest of your body follows, and you’re up and going. That’s how you get in the studio and you get started.

The second thing is to make sure that you are following a proven system, some kind of workflow, something that definitely works so you’ve got clarity around what you are doing. Because if you’ve ever tried to do something, and you’re not sure what you’re doing or why you’re doing it, you quickly lose interest, right? If you have to make this choice to be disciplined every single day, and then you want to be motivated, you’re going to want to be interested, and you’re going to want to know what you’re doing. You want to be really zoned in on it. Clarity is absolutely huge. So if you are not following a system, if you don’t have one in your existence for music, then that is a big step in the right direction.

The third one is building a habit. Now, there are really specific ways to do this, it’s not just turning up.

There are a lot of different caveats that will reinforce a habit, and that will make sure that it really gets ingrained and it’s something that your subconscious wants to do. What you’re ultimately doing here is automating your discipline. The choice gets made for you. You go into the studio and you make music on autopilot. If you’re in there, you’re making it on autopilot, you’re following a system, which means you’re getting results, you know what you’re doing, you see progress so it becomes really enjoyable, motivation on steroids. Back to that word addiction. Back to that word addiction. Habits, amazing quote for you, “Successful people are simply those with successful habits.” Brian Tracy. Can I say that one again as well because I think it’s so impactful? “Successful people are simply those with successful habits.” If you don’t know how to do this, it’s definitely something to get on with. Again, it’s a huge focus that we have right at the beginning for people joining FMM, new members. We help them to build the habit. Because once you put this on autopilot, and you follow a system that gets you results, the motivation is sky high.

You get to engineer your own motivation. That is the beauty of it. So if right now you are someone who has been wanting to get going with your music for a while, and it’s not working out, or maybe you were going with your music and you had a break and didn’t manage to get back on the horse, so to speak, I’m hoping that this message is incredibly powerful for you. Because it isn’t a case of waiting, it’s not a case of hoping for the best. It’s a case of it being in your control. It’s your choice. It’s up to you. Discipline is what gets you started, motivation is what keeps you going. Let’s put it like this, action is your choice. Action is always within your reach. And action is what causes motivation. If you think of it like that, you become your own source of motivation. You get to build it, you get to create it.

It’s your choice in life. Super, super powerful to understand it because it’s the people who implement, the people who take action, it’s those people that reach their vision of success, who are happy, accomplished, get the validation of having their music released on the labels they always dreamed of, seeing their favorite artists play their music. Hell, if you want to be a DJ actually playing your own tracks to crowds, that stuff happens at the micro level right now of saying, “Yes, I’m in control of this. I’m going to make it happen.”

I hope you enjoyed the show. Remember, 8th of October, stick that in your diary. If you haven’t signed up to the Finish More Music waitlist, it’s finishmoremusic.com/waitlist. Super easy to remember. We will email you the moment that the free training is out. Follow me on Instagram as well if you want to see the behind the scenes. We’re going to be filming it soon, so you get to see all the mad stuff we’re up to. It’s always really exciting. Get to be a fly on the wall, peek behind the curtain, so to speak. Do let me know what you think about this episode. I’d love to hear from you. Are you someone who at the moment is struggling to get started? I’d love to hear from you. What are you going to do? What steps are you going to take? Let me know. Let’s talk it out. Instagram, hit me up with a DM, @iamkeithmills. I promise you, I will get back to you.

It’s never ceasing to amaze me how many times I get back to someone on Instagram, like, “Oh, I didn’t think you’d get back to me.” I’m like, “No, you’ve just listened to the podcast where I promise you that I would.” “Well, yeah, but… ” I absolutely promise you, I get back to every single message. So I’d love to hear from you, where you’re at, what you’re trying to achieve at the moment, what you think may be in the way of it. Let’s jam out, I’d love to hear that. The show notes for this episode finishmoremusic.com/075. Do stay safe. Take care. I hope you enjoyed the show. I’ll catch you next time.

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