In today’s episode I share 3 growth-mindsets and tools that I’ve gained throughout the past 15 years as an entrepreneur. Because they’ve become innate to how I manage myself and my life, they’ve influenced my artist journey without me realizing it. And I believe they’re one of the reasons why I’ve been able to advance more than I thought I was capable of.

Being able to step into music and honor this love of mine has been the greatest gift, but stepping out of my shell has also been massively challenging and confronting. These three mindsets have a way of bringing me back to a birds-eye view, which then allows me to detach from the density of what I’m going through. From this bigger perspective, it’s easier to make aligned decision and let productivity flow.

1. Define your Hero’s Journey

Dreaming up the story you wanna live helps your mind build a structural frame for your life that not only allows for setbacks, but can even make you thrive on them. And it can also be really helpful to figure out what role you want your music to play in your life. Do you want it to be something that’s just for you? Or do you want it to be something you’re known for? Do you want it to be a hobby or a career?

Reframing your story like this helps you to connect the dots, especially when life feels random or overwhelming. And I feel like this is the definition of being an artist. Releasing your own music often feels random and overwhelming. This is why I think this is so powerful for artists, because I think being an artist is so much about how you relate to yourself and the narratives you give to yourself. And this can set your trajectory.

So I wanna give you some questions to form your own heroe’s narrative:

1. What’s your current “quest”?
2. Who are your allies?
3. What challenge are you overcoming?
4. How are you changing?

2. Get to know your ingredients

Get to know yourself and what makes you thrive and what makes you more drained. Because once you know that, you can create circumstances that help you feel energized as opposed to drained within your artist journey.

For example, I know that I thrive when I have a mentor or a coach, and even more so if I’m in a group setting. But I do have the tendency to retreat into my cave and plough through things on my own and not ask for help. So I’ve had to learn to open myself up more and put myself into groups and it totally changed my game.

Ask yourself:

1. What do you really enjoy doing and what do you dread?
2. What comes really easy to you and what takes a disproportionate amount of effort?
3. How much time and energy do you have on your hands and how can you use it for your best outcome?

All of these questions are here to help you figure out what you’re working with in terms of your own energetic ingredients and how to balance them with the demands that you’re facing in your life.

The harsh reality is, we only have so much energy and so much time, and life can just swoop you away with whatever happens in the moment. But the key is to be honest with yourself, get to know yourself and all of the deeper aspects within you, and then use that to create the circumstances you want in your life over time.

3. Connect!

I’d say it’s nearly impossible to get anywhere in a vacuum. So find ways to connect to other artists and create experiences around your music life. I know how hard it can be to step out of your shell, especially when you’re starting out and you don’t feel very confident with your music yet. But I encourage you to put out your feelers for any human connection you could make in music, whether that be in person or online. Just take small steps towards building friendships, collaborations, and just generally connecting with other people through the realm of your music.

Really, all that growth is, is forming new connections in a network. And you can look at it in two ways:

• Either your growing personally by forming new neural connections in your brain as you act on things that are outside of your comfort zone.
• Or you grow by connecting with other people and developing your personal music network that then holds and elevates you as you grow within the collective.

Once you have artist friends and colleagues, it’ll be harder to not make music and you’ll be creating the circumstances for more opportunities to arise and do more of the thing that you love.

I hope this helped you gain more of a birds-eye view of your artist journey!

Next week I’ll be introducing you to our 10 songs in 10 weeks songwriting challenge. Be sure to sign up to our newsletter if you want to hop on the train for that!

Happy songwriting,

Sonj