Follow your dreams”! You’ve heard that all your life.
And you’ve done so – maybe as an artist, athlete, or entrepreneur.
But then you face challenges. And after some time with constant struggle, it’s not so fun anymore. You’ve lost the joy.
And worse, you may feel bad, event guilty about it.After all, you’re supposed to love what you do and do what you love.
This is actually a very common feeling for artists, athletes, and entrepreneurs.
Creative people face rejection all the time. Financial struggles are often part of the game.
Many artist love to create, but dealing with the business side of things becomes less inspiring.
Dominic Cincotta is an amazing singer, but he lost the joy he once had for singing. I had the pleasure of meeting him at my Live Event in Melbourne, where he was gracious to come up on stage.
Watch this video first. Then we’ll talk about how to ignite that joy again.
Much of what my work as a coach is and has been to help reignite joy in artists and entrepreneurs. I want to help ignite that spark within to make their lives and careers much more fulfilling and successful.
So what can we do to reignite joy? What can we do to achieve greater success?
There are several aspect to this of course, but let’s begin by addressing one word Dominic mentioned:
Awareness
Anyone who has participated in any of my live or online training knows that developing greater awareness is key to be able to effectively improve in any area.
It applies to effectively healing a voice problem, but frankly, also in order to achieve greater success in any area.
Here’s why:The trap of the “results”.
A big trap we tend to fall into is the drive for a “results”. It’s understandable. We all want results. Me too. I have high ambitions and big goals. But the question is how to achieve “result”.
After some time of struggle and you still haven’t achieved the result you want, more and more frustration sets in.
If you feel expectations from the outside world, as well as from within, with time you feel more and more pressure.
What are your dreams?
There’s nothing wrong with having dreams and goals of course. But operating with a result oriented mind is something very different from having dreams and goals.
Part of my training is to lead you through processes to awaken your awareness.
When we do so we become better at living in the moment, and become better at being engaged in exciting processes. Through this you also begin to recognize progress that you would otherwise not have done.
Yes, one big part is to learn the difference between…
Result-oriented vs. process-oriented.
It’s the process-oriented individual who actually gets the results.
When you shift your awareness and mindset in this way, you experience the world differently. Practice becomes fun.
It become exciting to get up Monday morning to explore and discover, rather than try and do something “right”, or live up to someone’s expectations.
It’s interesting that it’s often the driven, ambitious person who is the one who falls into the trap of becoming more and more results-oriented.
Think about this:
If time passes and you’re still not achieving the “results” you think you should, it becomes very easy to feel “I’m not good enough”, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, we’ve been conditioned to be result-oriented from an early age, through school, and through a lot of “training”.
Let’s look at traditional singing training as an example:
No discipline I am aware of tends to use words such as “proper”, “correct”, and “right” vs. “wrong” as much as in the world of traditional classical singing training.
We should realize that effective sports trainers don’t use such nonsensical words.
In the world of effective training, there is no such thing as “proper”.
The only thing that matters is what is EFFECTIVE for you in your stage of development and depending on what you want to improve.
That futile search for “proper”, for “perfection”, for what you “should accomplish”, is a surefire way to sap the joy out of you.
The feeling/fear of not being “good enough” hampers many. Probably you too,
The day when you are doing it “right” is a day that will never come. It’s a fantasy.
In fact, most “results” people strive for are fantasies because they actually aren’t aware of what they really want.
The most common feedback you get.
The most common feedback we get in life is when someone points out what is wrong. Why? Because that’s easy.
we’ve been conditioned avoid the spelling “mistake”, avoid the math “error”, avoid making a fool out of yourself, don’t “miss”, don’t be flat, don’t be sharp, don’t crack, don’t do this and don’t do that.
The fear of making mistakes, the fear of being wrong, the discomfort of messing up, the feeling of not being good enough, etc., takes a toll.
Artists tend to get into the feeling that they always have to prove themselves. Have you ever felt that?And the more successful you become, the more critiqued you’ll become on social media, for example.
Athletes compete all the time and are benched the day they don’t do well.
Entrepreneurs have to constantly fail and reinvent themselves, and struggle all day long. And many get into these fields with a deep desire to prove themselves. (This can be turned into beautiful fuel for the benefit of mankind.)
So it’s very easy to become caught up in the feeling that “I’m not good enough”, and that “I’m not doing enough”. And with that pressure, joy quickly becomes absent.
What is joy really?
Joy comes from engagement in the process.
Once you become deeper engaged in processes and develop deeper and deeper awareness, you develop at far more rapid speed, and experiences greater success as a results from that.
Yes, “results” are actually a bi-product from how effectively you can engage in the process.
So here are questions for you…
Do you judge yourself or others in terms of “correct” vs “incorrect”, or “right” vs “wrong”, or “good” vs “bad”?
What and who’s expectations are you trying to live up to?
Do you feel you are not good enough? Do you feel life “should” be different?
Yes, life COULD be very different when you become engaged in beautiful processes where you are engaged in exploration and discovery, and then experience rewarding progress from it.
Post your comment below.
“Follow your dreams”! You’ve heard that all your life. And you’ve done it. Maybe as an artist, athlete, or entrepreneur. But now with all the struggle… the challenges… it’s not so fun anymore… you’ve lost the joy…
It’s a common feeling for artists, athletes, and entrepreneurs.
Dominic Cincotta is an amazing singer. But he lost the joy he once had for singing. I had the pleasure of meeting him at my Live Event in Melbourne, where he was gracious to come up on stage. Watch this video first. Then we’ll talk about how to ignite that joy again.
