Musicians, creatives—what a year!

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a fucking rollercoaster for me.

Plenty of highs and lows. Plenty of changes.

And plenty of lessons learned.

To see out the year, today I want to leave you with three major lessons I’ve learned that will help you flourish next year.

They sound simple, but if you take them on board, your 2024 will be next-level.

1: Levelling up is all about letting go.

It’s so easy to assume that your next step is about adding more.

Filling up your schedule more.

Increasing quantity instead of quality.

More music, more content, more effort.

And sometimes more is the answer. It’s also easy for us to make excuses for not doing enough.

But this year I’ve found so much more value in letting go of everything holding me back.

I kept hearing this David Allen quote in 2023: “You can do anything, but not everything.”

Instead of making yourself busier in 2024, be more selective about what you give your attention to.

Strip away everything that your heart isn’t really in, and that isn’t contributing to your future in any real way.

Make space for what is important.

Focus on just a few big meaningful things, and do an exceptionally good job of them.

How would your life change if you were able to 10x the quality of your art?

Or focus all of your energy into releasing a creative project you truly cared about?

What if you stopped holding onto the need to get everything done right now, and put your whole head and heart into getting one thing done right now?

Again, sometimes the best move is to add in more.

But if you’ve been trying to do that this year and it hasn’t worked as you’d hoped, it might be time to start letting go.

2: You can have it ‘your way’—if you become the person who deserves that.

In my work with musicians, I am constantly proven wrong.

Just when I think I’ve found the way to make progress in a certain way, someone comes along and does it (successfully) the opposite way.

This has not stopped happening all year.

And through working alongside musicians and a lot of self experimentation, I’ve come to truly believe this:

You can achieve your goals as a creative in almost any way you want… if you become the kind of person who’s able to do it.

There are more accessible and reliable ways to do this, of course, and those are what I often talk about to give people the best chance of succeeding.

But I genuinely believe that almost nothing is impossible when it comes to how you approach achieving your goals as a creative: 

• Marketing your art 
• Making your art 
• Building your career 
• Anything.

I’ve seen artists break all the rules and still win.

Everything from barely showing up on social media to literally spamming people in the DMs and comments with their music.

These are ‘rules’ almost everyone deems unbreakable.

Yet artists break them and succeed.

Observing this had led me to question everything about what’s possible for creatives nowadays.

There is no one perfect way to do it.

Again, there are more reliable ways to go. But nothing is impossible.

The massive catch to this ‘nothing is impossible’ deal is that you have to become the person who’s able to do it your way successfully.

This is no easy thing, and often means developing a special set of skills that makes you rare and valuable.

You will almost definitely not be able to carve a unique path on which you excel if you expect someone else to give you all the answers or hold your hand the whole time.

The path of ‘doing it your way’ requires tremendous courage, skill, and commitment—more than you think.

It’s scary too; you have to be willing to, in some sense, go against everyone else.

You will have to face a mountain of doubt and obstacles.

No wonder most people don’t do it.

Honestly, a lot of the time I try to do it I find myself creeping back into my comfort zone. Before I realise it, I’m back where I started.

When I do manage to take a step off the standard path and onto my own, it’s never comfortable. Never.

My brain screams at me that it’s wrong, that I’m destroying my career. Alex, take it easy, you’re being crazy… just turn around slowly and go back into your box where it’s safe.

The person who can break the rules and win big is no ordinary person.

They’ve done some work.

And if you want to be one of these creatives who carves their own path and walks it successfully, you’ve got some work ahead of you too.

But you can have it your way.

Whatever genius plan is in your head—whatever beautiful path you’re envisioning… it isachievable.

You just might not be the person to walk it… yet.

3: The ‘nice’ thing isn’t always the right thing.

This was the hardest one for me to learn this year.

If you’re compassionate, you probably try hard to make other people happy… maybe even at the cost of your own wellbeing.

This can come in many forms: 

• Maybe you give too much of your time to others because you know you could help them and it feels wrong to ignore that 
• Maybe your creative work or your social media posts are too focused on keeping your audience happy instead of doing what you love
• Maybe you let the opinions of others shape your life and it severely limits your ability to make valuable contributions to the world. 

Helping others and making them happy is nice.

But you know what’s nicer? Taking such good care of your own wellbeing that you’re able to help others even more.

To a lot of us, setting boundaries and focusing more on ourselves is incredibly uncomfortable.

It makes us feel selfish and guilty.

It feels like we’re directly opposing our desire to help others.

But we need to understand the real benefit of focusing on ourselves.

The better we are, the better we can help others.

And this applies to all sorts of things.

The more you allow yourself to dive deeper into your art or pursue your interests without guilt, the more of a unique and valuable impact you can have on people.

The more you give yourself the time and space needed to take care of your health and get clarity, the more you’ll be equipped to help others do the same.

The more you love yourself, the more you will love others.

By sacrificing too much of ourselves in the moment because it feels like the right thing to do, we may be sacrificing what we’re able to do for the greater good.

You don’t have to say yes to everything.

You don’t have to create for likes.

You don’t have to give yourself to everyone all the time.

2024 needs a healthy, creative, purposeful version of you.

It needs artists making genuine art.

It needs deep workers bringing something new to the table.

It needs people showing other people that everyone is most valuable when they’re at their best.

In 2024, set a standard for yourself and let yourself live up to it.

Don’t just choose the ‘nice’ thing right in front of you, and instead choose the thing that will allow you to help even more in the bigger picture.

You’ll feel better, I guarantee it. You’ll do better work. You’ll change lives.

Fill your cup, then let it overflow into others’ cups.

Have an amazing end of year, and I hope we can get closer in 2024.

I’ll be doing an extremely limited run of this early next year, so if you want to get in on it before everyone else, I highly recommend you jump on the waitlist.

Can’t wait to see you what you make of the coming year!

All the love and talk soon,

Alex