Creatives, Why Can’t You Get Unstuck?

Today we’re going to talk about a problem many creatives face, and that’s resistance to change—why it’s so hard to make the big important changes we need to make to progress in our careers.

There’s plenty to talk about on this topic.

But specifically today I want to mostly talk about a simple realisation I’ve had that’s helped me better manage myself as it relates to long term change.

If you’d like to go deeper into this, at the end of this letter I’ll recommend a book I’m currently reading that’s amazing so far.

For today though, we’ll keep it relatively simple.

So you might know the feeling.

You’re stuck in a certain place with something and you’re super frustrated because—seemingly no matter how hard you try or how many times you try—you can’t seem to make the habit or change stick.

It could be you’ve been repeatedly trying to take the actions to build your online presence…

But every time you get fired up and start giving it a proper go, you somehow end up back in the same place—or maybe you always end up talking yourself out of continuing with it.

It could be you’ve decided to really double down on releasing more music this year.

You got yourself all fired up, but for some reason now it feels harder than it ever has before even though you were so motivated.

You’re somehow now producing less music even though you were prepped to produce a lot more.

Or it could be anything like this—anything where you feel you need to force yourself into this new way of being.

You’re sick of being stuck in the same shitty patterns and getting the same shitty results—but then even when you do do it for a bit you end up back in the same place.

This has been my whole life.

For the longest time I felt like it was constantly one step forward, two steps back.

It felt like the universe was actively trying to stop me from making progress.

And it still happens with certain things. But I’m learning.

So today first I’ll share with you one of the biggest helpful realisations I’ve had about making progress, and about winning the battle against resistance in the face of long term change.

But it’s one thing to identify a problem; it’s another thing to actually fix it.

So I’ll also talk a little about what you can do to work on it, and also a bit about the subconscious, because it’s helpful to know at least roughly how it works.

I will reiterate that there’s plenty more to it than what I’m talking about today.

If you have subconscious patterns or needs that are stopping you from doing things, that’s work you’ve just gotta do, potentially for years—potentially forever.

What I’m mostly going to be talking about is becoming aware of certain feelings and behaviour so you can correct yourself.

It’s simple, but this has genuinely helped me make important changes in my creative career that used to feel impossible. Things like:

• Actually finishing projects
• Making a decent enough living
• Building an online presence
• And being able to actually manage everything I need and want to do.

I hope this will help you either see your own struggles as a creative in a new light, or at least serve as a reminder to approach change in a helpful way.

Before we dive in: The Awaken Your Fan Base On Social Media course is currently open for the third round!

This course takes you through all the stuff you need to know about:

• Defining your artist identity
• Content for musicians
• Social media growth
• Releasing music
• Productivity
• Starting and growing your email list
• And a bunch of other stuff will also be added to it in future.

The doors are only open for a limited time, and it’s currently available at the early bird price, which will also only be available for a limited time.

It will also never be available at this price again because it just keeps growing and growing.

So highly recommend you jump on it as soon as possible if you’re interested.

You can check it out here and of course feel free to contact me with any questions about it 🙂

Let’s get back into it.

Do you get stuck like this?

Ok, let’s start with this realisation I’ve had.

I can only speak for myself here, but maybe it will be relevant to you too:

When I want or need to make a big lasting change but I can’t seem to make it happen, I’ve found it’s usually because I’m either too motivated and not patient enough (or restrained enough), or I’m not motivated enough and too patient or restrained.

I’ll explain all this properly soon, but what this usually means for me is a frustrating dissonance between the actions I take and the actions required for change.

I end up feeling half like I’m kind of doing something about it, and half like I’m still stuck in the exact same place.

And it makes it all the more confusing and upsetting because at the end of the day I don’t have much to show for this struggle.

So to start explaining this better—

There are two main different “change situations” I find myself in:

• There’s the ‘rock bottom’ change—I hit some kind of rock bottom and basically never want to hit that point again so I feel like I’ve gotta completely turn my whole life around and do things differently.
• And there’s the ‘constant itch’ change—every day I’m constantly reminded of changes I have to or want to make, but that I haven’t done enough about yet. Maybe you regularly see someone doing something you wish you were doing but aren’t, or you just think about it a lot.

Let’s talk about each.

Rock bottom.

When I have a rock bottom moment, which can be like a wake up moment where I realise “ok that’s it—I’m changing for good”, I get highly motivated to change.

I want to go from 0 — 100 because I’m so fired up and I’ll do anything to avoid feeling like I’m in that pit again.

In this situation, I’m ready to start making a change right now.

But the problem here is I lack the patience or restraint to do it properly.

In most situations, making a big change that transforms your life is not about one big moment where everything flips from one thing to another.

It’s usually more about small changes every day that lead to something much bigger over time.

Obviously you can have defining moments—and rock bottom is good for that.

But we’re talking about lasting change here, and usually that means slowly and steadily changing your identity so you become someone who acts a certain way and achieves certain things.

So when I’m in this hyper fired up state because I want to escape rock bottom for good, I go too far.

I channel all my energy into the initial moment of change, ****the moment I start doing something about it…

…and then I run out of steam.

I can’t keep that intensity up every day because I used it all up right at the start.

So the fire goes out, and I start to either stagnate or go backwards again.

This is almost definitely a form of self—sabotage.

Maybe deep down I don’t want to change and I know that if I use up all my energy like this, I’ll run out of it and then I’ll have an excuse not to change.

What I should be doing instead is trying to keep that fire burning at a lower level for longer.

I need to regulate that motivation—distribute it over a longer period so I can do something every day and actually make lasting change.

The easiest example I can give you of this is working out.

If you’ve never worked out before, let’s say you’re super out of shape and you have a rock bottom moment where you realise “ok, it’s time to make a change” then you go and do the most intense hardcore workout the world has ever seen…

…you’re not going to last a week.

That’s you fucking with yourself.

You’ll be way too sore and so you’ll have a reason not to be consistent, to not change.

You might have had the fire initially to go big, but what you probably needed was a string of less intense workouts so you could build momentum and identity and ultimately change.

And sometimes that aggressive initial push is exactly what you need to dig yourself out of a hole and make real change.

Sometimes I’ll tell artists this who have been stuck with building their presence and have just learned what to do:

It’s helpful to go a little extra hard in the beginning if things aren’t moving how you want, so you can get over that beginner’s hump and make some real progress faster.

But you’ve gotta pay attention to yourself and learn when to go hard (and how hard) so you can manage yourself over the long term and truly change.

If you’re someone who’s prone to self—sabotage, going too hard too fast in the beginning could definitely be one way you’re holding yourself back.

For me, having a rock bottom moment puts me in a state where I want to immediately go 200% all in.

It’s like I’m telling myself that I can condense the effort required for long term change into one moment.

And that fire is great because it’s easily enough to get me started…

But I’ll often take it too far and burn out a week later, then end up back where I was.

I know this about myself now, so I can be smarter in these moments.

As much as I might want to go 200% all in, I have to ask myself if it’s the right move right now, or if it’d be better to give it a bit less and keep up that momentum over a longer time.

In these situations, I usually need to regulate myself and exercise more patience.

It’s about finding the balance between aggressive action and restraint.

And I feel like a lot of people get stuck in a similar situation.

In my work I’ll talk to musicians who are just fed up with not making progress.

They’re overly ready for a massive change, finally ready to step out of that comfort zone and go hard.

Usually it’s something to do with social media, but it could also be something like creating and releasing a bunch of music.

This initial motivation is great…

But many of those musicians don’t have staying power because they go too hard and fast in the beginning.

They get this spike of excitement and willingness to act which gets them going, but check in two months later and they’ve exhausted themselves.

All their hard work has seemingly gone to waste and they feel worse than ever because there’s no noticeable change.

These rock bottom situations feel like they call for aggressive all in action—and they might for a bit.

But for myself at least, I’ve found that what they actually need most of the time is smart, controlled, consistent action.

It’s incredibly difficult because all you want to do in those moments is everything you possibly can to change—to not be the person in this rock bottom situation.

But what you often need is enough drive to get going, but enough restraint to be able to distribute that drive over a longer period, and not fuck yourself over.

That means staying closer to that rock bottom situation for a little longer, which is super uncomfortable…

But when you get away from it, you’re more likely to stay away from it because you’ve changed your identity by repeatedly doing something for your new self.

If you find yourself in situations like this a lot, where you have a rock bottom moment and you suddenly have more drive than you know what to do with… be careful.

You definitely want to act on it, but you don’t always want to go overboard.

The goal is long term change, not just change for one moment.

It’s like the whole dopamine regulation thing, right?

You don’t want huge short spikes and then huge sharp drops.

You want a nice, steady line that has more subtle drops and slowly climbs up over time.

That’s how you feel good more often.

And the way you get that—from what I understand–is to exercise restraint.

You don’t binge on things that make you feel good with absolutely no restraint.

You give yourself a bit and then pull back so you can keep enjoying it and not feel like shit all the time because you overdid it.

So this is an important lesson I’ve learned: You need to be in control of your motivation and restraint, of your desire for something and your patience in getting it.

It’s not always about going all in all the time, even though it feels right in these moments to do that. But it’s also not about doing nothing.

Sometimes you’ll be required to exercise more restraint or patience.

And sometimes it’ll serve you better to have less, or none.

I think you just have to get to know yourself and recognise when you’re sabotaging.

I know I get easily excited or worked up about some stuff and I have a tendency to ruin it because I go too hard upfront, so I practise a bit of restraint which keeps me going longer.

But also sometimes I’ll be in a situation where I have that fire and I know I need to take full advantage of it.

And this leads us to the other ‘change situation’ I mentioned.

The constant itch.

The constant itch situation is when you’ve got something you want or need to change and it’s just constantly bugging you, like an itch.

You’re constantly reminded of it, maybe by looking at others or just because you’re always thinking about it.

An example of this might be that you really want to start showing up on social media to get your music out there but you just can’t bring yourself to do it.

You think about it every day—maybe you’ve even been thinking about it for years.

And you know it’s not that hard…but you just can’t make the move.

This constant itch, in my opinion, is really hard to deal with, because usually the stakes are too low for you to change.

You’re not at rock bottom, and so the discomfort of changing is harder to justify because your current situation doesn’t feel worse than that, right?

And it’s not even that the discomfort is that intense—it’s just that you don’t have a big enough reason to tackle it.

In these constant itch situations, there’s usually not a big obvious immediate threat to your wellbeing.

Life feels pretty normal—maybe a bit flat because you wish you were making that change—but it’s not so horrible that you feel you have no choice but to change.

This is a situation in which you have too much restraint and patience, and not enough motivation, or fire to change.

It’s the opposite of the rock bottom situation.

You’ll more easily justify doing nothing because you’re like “I can easily just start this tomorrow”… which of course you never do.

Too much patience and restraint. Too much sneaky resistance.

You might find yourself sometimes getting a little extra fire to do this stuff, and you start for a bit…

But you usually don’t keep it up because there’s not really anything there to keep that fire burning.

If you decide to just stop, nothing that bad will happen.

You might take what feels like a very small step backwards, but it’s not as painful in the short term because your situation isn’t that bad.

Whereas in the rock bottom situation, if you decide to stop, you fall back into that pit of hell.

So you go extra hard to avoid that, which again can often lead to you stopping because you exhaust yourself.

Or at least this is the case for me.

You might have had different experiences, but I have talked to a lot of creatives who have said similar things, and I see it a lot in musicians I work with.

What’s so dangerous about this constant itch is we don’t see in these moments how bad it can end up.

It’s these daily decisions to not change that lead us to rock bottom situations.

Rock bottom has this big immediate threat, so our motivation to change goes up.

But the constant itch is just this annoying lower level threat, so our patience and restraint goes up… ultimately leading to rock bottom.

So this low motivation / high patience and restraint thing is just as bad a problem as the high motivation / low patience and restraint thing.

Both stop us from changing over the long term, because both prioritise the short term.

Rock bottom prioritises short term motivation, and the constant itch prioritises short term patience and restraint (comfort in this case).

And as I’ve mentioned, the way I’ve been dealing with the high motivation situations, is to just practise restraint and patience so I don’t overdo it and sabotage myself.

I don’t have a better solution yet other than this—it’s just learning to be in that high motivation state and practising control.

But when you’ve got low motivation your restraint and patience is too high, how do we deal with this?

I find it’s easier for me personally to not do something that’s bad for me than it is to do something that’s good for me.

Exercising restraint, although still hard, is easier for me than making myself do something when I don’t have the fire to do it.

So for me, I can’t always just will myself into it, like “Ok Alex, you’ve just gotta do it, go do it.”

I will say though I watched a super interesting Huberman podcast on motivation and willpower recently and that was pretty eye opening—definitely worth watching.

But anyway, to tackle this low motivation / high restraint and patience problem—and to do it on a regular basis so you’re not just constantly stopping and starting and getting nowhere—what can we do?

There’s nothing more frustrating than sitting in that constant feeling of ‘meh’ where you want to change but you also don’t have the fire to do anything about it.

Here are two things that have helped me work on this in a big way:

• First is upping the stakes so that motivation goes up and patience and restraint go down. This is especially helpful for getting started on making a change.
• Second is changing my environment to lessen the resistance to the things I want to do and build better habits. This is especially helpful for continuing to do the thing that will help you change.

Upping the stakes.

When it comes to upping the stakes, there are two things I do, and both drive motivation up pretty effectively.

What I’ve found to be most effective for me is forcing functions.

If you want to do something or make a change, you put yourself in a situation where you kind of have to make a change or do the thing.

The discomfort of not doing it has now become bigger than the discomfort of doing it.

A few recent examples of forcing functions I’ve put in place recently:

Publicly announcing I was starting the podcast.

I’d been putting this off for a while now, but as soon as I publicly announced it and had some people actually listening to it, I felt compelled to keep going.

If I hadn’t publicly announced it, I don’t think I would have kept it up.

I’ve made it to 5 episodes so far, but episode 2 was a nightmare, and I could easily have quit then if I hadn’t already said publicly that the episode was coming.

This is the power of forcing functions: The discomfort of letting you down is bigger than the discomfort of me actually doing the work.

Another example:

Investing a pretty significant amount of money into getting the course up and running.

Honestly, if I didn’t, I don’t think I would have done it.

It took me ages to build—almost an entire year to get it from nothing to where it is now, and there’s still more to do.

If I didn’t have that lingering feeling of “well I put all this money into it, I better fucking do it” I don’t think I would have, because it’s been a massive job.

The financial commitment forcing function is a good one, because parting with uncomfortable amounts of money makes you get to work.

You don’t want it to have gone to waste because that would just feel terrible.

Another example:

Recently I started working with a drum and bass producer to help me develop my production skills in this style of music.

I’ve had blocks in the past with this style of music, which led me down the path of not finishing anything.

But now because I’m accountable to someone else (in a way), I’m already breaking through barriers.

If I hadn’t started working with this guy, I would almost definitely just be doing the same thing as I have been.

I would have hit the same walls and had nothing in place to stop me from running away, and so I wouldn’t have changed.

So when you’re struggling with low motivation and it’s stopping you from making a change, forcing functions are super powerful.

Can’t recommend them enough.

A final example which is from years ago:

I had this production job where my studio partner and I had roughly 24 hours to make a couple of tracks start to finish because they were going on live TV that next night.

I’ve never worked so hard in my life because if my studio partner and I didn’t get that done, the consequences would have been big.

It was a hugely effective forcing function.

And although that was just one moment in time, it did help me see how much more I was capable of when I put my mind to it, which I think contributed to change over the long term.

If you put yourself in a position where changing is less uncomfortable than not, it’s going to drive up motivation and the likelihood you’ll actually stick to the thing.

I also find it’s good for helping me manage the restraint and patience side of things too.

There have already been so many moments across the examples I just gave where I’ve wanted to rush it or go too far with it, but I’ve had these things in place to help me manage myself.

For example, episode 2 of the podcast was too ambitious for me with where I’m at.

You might look at the final result and not think much of it—it’s just an hour long episode, not really a big deal.

But really, it took me ages to get it finished.

And because I’m so new to this I made all kinds of mistakes that made it take even longer than it should have.

I got overly excited when I started working on it and I tried to make it longer, but I wasn’t ready for that.

If I hadn’t committed publicly to continuing with this podcast, that could have been a moment where I exhausted myself and then gave up, see?

So again, this is something I highly recommend for you.

If you’re struggling to commit to change, forcing functions will drastically increase your chances of success.

One you put something in place, it acts as a decision—maker.

It’s always a factor. It’s always there.

If you don’t feel like doing it, that forcing function is there to strongly encourage you to do it anyway.

Most—if not all—of my major changes in recent times have been because of forcing functions.

What’s something you’ve been struggling with?

• Is it showing up on social media?
• Or committing to the actions you need to take to grow your fan base?
• Or finishing and releasing more music?

Whatever it is, there will be something you can put in place to up the stakes.

If you can make the discomfort of staying where you are greater than the discomfort of changing, you will change.

If you truly want to change and you really mean it, forcing functions is where it’s at.

Just think about it.

Another thing you can do, which I also do and it also helps, is to just spend some time being present and actually thinking about the cost of not making the change you want to make.

And also thinking about just how much better life would be if you made it.

This sounds so simple, and it is, but it’s pretty powerful.

Most of us go through life super distracted and only half committed to even thinking about what’s important to us in any significant way.

It’s so easy to let your mind wander to other places or to let some distraction pull you out of thinking about your goals, unless you’re really committed to actually giving it attention.

When you do give it proper attention, when you think about what you’re losing by not changing and what you could gain, and you really sit with it…

…you can pretty effectively motivate yourself to get moving.

From my understanding, we have the power within us to really motivate ourselves if we want to.

In the right situation, we can just talk ourselves into doing stuff.

But that’s not going to happen if we never give ourselves the chance to sit with anything.

So just try this:

Find 10 — 20 minutes today to just sit quietly, away from distractions, and just think about your goals.

Ask yourself how much better your life could be if you made the change, and also the cost of not making it.

Let yourself feel what comes up and just sit with it.

I can almost guarantee if it’s truly important to you and you sit with it properly, you will light some kind of fire in yourself to get up and work on it in some way.

Just sit there and be present and think about it. Feel it.

The great thing about this is, if it works, you can do this anytime.

And it’s a really low barrier to entry activity.

Even in an unmotivated state you can just sit there and mull something over, right?

So maybe this sounds dumb to you, but I really mean it when I say this can work. At least it does for me. Highly recommend you try this too.

If you’re someone who gets motivated by like motivational content (like I do), this is basically the same thing, except you’re giving it to yourself.

You create a world in your mind where you’ve changed and you sit in that feeling.

You create a world where you stay the same forever and you sit with that feeling.

One of those is gonna get you moving.

Both of these approaches to “upping the stakes” work well for me. I hope you give them a go.

Now let’s talk quickly about changing your environment to help you actually stick to making changes.

Environment.

This has been an absolute game—changer for me.

What I didn’t used to understand was just how much of an impact your environment has on your life, in so many ways.

Even the smallest things can have the biggest effect on your long term change.

When I say environment, I’m not just talking about your physical environment, but also your mental environment.

You can set your environment up so that doing the thing that will help you change is actually easier than not doing it.

Or at least you can drastically reduce how much resistance there is.

The idea is you’re putting yourself in a space (whether physical or mental) where it becomes more normal or obvious to do the thing that will help you change.

They can be big obvious scary things, where you throw yourself into an environment where you just have to get stuff done (which is exactly what forcing functions are).

But you can also make smaller changes to your environment that shift your behaviour and your mindset and beliefs over time, and lead to absolutely massive results.

One example I think I read in Atomic Habits was about putting your water bottle in view when you’re working so you’re more likely to drink more.

I like this a lot, even from a productivity standpoint.

Apart from it just being good for your health, drinking water gives you more mental and physical energy…

…which will lead to doing better and more work…

…which will lead to better and more results…

…which will lead to better and more opportunities, and so on.

This is a good example of something seemingly so tiny and insignificant having a massive impact on your life and helping you change in huge ways.

All you did was put your water bottle more in view, but it lead to getting better and more opportunities in life.

Obviously it’s not always that simple, but this kind of domino effect thing is real.

Or let’s go back to music.

What if you’re not making enough music?

How could you set up your environment to change that?

Could you place your instrument or computer somewhere where it’s impossible to ignore?

Maybe before you leave for work in the morning you put your instrument on your couch, so that when you get home and you want to just flop on to the couch and do nothing, you see your instrument there.

It acts as a cue, and you’re more likely to say “you know what, it’s right here, maybe I should just mess around for a bit.”

Then maybe you start actually creating more stuff and that gets you motivated to create even more.

And maybe that leads to you thinking like “hmm you know what? Maybe now that I’m doing a lot more, I could start releasing and maybe start up a social media presence.”

And so on, right?

Maybe you don’t need any extra motivation to do more music because it’s such an addictive thing, but you could do this with anything.

• Are there small things you can put in place to change how you approach social media?
• Or things you can do to make it more likely you’ll record content?
• Or could you get yourself in a better headspace that primes you for working on the dream by watching a 5 minute video every day before you get to it?

You’ll have your own things that work better for you, so I recommend you experiment with things and see what comes out of it.

There are so many different ways in which you can affect your environment to create change, including who you hang around.

But I want to keep this relatively short because I want to focus more on the idea that not only do you have more control than you think over your ability to change…

…but also that you don’t always have to make these massive leaps to get massive results.

Sometimes you can just change small things that make it much more normal for you over time to take better actions and have better thoughts, which can lead to making big, lasting change.

And just before we move on, this is something I feel like a lot of us struggle with, or at least I do sometimes:

Coming to terms with the idea that big lasting change often comes from really small steps.

I understand it, of course, but it can be hard to look at a huge change I want to make—like becoming a completely new person—and truly believe that the way to go about that is making these tiny changes.

Sometimes it’s hard to get motivated enough about that for me to actually do anything.

I have this huge goal and my first step is to move my instrument to the couch? Really?

Or sometimes I’m so fired up about making this huge change that I want to do something much bigger, but that’s not necessarily the right move.

I’m like “ok, I’m ready to do this, what’s the plan?” and then when I realise the plan is some really small step, I’m kind of like “…oh… that’s it?” and it’s hard to just stick to that.

This comes back to the motivation, patience, restraint thing: It’s about managing yourself.

The subconscious.

The last main thing I want to quickly talk about today is your subconscious.

I feel it’s an important piece of the puzzle, and I think it’s good to be at least a bit aware of what it might be doing to you or for you.

Your subconscious can have a massive impact on your ability to change.

It can make easy things seem hard or hard things seem easy (if you can train it).

And so even if you’ve got tons of motivation and you’re trying to exercise restraint and patience as best you can…

…you may still find that you run into roadblocks, sometimes for reasons you just can’t see at all.

We all have subconscious patterns and beliefs that drive a lot of our actions.

Think of your subconscious mind like this huge computer that runs silently in the background of our lives and controls a large portion of what we do without us even realising it.

The way it runs our lives (as in, the beliefs and behaviours it tells us to have, which of course leads to certain results) is determined by the information it’s been fed over time, especially the stuff that was fed to it when we were young.

So if you grew up in a household that struggled with money beliefs like I did, you’re most likely going to grow up struggling with money beliefs.

And as a result you’re most likely going to struggle with money—unless you intentionally override these implanted beliefs.

Then we’ve got our conscious mind which I think of as the present mind.

If you look at your hand right now and think to yourself “this is my hand” and then you make it ball up into a fist, that’s you using your conscious mind.

You’re thinking something and making something happen in the moment.

Your subconscious mind is automatic; it does things based on the tape recording that’s been put in it.

Your conscious mind can override that tape recording in the moment.

If you’ve built up a habit of getting home after work every day and going straight to the couch to go on social media, you can override that habit with your conscious mind.

If you’re present, you can say “actually I’m not going to do that and instead I’m going to go work on music.”

The problem is your subconscious mind is way bigger than your conscious mind.

Your conscious mind can only focus on so much at any one time.

Whereas your subconscious mind is like this massively complex algorithm that runs most of your life.

This is why if you’ve got a bad habit that you’re trying to change long—term, and you’re trying to just willpower your way out of it, it rarely works.

You can’t permanently change because every time you try, you might initially get all fired up and make some conscious changes, but your relatively small conscious mind just can’t keep up with your massive, constantly running subconscious mind.

And your subconscious might be telling you to do the opposite of the change you’re trying to make.

It’s like you’re trying to put out a massive house fire with one small bucket of water.

You’ll put a little bit of the fire out, but by the time you come back with a new bucket of water, the bit you put out has already started up again.

So if you’ve got deeply ingrained beliefs or you’ve built habits that work against what you’re trying to achieve, that’s going to impact a ton of stuff you do and the results you get.

While you’re in the midst of trying to change (which is uncomfortable), you’ll make these tiny decisions that seems like nothing in the moment.

But they sneakily lead you back to where it’s nice and safe and comfortable, which is whatever situation you’ve been in most of your life.

For example:

If you’re trying to make a change to help you succeed in your creative career, but deep down you don’t believe you deserve success, or you’ve built the habit of bailing on hard situations because you’re afraid of getting hurt in some way…

…the moment you stop consciously challenging that belief or habit—actively working against it—you’ll slip back into old habits.

And if you don’t catch yourself and correct it consciously, you’ll end up in exactly the same spot as you’ve always been.

A handful of years ago I recognised this pattern in my life.

I would work up to achieving something big, and then right when I got to a high point, I would somehow find a reason to back off.

Somehow, I would find a way to make things stop working.

That was my subconscious pulling me back to comfort.

I*’ve done this with so many things:*

• Exercise: every time I was starting to get in shape, my body would find an excuse to somehow get sick, or life would get too busy or something.
• Music: every time I started a new project and came up with something I thought was really cool, I would find a way to ruin it or stop working on it.
• Career success: every time I got a big bump in progress in some way, I’d find a way to make life harder or knock myself down a peg or two.

Your subconscious habits and beliefs will destroy you if you don’t work on correcting them.

You need to pay attention to how you conduct yourself in life and try to identify areas where you sabotage yourself.

This is why shaping your environment and putting yourself in situations where you’re so uncomfortable that you have to change can really help.

But I also think it’s good to be aware of what’s going on with you beneath the surface, because sometimes there’s extra work to do.

So I recommend you take some important part of your life, sit down and write about it:

• Where do you keep getting tripped up?
• What patterns can you identify? What keeps happening that holds you back, and when?
• What beliefs do you have that are associated with the things you’re trying to achieve?

If you can identify how you’re messing with yourself, you can work on fixing it.

The more aware you are of it, the more power you can have over it.

I’ll leave this here, but there’s so much more you can learn about this stuff.

And there’s also so much more you can do for change than what I’ve mentioned today.

I’m only one person and these are experiences I’ve had, but all kinds of people have made all kinds of changes in different ways.

So if you want to learn more about this stuff, about self—sabotage and changing your life, I recently started reading a book called The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest and I highly recommend it if you haven’t read it already.

Even if you have read it already, I recommend going through it again.

It’s confronting (in a great way) and super interesting—definitely worth your time.

You can change.

It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible at all.

You can radically change the trajectory of your life if you’re committed to making it happen.

You can do it.

Ok, let’s wrap this up.

Again just before you go, reminding you that the Awaken Your Fan Base On Social Media course is currently open for the third round.

This takes you through all the stuff you need to know about:

• Defining your artist identity
• Content for musicians
• Social media growth
• Releasing music
• Productivity
• Starting and growing your email list
• And again, a bunch of other stuff will be added to it in future.

Doors are only open for a limited time, and it’s currently available at the early bird price, which will also only be available for a limited time.

Again, it will also never be available at this price again because it’s just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So highly recommend you jump on it as soon as possible if you’re interested.

You can check it out here.

Ok, see you again next week. You’ve got this 🙂

— Alex