I’ve had a few tough conversations with musicians this week that I can’t stop thinking about.
So today we’ll talk about something I think is really important when it comes to pursuing creativity as a profession, and that’s sacrifice.
Just before we dive in, in about a week I’ll be opening up the doors to my course Awaken Your Fan Base, which takes musicians through everything they need to build a fan base using social media.
It dives deep into branding, content, social media growth, releasing music, productivity, and it’s only going to be developed more over time.
Doors will only be open for a limited time, so if you don’t want to miss out I highly recommend you jump on the waitlist so you can be the first to know when it becomes available.
Ok, let’s get into it.
A handful of years ago I had a bit of a break down.
I was going through a time in my life where I was working through a lot of old beliefs, disconnecting from old friends and other people, and starting to actually think about my future seriously.
And this was bringing up a lot of painful stuff, specifically around my identity as a creative, and as someone who was building my own thing.
Because at the time, I had this belief, or this attachment to the identity of someone who needed to be as outwardly successful as possible as a creative, and also to have total freedom in my career and life right now.
So if every second of my life wasn’t about achieving that, I was doing it wrong.
It was all in, no matter what.
Basically, sacrifice everything that isn’t that, or else you’ll fail or you’re not serious enough about it.
In my eyes, it wasn’t even a possibility to consider any other way of approaching it.
And being able to make sacrifices is a great thing.
I wouldn’t have a life I’m happy with today if I didn’t make tons of them.
And anyone who’s also built something for themselves that they’re happy with would say the same thing.
You have to give some things up. You can’t half—arse it and expect to get anywhere decent with it.
That is true from what I’ve seen—you do have to face this reality.
But this belief and attitude I had came with a lot of pain and desperation.
Because I was wholly consumed by this one thing, I had attached my entire self to it.
That meant that when things were going well, I was super happy. But when things weren’t going well, I was a mess.
And that happens a lot, because it’s a bumpy ride—so I was a mess a lot of the time.
I don’t think pain is always a bad thing.
I don’t even think desperation is always a bad thing.
Really, I think both helped me do things on this path that a lot of people I know wouldn’t be able to do.
But, when you have too much pain and desperation, things go weird… in a bad way.
Constant pain and desperation doesn’t really gel with trying to build something for yourself in the world of creativity.
When you’re in that state of desperation so much to the point you’re not thinking clearly and your energy is totally consumed by these heavy emotions, you can’t make good decisions, and you can’t do good work…
And you need both to get where you want.
So eventually I kind of just cracked.
The pain and desperation and sacrifice that came with trying to build this creative career was so ridiculous that I felt like I’d totally lost myself.
I’d let almost every other part of my life fall apart in the pursuit of this one thing, and not only was I totally unhappy, I also didn’t have much to show for it.
Being so needy about being successful (and making it all happen right now) had narrowed my focus way too much, and so I wasn’t making good progress, I wasn’t enjoying it at all, and I wasn’t able to zoom out and look at things properly.
I was just stuck.
So I had a moment—a little ‘what the fuck am I doing with my life’ breakdown moment—and then I sat down to figure out what to do from there.
I had to decide what I wanted my life to look like, truly.
Was I really willing to give up everything else in my life to succeed on this path?
Did I really have to?
Was the only way to be successful to have nothing but this one thing?
Is this pain and desperation and insane level of sacrifice really necessary?
I asked myself why I’d started on this path in the first place. What was the goal of building my own thing and going down this road?
I knew I wanted to wake up every day and work on something that I’d chosen to work on, not what someone else told me I had to do.
I wanted it to be meaningful work, and I wanted to be creative.
I did want to achieve some decent level of outward success with it—actually I didn’t and still don’t want to place any cap on the possible heights of success.
But I also wanted other things in life.
I wanted to be healthy.
I wanted an amazing relationship.
I wanted to be able to pursue other projects, and a bunch of other stuff.
If this is what I wanted, the way I was going about getting it felt off.
At the time it was a non—negotiable to put all of my time and energy into this one thing so I could get somewhere decent with it.
But it wasn’t really working.
I was super unhappy and anxious and desperate all the time, and some of those other things I wanted in life had gone backwards.
I was supposed to be building a life where those things were going well, not terribly.
So I was at a bit of a crossroads here.
I knew exactly what I wanted, but was I going the right way about it?
I felt I had to make a choice:
Do I continue down this path of sacrificing literally everything in order to make this creative career work, so that eventually I could design the life I truly wanted?
Do I continue on with this intense pain and desperation in the hopes it’ll lead me to my ideal life, even though right now it feels like things are going backwards?
Or do I reintroduce other important parts of my life so that I can start living a life closer to that now… but risk not achieving the success in my creative career because I can’t give 100% to it?
This was really tough.
Because you can’t choose a path where there’s no sacrifice.
And you can’t choose a path where there’s no struggle at all.
You also can’t avoid having to make compromises in the short term to get your long term thing.
Sometimes the right thing to do is to go 100% all in on a thing and sacrifice everything else for a while.
What if I decided to start living a more ‘balanced life’ and then I never achieved my dream of building something successful in the creative space?
As a creative, you’ll know how much this would hurt, to not let yourself have that.
But then also what if I do sacrifice everything to have that, but it doesn’t work out?
What if I go all in and I end up with none of the stuff I really want?
Or what if I achieve the success but then I regret not letting in the other stuff?
Fuck, what do I do here?
I struggled with this for ages. I went back and forth, back and forth.
I had moments where I decided to go down one road, then I would backtrack and go down the other, and just kind of keep going back and forth between the two. Absolute fucking mess…
…but also the best thing I think I could have done.
Because in this constant back and forth, my world opened up.
I was still struggling and in a lot of pain.
I was still desperate half the time and feeling like the world was crushing me.
And I was still sacrificing a lot of progress by not committing to a path.
But this struggle helped me to see things differently.
It showed me that there’s a third option, one I hadn’t properly considered before.
And that third option was, to me, by far the most appealing.
The third option is this:
Instead of caving to the rules of one path or the other, instead of playing one game or the other… I was going to create my own.
What if instead of accepting I was someone who would have to either sacrifice everything to make the career work, or sacrifice success to have a more “balanced “life…
I became someone who could have both?
When I started to realise this was a possibility, everything changed.
Before, I was looking at life through this very limiting lens: You can either have the creative career or the “balanced” life.
And the reason I thought like this was because—at the time—I was the kind of person who could only handle one or the other.
Now, I know the truth about life: You have the ability to become someone who can have both.
That still requires tremendous sacrifice, you still have to endure pain, and there is still some compromise in career and other things you care about…
But it doesn’t necessarily look like what you think.
Here’s what I didn’t used to understand about people:
Most of us are creating our future based on our past.
Our past is defining who are in the present, and our present selves are taking actions to create our future based on who we think we are.
That is incredibly limiting.
Because if we look to our past to inform of us of the future, all we’re going to see is what we’ve experienced or understood then.
We’re going to assume the same rules apply to the future, which they don’t at all, unless you let them.
So if you’re someone who’s learned that to be creative is to be like a starving artist…
…or if you’ve learned that if you want to have a successful creative career you have to sacrifice everything else in your life…
…you’re going to create a future reality that reinforces that.
Right now, as you’re reading to this, there are infinite potential futures for you just waiting to be created—realities your past self (which remember might be your current self) just could not accept as real.
If you’re someone who constantly feels overwhelmingly busy and you just can’t possibly see how you could maintain everything in your life in half the time… that reality simply will not be available to you. You won’t see it.
If you’re someone who believes that only certain types of people get certain things, and because you’re not that person you won’t ever get that thing… you won’t accept a potential future where you can have that thing.
You will shut that down and instead create a reality that reinforces your existing belief.
And if you’re someone who thinks your only two options are either a successful creative career or a “balanced” life… no third option will be available to you.
It won’t present itself; your mind will block you from seeing it.
Looking at your future through the lens of your past self drastically narrows not only your view of the future, but also the chances you’ll actually be able to create the one you want.
What if for the rest of this letter, you let go of your past self’s vision of the future, and you decided to be someone completely different, someone who does have a third option?
For the rest of the letter, let yourself be someone with no limit on how far you can go, even if it feels a bit ridiculous.
Let’s talk to that person now.
Right now, you’re staring at one of two paths:
— Going all in on your creative career and sacrificing everything else in your life to make it work…
— Or having a more rounded life and sacrificing the success of your creative career.
Now imagine a third path. Create it in your mind.
On this path you have both options.
The creative career and the nice rounded life where you haven’t let everything else fall apart.
What kind of person would you have to be to go down this third path?
What would you have to give up to have both these options?
For this exercise, you’re not allowed to sacrifice the success of your creative career, and you’re not allowed to sacrifice those things you most want in your rounded life.
You have to find other stuff to give up so you can have both.
What can you do here? What kind of person do you have to become?
Well, turns out the stuff you have to sacrifice isn’t actually much of a loss at all.
Giving it up is mostly really good for you—it’s just really painful, initially.
You have to give up things like:
- Too much comfort
- You have to let go of a lot of fear, or at least you have to be more willing to face a lot of your fears
- You have to give up a lack of discipline
- A lack of focus
- Wasting time on things that don’t help you progress
- Inaction
- Excessive laziness
- Excuses
- You have to become better at dealing with pain to make you strong
- You have to let go of the need for so much external validation
- Unhealthy lifestyle choices
- Complaining about everything
- The belief that certain things are out of our reach
- That neediness, the desperation.
- A scarcity mindset
- All of the stuff our best selves don’t really want anyway.
And this is an interesting thing to me, something most people do and something I’m trying to overcome myself:
Most of us will sooner sacrifice something we say is important to us than sacrifice something we say we don’t want.
For example, most people—again, I do this too—will sooner give up creative career success or living a nice full, rounded life, for comfort.
They’ll give up stuff that is apparently so important to them that it crushes their soul when they can’t have it…
…because of fear, or because they won’t learn how to strengthen their focus, or because they refuse to let go of certain beliefs.
I want to be clear, I’m not having a go at you here.
This shit is hard, and I struggle with it too.
It is much easier said than done to overcome this stuff.
And also to each their own—it’s not my business to tell you how to live your life.
But if we’re accepting that this third option is a possibility, that it’s accessible to us and that we have to become a certain kind of person to have it, we also have to be able to let go of who we are currently.
You have to be able to detach yourself from your current habits and beliefs and views.
You can’t make excuses on this third path like you can on the first two paths.
On the first two, you can say things like: “well I would be able to have ‘x’, but I’ve given all my energy to this other thing”.
You can’t do that on the third path.
Those excuses are what you have to sacrifice to walk it.
Letting go of these things that we’ve attached to ourselves—that we see as actual parts of ourselves—is incredibly challenging, because it feels like we’re betraying ourselves.
We identify too much with the comfort, and so we see the discomfort as the enemy.
But it’s exactly these things holding us back from seeing and walking this third path.
If you’ve been stuck and it’s crushing your soul, your enemy is your best friend.
All those things that you want to avoid are all the things you need to confront.
It’s hard. It hurts. You will do anything not to accept it as reality…
But the truth is you can have what you want.
You don’t have to choose between the first and second path—not unless you want to be literally the biggest and best in the world or something, which is maybe a different story, but even then I would argue the same stuff at least in part.
But if you want the kind of life where you can have a successful creative career and not give up the other great stuff in life, it’s totally doable.
Just not as the version of you who holds onto fear, excuses, bad habits and limiting beliefs.
When you adopt the view that you are in control of a lot more than you originally thought, and that you can radically change yourself in ways you can hardly comprehend, you start to see new solutions.
I used to think the only way I could make the progress I needed to was to work like 90 hour weeks.
Wrong.
Most of the time nowadays I can get more done in half the time, sometimes even a quarter of the time.
I used to think I would never be able to take a full day off every single week to spend with my partner—I simply had way too much to do and if I took time off everything would fall apart.
Wrong.
We’ve been doing it for a while now, and things have only gotten better both in work and our relationship.
I used to think that I would never be able to find a way to balance relationship, career, personal growth, health, and a bunch of other stuff, while also doing them well and still having the freedom to explore other creative projects.
Again, wrong.
The amount of time and physical, mental, and emotional energy I was wasting on things I didn’t even want in my life is crazy.
When I started to consciously work on that stuff, it was like I’d entered an entirely new reality.
And I know that as I keep going—if I keep paying attention—this will only keep happening.
Don’t get me wrong: It’s not awesome all the time.
I do still struggle plenty. I get overwhelmed.
I have moments where I seriously doubt my ability to handle things. I fuck up.
I’ve still had to sacrifice some things that I sometimes wish I didn’t have to. I still experience plenty of pain.
But this third path is undoubtedly and infinitely better than the first two paths.
Because no matter which path you pick, there is sacrifice. There is pain. There is pressure.
But if that’s the case, you might as well pick the option where the sacrifices are things you don’t truly want, and the problems are better, right?
The dream is available to you if you become the person who deserves it.
A new version of you who can detach from those old things holding you back, and take on a new set of challenges instead.
Facing the discomfort.
Building the focus and discipline.
Getting rid of the excuses and the desperation.
It’s yours if you choose it.
So I want to share one more thing that’s helped me work through this stuff.
Again, I’m still going—plenty more ground to cover—but definitely making good progress.
Something big I had to let go of was needing this third path to look exactly as I first imagined it.
And I don’t mean giving up on my vision—I mean accepting that the road to achieve my vision might look a little different to what I first thought.
The thing about going down a path where you have to be operating as your future self instead of your past self, is that it’s harder to predict what the path is going to look like.
When you’re acting from your past, you’re more likely doing things you’ve already done and that will lead to outcomes you can predict.
You can pretty much see your way forward because you’ve walked this path before, right?
Whereas if you’re acting from your future, you’re creating a new reality on the go.
You’re constantly going into the unknown and figuring things out.
You have to trust yourself enough to find your way, and you have to be ok with your past self’s vision of the path forward being wrong.
This idea is uncomfortable, or at least it has been for me.
But letting go of this attitude of “well this is how I wanted it or expected it to work, I don’t want to do it another way” has allowed me to constantly adjust my approach to certain things, and I don’t think I’d be anywhere near where I am if I hadn’t been open to it.
Your past will constantly challenge you.
It will work overtime to keep you small, and it’s really good at convincing you that you’re doing the right or wrong thing when you’re doing the opposite.
You must stay awake.
Pay attention.
Be ok with making changes for the greater good and don’t hold on to any one particular plan so tightly that it holds you back.
Sacrifice is unavoidable. You will not be able to grow without it.
You are always sacrificing something, regardless of which path you go down.
You can choose to go down the path of going 100% all in on your creative career and sacrificing everything else in your life just to succeed.
You can choose to go down to the path of living a more rounded life and sacrifice putting as much as you can into your creative career.
Or you can choose to go down the path where you have time and energy and space for both, but you’re sacrificing the fears, behaviours, and beliefs that are stopping you from having that on the other two paths.
You would be amazed at how much more is possible for you when you’re willing to transform yourself.
If right now you think it’s literally impossible to create any more time or space for what matters to you without sacrificing your health or wellbeing…
…or you think it’s impossible to get better results than what you’re currently getting…
I strongly encourage you to challenge yourself on that.
Most of us are not even close to operating at our current potential.
And this super uncomfortable feeling you might have right now thinking about it is not the enemy, no matter how much you try to convince yourself it is.
You can build your creative career.
You can be healthy and happy and have time for yourself and for others.
You can create a life full of meaning and impact and growth.
You can have all of it.
You just have to change what you sacrifice.
You’ve got this.
A final reminder about the Awaken Your Fan Base course—if you’re interested in taking a big step forward in your music career this year, jump on the waitlist, and next week you’ll get notified when it opens up before anyone else.
Remember, it’s only opened for a limited time, so if you don’t want to miss out, I recommend you do it asap.
Ok, that’s it for now. See you again soon 🙂
All the love and stay awakened,
Alex
