One thing I love about making music or just being creative and building things is the transformation.
You start with an idea, or a riff, or a sound, and you build on it.
You keep developing it, adding to it, working on it.
And you eventually turn it into something that becomes much more than the sum of its parts.
Something that not only gives you a real, strong, unique feeling… but also gives other people real, strong, unique feelings.
It can become something that literally changes people’s lives—and on the extreme end maybe even inspires massive cultural shifts.
To me, that is amazing.
That we can take some seemingly insignificant riff or sound or idea or whatever and transform it into something so powerful is a great reminder of our limitlessness and our potential as humans.
And it’s not just making art.
People who spend their lives building their bodies completely transform themselves in many ways: Physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically.
People who gain a lot of experience in a company can end up running it, or people who gain experience in a certain area can end up becoming the go—to person in that area.
People who constantly seek out adventure can end up with crazy, interesting and impressive stories that leave people wondering how they manage to live such an exciting life.
All of these start with something super small: An idea, an interest, a decision, a behaviour, a habit.
But where they can lead you is mind—blowing to me.
This is something I wish I’d properly known earlier.
We can become superhuman.
We often look at other people who are at the top of their game almost as freaks, right?
These people seem superhuman, because their skills, minds, confidence, energy, whatever, is so impressive.
And they are superhuman.
They’ve become superhuman.
But they started as just human.
They went through a transformation to became who they are now.
They weren’t ‘just like that’; they became that.
So many of us don’t make this connection though, not properly.
Although we all know that ‘normal’ people can become extraordinary, it’s not something many of us treat as a real belief (especially not when it comes to ourselves).
We look at these massive things we want to achieve and see them as completely out of reach.
Because of where we’re currently at, we can feel so disconnected from them that it’s too hard to believe we could ever **have them.
This is how I used to think:
Imagine you’re standing on a cliff’s edge looking across at another cliff that holds all your wildest dreams, and there’s a biiiig gap in between.
The gap is much too big to jump; you’d never make it across.
So you look at all your dreams hanging out over there and you feel hopeless, because you think you won’t ever be able to get to them.
Those dreams are reserved for people who exist on that other cliff, not the cliff you’re on, right?
Wrong.
Because despite feeling that disconnection, there is a way to access that other cliff.
You feel held back because there’s this huge gap between where you are and what you want that you could never jump.
But you don’t have to be able to jump this gap to get what you want…
You can build a bridge over it.
You can lay one brick or plank at a time.
And eventually you can turn that gap into a path, one you can walk over.
This is where I messed up for years.
I saw that space between those cliffs—between where I was and where I wanted to be—as a gap that I couldn’t get over.
And so the things on the other side were just not an option.
But now I get it.
It’s not really a gap.
Or at least it’s not a gap you’re supposed to jump.
It’s a space that requires you to build a bridge over it so you can get to your dreams.
If you looked at some of the biggest and best songs in the world, you could feel like making something like that and having that kind of impact is out of your reach.
Maybe you couldn’t possibly see how your mind or your soul would ever let you come up with something so genius, because right now you couldn’t come up with a great idea to save your life.
Or maybe you could never imagine being in a situation where your music could reach so many people and have this impact, because right now you can’t get anyone to pay attention to your stuff.
This is the problem with that kind of ‘gap thinking’.
If we choose to see that space as an unfillable gap, whatever’s on that other cliff is not in reach for us.
If we think that the only things that are available to us are things we can currently just reach out and grab, we are severely limiting ourselves.
People who think like this (like I used to) will only ever believe they can achieve what they can easily comprehend, and therefore most likely only ever achieve that.
But if you know how this really works—how people really achieve amazing things, you can get that power back.
You don’t have to jump that gap; you just have to build a bridge.
And you don’t even have to be able to see the bridge already built, or how to build the whole thing.
You just have to be able to see that it can be built, and then start laying bricks or planks.
This is the secret to getting what you want.
Accept that you can do it, and then start taking small steps.
Don’t worry about whether or not you can see the full path and how to do everything perfectly.
Just accept you can make your way, and get started.
Going back to music for a second: When you’re making music, you don’t always know where a song is going to end up.
You don’t know exactly what the final product is going to sound like.
How many times have you started developing an idea only to end up with a finished song that sounds nothing like what you originally expected?
Countless, right?
I don’t know if I’ve ever—in my 20+ years of exploring creativity—started working on an idea and had it end up exactly as I thought it would.
It always ends up at least slightly (if not radically) different.
As you develop the idea or whatever it is, new pathways emerge.
New doors unlock.
You make new connections in your mind that lead you to different things you couldn’t see before.
This applies to everything.
How many times have you heard some super successful person say “we never thought this product would get this big” or “it started out as this simple thing, and over time we just kept developing it until it became this huge thing”?
When you’re laying that first plank across the gap, you might have no idea how this bridge is going to end up.
But you don’t need to know.
You’ll figure it out as you go.
Sure, you might need to learn a bit initially so you can get started—like how to lay a brick or a plank properly.
But you don’t need to be the world’s best bridge engineer right now.
Right now, you just need enough to get you moving. You can learn to become the world’s best bridge engineer as you go.
If you can see it in art, you can see it anywhere.
Hearing this and thinking about making music or making art, you’re probably more likely to connect with this idea because it’s familiar.
You are probably more easily able to see how lots of practise and small improvements over time could take you from an average musician to an exceptional one that changes lives.
Even if you’re having trouble believing you could ever be as amazing as the artists you look up to, you probably at least understand the concept because you understand how to practise an instrument or work on your craft.
But this same concept applies to basically everything, even things unfamiliar to you.
Anything big you want to achieve—anything where there’s a huge gap involved—can be achieved if you’re willing to build a bridge.
I do a lot of work with musicians online who are either in the beginning stages of building a presence, or who have been trying to make it happen for a while but they haven’t seen much movement.
In many cases, I realise these musicians are thinking small.
They place a limit on what they think is possible for them to achieve online.
This might be because they’re at the very beginning and have no idea what they’re doing yet, so the idea of building a big audience seems impossible to them.
Or maybe it’s because they’ve been at it for a while in a kind of half—hearted way and haven’t seen much happen.
Then the belief that they can do big things starts to shrink.
And this is understandable.
So the work we’ll almost always have to do in the beginning is getting them in a place where they understand the fundamentals of music marketing, specifically on social media.
These are things like:
- Understanding what drives interactions or engagement on social media in general, which essentially just boils down to emotion
- Understanding how traffic works on these platforms
- Learning a few simple but commonly effective content types that are good for sharing music, so they can get an idea of what kind of thing can work
- And understanding the general mindset of the consumer (or potential fan) on social media
A few months down the line, these musicians can be in a completely different space, both in terms of mindset and the results they’re getting.
I still get surprised by how much some musicians can change in this time.
All they needed was a nudge in the right direction and permission to show up without needing to see the whole path laid out beforehand.
They just needed a bit of knowledge and to start laying some planks or bricks, right?
And although not every musician has this same experience (because there are other factors that determine success)…
…and although it’s rare I get to see people go from A all the way to Z in a matter of months while I work with them…
I do get to see them get from A to B or C or D.
And this forward movement can really get them hyped up, because they can now see the light.
They can see that if they start making a few of the right moves, more answers will emerge out of the darkness—things that they couldn’t see before.
So they start to believe that they can go a lot further.
And when you allow yourself to think bigger like this, more and more answers appear.
And this can keep happening.
This is just one example that’s close to me where I get to see this transformation in action, and it’s super inspiring.
These people who felt entirely disconnected from the idea of building something like an online presence are now in the position to tell other musicians:
“Hey, you know it’s not so bad once you get started—I didn’t used to think I could do it, but here we are, and it can be the same for you”.
And this leads us into the next point I want to make, which is just how much these endeavours can change us, change our identities.
Identity change.
If you read my recent letter on authenticity, I talked about how things that feel unnatural to us right now can become things that feel like second nature to us in future.
They can feel completely like ‘us’.
So if right now you’re like “I could never get in front of a camera and talk, and I could never imagine myself doing that on a regular basis—that’s just not me”…
You could be saying something very different in a year from now after a bit of practise.
Things we consider a rigid, baked in part of our identity can actually be extremely flexible.
And this brick by brick bridge—building process of achieving our wildest dreams can change us radically.
Really, it’s kind of a non—negotiable; like a forcing function to make us change.
With each brick or plank we lay, we evolve a little more.
And after many bricks and many mini—evolutions, we become unrecognisable to our older selves.
This is something I think we should give a lot more attention: The fact that we can change so much, and that who we are right now is not who we’ll be in future.
I read about this a few months ago in one of Dr Benjamin Hardy’s books—I think it was Be Your Future Self Now.
He talked about how in 5 or 10 years time, you’ll be a completely different person.
Like, completely different—so different you could barely comprehend it right now.
Because as we go through life, our experiences and environments are constantly shaping us.
And on a day—to—day basis, these changes are often small, maybe completely unnoticeable.
But over the course of 5 or 10 years, you’ve shed tons of who you used to be and transformed into someone you maybe never thought you could be.
Go back 15—10 years.
Think back to 5 or 10 years ago and try to remember a handful of beliefs you used to have that you don’t anymore.
Or think about things you used to love or hate, that you now feel the opposite way about.
What did you used to be terrified of that nowadays you see as not much of a big deal?
What was something you originally thought you could never do but ended up being able to do it?
Chances are, quite a lot has changed in the last ten years as it relates to who you are.
At least I hope it has 🙂
And this doesn’t stop just because we’re older, even though that’s kind of how we think.
I can only really speak for myself here, but I’ve definitely held the belief that now I’m in my 30s, this is just kind of who I am.
That radical change only applies to younger versions of myself.
But the reality is when I’m in my 40s, I’ll be completely transformed again.
I’ll look back at 30 year old me and think “man I was a different person back then”.
And the same thing will happen the decade after that, and the one after that, and so on.
Things that you are terrified of right now, or things you think are completely out of your grasp may be things you love or feel deeply comfortable with in future.
It’s insane to think about this properly.
But you could look at someone today who’s completely different to you in almost every way and think you could never, ever be that kind of person or do what they do…
…but you could.
Even if you can’t wrap your head around it right now, you could.
The highly successful, accomplished, respected, confident, creative person you couldn’t imagine yourself to be right now… is not at all off the table for you.
For real.
Isn’t that just insane?
A handful of years ago, I would follow people on social media or listen to podcasts from people who I wished I could be like.
I wished I could have my own podcast that people actually listened to like they did.
Or I wished I could positively impact thousands of people on social media like they did.
I have both of those things now.
The podcast has a pretty small listener base so far because I’m only 13 episodes in, but people are still listening. It’s crazy.
People message me on social media talking about how my videos are legit helping them in meaningful ways.
I used to wish for this stuff, but I couldn’t properly see myself as someone who could have it.
Fast forward 5 years or whatever and now I’m passing on the message to other people who are in the boat I used to be in.
Crazy. And it’ll be even crazier ten years from now.
Another example of this kind of transformation is a music producer I coached a couple of years ago.
At the time she wasn’t making any money from her music online.
She was highly ambitious but had some stuff to work through and didn’t really have any knowledge about how to monetise.
After a few months of working together, she was making money.
Nothing crazy, but she could see it was possible.
And fast forward a couple of years, she has completely changed her identity.
Her personal growth around this stuff is unbelievably inspiring.
She’s making decent money now and has built a respectable audience who loves her and a very respectable business in music.
Now I learn things from her too.
The work we did a couple of years ago was fundamental stuff—basic monetisation for a music producer online.
But she’s gone way beyond that and now I’m looking at what she’s doing to get ideas for my own business.
She’s transformed.
And she did it one step at a time.
She didn’t go from nothing to where she’s at now.
She built up to it. Brick by brick.
So inspiring.
The point I’m making here is that just because your wildest dreams may feel completely out of reach for your current self, doesn’t mean they’re out of reach for your future self.
Not at all.
And this brick by brick bridge—building is how you’ll secure the future you want.
You don’t have to jump the impossible gap.
Accept that you can build a pathway over the gap—that you can change and achieve amazing things—and start laying bricks.
Unexpected benefits.
Another thing to look forward to when you decide to start taking steps towards your dream is the unexpected benefits and opportunities that appear along the way to help you move forward even more.
This is something that only people who take action will ever get to see properly.
If you’re sitting around planning out every detail of how your path is going to unfold but you’re not executing on anything…
…you simply don’t have a clear view of how it works.
Because the truth is it will probably look way different than what you expect.
And you have to be in it to see it.
It’s like once you start executing a veil is lifted, or someone flips a switch and puts you into another world of infinite possibility.
Opportunities and benefits that weren’t even on your radar suddenly become potential realities.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
Let’s say you’re an artist who decides to get serious about building an audience online.
You’re serious about your music career and you know that your online presence is an important part of that nowadays.
You think about how it might play out:
- You post a bunch of stuff
- You grow your fan base over time
- And in future you’re able to sell more stuff like your music, merch, tickets, whatever, right?
That’s a pretty clear path and fair to assume that if you were able to get a handle on social media you could achieve that.
But what you might not see on this path is all the side—effects that come along with it.
Maybe once you grow a bit of an audience, you not only gain some fans and sell some of your stuff, but you also start getting other opportunities and benefits.
Maybe now that you’ve got some leverage, you connect with other artists for collaborations that give you a massive boost in exposure.
Maybe because you’ve built a respectable presence you start getting offered way more gigs because you’re now on the radar for that.
Maybe you attract the attention of some other creative online who invites you to do an interview, you click with them, and decide to start a podcast together.
Maybe you attract other musicians with your content because you’re an amazing guitarist, and they start asking if you offer lessons or a course or something.
And then you create a product or service which gives you another income stream.
Hopefully you can see where I’m going with this.
The simple path you can see before you start is only the tip of the iceberg.
And even if you can imagine the stuff I just mentioned, once you actually start I can almost guarantee you’ll still be surprised by the opportunities you get if you build up a decent presence.
And it doesn’t stop there either.
It opens up your world.
Because of who you become in the process of building this stuff, you start to consider pathways you didn’t used to see as viable options.
Because you’re transforming, your world is opening up.
Maybe right now it’s not even on your radar to consider starting like a production company, because you just have no idea how you’d even do that and you don’t have the resources or whatever.
But when you become someone who’s able to build something decent for yourself and you’ve got all this evidence that life isn’t what you initially thought…
…you start to question those doubts.
You start to think “well I didn’t used to think I’d be able to build what I’ve built now… maybe it’s not actually that weird to consider the possibility of having this other big thing”.
And because you’re in this better place and you’ve built up all this experience, you look into it and realise it’s not actually that crazy of an idea anymore.
And this can just keep going and going.
Everything compounds.
With each step forward you take, another door opens, and your world just gets bigger and bigger.
I love thinking like this. It gets me all excited.
Before you start executing, you have no real idea of what’s truly possible.
You might think you can see, but you really can’t.
Once you actually get into it, life really does change.
Not right away of course.
But over time if you stick with it, you start to get a lot of distance between where you were and where you end up.
And being able to see the progress you’ve made is hyper motivating.
It makes you want to go even further, and it gives you confidence that you can go further because you’ve seen how far you’ve already come.
Your world is limitless.
And again, this all starts from laying one brick or one plank, to build that bridge.
This isn’t a fairy tale.
It’s not a pipe dream.
I mean, it will be if you never do anything.
But these huge dreams of yours aren’t out of reach if you’re an action taker.
And the way to get there is not extreme either.
It’s step by step. You can go step by step, right?
Keep saying yes.
Ok, I want to wrap this one up with a short story about the managing director of a big company I used to work for back in my office job days.
One day a bunch of the employees from this company—me included—gathered in a building to listen to some of the higher—ups talk about their roles in the company and a bit about who they are and that kind of thing.
I think this was supposed to be a chance for us lower level employees to get a better idea of what the company was all about, how it worked, and what was possible for us.
Even though I had no real interest in rising up in this company, it was pretty inspiring to listen to the managing director’s story about how he ended up in that position.
He started out in the workforce just like anyone else.
A regular guy, low level employee—maybe not even for this specific company, I’m not sure.
But somehow he ended up running or overseeing this huge company.
All the way from the very bottom to basically the very top.
What was his secret?
This is what he said that stood out to me: “I just kept saying yes to things.”
He’d show up and do his best at whatever job he had to do, and then he’d get offered some opportunity to take on some bigger role, and he’d say yes.
And he’d just keep doing that.
One step at a time.
If the opportunity was a step up, it was a yes.
And at the time, he wasn’t necessarily qualified for these positions already.
He became qualified by stepping into the role and rising to the challenge.
He didn’t say things like “I’m not ready for this, I’m not cut out for this”.
He just said yes and figured it out.
All the way to managing director.
When I heard this story, I was like “he makes it sounds so simple”.
Well, maybe it is simpler than we think.
Maybe all the stuff we constantly worry about and all the stuff we think we have to do in order to achieve great things isn’t what we should focus on.
Maybe we should just focus on saying yes to the right opportunities and worry about all that other stuff after we’ve said yes.
This is the reason I even wanted to bring up this story:
Many of us don’t say yes.
We come up with reasons to say no to ourselves all the time, whether it’s because:
- We’re not qualified for something
- Or life is too busy right now
- Or we don’t deserve it, or whatever it is.
We give in to the safety of our comfort zone and squander opportunities.
And I’m not just talking about opportunities that get handed to us from someone else.
I’m also talking about opportunities we could create for ourselves.
How many times have you had a cool idea for something you wanted to do, or seen a gap in the market, or visualised a unique path to success…
But then not acted on it for whatever reason?
I’ve said my fair share of no’s in life when I should have said yes.
And I know there are things that could have gone differently had I stepped up to the plate.
But over the last few years I’ve learned my lesson.
Now when an obvious “yes” comes along, I have to do something about it.
Because saying yes when you know you should opens up your world.
It’s how you go from being someone who had a simple idea for a riff to a full on artist whose music is heard and loved by millions.
It’s how you go from being someone interested in bettering themselves to someone the rest of the world aspires to be like.
It’s how you go from regular human to superhuman.
Saying yes.
Accepting you can do it.
Building the bridge brick by brick.
Walking over it step by step.
This is the secret.
And it’s available to you, right now.
Your life could change drastically in a matter of months.
It could change even more drastically in a matter of a few years.
And that time is going to pass regardless of what you do.
With every micro decision you make to show up or not, time is passing. So you may as well use it for good, right?
Lay the plank.
Take the step.
Say yes to shit you know is good for you.
Do that over and over and over, and watch what happens.
You won’t know yourself.
So not sure about you, but this one got me super motivated.
As I was putting this together I got a few big ideas I want to start moving on ASAP, so I hope this has done something similar for you.
Before you go, I want to let you know I’m currently available for consultations and coaching, which is not always the case.
So if you’re a musician who needs some direction with:
- building your online presence,
- career stuff in general
- or anything else you think I may be able to help with
You can check out your options here.
You’re also welcome to reach out with any specific questions if you have them.
Ok, let’s call it here. Hope this got you pumped up like it did me.
Talk again next week.
— Alex
