Are You Talking Yourself Out Of Success?
I’m going to talk about something which is so important that I’d say it is the foundation on which your success will be built. If you want to achieve success as an independent musician you’re going to have to know, learn and more importantly, put into practice, this vital ‘key’. You simply can’t and won’t experience true and lasting success without it. Not taking the time to learn this would be like building a house without taking the time to put in a solid foundation for the house to stand on.
That key is “belief”. It’s the foundation of success and whether you like it or not you will become who you believe you will become. It’s a universal law, i.e. like gravity. And also like gravity, It applies to all people, all the time, everywhere, so that means you. To put it simply and in a practical sense, your thoughts (which come from your ‘beliefs’) will dictate your physical actions and they of course will ultimately dictate your success.
Have you ever felt angry, depressed or even really happy? Of course you have and you also know from your own experience that it affects what physical actions you do or don’t take. For example, when you’re happy you do and say things that you wouldn’t do or say if you were angry or depressed.
These ‘feelings’ come from your ‘beliefs’. You feel angry because you ‘believe’ you have been wronged or you feel happy because you ‘believe’ something makes you happy.
Given that ‘beliefs’ are so important to attaining success, it would be helpful if we could have a way to prove and measure these beliefs to ensure that they are helping us get the success we’re after, right?
Well guess what? You can test whether your beliefs are ‘helping’ you to achieve success because your results are the ‘proof’ and they are also measurable.
If you want to get good at something, you have to study it, right? So it makes sense that if you want success you need to study it. There are people everywhere (in all kinds of businesses or pursuits) who are achieving it and you need to study these successful people and learn what they know and what they are doing.
I guarantee you that if you are not yet successful you will find that all the people who are successful will have different ‘beliefs’ about success than you. You absolutely need to have the ‘belief’ part in place to succeed because even your circumstances are not going to prevent you from achieving success. You must know of people who have had unfortunate circumstances or hardships before they achieved their success. Ever heard of Oprah Winfrey, Colonel Sanders (founder of KFC), Honda and Helen Keller. There are many, many people who have achieved success regardless of their circumstances. The point here is that it doesn’t matter if you like any or all of these people but it proves that ‘circumstance’ is not a barrier to success unless we ‘believe’ it to be and I’ll guarantee that not one of these people ‘believed’ that their circumstances prevented them from achieving success.
What successful people ‘believe’ is the rocket fuel that along with taking action, got them their success.
I might warn you though that confronting your own ‘beliefs’ is not an easy thing to do, in fact I’d say it’s the ‘hardest’ part of attaining success. They are your ‘beliefs’ for a reason and it takes a lot of courage to admit that your success (or lack of it) is because your ‘beliefs’ are preventing you from doing what it takes to succeed. But it’s not about self blame, it’s about being empowered, because if your lack of success so far is down to you, it must also mean that so too is your ability to create success?
We’ve all got an ‘inner voice’ telling us our beliefs, you know the one that says things like “you can’t do that”, “you’ll never make it”, “successful people are not like me” etc. You get the idea. They’re your beliefs and that’s what you need to work on if you want to be successful.
Go to work on your beliefs and I guarantee you, your life will turn around. It will probably be an ongoing work in progress though, as old beliefs like to sneak up on you when you’re not paying attention and they’ll throw you right back.
This article and other amazing marketing strategies and tools for achieving success as an independent musician are part of the free “Tools For Success” e-zine available by subscribing to TheIndieMusician.