Don’t Let Me Get Me.
With all of the hurdles you contend with as a DIY musician, you’re often your biggest obstacle. Learn why we self-sabotage & how to stop it from happening.
You’re listening to Episode 58 of the Music-Preneur Mindset Podcast.
Hello! You’re listening to Episode 58: Why & How We Self-Sabotage.
I’m your host, Suz – a mindset coach helping music professionals get clear on their goals and find the time to get it all done while maintaining a healthy work/life balance.
Often you have the time to get it all done, you just choose to spend that time doing other things.
Whether that’s sitting in front of Netflix or working hard but working on the wrong stuff – on the stuff that doesn’t serve your goals – in most cases not having the time is due to you self-sabotaging even if you don’t realize it.
Self-sabotaging is you getting in your own way. It’s not that there’s no money in music, it’s not that you don’t have enough followers, and it’s not that the industry is against you. It’s you. You’re often your biggest roadblock.
We all do it. It may look different on each person, but we all have our own way of setting ourselves up for failure big or small. Even the most confident people can self-sabotage.
We’re all afraid of something and we all have that inner self-doubt, that fraud talk that pops up in the most inopportune times to get us questioning our abilities.
I talked about Fraud Talk and how to silence it in Episode 11, but today I want to dive deeper into why it happens and what its purpose is.
First let’s look at what self-sabotage is and how it rears its ugly head in the life of a music-preneur.
If you Google self-sabotage you’ll come across a plethora of articles with laymen and experts all listing out the number 1 or the top 3 or the top 10 ways people self-sabotage.
I believe there are 5 fairly common groupings of behavior that manifest when someone is ready to halt their own progress and stifle their own success.
The first is procrastination. This doesn’t always mean a Netflix bingathon or staying under the covers all day. This goes back to what I often say about busy work – Busy ≠ Productive – and if you start cleaning your refrigerator or alphabetizing the files on your desktop or going back and updating the metadata of all of your past recordings rather than sitting down and finishing that mix you’ve been working on, that’s procrastination.
You might want to tell yourself your productive, you can tell yourself you’ve been swamped with work and super inundated, but the truth is you’ve done nothing but avoid the work that will actually serve your intended goal(s).
Procrastination can also appear disguised as Perfection Paralysis. You can work on that mix til the cows come home, spending hours and days on it, refusing to finish it because you tell yourself there’s still more to be done when in reality the fear of it being done and not being “right” or “perfect” – something that’s never going to be achieved – has taken over.
You can sit there patting yourself on the back that you’ve stayed focused and you’ve been hard at work on your latest labor of love, but in reality you’re horribly procrastinating and clearly self-sabotaging.
We’ll get to why you’re doing that in a bit, but let’s look at some other iterations of the self-sabotage beast… Ruining your relationships, burning bridges, and pushing people away in general are all BIG signs of self-sabotage. When you’re not feeling great about yourself it’s easy to take it out on others. There’s more to it than that, but starting fights with your partner, not picking up the phone when friends call, refusing help that loved ones offer, and snapping at people for the slightest offense are all ways of severing ties with your support system.
As we all know, this shit takes a village. So dismantling your support system is a great way to ensure your progress in your career is cut off at the knees. You may not think you’re self-sabotaging here. You may be so focused on how much people around you clearly suck that there’s no way it could be you who’s at fault. You’re not the one chewing too loudly or asking too many insightful questions because you care or having the audacity to breathe the same air at this very moment – they are. They’re the problem.
But if you were to go back and live in reality for a second you’d see that people often get on your last nerve when you have a deadline approaching or you’re in the midst of overcoming a new challenge.
Funny how that happens… maybe it is you. Hmmm
Another way to get in your own way is to practice unhealthy habits.
This one is a no-brainer. This is the behavior we often think of when we think about self-sabotaging.
Binge drinking, doing drugs, stress eating, stress dieting, pulling all-nighters, and hanging out with toxic people are all ways to ruin your chances at achieving your goals.
Nothing is more self-sabotaging than doing things that will directly harm you and the life you’re trying to build. While alcoholism and drug addiction and eating disorders are diseases, the reason people begin with this behavior in the first place often stems from a need to self-sabotage and destroy their chance at getting what they want.
It can all begin innocently enough and even masquerade as a tool to help them get where they want to go, but deep down we all know when we’re causing harm to ourselves.
There’s a reason they say you’re the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with the most and if you’re choosing to hang out with people who put you down or make you doubt yourself or who bring distraction and drama, that will reflect in your own actions.
Speaking of who you surround yourself with, another toxic behavior is surrounding yourself with Instagram accounts and YouTube videos that depict the perfect, successful lives of others.
Comparisons and that pesky Fraud Talk we mentioned earlier never serve you.
Sure, it’s ok to study what other music-preneurs are doing and taking what works for them and making it your own, or using what they’ve accomplished to spark a motivation in you to try harder, but believing in this idea of competition, especially in music, is harmful and a BIG waste of time.
Aside from the fact that music fans will always make more room for more great music they love and musicians will never run out of needing more booking agents, managers, coaches, and the sort, the idea of competition in our line of work is incredibly counter-productive because you’re always comparing apples to oranges.
Music is too subjective to compare side by side and bringing anyone onto your team as an artist is often so intimate that it doesn’t matter that two managers offer the same service, the artist is going to choose who they vibe with more, period.
But nonetheless we get on that IG feed and start scrolling through people’s curated highlight reels and start letting that Fraud Talk dictate how we spend our time. “Why bother going back into the studio? I’ll never acquire the following that so and so has.” “Why bother promoting that new offer when so and so already has a similar one on display?”
Does anyone else here that Self-Sabotage Seductress singing in their ear?
Lastly, another common way she wields her wrath is when you play small. When you stick to playing the same local shows, stick to offering the same services at the same price point, stick to brainstorming with the same 5 people without venturing out to collect new ideas, and so on.
Much like pushing people away, you may not think you’re self-sabotaging here, but failing to not push yourself and challenge yourself is doing your future self an incredible disservice. The magic, as they say, lives outside our comfort zone. You were not given this gift to be ordinary. In order to make your mark and leave the impact you truly wish to leave on this world you must push yourself to try new things, to make mistakes, to fall and get back up, to play BIG even when you don’t feel ready.
So why do we do these things? Why do we waste time on the wrong things, surround ourselves with the wrong people, or keep ourselves from growing?
Why would we keep ourselves from getting what we want, especially when we already have the tools we need to get it?
There are a few reasons, but I want to shine a light on one in particular today.
Let me first say, depression and anxiety and other mental and emotional disorders can be at play and often do play a large role in self-sabotaging behavior. In order to overcome these hurdles it takes a lot more than a simple pep talk or helpful app to get you back on track and I encourage you to seek professional help, whatever that looks like for you, in order to gain the proper tools necessary to deal with those issues.
However, less severely, the culprit that strikes me as the most common cause for these behaviors is cognitive dissonance and often links to the fear of success.
That’s correct, not fear of failure, but rather fear of actually getting what you want. Let me explain. A great article in Psychology Today {I’ve linked to it in the show notes} describes cognitive dissonance rather clearly. Dr. Ellen Hendricksen explains, “People like to be consistent — our actions tend to be in sync with our beliefs and values. When they aren’t, we make an effort to line them up again. If we start to rack up the victories and accomplishments, yet still view ourselves as flawed, worthless, incapable, or deficient, we pull the plug to get rid of the dissonance. If it feels bad to fail, it feels even worse to succeed.”
In other words, we know what it’s like to fail. Even though it sucks, we are familiar with the pain.
Succeeding at something we’ve never tried before, living a life we’ve only dreamed of – that’s new and unfamiliar and as animals we avoid the unfamiliar – it’s survival.
The easiest way to survive? Stick to what you know. Play small, right? Don’t leave your comfort zone.
Don’t get me wrong I don’t think you need to do anything for the sake of “should” or because someone told you it was the right path for you. Playing big is subjective.
Don’t go on tour and go wild on stage if that’s not your thing. If you thrive in solitude and prefer to play via live stream, great! But then challenge yourself to make your videos more entertaining, more engaging. Hone in on your craft as a video producer, grow your team with a videographer or editor.
There’s no one way to play big.
Raise your prices every so often. Challenge yourself to collaborate with new people. Push yourself to be more open and vulnerable with your audience. Release something before it’s ready.
There are plenty of ways to challenge yourself and still be true to who you are. Realize when you’re playing small and remember that it’s not comfort, it’s destructive. The best way to make the unfamiliar feel less daunting is to get used to visualizing it.
It’s not so much a “fake it til ya make it.” As I recently saw in a meme on Instagram, it’s a “FAITH it til ya make it” mentality. In other words, practice visualizing your success. Don’t just set goals, see them. Imagine them clearly in your brain.
Day dreaming isn’t for fools, it’s an important exercise. The more clearly you can see your goals and see the impact it can have on you the less unfamiliar it will feel as you go after it.
Cognitive dissonance is also tightly tied, as she explained, to our self-confidence. If we get that comparison bug and let that Fraud Talk take hold then succeeding doesn’t feel in line with how we view ourselves.
Perspective is a powerful thing. My mission with the Music-Preneur Mindset Podcast and Summit is to help you recognize yourself as a creative who is also capable of putting that business hat on, as the creative who is also capable of making sound decisions and who is empowered to call their own shots.
Your mindset can make or break your career and your ability to reach any goal, personal or professional. As they say it’s not the mistakes we make but rather how we deal with them that counts.
You can get dealt a pretty shitty hand in this industry but it’s up to you whether you decide to let it deter you or motivate you. You can also be dealt an incredibly blessed hand in this industry and it’s also up to you whether you make use of it or squander it.
So before you initiate that break up or ignore your friends’ calls or yell at your mom for putting your dishes away the wrong way when she came by to help you out {not that I know anything about that}, take a minute to check yourself – is this really how you want to treat the people in your life or are you lashing out because you’re afraid of what you’re going after?
Before you eat your feelings or grab that next drink, remind yourself how your actions now will affect your ability to act or not act tomorrow.
When you find yourself buried in your refrigerator scrubbing that old grimy orange juice stain on the bottom shelf, stop for a minute and assess how that’s getting you closer to your goal. Unless your goal is to win the blue ribbon for cleanest fridge on the block, you’re probably wasting time and avoiding what matters most right now.
In the end it’s all about how we see ourselves and what we believe we deserve from life and from our efforts. Because perspective and overall mindset is so important, I can’t think of anything more valuable than taking time each day to work those mindset muscles until you have shifted your perspective in a way that leaves you feeling empowered to take on the world!
Luckily, my good friend Bree Noble has created the Profitable Musician Summit – FREE access to an arsenal of industry experts who will help you shift your perspective around money and success as an independent creative in the music industry.
Rather than a PDF download this week, I encourage you to take action and REGISTER. You don’t need to watch every session if that’s overwhelming for you. But with over 30 niche topics around building a career in music where making money is no longer a hurdle in your path, there’s plenty of lessons to choose from and learn a little each day to get that shift happening.
It all begins next week on April 22 and runs through May 1. I dig in a bit deeper into this whole mindset garble with Bree in our session and I tied it together with some bonus gifts that you can use to find that clarity you’ve been looking for.
Head on over to www.therockstaradvocate.com/ep58 and register for the free Summit and check out all of the other great rocksources Bree’s other guests have for you!
As always, I thank you for listening and I’m here if you have any questions. Email me at anytime: suz@therockstaradvocate.com
Until next time, Rockstar! Have a wonderful week and I hope to see you back here next week so we can get grounded to get rising! Take care.
Key Highlights
- It’s not them, it’s you
- The harm of procrastination
- How unhealthy habits halt our success
- Why we push people away
- Shut the fraud up
- Why playing small causes big issues
- Why we self-sabotage and how to fix it
- Your actionable: The Profitable Musicians Summit
Links/Rocksources
- Theme music brought to you by DC-based Indie/Pop band Sub-Radio
- More podcast episodes can be found here
- You can download a copy of the episode’s transcript here
- You can read the Psychology Today article on self-sabotage & cognitive dissonance here
REGISTER FOR FREE HERE
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