The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. – Friedrich Nietzsche
Think a gratitude list is silly? Learn why a mindset based in gratitude is so powerful AND how it can bring more money to your business.
You’re listening to Episode 42 of the Music-Preneur Mindset Podcast.
Hello! You’re listening to Episode 42 – Why Gratitude Is Gold.
I’m your host, Suz – a mindset coach helping DIY musicians and creatives see themselves as music-preneurs in order to create a sustainable career in music.
Being a music-preneur, building a sustainable income and following from scratch is no easy task. As in any entrepreneurial journey, there are many ups & downs, sometimes happening simultaneously.
It takes a strong and mainly positive mindset to withstand this tumultuous and oftentimes unpredictable rollercoaster. Routines help us stay grounded and tethered to our path. They might sound restrictive at first, but they’re actually the opposite – as I’ve said many times before on this podcast – boundaries give us freedom.
Being a freelancer or DIY musician, or whatever label you’d like to give yourself, having flexibility is great, but too much of it can cause you to feel unbalanced and insecure in your progress. While you may be attracted to the unpredictable, it’s important that that unpredictability is encased in a structure that supports your goals.
For instance, if you’re someone who is constantly on the road, in a different city every few days, living out of a suitcase, having daily/nightly routines will help you sleep better, find your focus more quickly, and adapt to your new
surroundings much more easily than if you had no rhyme or reason to your day.
Even music has structure. Songs wouldn’t sound right if there weren’t a certain amount of beats in a measure and a specific amount of notes in a scale. While music provides freedom of expression and there are infinite possibilities for songs to be created, it’s based inside a structure that we can navigate within.
Humans crave structure and routine. We all have an internal clock that lets us know when to go to sleep and wake up, we all have an internal rhythm for when we crave action and when we crave rest. It may differ in each of us, but we all have it.
You may be a night owl and your friend may be an early riser, but you each have a rhythm and time clock your body responds to each day and night.
Most people crave a lot of routine – same start to their day, same commute to work, same job, same daily environment. While that may not be you, as a creative you may crave different environments, different tasks to focus on each day and so on, not having a supportive structure around you may be causing you to feel lost, floating aimlessly, or even out of control at times.
The world around you changes every day. Daily exercise, meditation, and even regular eating habits help build a strong foundation. Having a daily routine that includes giving thanks to the gifts around you helps to create a sense of stability around the chaos.
Knowing what’s right about where you are right now in life enables you to quiet the voices of doubt and disappointment. After all, if things weren’t the way they are right now you may not have the things that you are currently grateful for, decreasing feelings of jealousy, invisibility, and/or shame.
Showing gratitude isn’t about making some shallow gesture so you can feel like a humble human being. It’s about reassessing what’s working in your life rather than focusing on all the things you’d like to change.
Knowing what’s right and what’s working for you can motivate you to build off of that and do what you need to do to attract more of the right things into your life.
Even though showing gratitude can be so simple, many people are out of practice and struggle to make this a part of their daily, nightly routine. If you’re one of those people, the best thing you can do is start today.
There’s no “right time” to start showing gratitude. There’s nothing specific you need to do other than focus on what you’re grateful for and give thanks in your own way. It may be a silent prayer, or saying a simple “thank you” aloud or
paying it forward to someone else, or acknowledging a moment and moving forward more positively, letting go of the negativity that you may be holding onto at the moment about something else.
In order to create a routine out of gratitude, keeping a gratitude journal or notepad by your bed at night is always a great option. Or maybe you prefer to show gratitude in the middle of the day – whatever works for you.
You don’t need to write it down, however studies have shown that putting pen to paper does enable your brain to take in the information in a more powerful and impactful way.
It’s also nice to go back in time and see what was going on in your life at a certain point, especially after you’ve overcome certain hurdles and want to take a look back at how you stayed positive through the storm.
I prefer to think about what I’m grateful for before falling asleep so that I end the day, especially a difficult or trying one, on a positive note. But others find it helpful to recall positive things from the day before during their morning routine and prepare for the day ahead amidst gratitude for what’s already happened.
Again, there’s no right way, and there’s no one way to do this. And as I said earlier, this is more than a shallow gesture to sound more humble.
When you focus on building an attitude for gratitude here’s what happens:
- Your mindset around productivity shifts, aka you get more sh*t done. When we fail to take note of the things we’re grateful for each day, we can easily focus on what’s not right about a situation – what went wrong,
what didn’t work, what we didn’t get, etc. When that happens we tend to self-sabotage, as if to say, “Eh, what’s the point? It’s not gonna work for me anyway.” When we show gratitude we focus on what’s working and that can be extremely motivating. - It attracts more things to be grateful for into your life. Thoughts are energy, positive energy attracts more positive energy. People like working with positive people, fans want to support positive people, customers want to buy from positive people and so on. It’s not about faking it till you make it, but rather choosing to see the good in a situation and having faith that things will continue to improve. If a situation doesn’t go as planned, what lessons are you grateful for from it? If you lose money what are you grateful for still having? If you hate what you just created, what is it about your talents that you are grateful for having?
- It decreases fraud talk, competition, and other distractions. When you can identify what is working in your life or career you’re less likely to start telling yourself you’re a fraud with no actual talent, you stop looking at what others have that you don’t {because you’re busy looking at what you’re thankful for} and you don’t have time for nonsense because you’re now motivated to attract more of what you want into your life and focus on acknowledging when those moments happen.
Given that this episode is being published during the holiday season, some of you may be thinking, “Yea, ok, sure I’ll get to that when I’m done with the other 101 things on my list, if I don’t drown on my way there.” Or some of your ma
even be thinking you’d like me to kindly fuck right off with my message of gratitude and positivity when you may be in the middle of a really tough time right now – emotionally, financially, physically, you name it.
With seasonal depression, sickness, and other emotional triggers this time of year can bring, I hear ya! You may not be in the mood to spice up your life with a dose of poppy positivity, I get it.
However, it’s for those exact reasons that I scheduled this episode when I did.
Believe me, I know how difficult this time of year can be for a myriad of reasons, but that’s exactly why building gratitude into your daily routine is so important.
While being grateful may be the last thing on your mind given your particular situation, feeling you don’t have the time or energy for it is an alarming trigger that let’s you know you need it most right now.
Habits take time to build up, so this isn’t going to necessarily come second nature to you and it may feel a bit tedious at first, but taking time to really look at your situation through a more honest lens – where the good and bad coexist, that’s right, please remove your veil of cynicism – and realize that your troubles #1 don’t define you and #2 won’t last forever. At first, you may be feeling as if you’re stretching it pretty broadly when looking for things to be grateful for – you may roll your eyes and say, “Ok, yes, I’m not a child starving in a 3rd world, war-torn country at the moment.”
Correct! You’re not! And that’s a great place to start! Now keep going. You also have clean water to drink, shelter of some sort, and a piece of technology that allows you to learn {you are listening to this podcast after all} and a talent to share with the world and change lives.
You may not want to see value in those things, but try – because that short list right there is pretty huge! Right there in that list you have what you need to start making progress in life. You can make a difference with just those things
on that list.
Maybe you won’t reach your goals today. Maybe you won’t even check off anything on your list of tasks today. Maybe today didn’t turn out the way you had hoped it would.
But today is just one day in the many you will hopefully be given to make an impact – what was it about today that was special? You’re given more than you think and if you can focus on what those things are, you will realize you have what you need to keep going.
You may not have everything you need to be where you want to be, but you’re on your way. So don’t stop.
Now how do you make sure you keep this whole attitude for gratitude going? How can you turn this into a daily routine for yourself?
First off, setting an alarm helps. Create a notification on your phone or schedule it in your calendar – 10 minutes to stop and list 3 things you’re currently grateful for today. As I said, maybe it’s the last thing you do before bed, or the
first thing you do in the morning. Maybe it’s a random alarm you set during the day and challenge yourself to be grateful in the moment.
Beyond an alarm, having an accountability buddy is helpful. I created Rock/Star Slackers™ as a way to hold music-preneurs like yourself accountable to not only your goals but to the things in life that are working in your favor. Each week each member of the group submits the things they are most grateful for and lists out what’s working currently for them.
You can learn more about the program in the show notes if you’re interested.
Habits don’t happen overnight. If you’ve been used to living in the doldrums and allow frustrations to take over when things don’t go as planned, you may need help to shift your mindset and build up this important daily routine.
When you stop being all-consumed with the pressure to grow a large following and focus on being of service to your current following, you begin to notice the paranoia of competition falls away and in its place comes the understanding of the term “givers gain.”
Those who serve and place their focus on others will have more to be grateful for in their life.
If you’d like some guidance with building this habit into your routine, head on over to the show notes page and download My Gratitude List for free – it’s a guide to help you stay fo cused on what’s right in your life rather than what’s not yet arrived.
Simply go to www.therockstaradvocate.com/ep42 to download.
IN ADDITION, you’ll find links to my 2019 Rock/Star Life Planner – a weekly planner designed to not only help you stay focused on your goals, but also train you to build healthy habits, such as gratitude lists, ways to pay it
forward, and reminders to strengthen the key relationships in your life and career.
I’ve also added a link to my Planner Tutorial – a page that not only walks you through the Planner, but also dives deeps into showing you how to properly time block your week and prioritize your tasks, especially when your plate is
pretty full, as it likely is this holiday season. You do not need the Planner to access this page.
So go enjoy those extra ‘rock’sources!
Again, that page is www.therocksaradvocate.com/ep42.
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you’re looking to figure out your next steps, find time to balance everything on your plate, or work on creating healthier habits in your daily life, let’s talk!
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
- Why a positive mindset made up of healthy habits/routines is important [00:44]
- Where to start [03:29]
- How gratitude shifts your productivity [04:50]
- When gratitude is the last thing on your mind [06:23]
- How to build a daily habit around gratitude [08:45]
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
- Need accountability? Join us in Rock/Star Slackers™
- Check out my new Planner Tutorial page here
- U.S. rock/stars: Purchase your 2019 Rock/Star Life Planner here {International rock/stars: here}
Make gratitude part of your daily routine & watch your productivity shift into overdrive!
By downloading this freebie, you’ll be added to my weekly newsletter. You’re welcome to unsubscribe at anytime.
Now complete with a Planner Tutorial!
Learn exactly how to work gratitude into your weekly routine, prioritize your tasks, build your network, and block out time in your schedule for what matters with an audio tutorial on how to get the MOST from your 2019 Rock/Star Life Planner {U.S. rock/stars can purchase from this webpage; International rock/stars can purchase here}
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