Mindfulness for Artists: Staying Grounded in Music and Life

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You may have caught my post about How to Use Mindfulness to Build Your Music Career & Income. Building your income with intention and using the resources and talents at your disposal to bring in money is the fastest way to scale your career and get rid of that pesky day job.

However, mindfulness beyond money is crucial for your ability to sustain in this business. In order to stay motivated and optimistic in an ever-changing and ever-unforgiving industry you must be clear in your vision and centered in your desires to have the career you’ve always wanted.

Being mindful is being aware of your surroundings, feelings, thoughts and being present in the moment. It’s working with clarity and understanding what you need from yourself and others in order to keep going.

Mindfulness is more than having a meditation practice (although that is recommended) or reading books on spiritual enlightenment. You also don’t need to record your next record inside a yurt in order to be a mindful musician (although the acoustics would probably sound awesome).

Aside from living a more balanced and happy life, how can being more mindful in your day-to-day life enable you to grow your career?

Here are 3 ways you can practice mindfulness with the intention of building a more sustainable career in music:

1. Listen to your body. I know, this might sound trite and not directly connected to your career, but you’re wrong. It’s the most important piece of the puzzle when it comes to riding the waves of musicpreneurship. Learn to listen to what you body needs. If it needs sleep, rest. If it needs fuel, break to eat something. You know more than you think you know and stress has a funny way of tuning us our from ourselves. Listening to you body will better guide your creativity and allow you to instinctually know what your next steps should be, allowing you to kick writer’s block to the curb and let go of procrastination and overwhelm around certain decisions.
2. Silence your distractions. Again, this may seem over-simplified, but it’s the little things that can have the biggest impact. It’s difficult to listen to you body when bings, dings, and rings are going off every few moments. When you’re writing or playing music or even when you’re working on answering emails, shut off your smart phone. Challenge yourself to only check it a few times a day (it’s harder than it seems). Start with an app that counts how many times you unlock it and strive each day to get that number down. Decreasing that false urgency (i.e. “Someone needs me I must get back to them right now”) will greatly increase your productivity, enabling you to get more done in less time and with less stress.
3. Engage with fans as a human being. It can be so easy to chase the likes and the other “vanity metrics,” but it doesn’t take long to see that those numbers don’t always correlate with the money you bring in, the number of monthly streams you get or the growth of your audience at shows. Likes don’t grow fanbases, engagement does. What passions do you share? What is it about them that you relate to as another human being? What other bands do you both like? Being present when talking to fans after a show or when responding to comments online allows for a deeper connection beyond your music which enables you to have an engaged fanbase even when you’re not launching a new song, which takes the pressure off of always feeling you need to release the next one, like yesterday.

It’s important to have goals, but blindly chasing them isn’t going to get you there any faster. Acknowledging the journey and living in the journey is not only going to get you to your goals faster, it’s going to make achieving those goals more meaningful.

You can practice mindfulness in a myriad of ways and it can be as simple as pausing for 30 seconds to close your eyes and count your breaths, in and out. Whether it’s focusing on your breath, journaling, doing a 10 minute full-body stretch, or mentally checking in with how you’re feeling in this present moment, there’s no wrong way to be more mindful.

Need some guidance? Here are 3 free apps you can use to get started:

1. Tapping Solutions - Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) or “tapping therapy” is a quick, easy way for you to check in with your emotions, let out what’s holding you back, and rewrite the toxic script that you’ve been telling yourself. You can do it anywhere, in as little as a few minutes, focusing on topics from procrastination to anxiety around money or a new relationship.
2. Headspace - This well-known meditation app allows you to meditate in as little as 3 minutes, guiding you through the process which is great if you’re someone who has trouble focusing. With animated video tutorials and a plethora of supplemental resources, this app makes meditation fail-proof.
3. Calm - On the road a lot? Working late in the studio? Creative ideas keeping you up all night? If you’re having trouble relaxing and/or falling asleep, Apple’s App of the Year has Sleep Stories (often read by some of our favorite well-known voices) to help you get a better night’s sleep and fall asleep more quickly.

It doesn’t take much to be mindful, other than your decision to be. Just like pursuing a career in music, it’s a choice. Every day when you get up and decide to still live a life with music decide to live it intentionally. Tell us in the comments how you’ll commit to staying mindful to your career this week!

Suzanne Paulinski is a mindset coach and founder of The Rock/Star Advocate. She helps music industry professionals gain confidence and clarity in their goals with a healthy work/life balance. Her book,The Rock/Star Life Planner is now available on Amazon.