When I first started learning guitar, my intention was to be able to learn it well enough so that I could play a few songs around a campfire. I had a few friends who were great musicians, my girlfriend at the time was an excellent singer and I just thought that it would be fun to play. When I got it into it a little more I guess the music was in me. I couldn’t put the thing down. I became obsessed. For the first year I played at least 5 hours per day. I was in my last year of university and every study break was spent on that guitar. It wasn’t long before I could play a few songs… and the people around me just kept pushing me to play more and more.
After a while, I started going to open mics and before I knew it I was getting offered to play paid gigs. I couldn’t believe it, and to be completely honest, I still can’t. I don’t consider myself to be all that good really, I just really love it. I have so much fun playing for other people.
The interesting thing is that the more I learn and the more I play, the more I realize how much I don’t know yet. The more I realize how much I don’t know, the more self-conscious I get.
To this day, I still get a little pit in my stomach when a “real musician” walks into one of my gigs. I keep wondering if they are noticing all the mistakes and cheats that I do.
In life and in business, they say that your only opponent is in the mirror.
Being a musician really makes this clear to me.
It is absolutely impossible to please everyone. Afterall, there are very popular artists out there that have extreme talent, but I just don’t care for the music itself. I appreciate it, but I wouldn’t listen to it on my own time. So that being said, it is only logical that there are people that regardless of what they think of me, won’t care for what I do… and that’s ok.
Every time I hear a negative remark about me, I have a choice. I can chose to believe it or not… Funny thing is every time I hear a positive remark about me, I also can chose to believe it or not. At times, the self talk gets pretty bad. I wonder if those who say they like what I do are just saying that to be nice. I wonder if those who are bad mouthing me are “telling the truth” whole those who are supporting me are just humoring me.
I started thinking about how all this applies to business. Have you ever had an idea that you wanted to implement? Initially, you get some support and then all of a sudden someone shoots you down… then it doesn’t matter how many people supported you, you decide to believe the hater?
Support is so important in getting a business idea off the ground… Perhaps the key is to make a conscious choice to believe those who are supporting your idea as if they are the ones telling the truth and those who are unsupportive are the ones who are just not seeing eye to eye.
