Recording music in a studio is a fascinating and stressful experience.

Having released eleven albums in my career, it’s funny how every time studio day comes, the butterflies still get into formation.

Scientifically, it’s because of the observer effect. It states that the act of observation has an effect on the thing being observed.

Ask any professional recording artist. When every move you make is put on wax, it introduces a level of pressure far greater than simply jamming with friends or performing live. Not to mention, studio time is expensive.

But the other component of the fascination and stress comes from something more spiritual.

Because when you’re standing there alone and naked, bearing your soul in front of a microphone, you have to trust so many things.

You have to trust your brain to remember the music and lyrics that you composed two years ago.

You have to trust your fingers to hit the strings at just the right time.

You have to trust your instrument to allow the songs to emerge in the most meaningful way.

You have to trust your equipment to capture the performance in the most efficient way.

You have to trust your spontaneous instinctual abilities to adjust songs on the fly.

You have to trust your recording engineer to tell you when your pitch or rhythm has veered off the runway.

You have to trust your ears during playback that you’ll be satisfied with the take and not stuck in a state of artistic indecisiveness.

You have to trust your heart that perfection doesn’t exist, you’re doing the best you can, and the album is going to come out great no matter what.

No wonder it’s so exhausting.

But that’s the beauty of the experience. It’s a profound exercise in trust.

And since most artists only go into the studio every few years, whenever that moment comes, it’s always worth it.

P.S. My new album, Altars of Enough, is out! Enjoy.

Deserve is a problematic word.

For centuries, we have been justifying all sorts of awful behavior simply because we accept the belief that certain people receive more or less because they deserve it.

Deserving is nice story to help make sense of the world. But the reality is, nobody actually deserves anything. The gods have not chosen any of us. The idea of people getting what they deserve might work in a logical and rational world, but that only exists in the movies.

Bodine writes in her book of healing that whenever we judge whether or not we deserve something, we are usually applying other people’s standards.

The word deserve is about rewards, punishments, guilt and shame. It is about conditional love, which isn’t love at all.

One tactic to try is language substitution, a favorite of cognitive behavioral therapists. They recommend substituting irrational thinking for more realistic preferences.

For instance, instead of saying you deserve something, say you’re worthy of something.

Feel the difference of those two phrases as they come out of your mouth. The reason it likely feels better is, worthiness not some external demand or expectation about what the world should give you. It’s an internal state, one that exists right now, one over which you have legitimate ownership. 

Ellis, one of my favorite psychotherapists, used to write about how deserving the equivalent of directly challenging the truth of a situation in favor of what we wanted the truth to be. The word deserve focuses our attention on what we think should be, rather than what is.

Imagine a life not loaded down with the heaviness of feeling so unworthy.

Imagine not spending our lives trying to use externals to override our inner sense of unworthiness. Sounds pretty chill to me.

One last point on this word from the greatest sports agent in history.

Jerry Maguire says to his client, the great football receiver:

On the field, it’s about what you didn’t get. Who’s to blame, who underthrew, who has the contract you don’t, who’s not giving you love, that is not what inspires people. Just shut up. Play the game from your heart. Then I’ll show you the kwan.

Our days of keeping count of what we feel entitled to are over.

May we accept that nobody deserve anything, and may we learn to have gratitude for everything. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you still keeping count of what you feel you’re entitled to?

Carlin famously joked:

School was nothing but the indoctrination center where children were sent to be stripped of their individuality and turned into an obedient, soul dead conformist member of the American consumer culture.

That’s not a punchline, that’s perspective.

Because his joke is not really about school, it’s about sovereignty.

George’s words are a rebellious reminder about how our culture is very good at hypnotizing and dulling our consciousness. The world has a profound ability to completely indoctrinate us with its deluded model of happiness.

And we don’t have to say yes. We don’t have to lock into the brainwashed standardized masses and degrade into zombified morons who blindly accept whatever simplistic fairy tales are fed to us.

There’s still time to wake up.

Here’s a question that is helpful for tapping into our authenticity.

Which attitudes and courses of action do you reject that most people treat as gospel?

Everyone has one. Or several. And the key is making yourself aware of that disconnect, so you can start to feel empowered to advocate for the person you truly are, and not the one the world thinks you’re supposed to be.

Listen, most governments, religions, businesses, media and other institutions have the same hidden agenda. Keeping humanity small, scared, stupid and dreamless. Because it’s in their best interest to preserve the cultural trance that keeps us all distracted.

And so, if you are growing tired of watching the masses sleepwalk through life like pathetic automatons, you’re not alone. You’re not wrong.

Channel that anger to fuel yourself to effectively and elegantly opt out of most of society’s expectations.

And you’ll discover that freedom is closer than you think. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What if conventional wisdom was proven to be only a perspective, one that could be mistaken?

We live in a world where stupidity is encouraged, embraced, rewarded and repeated.

As if it were some kind of virtue. Everywhere we look, from individual people to mass media to large institutions, the world seems to be conspiring to put out our collective intellectual fire.

Our environments are pressuring us not to think.

Flip through the channels or the streams, and one thing is clear. Stupidity has become the hearth around which our society warms itself. Dilbert put this trend into perspective years ago, and today his insight is eerily prescient. He writes:

The majority of resources in a capitalist system are being pushed over a cliff by morons. It’s clearly the reason that humans rule the earth. Because we found a system to harness the power of stupid. Whereas in the rest of the animal kingdom, being a moron is nothing but bad. A moron lion, as an example, who can’t catch anything to eat, is adding nothing to the lion economy.

But a moron human who starts a business selling garlic flavored mittens is stimulating the economy.

This stupidity trend makes me feel sad and angry. As if all the work invested in the development of our intellectual curiosity is wasted.

After all, why transform into better versions of ourselves when we could get promoted by being an idiot?

Why act smart when there are literally millions of dopamine producing distractions to reward our ignorance?

Why set ourselves up for a barrage of scorn and ridicule, when we can use stupidity to fit in and get along?

I don’t have a solution to this problem. But for the time being, let’s become more aware that the world is very good at hypnotizing and dulling our consciousness.

And let’s accept that we’re all being chemically rewarded for allowing ourselves to be brainwashed.

Perhaps that’s a good first step for shifting our outside locus of control back within our own right thinking minds.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What are you doing that’s responsible but stupid?

Barnum knew that the public didn’t mind being lied to, as long as those lies were more sensational and entertaining than the dull, everyday truth of their miserable lives.

He may have been a hoaxer, but he still added something to the way the world was that made it more tolerable. As he says in his movie:

Hyperbole isn’t the worst crime. Men suffer more from imagining too little than too much.

Nolan makes a similar point in his movie about magic:

People are happy to be mystified. Because the audience knows the truth. The world is simple. It’s miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you got to see something really special.

That’s the beauty of magicians. They’re honest in that they tell us they are going to fool us, and then they do it, and then we eat up and burp gasps of delight.

Lies leap from their lips faster than a kiss. What’s not to like?

Point being, instead of growing outraged anytime somebody lies to us, pretending that we’re the only noble arbiters of moral rectitude, perhaps we should agree on one of the few truths that exist.

We live in a contradictory, unfathomable and absurd world, and our primitive brains have to construct mythologies, stories and lies to help us cope with it.

In a post truth society where fake news and alternative facts have become the norm, honesty is not always the best policy.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What do you risk putting your heart out into the thick tangle of the truth?

Ellis writes in his book on anger that our irrational beliefs are what upsets us most.

Especially in our relationships. If we have convinced ourselves that we must have sincere love and approval almost all the time from virtually all the people who we find significant in our lives, then we are in for a rude awakening.

Because apparently, that is not the way life works. Having raged for those who did not love us is exhausting, worst and most of all, stressful.

In fact, some people spend their whole lives doing this, paralyzed, worrying about what people will think about their heart. Just talking to them makes you want to take a nap.

On the other hand, some people spend their whole lives blissfully oblivious with the love that they own, the love that is theirs, the love that belongs to them, the love that nobody has the right to take away.

Kauffman writes about this in his inspiring film about adaptation:

You can love whoever you want, and if people think you’re pathetic, then that’s their business, not yours. You are what you love, not what loves you.

What a gorgeous and difficult practice.

Have you ever tried letting go of the number of people who don’t love you? Have you ever treated the act of loving as its own reward? Have you ever loved people without caring if they love you in return?

Good luck. The ego howls in protest. Because its job is to hide all vulnerability.

What do you mean people don’t even have to want your love back? Are you crazy?

Maybe. But although the thing we’re all looking for in this brief life can be described by the word love, it’s amazing how little we have to travel to find it. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What if your love was your worst kept secret?

To start the Personal Creativity Management revolution, we’re only opening Prolific to 100 people (71 slots already taken!). It’s now open to the public with an exclusive cohort of unique Founding Member slots.

The cost is one dollar a month, for life.

As beta users of our software platform:

*You get lifetime access to the app with no restrictions.

*You can use the full version of our platform, and every new feature we introduced down the line, forever.

*You will participate in feedback sessions to share input on how to make the product better so it can help you more

*You are grandfathered in through this exclusive offering and will join a cohort of beta users to help us get the product ready for an official public launch several months later.

Want to snag one of the first 100 48 29 spots? Learn more here.

But don’t take my word for it. Hear what Kelly, a Training Manager from Nestle Purina, has to say about PCM:

“Prolific is fantastic, and exactly the kind of open curriculum that the world needs more of!”

P.S. You can try Prolific for free right now. Access any of our 300+ tools up to five times each month. Enjoy!

Evolution is the process of many tiny incremental changes. And it’s a beautiful thing. We suddenly find a new purpose for one or more of our parts, but without significantly diminishing the old function, and it feels like magic.

Darwin’s work on natural selection says that among organisms, there is no such thing as better or worse, smart or dumb, good or bad, strong or weak. There is only well or poorly adapted to one’s environment.

This principle explains how we gain healthy stability in our lives. Just like the fated fish crawling out of the water and beginning to crawl on land, we too begin maneuvering our way to something that works.

Starting a new job often stimulates this kind of growth. We get thrown into a new role, a new team, or a new organization or industry, and finally we are able to utilize the full diversity of our talents on a regular basis.

We can flex those muscles we knew we had, but we were just waiting for the right environment in which to use them.

It almost becomes a game to see what part of ourselves we can bring to work every day.

Is your personality suited for the path you’re taking? Are you adapting your way into work that you’re uniquely suited for?

Byrne famously said that genius, the emergence of a truly remarkable and memorable work, appears when a thing is perfectly suited to its context. When something works, it strikes people as not just being a clever adaptation, but as emotionally resonant as well. When the right thing is in the right place, we are moved.

One of my good friends has struggled with this for years. Her talent stack is extraordinary, and yet, every few months, she finds herself spinning her wheels in the mud of frustration and dissatisfaction.

Nothing career threatening, she simply hasn’t quite unlocked the right platform to exploit her gifts in the most powerful way yet.

But her evolution will happen eventually. Nature is smarter than we are, it doesn’t need a reminder to never give it, and it has its own tempo and flow of which we are all only a small part.

Sometimes it just takes a while.

Hopefully she’ll still be around when the world is finally ready for her. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Is your dissatisfaction stemming from a lack of talent, or a lack of platform?

There are people in this world whose victimhood is their primary sense of identity.

They are looking for goblins in every shadow. Protesting every experience as a violation of their personal freedom.

But when we try to help or console them, they get annoyed. Sometimes horribly defensive and insulted. As if to say, hey now, don’t take away my tragedy. I’m planning on dining on that for a while.

In my own experience, it’s best to not add any fuel to this fire. Or even stand next to it. Because the over under of these people having a diminished sense of outrage is not in our favor.

They would rather we agree with them, so they can feel more justified in being a victim. They would rather sabotage themselves in order to return to their more comfortable and familiar state of misery.

It’s better to treat their martyrdom as a bell of awareness. A gentle reminder that we are not victims of the cosmos, we are victims of our own actions. And that as soon as we become capable of having expectations, we become capable of protesting about not having them met.

Neruda said it best in his poem:

You are the result of yourself. Don’t forget that the cause of your present is your past, as the cause of your future will be your present.

In a world where most of the oxygen molecules in our atmosphere are used for the purposes of sighing and bemoaning and complaining, taking this kind of responsibility for our life would literally be a breath of fresh air.

It’s a choice. Maybe the biggest one we make.

We can be victims of the moment, or we can become willing explorers.

We can be overwhelmed by circumstances, or we can become a masterful creators at play. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What impotent protest is waste of your life and energy?

When asked if it was possible for someone to rehab on their own, my favorite television doctor made the following observation.

Treatment is not a solo process. It’s an interpersonal experience, and it must be done with other people.

His insight, though, is not exclusive to people with substance abuse problems.

Because even if we have never taken a drink or done a drug in our life, it’s still hard to change alone. All personal transformation requires a reorientation from self towards the other.

Buber called this the mystery of reciprocity, or healing though meeting. He believed that there was a spiritual quality of our interpersonal connection where the sense of self receded and was replaced by the experience of we.

Here’s one way to prove that out. Think about the many ways you have changed the most the past five years.

Did you make it out alive because you carried those difficulties on our own?

Did you transform into a better version of yourself entirely on your own steam?

Of course not. Doing so would only have intensified your pain. It’s more likely that your changes were accomplished not so much on your own, but by finding another person or persons who brought something to you.

Not that you can’t change on your own. But our deepest understanding of self develops within the context of other people. If we are serious about the growth of this thing up here we call the brain, interpersonal connectedness is the answer. Even if it’s just one other person.

To quote the famous scripture, where two or three gather in my name, the divine is with them.

Bottom line is, we can’t heal alone, and even if we could, we wouldn’t want to.

Standing too much on our own without the resources of others can make us vulnerable to relapsing into our former selves. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How are you creating connections where healing naturally emerges?