I read a book whilst I was in prison called The Worry Cure. Everyday when I’m trying to accomplish a goal I’m reminded of this section that explained how the mind will play sneaky tactics to self sabotage any efforts to achieve something that scares us.
I tell myself that “Today I’m going to do X, Y & Z”. I start my process only for me to wind up doing T, U, V, W, A, S, D, B... It’s a procrastination tactic. It’s slightly more subtle than the blatant means of procrastination which is doing nothing, and I find myself thinking that I’ll eventually get to X, Y, Z, only to find yet another thing to do, and never getting to the focused task at hand before the day is done.
I procrastinate heavily especially on the tasks that makes me feel uncomfortable. Reason being it’s something I’ve never done before, or I want to achieve a certain quality that I don’t think I can pull off in the time I have or the skills I possess.
I’ll probably be writing about this again and again In the future because I don’t think I can over emphasise this, but the scary truth that I continuously have to face is that the journey of an artist is plenty about being willing to go through the uncomfortable moments of the process. It gets worse when you’re doing it independently as well.
It’s VERY interesting to see how the mind checks out of difficult situations. I’ve been fascinated both by moments when I’m doing it and moments when I’m seeing other artists doing it also. There’s a reason why there’s hundreds of artists out there who have terabytes full of beats and records, but have never released anything. They are their own worst enemy. They check in for the fun part which is recording their own music, but as soon as they have to be their own independent label to publish, release and promote their song they are nowhere to be found. They then escape this realisation by going back to the studio to create more music. It’s a pretty vicious cycle.
As time moves forward I’ll need to master my will to push through the things I find uncomfortable. The best way to do it is to learn how to enjoy it, because after doing this for a while I’ve come to the realisation that I’m going to be doing this a LOT.
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