This got me thinking about my role as a musician and performer. When performing in front of an audience, my hope is that I am interpreting the music and telling the story in such a way that I am helping the audience solve some sort of problem, or posing a question they may not have asked themselves before. In that context of helping the audience (in whatever ways artists can), what might it look like to choose autonomy-oriented helping over dependency-oriented helping?
Read moreBuilding Blocks Every Morning
The takeaway is that anyone attempting to acquire a new skill needs to focus on repeatedly practicing the foundational building blocks of that skill, detaching from achieving any particular end result. In this particular case, the argument is in favor of quantity over quality.
Read moreRewriting the Four Agreements →
Particularly as an artist, having the daily reminder to not take anything personally and to not make assumptions was crucial. However, in episode nine of The Long and The Short Of It, Jen reveals that there’s something that doesn’t sit well with her about the Four Agreements:
The problem here is that when you tell someone not to do something, you have neglected to tell them what to actually do. So I could say to you, “Don’t take anything personally,” but that leaves you action-less. It leaves you in a state of unknown.
So, in typical Jen and Peter fashion, they proceed to magnificently rewrite the Four Agreements, using “affirmative and inclusive language” in order to encourage active implementation of the agreements. (i.e. Saying “do this” instead of “don’t do that.”)
Read moreGetting Curious
I wasn’t curious about my audience, about the individuals who might be consuming these materials (or, more likely, not consuming these materials at all). And, more importantly, I wasn’t at all curious about why on earth I was putting these things—website, newsletter, YouTube videos—into the universe. It was just the thing that every aspiring artist did. Ultimately, it was spam.
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