You love playing music. And you want to focus on the art of playing music.
I understand your focus. I love music a lot!
Please consider developing important life skills in other areas of your life as well. Developing an overall good life will, in the long-run, help your musicality (or whatever else you consider important). I believe health, wealth and love all contribute to one’s overall happiness, and in turn allow one to create deeper, richer music.
If you haven’t already, please learn to how to maintain and improve your good mental, physical, emotional and mental health. I am doing okay at this, but am also seeking to maintain and improve upon what I have in regards to health.
Please learn how to maintain and improve good relationships with yourself, with your friends and family, with your musical colleagues and with the rest of the world. I’ve seen very talented musicians severely hamper their musical progress by getting caught up in negative vibes, both personally and with other people. Then again, I’ve seen many great musicians who have surrounded themselves with good vibes and done well.
And please learn how to live a financially abundant lifestyle. In any walk of life, finances can be a huge challenge. With a artistic/musical mindset, some of those challenges may be amplified. And musicians may encounter unique challenges specific to their lifestyle and work-style.
I am planning on doing a series of short articles discussing important skills that any human would probably appreciate in their pursuance of a good life. I am writing this piece for everyone, though I specifically focused on musicians.
Table of Contents
Health, Wealth and Love in Great Music
Health
A lot people see great musicians who have experienced extremely bad health, usually in relation to addiction and abuse. They think that the addiction and abuse helps create the good music. This is not the case. Usually what happens is the musician works hard and creates good music. In the process of creating good music, they get caught up in a unhealthy lifestyle. The unhealthy lifestyle eventually causes their health to deteriorate and with bad health usually comes sub-par (at least to their level) musical performances.
We can probably all think of some examples of famous musicians that had health problems which eventually killed them. While we hear the great music they created, we usually don’t hear the music that wasn’t so great once their bodies had been weakened by poor lifestyle choices.
I am not saying this to make any of these musicians look bad. I love all these musicians’ music and would be honored to have met them. But to dissuade current and future musicians from the belief that poor lifestyle will help one’s music.
Take Jerry Garcia. A much loved musical icon of American music. He suffered from addiction to drugs. We hear many of his great sets, but in the last 10 years of his life, many of his concerts feature a man who should probably be at home getting his strength back.
Take Jimi Hendrix. Sure he probably did LSD and mushrooms. But those things didn’t kill, alcohol did. He could have played for many more years. I love Jimi, and pretty much everyone does, but the lifestyle, not the music eventually lead to an early death.
Take Amy Winehouse. She died of alcohol poisoning. Sure, her personality is the type that would be doing lots of wild stuff and drugs. But no one plays their best when they are drunk. Maybe they get lucky sometimes, but usually they don’t sound as good. If they have stage fright, getting drunk is a crutch for not dealing with issues that eventually they will need to deal with. In other words, Amy Winehouse was extremely talented on her own – she didn’t need to do drugs to be great. But she did need to work out his substance abuse problems. I wish she had.
Another issue isn’t people who died young from overdoses. The other issue creeps up more slowly. It’s usually from poor diet, lack of exercise, and stress. This can happen with anybody, but the lifestyle of a professional musician comes with the challenges of eating well, exercising and staying relaxed in high stress situations.
Wealth
Many people in the artistic world view money and wealth in a negative fashion. While many of the negative aspects of money may be true, there are undoutbly many good parts to being on a path to wealth.
First, wealth can be considered much more than money. Wealth means strong relationships, knowledge, skills, and it means “money in the bank”. It also could be consider virtue. In other words, money alone doesn’t make you wealthy, and someone could be wealthy in many ways without having much money. But to both possess non-monetary and monetary wealth, in the long-run, will most likely help an artist.
Second, many people have the image of the starving artist. This is a common stereotype. While one may see many good the bohemian lifestyle, there are also drawbacks, especially as one gets older. Most people can sleep on couches and eat Ramen noodles for 10 maybe even 20 years. But not many people over about 40 or 45 can still live in their car and be functioning at their highest artistic potential.
Third, many things money does not buy. Freedom is freedom. But at some point, most people arrange their lives in relation to the society in which they live. In that case, money and wealth, if applied well and wisely, can lead to a better life.
Love
Great music is about love, at least to me (and maybe you, too?) Love and music go hand-in-hand. Music celebrates life.
Life, sunsets, adventures, sunset, romance, family, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands, crushes, puppies and kittens, springtime, “random” people walking down the street, neighbors, nature, God …. These are some things one can love.
Most music, in some form, talks about love.
And the best kind of music comes from the heart, from from what one know. So, yes, to me, love and music go hand-in-hand.
Relevant Articles
- Truth, Love, and Power in Learning Music
- 5 pillars of growth in music
- Ideas for developing self-belief and overcoming self-doubt in music (video)
- Positive Self-Talk in Life and Music
- 12 ideas for good health
- The 3rd way and abundance
- 12 ways to improve musicality
- Play what you sing, Sing what you play!
- Ideas for better time